Moving Back, Moving Onward

When Marshall Jackson left Pembina County in the new state of North Dakota, it was likely with only his immediate family. Along with his wife Hester, that included sons Burnett and Earl, and daughters Gladys and Eleanor.

According to the 1906 Canadian census, the family reported arriving in Winnipeg in 1903—although by then, son Burnett had married and moved to Saskatchewan, and son Earl had also moved out of the family household, likely remaining in Winnipeg.

As for the many Harvey family members related to Marshall's wife, Hester, none apparently joined them on the trek northward, when the moved to Winnipeg. For although Marshall was said to have been born in Peterborough, Ontario, the majority of census reports showed Hester as having been born in New York.

In checking the 1885 census for the Dakota Territory, Pembina County—where the young Jackson family had settled—had no less than thirty four people itemized with the surname Harvey, Hester's maiden name. In fact, on the land grant records for Marshall Jackson, related documents referred to both an Ellen Harvey and a John B. Harvey—and then a reference to "heirs of" John Harvey in 1899.

Whether Hester was connected to this John and Ellen was not clear from documents I could locate, though. John's obituary was vague, to say the least. Here's all The Pioneer Express had to say on the matter on May 4, 1894:

Mr. John Harvey, sr. passed away Friday last, after an illness for over six weeks, which he bore with Christian fortitude. He leaves a widow and seven children, all of whom were at his bedside when he passed away. His funeral on Sunday last was largely attended, about sixty carriages following to his last resting place.

There was a John B. Harvey buried in a Pembina County cemetery—the Walhalla Hillside Cemetery—who had died on April 27, 1894, well within the parameters described by the newspaper article. Of course, a will and probate records would help determine whether Hester Harvey Jackson was among those seven children steadfastly attending to John Harvey in his last moments. As neither FamilySearch.org nor Ancestry.com currently include digitized wills or probate records for North Dakota, and since I have no plans in the foreseeable future to journey there, that little research project will have to be put on a back burner.

However, I can certainly hunt and peck through the documents which are available, in the meantime. So I looked for any records which might contain a John, an Ellen, and a Hester in the same household. I found one: in Watertown, New York, where a John B. Harvey lived with his wife Anna and four children, according to the 1880 U.S. Census. Conveniently, the household included a seventeen year old Hester, plus a nineteen year old Ellen. The added bonus was the inclusion of a son John—thus making his father's record agree with the "John Harvey, sr." designation we found later in North Dakota.

There were, of course, several drawbacks to this proposed match.

First was that the reporting party declared every single one of the household members to have been born in Canada, thus disagreeing with Hester's subsequent—and repeated—identification as having been a New York native.

Second was not only the number of children, but the discrepancy between their names and those of the Harvey family I found in the 1885 Dakota territorial census—while I found an Ellen and a John (Hester was, by then, married to Marshall Jackson), I lacked any sign of their older brother Samuel.

Worse, while it certainly would be possible for more children to have been born to the couple after the 1880 census, it wouldn't quite as handily explain away so many discrepancies on the reported ages in each census. Not to mention, there would be some explaining to do in the matter of wife Anna turning into wife Agnes in the journey from New York to North Dakota.

At best, all I can determine at this point is that Hester's Harvey family—whoever they were in Pembina County—all seemed to remain behind as she took her leave of them in 1903. Many of them likely remained in North Dakota for the rest of their lives, judging from the many Harvey memorials on the Find A Grave entry for the Walhalla cemetery where John B. Harvey was buried.

As for Marshall Jackson's own siblings—he had two brothers and two sisters, all but one sister still remaining in the Jackson household in Calhoun County, Iowa, in that state's 1885 census—none of them seemed to follow him back to Canada either. One brother headed toward Montana then eventually wound up in the Los Angeles region, while the other eventually ended up in the Chicago area. One sister stayed in Lake City, Iowa, until after her husband died, when she returned home to Ontario and remarried. The other sister eventually moved to Nebraska.

The 1903 move that returned Marshall Jackson back to his homeland brought with him five United States citizens. According to the 1916 census, Hester and her daughters became naturalized Canadian citizens in 1910. That didn't last for long, though. After the tragic death of her husband, Hester eventually moved southward with her two daughters, where each of them lived in various locations in Los Angeles County in California.

As for Marshall's two sons, the eldest moved first to Saskatchewan, but eventually ended up moving closer to his father's home in Winnipeg by relocating to the city of Brandon. The youngest, at first living in Winnipeg, later moved to Saskatchewan, to Moose Jaw.

I often wonder, in the aftermath of great personal tragedy, what becomes of those left behind—what the personal repercussions were, and how far that painful experience emanated. In the case of Marshall Jackson's family, as his children married and started families of their own, life's path seemed to tug them in different directions—a natural occurrence for many of us in these more recent eras. It's been almost one hundred years now since Marshall Jackson lost his life so tragically and senselessly, and the family has seen the passing of two more generations since Marshall's death. And yet, though the newspaper headlines of the tragedy that took his life have long faded from public view, his was a story that surely hasn't been forgotten by the ones who were the closest to him.    

Above: Where the Marshall Jackson tragedy began: boarding the eastbound train at the Canadian Pacific Railway depot in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in January, 1917. From the Rob McInnes Postcard Collection, one of the collections featured at PastForward, Winnipeg's Digital Public History. Used by permission, with thanks to the Winnipeg Public Library. 
 

Clues of Family Close By

I'm always curious, in examining the stories of brave immigrants who left home—and all else, apparently—to travel great distances at considerable risk, just to have a fresh start in life.

In the case of Marshall Jackson, he left the place of his birth—Ontario, Canada—as a young adult headed for Dakota Territory. Best I can tell, he married after his arrival there, to a young woman named Hester Jane Harvey.

But did he come west on his own?

It was thanks to those archived newspapers that I discovered he was not alone in that immense journey. For at least part of the way, he had the company of family. While I don't yet have all the details, one brief newspaper mention in The Pioneer Express on June 1, 1894—for which scant detail I'm certainly grateful—opened up the picture for me. Under the headline, "Died," was found this brief entry:

JACKSON.—At Lake City, Iowa, May 11th. Mrs. Astor Jackson, aged 52 years. Mrs. Jackson was the mother of Marshall Jackson of Walhalla and sister of Wm. Rose, of Ernest, in this county.

Part helpful and yet part not helpful—I have yet to find the town called Ernest on a map, and more to the point, anyone named William Rose in that county—it does tell me a few things. First of all, that Marshall had family who had also left Canada and headed west in the United States. Second, it provided the name of his mother, and—especially valuable—her maiden name. Then, too, if she hadn't been coy about revealing her real age, it gave me the reference point to extrapolate the year of her birth. Coupling that with an educated guess that she might also have been born in Ontario, it held out the hope I could trace Marshall's own documentation to his birthplace in Ontario, as well.

Given the precise date of death and the location, it wasn't difficult to confirm that record in Lake City, Iowa. The location, in Calhoun County, was a railroad town founded in 1856 whose population peaked at the turn of the century—just a few years after Mrs. Jackson's passing—and has gone steadily down from that high of 2,703 ever since.

As it turns out, the newspaper got one detail wrong, though: her name wasn't Astor, but Esther—although throughout the many years of documentation in which her record was captured, her given name suffered the predictable spelling permutations, so "Astor" is forgivable. She, her husband, two sons and a daughter had apparently lived in Lake City since at least the 1885 state census, giving us a snapshot of Marshall Jackson's immediate family. Perhaps he, too, had once lived there before venturing further westward to the Dakota Territory.

Esther Rose Jackson, who predeceased her husband, was buried at the cemetery in town. At least that's what I gleaned from her memorial on Find A Grave. I can safely say that's a record I would never have stumbled upon, had it not been for that brief mention in the North Dakota newspaper linking her with her son, Marshall Jackson.

That, however, was not the only nearby family connection for Marshall's family. A few hints in property records made me wonder whether Marshall's wife might also have had connections in town.

Marshall had married a young woman with a name similar to his mother's. In the case of his wife, most documents listed her name with the spelling Hester. Her maiden name was Harvey, and her own mother's maiden name had been Burnett—thus providing the explanation for the given name of Hester and Marshall's eldest son: Burnett Harvey Marshall.

There did happen to be, in Pembina County, several entries in the 1885 Territorial census for the surname Harvey. Although I don't know yet which ones were related to Hester, it was interesting to learn that there were some Harvey family members named in relation to the original land grant Marshall Jackson had obtained in 1891.

If Marshall and Hester both had family which had moved west with them, what was prompting them to leave home once again? Were they going it alone, this time? Or was this move back to Canada also going to be done in the company of others?

Getting Personal

In retracing the steps on the timeline of constable Marshall Jackson's life, not all was newspaper coverage of his career in law enforcement. There were a few glimpses on the personal side in those Dakota Territory newspaper reports, as well, helping to paint a portrait of the man and his family.

The newspaper from the county in which he settled, after leaving his home in Canada, captured this moment in time on March 1, 1889, in The Pioneer Express:

Marshall Jackson, wife and family, have returned from the east. Their little boy was sick with the chicken pox when they left and he has been very sick since their return but is now slowly convalescing.

Given the date of 1889, it was impossible to tell whether the "little boy" the paper was designating was Marshall's oldest son, Burnett—who would, by then, have been five years of age—or their younger son, whose name turned out to be Earl, after all.

Still, one valuable clue in that brief insert showed us that the Jackson family had reason to visit someone—or something—back east. The trick in finding utility in that "back east" idea depends on the frame of reference of those choosing that descriptor. For those of us originating on the eastern seaboard, the phrase could only mean one thing: an east coast destination. But for those accustomed to midwestern ways, the term could simply mean a trip to, say, Iowa.

Wherever it was, though, chances were good that Marshall had not made his previous trek westward as a young, single man, alone. The possibility of family nearby—instead of far away, back in Ontario—increased ever so slightly with this detail from the local newspaper.

Second son Earl became the mention of the next clue found in newspaper reports of Marshall's personal life in North Dakota. Once again, it was The Pioneer Express providing the details, this time on October 4, 1901, in a section labeled "County News" under a subheading for Glasston:

Marshall Jackson of Neche visited his son Earl, Sunday.

As brief as that line was, it also provoked some questions. By 1901, young Earl would have been about fifteen years of age. Considering he was living back in Neche at the time of the 1900 census—just over one year previous to this news mention—what caused the change? There was little more in Glasston—then as well as now—than farmland and a stop along the Great Northern Railroad. Could he have moved the twenty five miles from Neche, simply to get a job?

Actually, hold that thought on the railroad. The Great Northern Railroad may well have been the very vehicle which brought Marshall Jackson to this part of the Dakota Territory in the first place. After all, the Great Northern had branches that ran northward to Canada from Dakota Territory and, like the Northern Pacific Railway—another company with early train service to Dakota with a northern line headed to Winnipeg—heavily promoted their service westward to immigrants and others seeking new opportunity as land in this territory opened up in the 1870s onwards.

Whether it was the Great Northern or the Northern Pacific that brought Marshall Jackson all the way from Ontario, Canada, to Pembina County in Dakota Territory in the early 1880s, one thing is sure: it was the easiest way to move back out again. And that is apparently what Marshall and his family did, in the early 1900s.

An entry in the April 3, 1903, edition of The Pioneer Express gave the first indication:

W. A. Murphy purchased the residence of Marshall Jackson, of Neche, recently. The latter will remove to the Northwest.

Well, take that last line with a strong dose of skepticism. You know those editorial foibles. As we already know, by the time of Canada's 1906 census, Marshall and Hester Jackson and at least their two daughters were in Winnipeg, listing their date of arrival in the Dominion of Canada as 1903.

Above: An undated photograph, circa 1909, of Osborne Street in Fort Rouge, the section of Winnipeg in which Marshall Jackson and his family eventually moved, upon their return from North Dakota. This intersection was less than one kilometer from the Jackson home. From the Rob McInnes Postcard Collection, one of the collections featured at PastForward, Winnipeg's Digital Public History. Used by permission, with thanks to the Winnipeg Public Library. 

Putting the Search in Context

One thing which seemed masked, in the search for Marshall Jackson in his home in Dakota Territory, was the context in which he arrived, lived his life, and eventually exited. Perhaps there is this sense of continuity assumed in any genealogical search: that while our ancestor obviously arrived at some point, the place at which he arrived had always been there—at least in some form.

Sometimes, you have to put effort into the search to step back and discover the big picture. What I missed in this week's search was the fact that Marshall Jackson had arrived in Dakota Territory in the early years of formation of the places in which he lived. Not only that, but he arrived in the early years of his own life, as well.

Judging from census records, it appears to have been a young, single man of barely eighteen years who arrived in Pembina County from his native Ontario, Canada. Pulling our clues from the 1900 census, when he declared his age to be thirty seven, he gave his birth to be in the month of July, 1862. While his arrival out west in 1881 might have given the impression that he was a seasoned traveler, the fact was that he actually had barely grown up and left home.

In that same census, he indicated not only that he had arrived from Canada in 1881, but that he had become a naturalized United States citizen.

Sure enough, turning to the database at the North Dakota State University Archives, looking up his name in their naturalization records index yielded this result:

Marshall Jackson had filed his first papers in Pembina County on November 1, 1881. The follow-through occurred in the same county almost to the day, six years later.

Now, let's put this in perspective. In 1881, North Dakota was not yet a state—that didn't happen until the end of 1889. The county in which he filed his papers—Pembina County—was established in the northeast region of the Dakota Territory in early 1867, but didn't assume its current holdings until much later. Its shape morphed through a series of transitions that took it down in size from 1871, when it stretched from the Canadian border to nearly current-day South Dakota, to 1873, when the process began to carve eleven new counties from Pembina's borders.

That process had barely been completed when Marshall Jackson arrived in the region. To say where he actually settled might have been near impossible, without following the border changes through several iterations of map editing, if it hadn't been for two other documents.

One of those documents was the territorial census conducted in 1885. Transcribed and posted for free access on the North Dakota State University Archives, it shows us a young Jackson family—in addition to Marshall, his newly-wed young wife Hester and two year old son, listed as Bernard, at the bottom of this page—living in Cavalier, one of the counties carved out from the formerly immense Pembina County.

The other document which guides us to Marshall's whereabouts had a later date of origination: February 13, 1891. By the time that record was issued, Marshall was not quite yet twenty nine years of age, but he had just gotten himself named as a patentee on a land grant in Pembina County in the new state of North Dakota. In some ways, he and his family could be considered pioneers in that county's history.

Of course, at the time of the 1900 census, we can see the Jackson residence was located in the town known as Neche—said to be a Chippewa word meaning friend—and Marshall and Hester were by then the proud parents of two sons and two daughters. By the time the Jackson family left the state—best guess so far is 1904—Marshall had become well established in the county, thanks to his active duty as Pembina's constable.

By juxtaposing Marshall Jackson's personal timeline alongside the historical events of both the territory and the county, it reveals just how early in the history of the new state of North Dakota the family had actually settled there.

Above: Plat map of the township of Neche, North Dakota, from 1928—long after the Jackson family had left town; courtesy United States Library of Congress; in the public domain.
 

One "L" Or Two?

If you happen to find yourself researching the family history of a man employed in law enforcement in the small towns of nineteenth century America, you may find a wealth of mentions in local newspapers. All the better if those newspaper excerpts can be gleaned from a publicly accessible source such as the Library of Congress' Chronicling America project.

In our case, we've been perusing Dakota area newspapers from 1881 through 1904, the years our man Marshall Jackson had been living and working in Pembina County. The date range was gleaned from census records, both in the United States and in Canada, where "Marsh" moved, after his twenty-plus year stay in what had just become the state of North Dakota.

The 1900 U.S. census had indicated Marshall Jackson was serving as constable, but assertions in the Winnipeg newspaper, on the event of his death, had pegged him as a former sheriff in North Dakota. All I could find, though, was a series of articles in The Pioneer Express detailing his candidacy—and subsequent loss—for sheriff in Pembina County.

Still, there were ample entries in the local paper giving every indication that he was active in local law enforcement. Take, for instance, this entry on September 19, 1902:

Marshall Jackson, of Neche, was notified to look out for Frank Forbes, an escaped insane patient of the Jamestown hospital, who was committed from Hyde Park some time since.

Marsh's name was peppered liberally among the usual small town cop stories. In one instance reported on June 15, 1900, a local farmer was approached about purchasing some cows from two men who had just come over the county line. After the deal was struck, the purchaser discovered his bargain of "a couple of cheap beeves" was really the property of a neighboring farmer, who identified them as such.

Upon that discovery, the man, now out his money and having returned the stolen property,

immediately telegraphed Marsh Jackson, county constable, of the trouble. In the evening, Mr. Jackson arrived and it only took him a short time to secure a clew to the direction taken by the thieves....

Cattle thievery wasn't the only crime to make local headlines in Pembina County. On October 24, 1902, a store in Neche was broken into and the cash register stolen. A series of other stores in town were also hit that same night. However,

One of the suspects was arrested by Marshal Jackson near Altona the next day and now occupies quarters in the village jail pending examination.

Even the more pleasant aspects of a police officer's duties were covered in the local paper. The "international picnic" of the "A.O.U.W. of Manitoba and North Dakota"—held to be "one of the most successful"—included among its accolades on July 6, 1900, a nod to our man:

Marshal Jackson performed his duty, and the peace of the day was not marred in the least.

This January 27, 1899, report may have been another example encompassing all in a day's work for local law enforcement.

Marshal Jackson of Neche brought over a man named Robert J. Embery to the county jail, in default of bail, under charge of assault with a dangerous weapon. Embury was in a scrap with another man and Deputy Marshal Neil McKinnon attempted his arrest when Embury assaulted him with a leaden billy.

Wait! Deputy Marshal?

If some of these news reports—alternately featuring spelling as Marshall or Marshal—offended the sensibilities of your editorial eye, you are not alone in being irked by this irregularity. Though we could have excused it—just as the swapping of "Embery" and "Embury" in the above news story—to poor copy editing, it seems there was something more at play here.

Like this example. Remember the stolen cash register reported on October 24, 1902? Here's another detail:

Marshal Jackson, of Neche, on Tuesday brought over the two burglars who went through LaMoure & Co.'s store. They are pretty tough-looking characters. One of them became a little belligerent, which resulted in a black eye for him and a broken finger for the marshal.

Oh oh. Could this have been Marshal Marshall? But I thought he was constable. He was, after all, collecting fees for his services as constable.

So far, in sketches of the big picture of local law enforcement, I had run across mentions of the office of sheriff and that of constable. I hadn't picked up on the possibility that there was also a position there called marshal. It was time to consider whether Marsh was the marshal, or whether someone else was.

It didn't take long, in Chronicling America's easy to navigate newspaper resource, to find a "clew." There, in the May 10, 1895, edition of The Pioneer Express, was a whiff of local politics to waft in our direction:

On Saturday night a caucus was called to put in nomination officers for the ensuing year. It needed not a very intelligent man to see which way the wind blew. The fight was on the clerkship and marshal.

So there was a position of marshal out in this pioneer region. The question now became: who was the marshal? Marshall? Or some other Jackson?

In that very 1895 column discussing the machinations of local politics, we find our answer. The "hottest fight for years" resulted in "a strong ticket elected" which included, for marshal, a man identified by the name of C. Jackson.

Whether Mr. C. Jackson retained his position after that year's election, I can't tell. But further inquiry led to some details which either will serve to confuse or clarify whether Marshall Jackson was ever known as marshal in these parts. It seems—at least on November 2, 1900, the eve of another election—that perhaps the editorial staff of The Pioneer Express had finally made peace with their Ls:

Marshall Jackson of Neche has made an enviable record as a peace officer while acting as constable and marshal of Neche village. He is a teetotaler, does not drink or smoke, and is one of the most active men we know of. He will make a good record as sheriff.

It seems the predictive power of their editorial staff is exceeded only by their editorial prowess in such political matters.  

At Least a Candidate

Archived news reports can help augment genealogical research, but should come embedded with a caveat emptor warning regarding editorial errors. That, I learned long ago. And don't intend to ever forget.

In the search for details on the life of murdered immigration officer Marshall Jackson of Winnipeg, I was elated to discover the local newspaper during the years he had lived in North Dakota is now part of the Chronicling America collection of the U.S. Library of Congress. Still, I made sure to proceed cautiously in case of any potential editorial hazards.

My goal in checking each mention of Marshall Jackson's name in the North Dakota newspapers in the Chronicling America collection was to see whether the memorial comments printed in Winnipeg following his passing were indeed accurate. In particular, the Manitoba Free Press had mentioned that "Marsh" had once served as Sheriff in Fargo, North Dakota.

Already, I was discovering that that report was not entirely correct. Fargo was located in Cass County, while we have already seen that, at least in the 1900 census, Marshall Jackson was serving as constable in the town of Neche in Pembina County to the north.

While Cass County isn't Pembina County—and constable doesn't equal sheriff—I thought there might still be some truth to the matter, so I trawled through the many references to Marshall Jackson found in the Chronicling America collection to see what I could find.

Right away, I found a mention of some activity of interest. From The Pioneer Express, Pembina's newspaper, on August 24, 1900:

Marshal Jackson of Neche was in the city on Wednesday evening and made us a pleasant call. Mr. Jackson was on his way to Drayton and expected to make several calls on his way. He informs us that he expects to be a candidate for the office of sheriff before the republican county convention, and from present prospects confidently expects the nomination. Mr. Jackson's record as a police officer and constable is of the best and proves him to be a faithful and efficient officer worthy of promotion.

While the slant on that article slides farther toward editorial spin than news reporting, it does show us that Marsh at least intended to run for sheriff.

A second such insertion in the same newspaper—this time on September 7—shows the man was busy pursuing his political dream.

Marshal Jackson of Neche was in town last week talking politics to some of the boys. "Marsh" is spoken of as a likely candidate for sheriff on the republican ticket.

Sure enough, in a column of convention reports gathered in the September 19 edition of the Grand Forks Daily Herald, one day after the republican county convention in Neche, Marshall Jackson's name appeared among those who had been nominated. It was now official: he was running for sheriff.

Now it was time to get to work. As election day drew near, Marsh did seem to be out there, connecting with prospective voters, according to mentions like this one in The Pioneer Express on October 19:

Marshall Jackson and J.W. Harvey have been canvassing this district and apparently are well pleased with prospects. They are both good fellows and deserve a popular vote.

It may have been too early for such confidence. The local newspaper began printing the list of candidates for all offices in late October. Marsh was running against Democrat candidate F.J. Farrow. From what I can glean from other editions of The Pioneer Express, Farrow appeared to be the incumbent.

As it turned out, Marshall Jackson couldn't generate enough support among the voters by the time of the November election. The tally—not printed in the Express until November 9—showed our man gleaning a total of 1,412 votes. His opponent, Sheriff Farrow, came in at 1,759. I'll let you do the math.

Still, there's one thing I've noticed about researching ancestors and others who once served in law enforcement careers: you can find a lot of mentions of their name in the local paper. Considering I received five pages worth of hits at Chronicling America for Marshall Jackson's name—within the limited time frame of his few years in the Dakota Territory and new state of North Dakota—it appeared there was a lot more to learn about his career as constable than in his brief run for sheriff.

    

Finding the Jackson Family

It isn't every day that one uncovers a murder mystery among the stories tucked inside one's family history. Even though the victim in this case—Marshall Jackson of Winnipeg, Canada—wasn't part of my family (sadly, it was his murderer who was a distant relative in my matrilineal line), I wanted to trace his story to find out more about the man.

At the time of his 1917 death in the line of duty, working as part of the immigration service, Marshall Jackson lived with his family in a section of Winnipeg known as Fort Rouge. Newspaper reports of his funeral helped pinpoint his family in the census taken only one year prior to his passing. Although the household listed Marshall, his wife "Ester" and two daughters, we had seen from newspaper coverage that he also had two sons—one living in Brandon in the same province of Manitoba as his parents, the other in the neighboring province, Saskatchewan, in a place called Moose Jaw.

Rather than attempt the rather unwieldy genealogical chore of trying to find these Jackson sons at their place of residence in that same census enumeration—a trying feat, considering such a common surname—I thought it might be more expeditious to wander back through the census records systematically, until I could locate a year in which they all resided in one household.

Pulling up the prior census, though, proved unhelpful. There, still in Winnipeg, were the Jacksons—sans sons, unfortunately. The 1911 census showed wife Hester and daughters Gladys and Eleanor, but no sons.

Again, skipping backwards another five years to the previous census record of 1906, we find the same household. No sons.

Five years prior to that, in the 1901 census: nothing. No Marshall Jackson family whatsoever—with or without sons.

It might have seemed like we were doomed to have to go the more tedious route of eliminating numerous Jackson families in those two other Canadian locations in the hope of finding the right sons of Marshall and Hester Jackson. Except for one thing: looking at the actual digitized replica of the census page reveals much more than the mere transcription provides (at least in current formats). And on that digitized record, we could glean a few more facts to help reconstruct this family tree.

For one thing, the 1916 census showed that the Marshalls' youngest daughter was born in the United States. Because she was twenty one years of age at the time of that census, it would mean that the family—well, this daughter and her mother, at the very least—would not have been in Canada as late as 1895.

This particular census, however, helps us pinpoint the year of immigration a little more clearly—if, however, the reporting party remembered the incident clearly.

The 1916 census record shows Marshall's wife—not a citizen at the time of her arrival in Canada—to have come to that country in 1904. The same thing was reported for her two American-born daughters, indicating they must have been in the United States during the time of that country's census in 1900—thus addressing why they wouldn't have shown up in the 1901 census in Canada.

And sure enough: there the family was, in the town of Neche in Pembina County, one of the most northern counties in the new state of North Dakota.

Although the precise handwriting of the enumerator made reading the names of each family member a snap, it was somewhat complicated by his less than stellar spelling abilities, thus not quite providing us the precise names of each of Marshall Jackson's sons. However, we do have an approximation of what their names were. "Bernatt," the eldest, was fifteen years of age, having been born in North Dakota in December of 1884.

The second son, also born in North Dakota, arrived in June of 1886, bringing him to the brink of fourteen years of age at the point of the 1900 census. The only problem is: I can't read his name. It looks suspiciously like "Irl," making me wonder whether it should actually be Earl—until I succumb to pondering the possibility that it might have been Gil. I find it more forgivable to have to endure bad handwriting than poor spelling.

Of course, the girls were both listed—Gladys, having been born in October of 1891, and her younger sister "Ellen" in August of 1896—as was their then-thirty six year old mother, Hester. Apparently, Marshall and Hester had by then been married for seventeen years, placing the year of their marriage around 1883, and the location—considering Hester was, by other reports, actually American and not Canadian, as this census mistakenly identified her—somewhere in the United States. Indeed, the date of Marshall's arrival in the country was marked as 1881, most likely precluding the possibility of a Canadian marriage.

Another interesting detail of that 1900 census in North Dakota was the listing of Marshall's occupation. The census reported him to be serving as constable. While not to the rank of sheriff that the Winnipeg newspapers had later reported him to be—and certainly nowhere near the size of city his reported location of Fargo would have been at the time—the position of constable was a form of law enforcement officer, in some cases an elected official.

Although by this census record, Marshall Jackson had not, exactly, served as sheriff as the Winnipeg newspapers later reported, there were other indications that the paper may not have missed the mark by as much as it seems here. It was another newspaper report—this time from stateside—that provided a few hints.

Above: The Marshall Jackson household in the 1900 U.S. Census for the town of Neche in Pembina County, North Dakota. Image courtesy Ancestry.com.

Remembering an "Old-Timer"

When the long-sought obituary finally materializes for the ancestor one is researching, the question uppermost in mind, of course, is: will the newspaper report include that coveted list of relatives?

In the case of research on Thomas Guinan of Winnipeg—and formerly of Ontario and North Dakota—the answer was, thankfully, yes.

I'm not sure I would like to be remembered as an "old-timer," but that is how Thomas Guinan was presented in the long write-up published on May 5, 1937—three days after his death. Headlining the article, plainly enough, "T. Guinan, Old-Timer of Winnipeg, Dies," the Winnipeg Free Press devoted a good portion of two columns to a review of the man's life accomplishments.

Small wonder. The paper characterized the man as a "prominent figure in the development of Winnipeg and the west in the early part of the century."

Thomas Guinan's age was given as eighty—right away providing a warning to remember that all newspaper reports are suspect, when it comes to pristine accuracy. An earlier article had indicated that he was born six years earlier. Typo?

Still, the overall picture provides a guide for retracing the steps of Thomas Guinan's personal history.

Born in Huron county, Ont., on Nov. 10, 1856, he spent his early days on a farm near the village of Blake in Stanley county. Educated in the public schools of Ontario, he remained in that province until the late seventies, when he moved with his parents to North Dakota, where his family was one of the early settlers in the Langdon district.

Some of the details of his business dealings as a young adult we have already stumbled upon, thanks to newspaper reports in North Dakota, where Thomas had settled with the rest of the Guinan family.

Mr. Guinan later went into the hotel business at St. Thomas, N.D., where he lived for many years. Beginning in 1896, he served four years in the North Dakota legislature.

Of course, the main focus of Thomas Guinan's obituary would be his years spent back in Canada. Many of these details we've already uncovered, as well, including his original settlement in the Elm Creek area and his later involvement in the real estate business, headquartered in Winnipeg, as president of the Red River Land & Loan Company.

Remembering the article I had found yesterday on the court case calling some of his real estate deals into question, I was interested to see how the newspaper—now in retrospect—would portray that rough stretch of the Guinan history. In the circumspect graciousness reserved for the eulogized, the Free Press said merely that he "was instrumental in bringing many settlers to the west" and that "the present suburb of St. James was largely developed" by the Guinan company. However, the paper couldn't resist the understated reminder that

Mr. Guinan was a Conservative in politics, and was a staunch supporter of the late R. P. Roblin during his long term of office as premier of Manitoba.

Coming to the statement that all genealogists live for, the Free Press reported that Thomas Guinan was

survived by his widow and five children, Anne, Ethel, Thomas, Jr. and Stanley, all of Winnipeg, and Lawrence, of The Pas, Man.; three sisters, Mrs. Margaret Franklin, Grand Forks, N.D.; Mrs. Hector Falconer, Portland, Ore.; and Mrs. Thomas Graber, Regina, Sask.; and two brothers, Hugh, of Teulon, Man., and Daniel, of Moose Range, Sask.

Other than omitting the actual name of his widow, Thomas' obituary turned out to do a fine job of orienting us to the Guinan family constellation. As if wishing to further confirm the connection, the paper went on to include a post-funeral report on May 6, 1937, which added the names of the pallbearers, including Dan "Rayan" and Pat Ryan, likely nephews of Thomas Guinan through his by-then-deceased sister, Annie and her husband, James Ryan.

Newspapers being newspapers, that this obituary might have been embellished is a risk we have to take in seeking more information on the man. The political hot water swirling around the one episode of Thomas Guinan's career, though in this article presented quite innocuously, may well have led to what the newspaper benignly mentioned as the time when

he retired from business during the Great War and since then has lived quietly with his family....

However, dates and details of political analysis aside, the Guinan obituary provides us a guide through the underpinnings of Thomas' personal life, for which I am grateful. Between this tedious newspaper search, involving both the publications in North Dakota and in Winnipeg, and the outline of his family constellation, despite some discrepancies in details, I was finally able to locate a possible census record for the intact family before they left Ontario for North Dakota.

Not exactly in the "Stanley county" residence identified by the Free Press—and indexed under a spelling off by one critical letter—this 1871 census entry for the "Gainan" family in the Stanley district, still in Huron County, finally yielded the list of family members I had suspected would be the way it was. With Thomas at a promising fourteen years of age at that point, the list included the two brothers I had wondered about—Will and Joseph—as well as sister Annie and baby brother Hugh, likely named after the "Uncle Hugh Quigley" I had seen mentioned in various newspaper entries. Eight year old Margaret became the "Maggie" Guinan who later was wed to John Franklin in North Dakota. And Mary most likely later became Mrs. Falconer, mother of the unfortunate ten year old Stella, returned to her childhood home in North Dakota for burial.

Above: The "Gainan" family—likely the Guinan family—from the 1871 Canadian census for the Province of Ontario, Stanley township in Huron County. Image courtesy Ancestry.com.

Land Grabs: Doubting Thomas

Sometimes, it helps to go with your gut instincts.

Yesterday, I mentioned having that vague feeling, when looking at the Guinan brothers' enthusiasm over moving north from their Grafton-area farms to Canada. "Times are booming and he likes the country," reported the November 18, 1906, Daily Herald, out of nearby Grand Forks, North Dakota, concerning former resident Joseph Guinan. "Reports of the good climate and soil in that part of Canada are not exaggerated," affirmed another Daily Herald story about his brother, William Guinan, later on February 10, 1911.

Really?

I couldn't help but think that maybe, just maybe, someone had a vested interest in getting rid of some property.

While GenealogyBank.com gave me the scoop on what was happening among the Guinan brothers, back home in North Dakota, I had to turn to NewspaperArchive.com to scour the reports from the Winnipeg side of the story. Sure enough, there was land to be sold and money to be made, and apparently at least one of the Guinans was in the midst of the deal.

Of course, I can't entirely be sure this is one of our Guinans. After all, trawling through 196 hits from my Guinan search at GenealogyBank gifted me with information overload. After diagramming and time-lining who was related to whom—a multi-hour project, I assure you—at least I can say I think this is one of our Guinan brothers.

The furor all seemed to center around the business savvy of one Thomas Guinan. He, in turn, was apparently related to both Joseph Guinan and our William Guinan, husband of the by-then-deceased daughter of Edward and Johanna Ryan (you know: either Margaret or Mary).

The trail northward started, sadly, with a report of the death of a ten year old girl, Stella Falconer. Though she had died in Elm Creek, Manitoba—due north about one hundred miles from the Guinan properties near Hoople, North Dakota—her parents had chosen to return her body to the family burial plot at Saint Thomas. Thus, her obituary appeared in the newspaper of the nearby Grand Forks, North Dakota: the Daily Herald of October 19, 1902.

Frustratingly, that obituary did not exactly mention the precise relationships between the Falconers and the Guinan family, but both Thomas and Will Guinan were mentioned as joining the funeral party on its journey southward from Canada, including the detail that they would be staying at the home of Joe Guinan.

So, who was this Thomas Guinan? As it turns out, following his trail through archived newspaper reports not only painted a colorful picture, but yielded the back story, once I arrived at his own obituary, later in 1937.

I had made a mental note about one entry I found early on, which hadn't specifically mentioned Thomas' name; only in retrospect was I able to go back and retrieve it as ours. From "The City: Bits of News" in Grand Forks' January 23, 1897, Daily Herald:

Representative Guinan, of Pembina County, tarried in the city yesterday. Guinan is good looking and a blamed nice fellow.

The good-looking representative, evidently, left his position before the time of the Falconer funeral in 1902. At least, we can assume. In the next news report I found of him, a decade later, he was billed as president of the Red River Loan and Land Company, presumably out of Winnipeg, where his ads were spotted in The Manitoba Free Press. Here's a sample of the copy from his ad run on March 21, 1912:

For Sale: Bergen and Rosser lands. 1840 ACRES—Known as the Clarke Howe Farm. This splendidly equipped farm is owned by me and I am offering the same for sale. All the land is under cultivation. Two sets splendid buildings, 3 windmills and water for unlimited stock. 1,000 acres ready for crop. For a quick sale $65.00 an acre. $25,000 cash; balance 5 years, at 6%.

It was a politically-instigated article appearing a few years earlier, though, that cast Thomas Guinan in a different light. Headlines from the March 3, 1909, Manitoba Free Press—only three years before the "postage stamp province" had its current borders established—shrieked, "Land Transaction Should Be Investigated."

The headlines went on to explain,

Sixteen thousand acres of swamp area transferred to the Province in December, 1907, were immediately sold to Thomas Guinan, who resold at a profit of from $2 to $3 an acre.

And that was just the headline.

From what appeared to be a politically-motivated vendetta against the then-current province premier, Sir Rodmond Roblin, a "public accounts committee" launched a "preliminary hearing" into a particular land transaction which was considered to have "some peculiar features."

That transaction, of course, was the land swap masterminded by none other than Thomas Guinan, the one whose brothers were so enthusiastically endorsing the popularity of moves north to Canada.

In that same March 9, 1909, Manitoba Free Press article on page five, every detail of the hearing was reported, down to the haggling by the Attorney General over questions plied during cross examination, and offense taken over insinuations that "a prominent Liberal" might have been somehow implicated in impropriety during the land transactions.

Whatever came of that episode in Mr. Guinan's life I haven't been able to determine. However, later newspaper entries of a more mundane nature did help to reveal some of Thomas Guinan's life history. From the Manitoba Free Press of November 9, 1912, a benign article entitled "Birthday Congratulations To," provided a helpful sketch:

Thomas Guinan (Winnipeg); born, Huron County, Ont., Nov. 10, 1850; member of North Dakota legislature, 1896-1900, when he moved to Winnipeg; president of Red River Loan and Land Company. 

The unfortunate report, July 22, 1916, of the death of Thomas Guinan's eldest daughter, Kate—then twenty five—revealed the detail that she was "born at St. Thomas, N.D., and removed with her parents to Winnipeg about 15 years ago." She, like the Falconers' daughter in 1902, found her final resting place at the family plot back in North Dakota.

But it was discovery of Thomas' own obituary, when his own last moments had arrived in 1937, that provided the complete road map of his life's travels—and, as you may have guessed, the story of how the rest of the Guinan family and their associated in-laws had made the journey from their original home in Ontario to the American farmland of North Dakota and then back again to Canada.

That, however, includes enough detail to merit a post of its own—tomorrow.

When Business is Booming

Call me crazy, but I decided one way to determine which of the many Guinans settling in the Grand Forks area of the Dakota Territory were related to our Ryans was to do a universal search of the surname in the historic newspapers collection at GenealogyBank.com. We do, after all, have the technology. Why not?

It took quite a while to sift through the 196 hits received from such a query. It will take even longer to sort out which Guinan was related to whom. Precious few of those news reports coupled the name Guinan with the surname Ryan, actually. But since at least two Guinans were in-laws of our Ryan line, I have a lot to learn by examining the comings and goings of the extended family.

While I'm still mulling over all the listings, don't think I'll just vacate this blog space. Oh, no. There are too many useful tidbits to share. So I may as well start with a few, today.

One of my main questions was, "What made the Ryan family decide, after emigrating from Ontario to the Dakota Territory, to return to Canada?"

I always had the hunch that Edward and Johanna Ryan did not make their cross-country move alone. Besides taking their adult children with them—well, at least three of them for certain—there were others whose names seemed to crop up, not only in North Dakota, but later, after their return to western Canada. Among those names were several of the extended Guinan family.

Evidently, some of the Guinans were—at least for a while—successful businessmen. It was quite entertaining, reading through the sometimes snarky editorial comments tossed into the local columns of the Grand Forks Daily Herald. Of course, there were many ads placed for the business of one Guinan relative—Thomas—but in addition to that, I gleaned enough to get a sense of life in early 1900s North Dakota. More importantly, I also got a glimpse at who was lobbying to move northward—and why.

This entry from the May 3, 1903, Daily Herald made me smile:

Thompson & Guinan have received a new tonophone, or in plain English one of those new fangled pianos that run by electricity and goes without fingers.

While Thomas Guinan was part of the extended family that still remained in North Dakota after the turn of the century, his brother Joseph Guinan—at least, I think he's his brother—had evidently already made the move northward. Under the headline, "Grabbing the Coin," in the November 18, 1906 edition of the Daily Herald, the report was made,

Joseph Guinan, who has been in Sasktoon, [sic] N. W. T., for some time, writes to friends in this city that he is making lots of money in the hotel business at that place. He says times are booming and he likes the country.

By February 10, 1911, another Guinan brother had chimed in, according to the Grand Forks newspaper.

Wm. Guinan of Saskatoon, a brother of Joe Guinan, a former business man of this city, and now also located at Saskatoon, is a visitor in the city, and will leave this morning for his Canadian home. Mr. Guinan reports that a large number of people in eastern and central Canada will move to the Peace River country in the spring, and that the reports of the good climate and soil in that part of Canada are not exaggerated.

Thinking of how blustery the weather could be in North Dakota, I have to wonder how "not exaggerated" the Guinan report of good climate farther north at the Peace River valley might have been. Somehow, it makes me wonder if the Guinans were single-handedly launching a public relations campaign to urge their friends, associates, and neighbors to all vacate Grand Forks and join them in moving to Canada.

Above: Vintage postcard of downtown Grand Forks, North Dakota, circa 1912, within the decade after many of the Guinan family had left the area for Canada. Courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Following the Wider Family Circle

Sometimes, when stumped by your ancestors' whereabouts, the best course is to follow the trail of their family members—and sometimes even their friends.

Since I've been stymied by the families of Edward and Johanna Tully Ryan's grown children, I thought it might be profitable to seek out any trace of the in-law family into which two—at least that's my estimate—Ryan descendants married. Son James had married a woman by the name of Annie Guinan, and daughter Mary—at least, I think it's Mary—had become the wife of one William Guinan.

All this happened—at least, if I'm correct in my guess here—after the Ryan family emigrated from Ontario. Which means these marital vows were exchanged somewhere in the northeast corner of the Dakota Territory. Thankfully, that meant the odds of finding the wrong families would be extremely slim. After all, the population of Grafton, North Dakota—where Edward and Johanna Ryan showed up in the 1900 census—had just then crested two thousand souls. Nearby Hoople—closest town to the land grants obtained by William Guinan—at that same time registered a population of one hundred seventy four.

What were my chances that seeking the surname Guinan in newspaper reports of that time period would give me false leads?

Well, it was at least worth the chance. So I took a look to see what I could find.

Using GenealogyBank.com, I was pleased to see that there were a good number of hits for my search on the name Guinan. The oldest of them was the most felicitous. From The Grand Forks Daily Herald on Monday, November 29, 1886, the reprint from the Saint Thomas Times reported:

One of the most pleasant events of the season was the marriage of Mr. John J. Franklin to Miss Maggie Guinan, last Tuesday evening. The ceremony was performed by Rev. Father Kennedy of Grafton in the presence of a number of invited guests.

But was that my Guinan? I couldn't yet tell. At least, for the Guinan household I had found in the most recent census—the territorial census conducted in June, 1885—there was no sign of a Maggie or Margaret Guinan. Of course, that is provided I've found the right Guinans in the census to match up with my Ryan descendants.

I kept looking. There were other reports for Guinans in the area. Take this one, found as a reprint of the Saint Thomas Times in the February 5, 1899, Grand Forks Daily Herald:

Mrs. Guinan was buried here last Friday. She was the mother of Tom Guinan of Grafton and William Guinan of Hoople.

Though not indicating the given name of the unfortunate Mrs. Guinan, the article did provide enough direction to sketch out a rudimentary family constellation. And indeed, that's where our William Guinan—and his lined-out wife Margaret Mary had lived, according to the 1900 census.

Another report, again from the same resource and dated May 31, 1899, helped build the Guinan family constellation even further.

Bernie Guinan of Grafton has been spending a few days visiting at the homes of his uncle, Hugh Quigley, and his cousin Joe Guinan. He will return to Grafton Thursday morning.

Great! That gives us some further clues. First, the connection to the Quigley surname is encouraging, as we've already noted that in other records, most recently the Margaret Quigley living next to the Guinan family in that 1885 territorial census. This report, though, indicates a Guinan family in Grand Forks, the town of the newspaper report. Perhaps the Bernard Guinan of the 1885 census record is one and the same as this Bernie? After all, this Bernie had a brother named Hugh as well. Could that Uncle Hugh be Margaret Quigley's sibling or in-law?

We find another confirmation of Thomas Guinan in the same Grand Forks newspaper on September 15 of that year:

Thos. Guinan, formerly of this city [Grand Forks] but now of Grafton, was in town on Thursday making a deal with Soards for a engine [sic].

Just when we think we're making progress with this newspaper archive expedition, however, we run into some conflicting information. From the September 19, 1899, Grand Forks Daily Herald:

Berney Guinan, brother of Joe Guinan of East Grand Forks and a relative of the Franklin and Quigley families, died in Grafton Sunday morning at 10 o'clock of typhoid fever. Berney was a young man in the prime of life, being 24 years old, and was possessed of a most kindly and gentle disposition which endeared him to all who knew him.

Though the article went on to extoll his virtues, it certainly didn't provide me any explanation for who this particular Bernard Guinan might have been. After all, the other Bernard Guinan was cousin to Joe Guinan, not brother. I began to see the specter of another family rising, rife with named-afters. While the lingo sounded right—all the right Quigleys and Franklins were there—things were not stacking up in just the right places. The traditional Irish naming pattern was sitting off in a dusky corner, mocking me.

At least the obituary provided me with some solid information—that the funeral would be held at Saint Thomas' Cathedral in Grafton and the burial would be in "the Catholic cemetery"—and gave me an inkling of what, exactly, might have wiped out the unfortunate mother, "Mrs. Guinan," back in February and her possible relatives, the younger Mrs. Guinan and her brother, Dennis Ryan.

Though interesting—and sometimes tantalizingly close to its target—following the trail of these possible members of the extended family didn't seem to serve its purpose of leading me to the information I'm seeking on our Ryan family. Yet.

A Wider Circle of Friends

Having mentioned, the other day, my lack of resources for following our immigrant Ryan family from their last home—the pre-1900 Walsh County settlement in what became the state of North Dakota—in their return to Canada, I've since realized my brief hiatus yesterday allowed me to find some well-timed resources for this latest Canadian foray.

Whatever happened to Edward and Johanna Tully Ryan and their extended family, I cannot fully tell at this point. It is obvious that their son Dennis died, leaving a widow and several children. It is just as likely that one of the Ryan daughters likewise died. As we'll soon see, her mother-in-law may also have died in that period of time between Dennis' 1892 death and her own by 1900, as well as some other Guinan relatives. In fact, though I can't yet figure it out, Ryan matriarch Johanna herself may have died in North Dakota by that same date.

There is a lot that could be settled, if only I could contact a cemetery office for the Catholic cemetery in Grafton—or possibly the larger Walsh County area.

In the meantime, while I search further for answers there, another option is to follow the remainder of the family north as they moved back to Canada—first, apparently, to Winnipeg, and then to various remote farming communities in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Last I had looked, however, there weren't enough resources online to assist me in even formulating an educated guess as to what became of the Ryan children's own grown children.

Taking this quandary as a prompt to revisit what I had found the last time I journeyed down this path, I was heartened to discover much more has been added to online resources. For one thing, an entire set of Catholic records for Saskatchewan has been put online by FamilySearch.org—good news, indeed, for this researcher.

Just as I had found for marriage and death records of Ryan family members who had settled in the province of Manitoba, the office of vital statistics for the province of Saskatchewan—and later, as some of the family's descendants headed even farther west to British Columbia—has been adding records to their online resources. In addition, apparently for some parts of western Canada, rather than Catholics being buried in a cemetery run by the local church, burials for all faiths were sometimes made in a city cemetery, of which certain portions were designated for specified religions. Happily, those city cemeteries sometimes included online listings of those buried within their realm.

The most serendipitous of my findings this week, however, was the discovery that @marksology—a.k.a. Kenneth R. Marks, the consummate pursuer of free historic newspaper resources worldwide—had just posted to his blog, The Ancestor Hunt, an updated listing of online historical newspapers in Saskatchewan.

Those are the kinds of friends a genealogy researcher can really use on her side. I am now in researcher heaven.

With a Little Help From Some Friends

Sometimes, it takes a village—of fellow genealogical researchers—to help solve a family history mystery. That's what it was beginning to feel like, when I muddled through the Ryan family in 1900 Walsh County, North Dakota.

Later in life, Edward Ryan and his wife—the former Johanna Tully, sister of my husband's great grandfather, John Tully—had immigrated to what was then the Territory of Dakota. At least, that's what I presume. It was easy to find their one son, James, who was listed in the 1900 census in which the new state of North Dakota made its first appearance. It was also fairly uncomplicated to discover that their other son, Dennis, had already passed away, leaving a wife (Mary) and four children.

Unfortunately—and isn't this always the case when researching the unmarried female relatives in a family—it was not as easy to determine what had become of Edward and Johanna Ryan's two daughters, Margaret and Mary. For one thing, their dates of birth were close: Margaret, born approximately 1858 in Ontario, Canada, was two years older than Mary. The main issue, though, was the difficulty of tracking possible marriages in the face of such common names, coupled with the magnitude of the move from eastern Canada to the territorial outreaches of the western United States.

True, one or both of the sisters could have married and remained in their home in Huron County, Ontario, left behind by their aging parents and older (and, at that point, still unmarried) brothers. Also—though hardly as likely—one or both of them could have remained in Canada as spinsters, while the rest of their family embarked on this wild adventure in a distant locale where the more hands available would help make the work lighter and more successful.

While I can say that it's my hunch that each of them accompanied the rest of the Ryan family in their move westward, I know you'll be hesitant to buy that. Having a "hunch" just doesn't cut it, when it comes to serious genealogical research. We want to see proof.

Sometimes, however, proof is not forthcoming. After all, I'm a denizen of the West Coast of the United States. It's unlikely that I'll just hop a jet and zoom over to Ontario, just to thumb through old marriage records that haven't yet made their appearance online. And I love the thrill of the hunt too much to cave and shell out the bucks to hire a professional to answer those questions for me.

So, I did the next best thing: I turned to my genealogy friends online—those denizens of the genealogy forums which were still in their heyday when I struggled with this research dilemma almost ten years ago. Focusing on the 1906 Canadian census clue I had found in Saskatchewan, in which a William Guinan had reported step-children by the name of Ryan—Chester Ryan, in particular—I went looking for any other researchers working on the same line.

Because I had done some exploratory work on the Guinan line—the surname of that step-dad who had apparently married widow Mary McMartin Ryan in Winnipeg in 1900—I knew some of the other surnames associated with that family. Through a search in an online forum, I found someone from a related line who could answer my questions.

Since I do so much research besides the classic name-date-place documentation of strict genealogical pursuit, over the years, I've assembled pages of records on obituaries, news clippings, and other records on several of the people I've researched. All those find a home in the notes section of my family history database. Dated and cross-referenced with the provider's contact information, each entry helps lead me back to the person who first directed me on any given question I've studied.

In the case of this William Guinan and second wife, Mary McMartin Ryan, I ran into a genealogy forum respondent who happened to have corresponded with someone from another branch known to be part of this family. Now that I look back on her notes, I'm so grateful I saved them, verbatim.

Basically, thanks to this forum contact, I now benefited from the notes of yet another researcher. Here's what the note told me:

Firstly it [the note from the other family researcher] indicates...he [William Guinan] remarried in 1900 to Mary McMartin Ryan "the widow of his brother-in-law" (sorry it didn't say which bro-in-law, but Dennis could be right) who had children of her own. William homesteaded in Sask [Saskatchewan] with 11 people in his household. He died in a car accident near Saskatoon in 1919, and was taken for burial with his first wife in North Dakota by "James Ryan and wife from Winnipeg." William was "survived by his wife, three sons and two dgts."

 
Of course, that fit nicely with the scenario I was beginning to see unfold with the 1900 U.S. census and the November, 1900, marriage record I mentioned yesterday. If you've been absorbing this tangle of names and dates, you'll recognize the name James Ryan as belonging to our Ryan family, being Dennis' only brother.

You will also see this as confirmation that William's first wife—whoever she was—had passed off the scene before his November, 1900, marriage to second wife Mary McMartin Ryan, widow of Dennis Ryan. The email also tells us that that first wife—whoever she was—was buried not in Canada, but back in North Dakota, likely near where the Guinans had formerly lived.

That, of course, brings us full circle back to the 1900 census and its enigmatic write-over, showing William's first wife to be named either Mary or Margaret. One way to resolve that enigma would be to locate death records for any of her children—but, as we'll soon discover, all her children moved with the family to their new home in Canada, making online access to such records not impossible, but a bit trickier.

It would have been helpful if one of those volunteer websites such as Find A Grave had included a listing for William Guinan's thirty-eight-year-old wife, wherever she was buried in North Dakota. Unfortunately, at this point, only three Guinans are listed in the entire state. While they are undoubtedly relatives of William, none was his unfortunate young wife.

There is, however, another interesting point about the quoted portion this forum participant had passed along to me from the other family researcher: the mention that after his passing, William's remains had been taken back to North Dakota to be buried next to his first wife. The sad duties fell to the brother of William's second wife's first husband.

Doesn't that sound a bit convoluted to you? While that is very kind of him, why was it the lot of James Ryan to bury his former sister-in-law's current husband? Besides, as you can tell from the note, James himself had also moved away from North Dakota and was residing, not in Saskatchewan, the current home of the Guinans, but in Winnipeg, in the province of Manitoba. This "favor" to a former in-law was beginning to take him far out of his way.

As you've likely suspected, there was another reason for such a kind-hearted gesture. James' own wife, Annie, was a Guinan, too. While I've yet to determine her relationship to William, it is close (either sibling or first cousin).

However, I'm also positing that there was a second family connection between James Ryan and William Guinan: that that burial next to William's first wife would put him side by side with James' own sister.

I had some hunches about this possibility—but no solid proof. One nice touch was to look at the 1900 census record and realize how nicely the pattern of their children's names fit within the traditional Irish naming pattern. The first daughter—for whom the lot fell to be named after the mother's mother—the given name was Johanna. The second son—in this case, traditionally the namesake of the mother's father—was named Edward.

Short of finding any death record—and granted, with a death as early as 1900, it would be unlikely that any such record would indicate the name of the deceased's parents—I couldn't say for sure that this was the case. However, enclosed with this forum respondent's email was some additional helpful information. In mentioning that William Guinan's first wife had died in 1899 in North Dakota, my helpful forum contact explained:

William Henry Guinan had married twice, first to Mary Ryan (dgt of Edward and Johanna Tully) with whom he had 7 children.

Granted, being provided with this information does not make it so. Witness the many online trees which label William's one and only wife as Mary McMartin Ryan—disregarding the messy detail that their 1900 marriage would preclude her maternal link to his children born before that date, or the fact that he had Ryan stepchildren in his 1906 household. Documentation of these details would be a nice touch.

On the other hand, if William's first wife was indeed a Ryan, that would provide part of the answer to my question about the reason for James Ryan taking such care to deliver William to his final resting place so far from his home. That she was a Ryan named Mary would provide an additional answer—although, having answered the question instigated by that sloppy census enumerator's 1900 write-over, "Mary or Margaret," now launching us on a second quest to determine what had become of the Ryans' other daughter.

At this point, however, it gives me a rough sketch to go on. Barring any further documentation to the contrary, I'll use this as my working premise for the time being. It certainly provides a better fit than the assumption that the post-1900 wife was mother to all the children in both parts of that blended family.