Shalon Hoyle's Blog – January 2015 Archive (4)

I have been able to find quite a bit of information in the last couple of weeks.  I received birth, marriage and death certificates ordered from England on quite a few members of my family.  We had concrete birth dates, concrete marriage dates, concrete death dates, at last.  My father stared at each one of them, touched them, smiled at them.  The most moving certificate form him was his father's birth certificate.  "I have people, " he said.  More certificates were ordered, and now we sit…

After several weeks of not being able to find my grandfather in the 1911 census, I started to wonder about the theory my cousin's husband had.  Could my grandfather really have been sent to Canada?  I searched for my grandfather in passenger records from England to Canada.  My cousin's husband had mentioned a record he found and I took a look at it.  Charles Brown, passenger with the Waifs and Strays Society, en route to Canada in 1912.  The boy in this record was the right age to be my…

At this point, I started to see a side of my father I had never seen.  To give some history, I am an only child and a daddy's girl.  I have no problem admitting that I was a spoiled child.  My parents had some difficulty having me and I was a preemie.  In addition, in light of my dad's background, he worked very had to make sure I had everything I needed and wanted.  He worked very hard to make sure I knew how much he loved me and how important I was.  Even as an adult, my dad does a lot for…

When I read my dad's adoption file and found my grandfather's Canadian Army discharge date, I had no way of knowing what the one little number would reveal.  I had no way of knowing the pain it would reveal and how it would affect my dad.  After finding the date, I went to the Canadian Army webpage to search for military records.  I found a World War I listing for Charles E F Brown, but the birth year was off by four years and he was born in England.  I read the Attestation Form and it…