Hello Everyone. Here we are again. When I began writing, it was +30C outside, under a brilliant sun, with the leaves just starting to go from green to gold. Today, it's only +10C, but the sun is shining, water is running, the snow is nearly gone and the trees, which have been naked for months, are beginning to show signs of new life. So let's pour ourselves a big mug of steaming hot tea. Then we can put our feet up on the oven door and have a bit of gossip about the latest International Reunion and all the people we met over the summer.

Forecast: Sunny and hot, with a shiver of excitement!

About 20 Canadian and American Coubroughs began today in high anticipation of a hot August weekend spent with "the clan." Yup! It was the fourth International Coubrough Reunion. Despite the fact that no one from outside North America was able to attend, we did manage to enjoy ourselves. As usual at these affairs, we spent almost as much time eating as we did talking--and for the Coubrough tribe, that's a lot of food!

This most recent edition, which ran 3-5 August 2007, was hosted by Andrew and Maureen Coubrough, who welcomed us with a lovely supper at their home on Thursday night. It was a distinct pleasure to visit with both old friends from previous reunions and "new" cousins, newly met. We spent a delicious evening, catching up on news, and stuffing ourselves on Maureen's fabulous cooking.

True to the forecast, Friday dawned clear and hot--an auspicious beginning for the official start of the gathering. After a day spent sight-seeing, we kicked off the party at Picano's restaurant. Between bites of a marvellous Italian dinner, we introduced ourselves, told a few stories, and talked our way up the family tree. After dinner, we repaired to Andrew and Maureen's home for drinks, more visiting, and--you guessed it--more food.

After keeping Maureen and Andy up much too late, we dragged ourselves back to the hotel. Saturday morning found us up with the birds--so as not to miss anything, you know. We spent most of the day indoors ⁽¹⁾, in the conference room at the Homewood Suites hotel, where many of our out-of-town partygoers stayed. After a lazy morning, chatting among maps and old family pictures, it was time once again for food. The noon hour found us partaking of a catered lunch, with more of Maureen's home cooking for good measure. The afternoon offered more opportunities for visiting. Some folks were content to sit chatting around the tables in the conference room, while others, preferring to take their show on the road, went for a walk, a swim, or a nap. Saturday ended with another dinner at the home of the Troy Coubroughs, who we, yet again, kept up way past their bedtimes.

On Sunday, all were invited to attend the regular service at the Kirk in the Hills Presbyterian church, an establishment which was modelled on Scotland's Melrose Abbey. The heathens among us (including yours truly) took the opportunity to and catch up on some administration. ⁽²⁾ The last official function of the weekend was a farewell dinner, held at the Forest Lake Country Club. It seemed fitting, somehow, that we should be filling our faces together one last time, since food always seems to figure large at these parties. As always, it seemed that the weekend passed all too quickly. Before the gabfest had got properly started, it was time to go. So with handshakes and hugs (and even the odd misty eye), we bid each other good-bye, amid plans and promises to meet again in Ogema, Saskatchewan, in the summer of 2009.

Jim & Annie's in-laws (Part I)

Despite the amount of time that has passed since the last edition of this edifying monologue, I haven't found anything new about Jim and Annie, or their direct descendants. I have found a few more bits about some of their in-laws. This will be the first of two parts outlining the families of the brothers and sisters of Annie MacDonald, James Coubrough, Annie Thompson, James Charteris Brown, and other connected families.

We still don't know exactly when Annie MacDonald's family came to Canada, but at least some of them were in Cape Breton by 1841, when our Annie would have been about 17. Norman McLean, who married our Annie's sister Flora, arrived in Kennington Cove about 1840. When he applied for a land grant in 1841, he said he had lived a year on the land he asked for, and had built a house there. There is no evidence that they were married in Scotland, and as the land petition makes no mention of a wife, it's likely safe to assume he didn't yet have one. However, it's likely, keeping in mind the church situation (there weren't any!), that they were married before their first son, John, was born, in 1842, or soon after ⁽³⁾.

A map of the original land grants in the Kennington Cove area shows that Norman & Flora's farm was right at the edge of the cove, overlooking a small sand beach. Apparently the government of their day didn't operate any faster than ours. Norman's petition, originally dated 1841, was the first one known to have been approved in the Cove area -- in 1852!

After the War of the Spanish Succession, the French ceded Acadia ⁽⁴⁾ (roughly New Brunswick) to England. This meant their territories in the northwest Atlantic were limited to Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island, which they knew as Isle Royale and Isle Saint-Jean. The area's main source of wealth, in those days, was the cod fishery, an activity that brought huge wealth to merchants of many European nations. The fortress of Louisbourg, or more correctly, the fortified town, completed in 1744, had two primary purposes. First was safeguarding the French interest in the lucrative cod industry; second was guarding the entrance to Quebec - the reason Wolfe was ordered to destroy it after its capture.

Not unlike many of their European counterparts, the government of New France was more than a bit corrupt. Money intended for the maintenance of both the fort's defences and its garrison troops mostly made its way to the pockets of the town's administrators. In 1745, the walls were already crumbling, and the troops, who had not been paid in two years, were on the edge of mutiny - that is, the ones who had not already deserted. That year, soon after the declaration of yet another war between England and France, New Englanders decided to take the fort. Just over six weeks later, Louisbourg had fallen to the British. Three years after that, at the end of the war, the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle returned all territorial borders to their pre-war locations.

Ten years after the treaty, Britain realized it could never own North America if the French held the gate: Louisbourg had to go. In 1758, a new-made general named James Wolfe ⁽⁵⁾ was sent to take control of it. He landed at a place called Kennington Cove, about three miles from the fort. Today, this is Kennington Cove's main claim to fame.

After Louisbourg fell, it was completely razed so it could never be used again. By 1840, it was an "ancient ruin," overgrown, and long-forgotten. A short sail up the coast is Kennington Cove, a tiny little dent in the north shore of Gabarus Bay. Accessible today only by water or by a narrow, crooked dirt road (parts of it were originally built during the 1758 siege of Louisbourg), in 1840, it was isolated and remote, though there were other tiny settlements scattered around the bay. Today, the fortress is clearly visible across the water from the Kennington Cove beach. In 1840, however, the ruin was so hidden in the trees and tall grass that our intrepid ancestors probably weren't even aware of it. Much more obvious was the reason the fort was built there in the first place: the harbour hardly ever freezes over, a fact our fishing ancestors must have greatly appreciated.

At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the vast changes taking place on another island would soon change the face of that remote little Cape Breton cove. Starting in about 1839, all the human occupants were forced off the islands of North and South Uist, in the outer Hebrides of Scotland, to make way for short, fat, woolly tenants that were worth a lot more money. The proprietor being more humane than some of his peers, many islanders were offered passage to Cape Breton. (Though this was the extent of his humanity: It was Cape Breton or nothing. Some food was supplied, for the trip, but they had to find their own tools, livestock, seed, etc., for their new farms.) While much of the land on the Uists is hilly, and some is just plain rocky, there is quite a bit of farmland. Most of their farming was more tending grazing animals ⁽⁶⁾ and garden plots than what most Canadians think of as farming. Being islanders, all were undoubtedly familiar with sea travel. Most folks did not want to leave the place ancestors had lived a good life for centuries: there was no reason they shouldn't continue the same way as they had always done. In 1840, though, there was no choice about going. A few went to the mainland, or to Ireland, where they had friends or family. Many held out as long as they could, but to no avail. By the end of 1841, all the people, some forcibly ejected, were gone. In the end, every person from both islands set out on the longest sea journey of their lives. Most of them would eventually call Cape Breton home.

According to Elaine Sawlor, the area was first settled by one John MacAulay, in about 1841. By the mid-1840s, Kennington Cove had collected up a fair-sized Scots community. For the next thirteen decades, it was home to many Protestant ⁽⁷⁾ Highlanders who had been forced out of their native Hebrides. Mainly MacDonalds and McLeans, sprinkled with Munroes, McLeods, McInnises, MacAulays, and Wilsons, these folks, who all spoke their native Gaelic, supplemented their "rock farming" of root vegetables with spring lobster-fishing and winter timber-cutting in the winter. The few tiny clues available lead us to believe our MacDonalds were among those cleared from North Uist ⁽⁸⁾, as were their Kennington Cove neighbours, the McLeans.

As late as 1948, Kennington Cove still had at least one store, a lobster canning factory, and two churches conducting regular services (including one in Gaelic). In 1968, the village's land was expropriated as part of the park reserve for the new Louisbourg National Park. Much as their ancestors had been 130 years before, 16 people (3 families) were forced to leave their homes and move down the road to Gabarus. It was a shorter move, but possibly no less traumatic.

The McLeans' beach is still there, of course, but today it's a picnic ground in a national park. Overlooking the beach, on what was once Norman and Flora's farm, is a small sign, about a foot square, with a few of sentences saying that there used to be a canning factory on the site. A few steps away is a similar sign noting that native people had used the beach clearing for centuries as a summer fishing ground. Within the cleared area now allocated for the picnic ground, there is no other indication of either the natives or the Scots settlement that stood there for nearly a century and a half. Lucky for us, the people were of sturdier stuff.

We still don't know if Norman's family and Flora's came at the same time, but because of the way their home island was cleared, we have reason to think that they did. Neither Norman, nor Flora, nor their families appear in the 1841 British census for North Uist, so they were probably already gone by the time it was taken. We also know that Norman applied for his land grant in 1841, having been living there for a year by that time. Judging by the 1842 birth date of their first known child, it's probably safe to assume that Flora and Norman were married the same year he applied for his land title. If their families didn't come at exactly the same time, they must certainly have been within a few months of each other. If Flora, aged about 20 in 1841, was in Canada then, it seems reasonable to think the rest of her family was here too.

Niel MacDonald & Flora MacLean

As far as we can tell, Flora was the oldest daughter (3^rd child), of Niel MacDonald & Flora MacLean. Niel & Flora brought seven of their children to Canada, probably in 1840-41, as noted above. At about 19 & 20, Flora and Archy, the two oldest children known to have immigrated, would already be grown up, as would our Annie, who be about 16 or 17. At 14, Coll, next after Annie, would be doing a man's work, though he would still be considered a boy. The three youngest sons, Ronald, William, and Donald, at 12, 11, and 10, would be just boys, and would have boy's work: herding cattle and sheep, weeding gardens and crops, chasing crows, etc.

There is thought to have been another son, Peter, a schoolmaster, who stayed in Scotland when the rest of his family left. Niel & Flora were roughly the same age, both having been born about 1795. We think they were married about 1817. If, as we believe, Peter was the oldest child ⁽⁹⁾, he would have been at least 22 or 23 when his parents emigrated--old enough to fend for himself, and possibly already a husband and father. Unfortunately, this is pretty much all we know about him. With so little to go on, there doesn't seem to be much hope of finding anything else.

Their children were no longer infants, and many of their friends and neighbours ended up in the same place as they did. Still, it must have been a horrible wrench for Niel & Flora: uprooting their family, leaving behind the bones of their ancestors, along with everything else they had ever known, "abandoning" their oldest son, being flung about on the wild grey expanse of the North Atlantic for weeks, setting down in a dark primeval forest at the edge of nowhere, trying to try to hack out a new life at the end of the world. Only the ocean would have been familiar: The eastern Atlantic Ocean, where it crashes on the coast of North Uist, is no tamer than the western side that batters the Cape Breton coast.

On the other hand, perhaps Niel & Flora were born with the itchy feet they passed on to their children: The year after Norman received the title to his Kennington Cove farm, Niel & Flora, along with their four youngest sons, were to be found in Upper Canada, and their second daughter, Annie, married a soldier, moving at least three times before settling near her parents, in 1858. Maybe they even liked the adventure of civilizing an untamed land, and it's possible that at least some of them would have eventually left Scotland on their own. Or, as with so many men of their time, once having been forced out of their past, it may have been the desire for land of their own that drew them west.

We don't know what the family's finances were like at home in Tigh Ghearry, or what kind of creature comforts they were able to bring with them to Canada. We do know that they were not destitute by the time they got to Dawn Township. In July 1853, Coll, then aged about 25, paid cash for the 200-acre farm he bought for himself and his father. Five years later, in January 1858, he purchased a 50-acre farm for his sister Annie and her husband Jim. Not only did Coll pay cash for Annie's farm too, he also held the mortgage on it until his sister paid it off in 1883. Later, brothers William and Donald also bought themselves farms in the area without having to take huge bankloans. While the family was not exceptionally wealthy, it seems obvious that they weren't exactly broke either.

Norman MacLean & Flora MacDonald

I haven't managed to contact any living, breathing ones yet, but Norman & Flora McLean ⁽¹⁰⁾ did leave a number of descendants. And I found out who his father was. According to Elaine Sawlor, a Cape Breton historian, four of Norman's brothers and two of their sisters settled in Cape Breton, though some distance from Norman's farm. Neither Norman McLean's father, Alexander, nor his mother, whose name is not known to us, is believed to have crossed the ocean. Of the five brothers, Norman was, of course, at Kennington Cove; John, Philip and Roderick settled at Catalone, a few miles from Kennington Cove, and Lauchlin settled at Sangree, near Mira, quite a few miles from the others. Philip married a Catherine MacDonald, but there's no indication of how or if she was related to Norman's wife. Nor do we know if, or to whom, John and Roderick were married. There were also two McLean sisters: Flora, about whom we know nothing except that she married a man named McPhail, and Effie (probably christened Euphemia), about whom we know nothing more than her name.

Norman died in 1883, and Flora about 20 years later. Before that, however, they managed to raise nine kids of their own, all born at Kennington Cove:

John, born abt 1842, married Catherine Ferguson, daughter of Alexander Ferguson & Mary McRury. John & Catherine had four kids: Margaret, Alexander, Flora, & Mary Ann. John, Sr., died in 1901.

Neil, born abt 1849, married Mary McVicar, daughter of Archibald McVicar and Effie McPherson, in 1883, and had 6 kids: Norman, Alexander, Effie, Catherine, Lexie, & Malcolm. Neil died in 1929, in Catalone.

Archibald, born abt 1851, married Isabella McVicar, sister of his brother's wife, in 1884. They had one daughter, Katherine, born about 1889. In 1910, a Home Child ⁽¹¹⁾ named David Wilbraham, aged 8, was sent to live with Archy & Isabella. They raised him as their son, though as a "charity boy" he was expected to put in a full day's work as soon as he was physically able. As a young man, David found work in the Margaree area, on the west coast of Cape Breton. He never married, but spent the rest of his life there, though he often returned to Kennington Cove to visit. Isabella died in 1916, Archy in 1924.

Katherine, born abt 1855, married John Ferguson, son of Alexander and Peggy Ferguson, in 1876. We don't know if they had any children, or if John was related to Catherine Ferguson.

Flora, born abt 1858, married Donald Wilson, son of Hugh & Isabella, in 1881. They had 5 kids: Hugh, Flora, Norman, John, and Alexander. Donald died after the 1901 census, but before October 1908. In 1910, Louisa Wilbraham, aged 10, older sister of David, came to live with Flora, whose four surviving children were all grown up. On 11 November 1918, "Louie" married Roderick (Rory) McLeod, a man 27 years her senior, and raised eleven children. Flora died in 1945.

Margaret, born abt 1860, doesn't seem to have ever married. She died in 1930.

John Archibald, born abt 1862, married a Catherine Ferguson, daughter of John & Betsey, in 1905. We don't know if she was related to the other Fergusons in the family. Catherine & John Archie had 2 kids: John Norman, and Flora. John Archie died in 1943, and Catherine in 1947.

Malcolm and Ronald, both born abt 1858-9, don't seem to have ever married, and nothing more is known about them.

There may also have been a daughter named Mary Ann. However, since she seems to have been born about 1876, when our Flora would have been around 55, it seems more likely that Mary Ann was a granddaughter.

Simon Thomson & Elizabeth Johnston

Annie Thompson ⁽¹²⁾ was born 26 September 1840, at Scarborough Junction, York County. The youngest of six children of Simon Thomson and Elizabeth Johnston, Annie was among the first generation of her family to be born in Canada. Her parents, who had come to Upper Canada (Ontario) as young adults, were married in Scarborough Township, 2 January 1824. William Thompson, Annie's grandfather, was the oldest son of Andrew Thomson and Janet Scott. He is not known to have come to Canada, but all three of his surviving younger brothers did.

Archibald, Andrew, and David Thomson all settled in the Bendale area of what is now the city of Scarborough, ⁽¹³⁾ where their original homestead is a city park. Thus, the original settlers of Scarborough were our Simon's uncles, which is possibly why Simon selected Scarborough as his destination when he left Scotland. In any case, Simon Thomson & his wife, Elizabeth Johnston, raised six kids, including our Annie, all born in Scarborough Township:

Robert, born 26 January 1827, married Mary Little sometime after the 1861 census, which listed him as 33 years old, and still living at home.

David, born 1828, also married a girl named Mary. They had at least one daughter, Rebecca, born about 1856, in Scarborough.

Archibald was born in 1829, but that's all I know of him.

William, born 1831, was aged 29, still single, and still living at home in the 1861 census.

Janet, born 1836, married a James Elliot in 1863. They had at least 11 children: John, abt 1864; Simon, abt 1865; Robert, 1868; Elizabeth, 1870; James b May 1872 d June 1872; William James, 1875; Archibald, abt 1877; George, abt 1879; William David, 1880; Jane, 1882; and William James, 1885. James died a very old man, in 1930; his wife was only 49 when she died 1 September 1885, of pueperal convulsions and jaundice, two weeks after the birth of her tenth child.

Annie, born 1840, of course married our Jim Brown, in the summer of 1862, and raised her family in Dawn Township.

James C. Brown & Annie Thompson

On 12 June 1862, Annie Thompson married a neighbour, James Charteris "Jim" Brown, and moved with him to Dawn Township. Jim's parents, a blacksmith named John Brown and his wife Margaret Henderson, had moved to Dawn Township a year or so before. Jim and his Annie moved onto the lot "next door", where they farmed until Annie's passing on 1 December 1893. Annie was only 53 when she died of "Paralysis, about 5 years," most likely after a stroke well before her 50th birthday. Jim carried on farming alone until 1909, when he moved west to Saskatchewan with his oldest daughter Liz (Mrs. Matt Coubrough). In the meantime, Jim & Annie managed to raise four children:

Elizabeth Johnston Brown, born 18 September 1862, married Matt Coubrough, 3 October 1883, and raised 16 children.

Margaret Henderson Brown, aka Maggie, was born 12 May 1865. She married Lachlan McNeil 16 March 1892, in Dawn Township. They raised one son: Archibald Patterson McNeil, born 14 January 1894. Archibald McNeill was one of witnesses to the marriage of Jim Coubrough and Liz McGuire; the other was Mary McGuire, probably the bride's sister. Mary and Archie are most likely the other two people in Jim and Liz's wedding picture. (Their mothers being sisters accounts for how much alike these men look.) People I spoke to in Dawn Township told me that, while they didn't remember his wife's name, Archibald had been married about 1929. He had a son and a daughter, but poor Archie had lost both his children and their mother to diabetes within a couple of years of each other. Ontario death records available to the public only go up to 1934, so I haven't found any other dates for Archie. His mother Maggie died 8 October 1932, aged only 67, of "cancer of the breast and liver."

John, born 1 May 1868, married Ethel Maud Stephenson in June 1902. They raised three children: Ethel Mona, born abt 1903; Anna Marian, 1904, and John Kenneth (Jack), in 1911. John, Sr., kept a store at Edys Mills, in Dawn Township, where he was also the postmaster from 1 February 1902 until 13 September 13, 1929, when he resigned the post. His niece Flora Jane Coubrough worked in his store for a while before she moved west with her mother in 1909. John died in 1939. He, his wife, and their son are buried with his parents in Dresden, Ontario.

Simon Thompson, born 30 June 1875, was married very young, to a girl called Mary Elizabeth Beattie, in about 1904. Their first child, a girl they named Mary Estella, was born 25 June 1895, just a few days before her father turned twenty. Mary Estella was followed by a sister, Hazel Beattie, on 9 April 1897. Hazel was only a few months old when her father decided he had had enough of family life. He headed off to the Klondike gold fields, abandoning his little family without further thought. He eventually married again, though there is no evidence that he ever divorced his first wife. He apparently never contacted his family again - neither his wife nor his parents.

To be continued....

Other branches

1. We've known for a while that Christina Dunn Coubrough, 2^nd daughter of John Coubrough & Mary Binnie Davidson, married John Roderick Cameron in 1877. Now, thanks to our research Elf, aka Barbara McCue, in Thornliebank, we now also know that Christina had nine children and that she died in 1929. Her oldest child, a son named James (father not known), was 10 years old when Christina married John Cameron. In 1881, the 13-year-old James was aboard a military training ship, the Mars, moored in the River Tay, in Fife. He appears not to have ever lived with his stepfather's family after that.

Christina's other children, all born in Maybole parish, Ayrshire, were:

Mary, born about 1879; Annie, abt 1880; John abt 1882; Archibald, abt 1885; Elizabeth, abt 1886; Jessie, abt 1889; Minnie, abt 1890; Roderick, abt 1892. To date, this is all we know of the family, except that Christina was a 79-year-old widow when she died 2 February 1929, at 23 Carrick Road, in the town of Ayr.

2. Anthony Cathcart Coubrough, son of Anthony Sykes and grandson of Anthony Park Coubrough, was an chemical engineer by profession. He seems to have spent much of his career in the Indian Civil Service. In 1923, he was president of the Society of Engineers there. A couple of years before, he had written a booklet called "Notes on Indian Piece Goods Trade," published in 1921, in Calcutta, by the Government Printing Services. I haven't seen the book itself, but the catalogue description says it was "16 pages, with 5 large fold-out graphs."

3. Several years ago, we found a John Ogilvie, in Pennsylvania, in the 1910 US census. Also in his home were his wife Catherine, his son John, and his mother-in-law, Jean Coubrough. Since the census said Catherine was "the mother of 0 children" ⁽¹⁴⁾, we assumed the boy was not her son. After that, we were pretty much stymied. It seemed likely that Jean's maiden name was not Coubrough, but it could have been, and she was certainly not the only Jean Coubrough to call a daughter Catherine. There was no help for it: Jean and Catherine were on the alien list.

I have mentioned before that I could never find all this stuff myself. This time, it's thanks to Judy Simpson that we know which Catherine Coubrough John Ogilvie married. Jean Coubrough, mother-in-law, was Jane Brown, widow of William Coubrough. William was almost certainly the brother of Matthew Coubrough who married Margaret Duncan and took her to Australia. Our guess is that they were either the sons of Catherine Andrew & John Coubrough, or the sons of John Coubrough & Catherine Young: Another correspondent claims they were brothers of her ancestor, Margaret Coubrough who married William Muir. Nothing has yet been proven either way.

Regardless of who her grandfather was, Catherine Coubrough was about 38 or 39 when she married John Ogilvie about 1893. According to Judy, "Catherine died in 1920 and is buried in Chester Rural Cemetery, in Chester, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, along with her sister, Marion M. Blair, Marion's husband, Archibald Blair, and two of the Blair babies, Malcolm F. and John C."

Apparently the US did not agree with poor Marion. Her two youngest sons both seem to have been born in Chester, but neither saw his second birthday. Malcolm was about 23 months when he died 13 December 1889. His baby brother, John Coubrough Blair, was only 6 months at his death on 26 July 1890. Archibald Blair died in 1922, in Chester, just shy of 31 years after he had buried his 40-year-old second wife, in February 1891. (He had been married to Jane Smith, in 1875. He had two children, aged 4 and 2, when he married Marion Coubrough. After her death, he married again, to Ella Boyle, in 1897, but they are not known to have had any children together.)

4. Matthew Gibb Coubrough, youngest son of Matt Coubrough and Jean Allan, grew up with his father's cousin, Joseph Gibb, at 2 East Row, was part of a group of houses built for the workers at the Crum print works in Thornliebank. In 1871, young Matt was a clerk by trade, one the "upper crust" of working people. Down the street, at 14 East Row, lived the family of James Dowall, calico starcher, and his wife, Sarah McOscar. Their third daughter, Margaret, a power-loom weaver, was about seven years older than Matt, but it didn't deter his pursuit. He married Margaret in 1874, when he was about 22, but perhaps his inspiration was the the "older woman" who lived down the street. Familiarity breeds content?

5. In July 1794, William of Ellrig was on a committee for Internal Defence. This committee seems to have been made up of local landowners, which was probably William's main qualification for the job. It wasn't until 1811 that his grandson, another William, managed to lose the whole estate in the Falkirk Union Bank failure.

6. In a previous edition, I said that John Coubrough, son of John C & Wilhelmina Thompson either never married, or did so quite late in life. It appears that the latter was the case. In the March 1901 census, he was still single and at home with his widowed mother. A year later, in Glasgow, on 11^th April 1902, at the age of 42, he married 35-year-old Elizabeth McColm, daughter of John McColm and Annie Gray. I don't know John's exact date of death, but Elizabeth was a widow, when on 13^th March 1941, she was killed by a bomb that landed on/near her home at 21 Nelson Street, in the Tradeston district of Glasgow.

7. Thomas Coubrough, son of Henry & Wilhelmina Cowbrough, and husband of Katherine Wylie, was a ships stores dealer in the 1861 census for Tue Brook, West Derby, England. Our previous information held that their children were Elizabeth (date unknown); Walter, 1861; James, 1864; and Thomas, 1868. According to the English censuses for 1861 & 1871, James was actually the baby of the family, rather than the middle son. Walter and James were born in 1861 and 1864, as we thought, but Thomas was actually born ten years earlier, in 1858, making him the oldest son, not the baby.

Katherine Wylie seems to have died quite young, in her early 50s. According to the Ellrig genealogy, she was still living in 1880, but in the March 31, 1881 census, her husband was a widower. This branch of the Coubroughs had the sea in their blood. The elder Thomas's brother, William, went to Australia, probably to work for the family shipping interests, and died there in 1869; their brother Henry was a "merchant in the American trade", and their father, Henry, was a sailor.

Question corner

Here are some of the questions where we know just enough to make them intriguing.

1. Who was John Cowlbough in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, in the 1790 US census? Was he one of ours? The family consisted of two "free white males over the age of sixteen including heads of families," one "free white male under the age of sixteen," and two "free white females over the age of sixteen including heads of families." There were no slaves attached to the family.

2. Who were all these people who went to Australia? Only Robert Waterson Coubrough (son of Margaret Waterson) and John MacArthur Coubrough have sort of been identified.

Mary Coubrough MacDonald, b 1920, Dalmuir, Scotland in Australian Air force 2^nd World War

Robert Waterson Coubrough, Musician

William Coubrough Weir & Sarah McHenry from UK, 1964

Norman David Coubrough & Jessie Dow from UK, 1963/4

John Coubrough and Agnes Webster moved to Australia, 1965; 

Alexander James Coubrough, b 1 Nov 1926, Perth, WA

John MacArthur Coubrough from UK 1950

Evelyn Coubrough and Harold Victor Smith from UK, May 1969

Hugh Coubrough & Lilian Smith from UK 3 May 1963

John Coubrough & Williamina Kilgour from UK, 1950

1. In true North American fashion, after a winter spent complaining about the cold, we spent this gorgeous day in an air-conditioned room -- complaining about the heat!

2. That is, we went to the local Staples store, bought CDs, and, for each partygoer's family, made a copy of all the pictures we took during the weekend.

3. In the early days, most of the few clergymen were circuit riders who performed many months' worth of marriages & baptisms on a visit to the isolated communities in their charge. Since people couldn't put their lives on hold, there were many "country" or hand-fast (common-law) marriages. Nova Scotia marriage registers begin in 1859, so this may be as close as we ever get to the right date.

4. Which would eventually lead to the nasty business known as "the Great Disbursement." The forcible clearance of thousands of French-speakers from British territory resulted in the devastation of dozens of families and the deaths of hundreds of people. A less distasteful result was the "Cajun" culture of Louisiana, Cajun being merely a corruption of "Acadian."

5. The next summer, General Wolfe would fight his last - and much more famous - battle at Quebec City.

6. The majority of Uist islanders being fishermen, they would have had root vegetables, a few sheep or cattle, for wool and hides, and a bit of barley and oats for ale and bread.

7. Most of the Catholics from South Uist settled along the Mira River.

8. which was probably at Tigh Gheary, on the south-east coast.

9. He may have been between Flora & Annie, but would still have been a man grown by the standard of his day.

10. For 19^th century Scots, the spellings Mc, Mac, M' were interchangeable, the same person often using any or all of them at various times.

11. Home Children were British child immigrants. Usually either orphans or children of parents too poor to support them, they were sent to orphanages or "care homes" in England. In an effort to give them some sort of family life, well-intentioned people shipped thousands of them to Canada, mostly Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada. Families here could request a child by age, gender, and type of work they were wanted for; e.g. a boy 10 - 14 to work on a farm. They were supposed to be supervised, and if neglected or abused, they were supposed to be removed to a different home. Most of them were well-cared for, often raised as part of their adoptive families, though, sadly, some really were abused. Sometimes siblings were all taken by the same family, but more often they were split up. This happened to David Wilbraham and his sister Louisa, though at least they went to related families who lived near each other so they probably had at least occasional contact. It is estimated that as many as 13% of Canadians are descended from these children. The Home Children scheme ran from the late 1870's to 1939. With the outbreak of the Second World War, it was thought too dangerous to send ships full of children across the Atlantic.

12. Annie's grave has "Thompson," but not all of her family used the "p."

13. In 1998, Scarborough and other nearby cities were amalgamated with Toronto by order of the province of Ontario. Many Scarborough residents, though, would rather clean toilets than say they were from Toronto.

14. Two of the census questions asked how many children each woman was the mother of, and how many were living at the time of the census.