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Archiver > Scotch-Irish > 2010-04 > 1272639380


From:
Subject: Re: [S-I] Mitchell, Scotch/Irish New York to Michigan
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:56:20 +0000 (UTC)
In-Reply-To: <E94D4E44AB7349D6B67B1676156CFA54@DF57ZS51>


Hi Karen,

It's good you are trying to learn how your parents got from Armagh to Canada in 1840. The way you research this is to study the methodology. You can do this by buying or borrowing books on the topic, attending lectures on records documenting Canadian immigration from Ulster, downloading lectures, reading them free on line, googling. A summary is here:
http://www.theshipslist.com/Research/canadarecords.htm

The first thing you will notice is that Canada didn't begin to keep records with a few exceptions till 1865. You may then notice your date is before this. So how long do you want to try to learn about an event that may well not be documented in any record, anywhere? You can spend 20 or 30 years doing this, or 50 or more. At the end you could be very grouchy and none the wiser. There are strategies for locating information -- in family histories, county histories, etc, etc, etc, etc. I often cite www.genealogical.com/university.html as a place to go to. It has a chart that details the possible sources to find information about migration. You can also improve your analysis skills and learn how to analyze the data you already have to indentify clues that you have overlooked. This sounds immensely boring and unexciting, but I only hope that when I get back to my family history I have overlooked some of the astonishing buried treasures found in what clients of mine have sent.

Still, if no one documented the name of the ship in your family, you may have to channel them from the other side. Even this is risky. I assume, anyway, if we called back my great aunt, who migrated at the age of 4 with her family from Scotland in 1893 and who in her later years wrote a letter documenting what she knew, that she'd give the same ship name as she did in her letter. Unfortunately, she was wrong. It didn't take long to discover that no su ch ship as she named existed in 1893 or ever lugged people from Scotland to the USA. However there was a similar named ship. Sure enough, I found them on a passenger list for THAT ship. Move back another hundred years or more -- there are plenty of errors in our holy, received family histories. Sometimes you gotta work around the family history <grin>. Or the opinions of deceased ancestors called back from the grave to the spiritual circle.....

I'd check Filby and then turn to hunting up oral family history that has been preserved in collateral lines, if not your own.

Linda Merle

----- Original Message -----
From: "Karen" <>
To:
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 8:37:51 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [S-I] Mitchell, Scotch/Irish New York to Michigan

Mary, how did you learn the ship they cdamne on? I'm trying to larn how my
great great grandparents got from Co. Armagh to Canada in 1840. Many
thanks,
Karen
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mary Widener" <>
To: <>
Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2010 9:51 PM
Subject: Re: [S-I] Mitchell, Scotch/Irish New York to Michigan



My Scotch Irish came to Abbeville, S. Carolina in 1767 from Belfast.
Directly to Charleston, S. Carolina, have the ship they came over on and the
land they were given, Matthew and James SHANKS, Matthew the father, his wife
died enroute from Belfast and James was only about 4 or 5 years old when
they arrived. James had an uncle who had previously come over, a Robert
WILSON
Mary Widener

--- On Thu, 4/29/10, Sarah <> wrote:






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