I recently spent 2 weeks in NYC and discovered that they have an entire room devoted to Genealogy. There are many books, folders, and other items that can be accessed there. I don’t live in New York, so I got a free temporary (3-month) card and was off to the races.

Their research catalog is vast and I was able to call up files for various old NY families that my husband is a part of (Pinckneys, Vermilyeas, Tourneurs, Guions, Fourrestiers, etc) as well as books that referenced them. Some were on site and I could get them with a short wait. Some were offsite and I could order them up via the research catalog, and they would be there within a day, maybe two.

What a wonderful resource!

The 1891 Census of Canada makes our little Calhoun family seem so normal, cohesive.  As I have seen on other Census data, the age noted for Robert is wrong.  It says he is 42, but depending on when the census was actually taken, he would be 43 or 44 and Eliza is listed as 38 but she is either 36 or 37.    The family patriarch, Robert, is 44 and an Agent (probably still for Rathbun Lumber Company).  Eliza is 37 and a housewife.  The family religion is said to be Methodist.  All the children are still listed in their household:  Charley is 19 (and listed as a YMCA Secretary, Grace is 17, Bertha is 15, Alex is 11, Marion is 7, Kathleen is 4, and Doug is 1.  Very tidy.

Research within the family (grandchildren of Charley’s) tells me that Charley and his father didn’t get along. In fact, Charley’s granddaughter, Diane, tells me that he had been beaten down (at least mentally) by his father.  He left the family home early and separated himself from his parents.   He wanted to go to college but never had the opportunity because there was not enough money.  Charley went out and got a job.  He was a very religious man and the YMCA would have been a great place for him.  The YMCA’s mission was to engage young men and promote Christian values.  Charley was a very religious man throughout his life.

I wonder if Charley’s father, Robert, had felt trapped by his wife’s pregnancy and took it out on Charley, though there is also evidence that he was not always kind to his wife.  This came out in letters between his daughters, Marion and Kathleen.

His mother, Eliza, on the other hand, was always written about and talked about as being a very kind woman.  Her children and her grandchildren adored her.

In 1891, daughter Grace had begun teaching.  She was teaching in Belleville and the rest of the family, save Charley, had moved to Ottawa about 2-3 years later…the family story is that Robert was looking for educational opportunities for his very bright children.

Charley moved to Montreal, Quebec with the YMCA and continued to excel in that organization.  He became a master fundraiser, and worked his way up to the International YMCA and worked in New York.  He married EFFIE MARGARET BUDGE, the boss’s daughter, and had a family of 4 girls and a boy (Margaret Calhoun Sedgewick, Robert Budge Calhoun, Kathleen Calhoun Leathem, Eileen Calhoun Russell, and Beatrice Calhoun Nancekevill).  He died at 86.

Grace first became a teacher, then went on to a professional course in Guelph.  She became a Supervisor, ended up making more money than her father, was the first woman to own a car in the province of Ontario, and was very prominent in Ottawa schools for her entire career. She never married and died at 77.

Bertha was the real mystery.  She appears to have been “simple”; I think that was the word that family at that time used to describe her.  She lived at home as a housekeeper to the family, then went to live in a hospital.  She died, unmarried, at age 99.  The family took good care of her all those years.

Alex was brilliant.  He earned a scholarship to go to university and became a high school teacher, then became a librarian.  He was the founding librarian of the Calgary, Alberta Library system.  He was an incredibly influential man in his community.  He was my husband’s grandfather.  He lived to be 99 years old.

Marion became a librarian at the Geological Survey of Canada, in Ottawa.  She became a VAC nurse in England at the end of WW2, after the death of her brother, Douglas.  She married Stewart Clifford McLean (called Mac), a Geologist.  They had 2 children, Donald Douglas McLean and Kathleen (Kay) McLean. She lived to be 84 years old.

Kathleen was the youngest daughter. She became a teacher first, then followed her brother, Alex, to Alberta and became a librarian. She had an affair with a prominent, married, Canadian artist and when that ended she headed to New York City to work in the library of J. P. Morgan.

Douglas, the baby of the family, became an engineer and eventually joined the army with classmates from university. He died at Passchendale in Belgium while working on building a road for the Allied Forces.

I am in the process of writing “the Book” on one part of the Calhoun Family.  ROBERT CHARLES CALHOUN and ELIZABETH ANN PARKE were my husband’s great-grandparents.

I have collected a 3-inch binder-full of material on them and on their children.  I have found so many interesting things that the documents have uncovered about this amazing group of people.  I am trying to decide how many documents I will include in the PDF-book that I am creating.  I am in the process of deciding the page layout…what will look aesthetically pleasing?  (I worked on my high school yearbook and was on the layout staff, so I know a little bit about this.)

This is actually less fun than collecting the data but it is the reason I collected all this data…to tell their story.

Their story started in Ballinamore, County Leitrim, Ireland.  Robert was a teacher in the Church of Ireland school.  Eliza was either a student or a teacher’s assistant.  Romance ensued.  They married in Feb 1872 and got on a ship for Canada.  They had 10 children (that I could find a record of), with 3 of those children dying in childhood.  I want to tell this story in the right way.  Can I do it?

My husband’s Great-Aunt KATHLEEN CALHOUN (20 Nov 1886 – 23 Nov 1970) has always interested me enormously.  She was very close to her brother, my husband’s grandfather, ALEXANDER CALHOUN, and so the family has photos and momentos of hers.

Kathleen struck out on her own at age 24 and went out (Alone!!!) to the Canadian prairie to teach.  She was in Saskatchewan…a place most Americans and many Canadians have barely heard of, much less traveled to.  And in 1911, Saskatchewan was a very remote place…a pioneer’s place.  First in Elbow and then in Saltcoats, Kathleen showed her grit and her gumption as a young woman, solitary and smart, out in the hinterlands.  There are some wonderful photos that are still in the family.  Just look at these:

And just how did Kathleen get there?  She was a woman with a college degree.  In 1911!  Here is a bit more of her story.

Kathleen was the youngest girl.  Her older surviving sisters were GRACE, BERTHA, and MARION CALHOUN.  There was an older sister, MYRA ISABELLA CALHOUN, who had died of consumption at 9 months old.

Kathleen was seemingly incredibly bright and won the Silver Prize (the highest honor) in Mathematics at her secondary school, Ottawa Collegiate Institute.*  This made way for her to win a scholarship to college.  She followed her brother, Alex, to Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, from which he had graduated in Spring 1902 with a Gold Medal in Classics, his major.

Kathleen graduated in Spring 1904 with her Mathematics Medal and Queen’s University Chancellor’s Scholarship in hand (worth $200 per year). She had won a French and German Scholarship as well, according to the Ottawa Journal (12 Aug 1904 and 18 Aug 1904).

After two years at Queen’s, she spent a summer teaching in Manotick, Ontario, of which she noted:  Earned $70, paid $20 board…brought home $50.  Kathleen switched schools to Ontario Normal College in Hamilton, Ontario in the Fall of 1906.  This was a school to train secondary school teachers.  She only went there for one year; the college closed in 1907 when teacher training went into the University system.  She must have switched from Queen’s because she decided to be a teacher.  Hamilton was 300 miles from Ottawa, on Lake Ontario, not far from Niagara Falls.

In June 1907, Kathleen traveled by boat and train to Calgary.  She went to Red Deer, Springbank, and Carstairs to apply for teaching positions.  She accepted a position in Carstairs in a 4-room school and taught there till December, when she returned home to Ottawa.  She was ill with thyroid problems, which would plague her for the rest of her life.

In April of 1908, Kathleen began teaching in Ottawa at First Avenue School, Grade 1.   After a year and a half of teaching, Kathleen returned to Queen’s University, where she graduated in April 1911.  She left Kingston and headed back West to teach at a school on the prairie near Elbow, Saskatchewan.

On 30 June, she left Elbow and taught at a new school at Saltcoats on the prairie, slightly southeast of Yorkton near the Manitoba border (just north of North Dakota).  By Christmas, she had returned to Ottawa.

The 1911 Census found Kathleen in the area of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.  She must have been living alone as she is listed as head of household, and there was no one else in her household.  She was a Teacher, living on her own means, worked 22 hours per week and earned $325.

What an adventure!  Could I have been as brave?

*Brief description:  The Ottawa Collegiate Institute is another notable school in Ottawa’s history, still open under the name of the Lisgar Collegiate Institute. Established in 1843, this originally all-boys school began admitting girls in 1859. In 1874, the collegiate relocated to its current spot downtown at 29 Lisgar Street (known as Biddy Street at the time).