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From: Linda Merle <>
Subject: Re: Canadian History
Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2000 09:40:45 -0800


There's a really good Canadian website out there that sends me regular
emails --- what the heck is their addy?? It is so good it is better than
most on Irish, English, etc, stuff than most others that I get.

History - or rather the past, is just a series of events and non events.
It takes historians to put the pieces together into a creditable story. As
more records of events become available and as methodologies for
interpreting raw data (events and non events), our ability to interpret
the past improves, or declines if our methodologies, biases, etc, overcome
our scientific objectivity. A lot of reinterpretation is occuring now of Irish
history and most of it is much better than what was done in the past.
Ie for once Irish historians are revisiting primary material and reinterpreting
based on primary records so that both the British (Protestant) agendas
and the Irish Nationalist distortions of the past are being chucked. The
problem with politicized history is that it makes it obscures someone's
family history.

Drawing on recent reading of mine on colonial history, in the 1600's, Britain
did not encourage emigration and the establishment of large colonies in
Canada. It had its inherited French population and its Indians and a small
population of traders. In fact, it DIS-Encouraged immigration. The stories
of various land scams in "Ulster Emigration to Colonial America" (covers
mid 1700's) shows that the climate was not so attractive as well. With the
American Revolution all that changed, of course. Then the North American
colony became divided (like the Island of Ireland). Loyalists north, rebels
south. Recall that in 1776 there were very few Catholics in North America
(excepting our cousins the French Canadians). Recall that no matter what
your surname was, if you put foot on these shores bound from the island
of Ireland and were not Catholic, you were deemed to be "Scotch Irish", then
most of the folk from Ireland here in the 1770's were Protestant. Those
who were loyalists often migrated North of the border.Though we are told most
Scotch Irish supported the Revolution, there's always exceptions to the rule.

So many times early Canadian research involves an extra hop south of
the border into the USA. Luckily there are a lot of records. It's a
speciality --
loyalist research. A lot of families chose to stay and obscured their past --
so some of you looking in DAR records might give a fast browse through some
loyalist indexes <grin>!!

We're talking broadly painted history here. It remains a fact that the earliest
whitefolks in Pittsburgh were the French and Irish Catholics and 300 Irish
Catholic families left southern Donegal in 1790 for Pennsylvania. Many of them
settled in Donegal Twp, Butler Co, where they lived in harmony with the
Scotch Irish who arrived later. History is about broad trends. Family history
is about individual families -- the two are very different.

If you do get your Canadian heritage back to the French era, wow are you
lucky. The French left many records in early Canada --clearly they were
far better records keepers than the British. It's very possible that some
there were Irish. This I know because someone who lives locally must
research the era- -- my local LDS center is full of early censuses and
marriage records. Almost inspires me to research the Garneau's (grand-
daughter's father is half French Canadian and half Irish -- O'Rourke, also
Canadian).

As soon as my email shows up from Canada I'll post it to the list.

Linda Merle (Almost 100% British -- Monsieur Merle is a Parisian Frenchman,
now living in New England -- you don't want to mess with him; his cousins
are Merlo's and one was Al Capone's banker!)

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