Lieut. James Kay (1888 – 1917) - Update

As mentioned in my previous post, my sister had given me some medals and a dog tag belonging to my step-great uncle James Kay. With these I embarked on a search of his military records.

My first step was to check the Canadian Soldiers of World War I on Ancestry. I didn’t have much to go on except his name and that he lived in Montreal. I found a record for a James Kay with a relative of Elizabeth Muirhead Kay. On selecting that one, I found an Attestation Paper indicating Elizabeth Muirhead Kay as next of kin, who lived at 38 Overdale Ave., Apt. 4, Montreal. Overdale Ave. rang a bell, so I double checked some papers that I had and found an old Income Tax receipt for a Helen Kay dated 1923 (she owed a whopping $.72) that said that she lived on Overdale Ave; however, the street number was 36 Overdale. I knew that my step-grandfather had a sister named Helen. I printed off the Attestation Paper just in case this was my James. I then decided to go a different route and typed in my step-grandfather’s name, Adam Sinclair Kay. First record that showed up had a relative of Elizabeth Muirhead Kay. It was Adam’s Attestation Paper listing Elizabeth Muirhead Kay as next kin (mother) living at 38 Overdale Ave.! I have a postcard that James wrote to his mother in January 1916 and it was addressed to E. M. Kay. This was the clincher that confirmed that I had found the right James Kay. I couldn’t believe my luck that within a ½ hour I had found both James’ and Adam’s Attestation Papers. The papers had their date of births, location of birth, their occupation and their service number. It also listed previous military service. James had served seven years with the Royal Highlanders of Canada. One of James’ medals that I have is from the Royal Highlanders!

The Attestation paper was for the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force. I had never heard of this so I decided to google it. The first link that showed up had a complete explanation of this special force. Apparently during World War I, Canada didn’t have a fighting militia so Canadians signed up to fight with England. This force was later disbanded in 1919. The article I found had links to other sites and one of them was Veteran’s Affairs Canada. Veteran’s Affairs Canada has a Canadian Virtual War Memorial. The introductory paragraph says “This site contains a registry of information about the graves and memorials of more than 116,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders who served and gave their lives for their country. Included on this site are the memorials of more than 1500 soldiers who died in service to Canada since the Korean War, including peacekeeping and other operations.”

I plugged in James’ name (you can also enter date of death if you have it, which I didn’t). Two entries showed up. The first was for a James Kay, Regimental Sergeant Major (WO.I) who was part of the Canadian Infantry, Manitoba Regiment (which also showed his service number) who died in 1919 – not my James. I selected the second record and hit pay dirt! Lieutenant JAMES KAY who died on July 28, 1917. Force: Army; Unit: Canadian Garrison Artillery; Division: 5th Siege Bty. The dog tag that I have says Lieut. J. Kay, 5th Can. Siege Battery. I now had a date of death and a location in France where he is buried. The memorial lists the cemetery and even a location within the cemetery where his grave is.

(To Be Continued…..)

Lieut. James Kay

As mentioned in previous posts, my mother remarried when I was 2 years old, after my father passed away. Although I knew that my step-father and his sister were born in Lachine, Quebec and that my step-grandmother was born in England, I didn’t really know too much about the Kay family, other than the fact that my step-father’s sister, Helen was married to my father’s brother, Forbes Farrell, making my blood cousins my step-cousins! (I’ll post more on that in a future post).

Last weekend my sister Judy brought out a box of medals that belonged to my step-great uncle, James Kay that I hadn’t seen in years. She wanted me to take them as she knows that I am working on the family history and thought I would be interested in them.

James Kay was a name that we had heard about but whom we knew virtually nothing. All we knew was that he was my step-grandfather’s brother and that he was killed during WWI. I don’t even remember ever seeing a picture of him. My step-father didn’t know anything about him and my step-grandfather died when I was little so we couldn’t ask him. James Kay was just a name from the past.

While looking through the box of medals, we found a picture of him. Now we had a face to a name and James became a real person! This picture was the front of a post card that James sent to his mother dated January 1916.

We also found two tiny pictures, one of which was of his grave and temporary cross, with a hand drawn map on the back showing the cemetery where he is buried, but no name of the cemetery (although I could tell from the map that it was in France).










With the medals we also found his dog tag, which mentioned his Unit name. I told my sister that with this little bit of information, I would try to see if I could find James’ military information. The next couple of days were spent researching (after which my elbow gave me grief) and did I hit a gold mine! Not only did I find James's military information, I also found some information on my step-grandfather that I knew nothing about.

Stay tuned to see what I found.

The Marshall Clan

The word prompt for the 11th Edition of Smile For The Camera is brothers & sisters? Were they battling brothers, shy little sisters, or was it brother & sister against the world? Our ancestors often had only their siblings for company. Were they best friends or not? Show us that picture that you found with your family photographs or in your collection that shows your rendition of brothers & sisters. Bring them to the carnival and share. Admission is free with every photograph!

The brothers and sisters that I have chosen for this edition of Smile For The Camera are my mother and her siblings. My mother had six siblings and they were all very close, especially the 3 youngest (they did everything together – especially getting into trouble). My grandparents passed away when my mom was very young - my grandfather when she was 2 years old and my grandmother when my mom was 11 years old. The oldest of the siblings, my Aunt Nell then became guardian of the 3 youngest kids. She was married but her husband, a Canadian soldier, was off fighting. The next 3 oldest, my Uncles Dave and Robert and my Aunt Rachel were also married and in the service. When the war ended, my Aunt Nell was to immigrate to Canada as a War Bride and was going to bring the 3 youngest, my Uncle Norrie (17 yrs), my Auntie Vina (15 yrs.) and my mom (13 yrs.), with her. Up until about 2 weeks before departure, all but my Aunt Nell received their papers. While waiting for her to received her papers, my Uncle Norrie turned 18 and was called up for his mandatory 2 years of service, causing him to remain behind in Scotland.

The first picture is of all the brothers and sisters (minus my Aunt Rachel) taken just shortly before my mom and her two sisters left for Canada in April 1946. Left to right – back row: Dave Marshall, Muriel (Robert’s wife), Robert Marshall and Norrie Marshall. Left to right – front row: Lizzie (Dave’s wife), Nell (Marshall) Crossman, Vina Marshall and Rhona Marshall (my mom).

The second picture is of the brothers and sisters taken in October 1970 when my mom returned home for the first time in 24 years. It was a great reunion for her seeing her brothers and sisters again (my Aunts Nell and Vina were absent from this gathering). Back row: Norrie and Dave. Front row: Rhona (my mom), Robert, and Rachel.

The last picture is of the four sisters. This was taken in the mid 1980’s and was the only time that all four sisters have been together since before the war ended. Left to right: Vina, Rhona and Rachel. Nell is the one sitting.

Unfortunately, only two of the seven siblings are still alive, my Aunts Rachel and Vina.

I'm Still Alive!!

Just a quick note (against doctor's orders) for those who follow this blog. I did not fall off the face of the earth - I'm still here. I have been suffering from Tennis Elbow and have been in excruciating pain for the last month and a half. I finally caved in and went to the doctor 3 weeks ago when I couldn't take the pain anymore. I've been on meds for two weeks and have been taking physio therapy twice a week for 3 weeks now. It is slowly getting better. Strict instructions from the doctor to try to stay off the computer as much as possible and to rest the arm, which of course is really hard since I'm a secretary and am on the computer all day. Needless to say, I've stayed off it at night (I think I'm having withdrawal symptoms!)

I used to snicker at people when then said they had Tennis Elbow thinking this was just an excuse not to do things (a few people at work use excuses like this not to work), but snicker no more. It really hurts!! It not only affects the elbow, but the swelling and pain affects the whole arm, and even makes the fingers numb. It doesn't help either that it's my right arm and I'm right handed!

I caved on the weekend and did some research on the Scottish Census on Ancestry (of which I found loads of information), but paid for it the next day. I will be posting what I have found, but it may take a few more days rest before that happens, so just be patient with me. I do hope, however, to get my post done for the Brothers & Sisters carnival that is due on Tuesday.

That's it for tonight, folks.

My Number 21

This week's Saturday Night fun over at Genea-Musings, Randy Seaver is asking who is your Number 21 on your Ahnentafel list. Unfortunately, my Number 21 is still undiscovered so I went with the next closest that I have, which is my Number 24, Robert Marshall.

Robert Marshall is my maternal great, great grandfather. He was born in 1819 in Alyth, Perthshire, Scotland and died around 1891 in Dundee, Scotland. He was married to Ann Kynock of Dallas, Morrayshire, Scotland. Ann was also born in 1819 and died in 1895 in Dundee. They were married on September 26, 1841 and had 9 children. I still have to find out their exact dates of birth and deaths. These are some of the many things on my To Do List.

Robert and Ann were married in the new parish church, which is still standing today. The parish record states simply “Robert Marshall, teacher, Alyth, and Ann Kynoch of the parish of Dallas, were 3 times preached on September 26, 1841”. This is, of course, the Scottish custom of reading the “banns” to the congregation to announce the marriage.

Robert was a school teacher in the village school of Glenprosen. With it went the school house. It was a Society school set up by the church (The Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge).

Robert and Ann’s children were:

Anne Marshall – born around 1844
David Fenton Marshall – born April 13, 1847 (David is my great grandfather)
Robert Marshall – born July 16, 1849
John Kynoch Marshall – born June 18, 1851
William Ramsay Marshall – born September 15, 1853
James Grant Marshall – born November 24, 1855
George Smith Marshall – born August 30, 1858
Francis Ferguson Marshall – born November 28, 1860
Helen Leighton Marshall – born 1865 (Helen is my great, great aunt as well as my great grandmother).

You will notice that I mentioned that Helen Leighton Marshall is both my great, great aunt as well as my great grandmother. David Fenton’s son, Robert (my grand father) and Helen Leighton’s daughter, Eliza (my grandmother) married. Which means that my grandparents were first cousins! I somehow think that is illegal and could explain why my family is as strange as it is!

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today would have been my mom’s 76th birthday. She was born on Feb. 21, 1933 in Dundee, Scotland and passed away on Sept. 8, 2003. When I was Worthy Grand Matron of the Order of the Eastern Star, I did a talk about Mothers that I wrote and I thought I would post it here in tribute to my mother.

During the years that passed from when I was born until my sisters and I moved away from home, my mother didn’t have a job. If she had been asked to fill out a questionnaire about her personal data, she would have left the question “Employment” empty. She believed that her job was to be our mother – full time. That was the way she had chosen it to be.

Here is an old photograph of my mother. In the photo I think she looks very beautiful. She was about 16 years old then. When I look at the photo, I see a woman who could have had an unlimited number of opportunities in life. Although she didn’t always look it, Mom was a tough bird.

Like a lot of people her age, she had a rough childhood. She grew up in Scotland during the worst of the Second World War. Many a time she could be found hiding under her bed, because of the bombings near by. That is, when she wasn’t busy getting into trouble. Mom had six sisters and brothers. Three were off serving their country and the oldest was always working, so that left the three youngest kids plenty of time to get into trouble! In 1946, at the age of 13, she immigrated to Canada with two of her sisters, the oldest being a War Bride. They arrived in Halifax and then rode the train to Balcarres, Saskatchewan to live on a farm, and with a new family she had never met. Coming from the modern city of Dundee to a farm, she always said she never knew what was worse, the war or not having indoor plumbing! Although mom quit school at 16 years old she never let that stop her. She was never one to sit around. She would always be out working – be it on the farm, at the local hospital or at a seafood canning plant in Toronto where they once spent the winter. I know that if she had put her mind to getting a career, the whole world would have been at her feet. Yet she always contemplated herself as housewife and mother.

Mom got married at 20 years old to Robert (Allan) Farrell, a boy from the next farm. Allan, my father, was a diabetic since the age of 13. Due to complications, he passed away at the age of 35 leaving my mother a widow with 3 kids at the tender age of 28 (by this time we had moved to the “Big City” of Moose Jaw). Two years later mom re-married a family friend who lived in St. Lambert, Quebec (his sister, Helen Kay, was married to my dad’s brother! That’s a whole other story!). As soon as we moved to St. Lambert, Mom got involved in the Women’s Church Guild. She became a constant worker at the church bazaars and rummage sales and later, as we grew up, with the Girl Guides. She was an avid crocheter and made a lot of afghans. Everyone in the neighbourhood we grew up in admired her for the great effort she put into charity work, but if someone asked her what she did for a living or who she was, she answered that she was Douglas Kay’s wife, and Judy, Heather and Alana’s mother.

The thing I remember best from my childhood is how it felt to come home from school. She was always there and when we swarmed through the door, she was getting supper ready to put on the table. Today there are probably many women who will see what she did as a waste of her good abilities. Why would a determined woman be content with making soup and sandwiches? I don’t know the answer myself. But it must have been good for something when I, many years later, still remember how it felt to rush through the kitchen door – and there was mum, waiting for us. I just wish I could have given that to my daughter.

I belong to a generation who by and large grew up in families with mothers who were home all day. And there is no way I could have had a better childhood. If my mother suffered privations from being a housewife not working away from home, she did not transfer any of them to us, her children. And whatever we may have of good qualities, we have because we had a mother who considered it her job to be our mother.

In the middle of all of life’s confusion, it is actually very reassuring to know that you always have a simple rule of thumb: how would I act if my mother could see me right now? In a way I think that we in our generation have fooled ourselves into believing that we can reinvent the whole world and alter the fundamental rules of life overnight. But deep inside we all know that we are actually the same people we were at the time our mothers could look into our eyes and see what we had done without needing to exchange one word. And believe me, in my case that happened a lot! I remember that as a little girl I believed that there were monsters living in my closet. Before I could fall asleep, I had to have mum chase them out of my room. Only then could I sleep.

I’m shrinking a little as I write this. But only if I tell it exactly the way it was can I explain what I mean: most of the time in our lives we have to chase out the monsters from our closets ourselves. But during a few short years in the beginning of our lives, our mother takes care of them for us.

Today I think that many women would be afraid of a life like the one my mother had. So many things have changed that if an intelligent woman would have to do today as my mother did then – devote herself to a husband and children – she would not only feel that her options were limited, but she would also feel outright threatened. I hope that my mother felt that she did the right thing.

We all go through our adult life with the conception that we have never been anything but fully developed grownups. But we have; we have all been small children once, who hurried home from school completely assured that someone was waiting for us at home. It meant something then and it means something today. And I am eternally grateful that the woman in the photograph was waiting for me.

Who’d have thought I’m a KreativBlogger?

What a nice surprise to receive a message from Amanda at A Tale of Two Ancestors telling me that she has awarded me the KreativBlogger Award. As a new genea-blogger I certainly didn’t expect this. Thank’s so much Amanda.

The in rules for the Kreativ Blogger Award are:
1. Copy the award to your site.

2. Link to the person from whom you received the award.

3. Nominate 7 other bloggers.

4. Link to those sites on your blog.

5. Leave a message on the blogs you nominate.

There are so many to choose from that I compromised on 6.

My nominees for this award are:

AncesStories: The Stories of my Ancestors
Claudias Genealogy Blog
Delia’s Genealogy Blog
kinexxions
Twig Talk

Olga’s Daughter

Tombstone Tuesday - Unknown

I don't have too many pictures of tombstones as yet, but I had to post this one. This is a picture of my daughter when she was 2 years old. It was taken at the Abbey in Kelso, Scotland when we were over there for my sister's wedding. I have always had a fascination for old cemeteries, especially those attached to a church. The grave in this picture had sunk into the ground and my daughter decided to jump right in. I don't think she knew what she was "getting into"!

You’re going where without me?

It’s been a busy week so I haven’t had much time to post anything. This is the other story I have been told about when I was a baby (actually I was two years old). My mother always liked to tell the story about when she re-married when I was 2 years old. We were all sitting in the front row watching. I was sitting (I’m sure very quietly) next to my uncle Harry. When it was time for Mom and my new Step-dad to go to the side room to sign the register, I decided that I should go along too. My uncle, who had just had a cast removed, reached over and grabbed me with his very tender arm. Apparently, with his face quite red and beads of sweat popping out, it was the one time that he nearly cursed in church! Everyone seemed to think it was quite funny!

My mom re-married and old family friend, Douglas Kay on December 21, 1963 in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. They met through his sister, Helen, who was married to my Uncle Forbes Farrell. My mom was a young widow, aged 30 yrs. old, with three little girls. It was a small wedding with the reception held in the church hall. It’s nice to know, that even though she was re-marrying and would be moving away, her former in-laws and the rest of the Farrell family attended the wedding. My mom’s sister, my Aunt Vina as well as my cousin Bob stood as witnesses. This is a newpaper clipping of the wedding announcement. Unfortunately, it’s not very clear.

The top picture is one of the few pictures that I have of my paternal grandparents, Robert and Ellen (Nellie) Farrell. That’s me sitting in my grandmother’s lap.

The picture on the bottom is just some of my cousins who attended the wedding.

The High School Years

My first meme! Randy Seaver over at Genea-Musings has Saturday Night Fun – Your High School Years. Thought this would be a great one for my first time. I know its Tuesday, but better late than never, right?

1. What was your school's full name, where was it, and what year did you graduate?

Chambly County High School, St. Lambert, Quebec – 1979. It’s now called Chambly Academy.

2. What was the school team nickname, and what are/were your school's colors?

I don’t think we had a school team but our colours were red and white.

3. What was the name of your school song, and can you still sing it?

We didn’t have one.

4. Did you have a car? How did you get to and from school?

No car. Wasn’t old enough to drive until after I graduated. I walked to school.

5. Did you date someone from your high school? Or marry someone from your high school? Were you considered a flirt?

No, no and defiantly NO.

6. What social group were you in?

I didn’t belong to any “groups”, but two of my best friends did!

7. Who was/were your favorite teachers?

Mr. West, my old English teacher. He was the one that really got me into reading. I always remember him wearing an old tweed jacket with the patches on the elbows and his glasses perched on the end of his nose. When not in class he always wore a scarf around his neck and an old fedora type hat. He was great.

8. What did you do on Friday nights?

Usually stayed home and watched TV. That’s because I didn’t belong to any social groups!

9. Did you go to and have fun at the Senior Prom?

Didn’t go.

10. Have you been to reunions, and are you planning on going to the next reunion?

I went to my 25 year reunion 5 years ago. It was really good seeing everyone again. I believe they are planning a 30 yr. reunion this year, but not sure if I will go. There is also a reunion for the whole school, all years, coming up next year.