#52 Ancestors Week 30 - "Colourful"





Since I live in Canada now, I always add the "extra" vowels, and I don't want to get out of the habit. I have already written about the most colourful character in my family for Week 2- Favourite photo, my grandmother  Jean Treleaven Marr Park. I'm going to feature someone else, but going through more of her old photos, I found a few that literally made me lol.  These were taken at Rondeau Park in Morpeth, Ontario circa 1920. Her friends were hilarious, too!

I remember her telling me that she had a crush on Guy Lombardo's brother, and I think I found a picture of the two of them.  My aunt tells me they were "an item". After both of my Grandma Jean's husbands passed away, she moved to

Vancouver and lived with my aunt. Apparently, Mr. Lombardo came to visit her when he was in town along with his much younger wife. Maybe he wanted to show her what she missed out on! 

This week I was focused on some new information I discovered. If you frequent the Family Search website you may have received the same email I did. July 24th, 2018 was Pioneer Day, and the site provided links to all of your Pioneer ancestors. Very nice. I've spent a large part of my ancestry time this week reading their stories and verifying my connections. I have links to 20 people according to the email, which I find hard to believe. Some of them are 100% correct, like 2nd cousin, 4 times removed Jane Parkinson, pictured above ↑. It takes a special person to brave the elements and danger these folks faced to get to their final destination. I don't understand a lot about the Mormon religion, but their great faith guided them to take this journey. Jane and her two daughters traveled all the way from the east coast of England to Salt Lake City. The story of their pilgrimage is here. An account of her life and plural marriage to Henry C. Fowler is here. She was still married to her first husband Charles Atkinson but is listed as a widow in the 1869 Salt Lake City directory. This was the custom of the time apparently. Jane's first husband Charles Atkinson also remarried soon after Jane departed for America and had four more children with his 2nd wife. Talk about colourful! 

So far I can verify the connections with the Pioneers on my mother's side of the family. They are from the same small towns in Lincolnshire, England as my direct ancestors. The churches there kept meticulous records of every major event in their parishioner's lives. My mother was a religious person. When I was a child we went to church every Sunday. She was even a Sunday School teacher for a time. It makes you wonder about the nature/nurture aspect of what makes people tick. 💜



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