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Charles Pache, 1766-1849, original owner of my inherited Grandfather clock |
Space was tight in the two
vehicles laden with my son's belongings so I could not take a lot, and frankly,
wasn't so inclined. But amongst the pictures that I came away with was a single
sheet of paper detailing the basics of a Connor family tree which had been made
a decade before by a distant cousin, Phil Connor .
Phil had taken up genealogy in the dark ages prior to computers and on-line
internet resources and I vaguely remembered him visiting and interviewing my
Dad. It wasn't until the following spring that I took a good look at this
family tree chart while trying to purge my own glut of space-consuming hard
copy pictures, by scanning them to disk.
My father had tried to interest
me in the family history three decades earlier, during a trip to his hometown
of Saint John , New Brunswick , where he dragged me around
while he interviewed what few relatives he could find still living there. Prior
to this, Dad had never talked at all about his family, not even his immediate
family members such as his father; a common Irish trait amongst our Connor
progenitors, as I later learned through various cousins. The Connor clan also
proved to be the least documented of all the branches of the family, and possibly
of any other family in history.
Barely out of my teens, I paid
scant attention and had little interest in the family history during that Saint John tour so long
ago, and couldn't even remember who we visited or what we heard. Maybe it was
the fact that Dad had now passed, or concerns about how Mom was declining with
the years, but for whatever reason, looking then at Phil's concise depiction of
six known Connor generations finally intrigued me, and I wondered if I could go
on-line to expand on this basic information.
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Inherited from by paternal grandfather, built in England mid 1700's. Still works! |
Soon I was joining the local genealogical society and
reading everything I could lay my hands on about the research process. I also
read Sharon DeBartolo Carmack's book, You Can Write Your Family History, and thought this would be a terrific
retirement project. I was hooked.
Meet the Storyteller - Bruce Connor
Bruce is a retired air traffic controller living in Vancouver,British Columbia. Sandwiched beside Stanley Park and the seawall, his location also facilitates his photography hobby. Bruce has been researching for over two years logging a lot of miles in Canada, the US and the Uk, pouring through BMD records and newspapers in various libraries and archives. Bruce is hoping to complete one more trip to the east coast of Canada and the US this fall, followed by another final research trip back to the UK in the spring. He's hoping these trips will help him to complete the family history book he is currently writing. He plans to self-publish this overly large effort by the end of next summer. Good Luck Bruce!
Meet the Storyteller - Bruce Connor
Bruce and his only granddaughter, the inspiration behind his book . |
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