Vanessa Currie, an Agriculture Technician at the University of Guelph in Southern Ontario, is growing the potato that led to the Great Potato Famine in Ireland.
The potato variety—called the Lumper—was the one most likely grown in Ireland. It will be on display at the Potato Day Show on Wednesday, August 12th from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the university's Elora Research Station.
Known as a "historical specialty", the growing of the Lumper variety of potato most likely led to the blight which caused massive immigration to Canada in the mid-1800s.
Currie says that the potato looks as healthy as the others in the fields this summer, so she is anxious to harvest them. She plans to dig out a few for tomorrow's display and then harvest the rest in September.
She is going to evaluate the variety for its taste, cooking, and storage to see how it does.
Canadian farmers likely grew the Lumper variety in the early 1800's, but she doesn't know if they grew them after the Irish Famine.
She got the seed from the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada potato gene bank in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
A daily blog about Canadian genealogy, heritage, and history
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
John Grenham's Irish Lectures
As John Reid noted in his blog <http://anglo-celtic-connections.blogspot.com/2009/08/capacity-crowd-for-john-grenham-in.html>, it was a sellout crowd at Ben Franklin Place in Ottawa to hear John Grenham speak on Irish records. He is a well-known genealogist in Ireland, and is the author of books and of the website, <IrishTimes.com>.
I always try to come away with one piece of information, and I hit the jackpot again yesterday.
My husband is a French-Canadian from Quebec, and his great-great-grandfather married an Irish girl—Sarah Conroy—whose father was a major in the British Army in Quebec City.
Why was he there, I wondered at the time. And why did he send for his family from Ireland? It didn't make sense to me -
This had only become apparent to me in May while we were up to Quebec City on a visit, and my husband's aunt showed me a family chart she had had done by a fellow in Montreal not that long ago.
And when I checked <ancestry.ca> after getting back home, there was the marriage record of where they had been married, and that she was the daughter of a Major Conroy from Ireland.
The reason—as I learned yesterday—was that the British Army at that time was made up of Irish to a large degree - fully one-third of them were Irish!
So I got that question answered!
I also learned that there aren't many records intact back beyond 1922 because the storeroom of the archives building (the Four Corners Complex in Dublin) had been overtaken by rebels and eventually blown up, and not one piece of paper had been saved. (Papers in use in the Reading Room were saved, however.)
If you get a chance to hear him talk, and you do have Irish in your ancestry, please take a minute to listen, because he gives very good lectures, and the questions asked by the audience were fabulous.
I always try to come away with one piece of information, and I hit the jackpot again yesterday.
My husband is a French-Canadian from Quebec, and his great-great-grandfather married an Irish girl—Sarah Conroy—whose father was a major in the British Army in Quebec City.
Why was he there, I wondered at the time. And why did he send for his family from Ireland? It didn't make sense to me -
This had only become apparent to me in May while we were up to Quebec City on a visit, and my husband's aunt showed me a family chart she had had done by a fellow in Montreal not that long ago.
And when I checked <ancestry.ca> after getting back home, there was the marriage record of where they had been married, and that she was the daughter of a Major Conroy from Ireland.
The reason—as I learned yesterday—was that the British Army at that time was made up of Irish to a large degree - fully one-third of them were Irish!
So I got that question answered!
I also learned that there aren't many records intact back beyond 1922 because the storeroom of the archives building (the Four Corners Complex in Dublin) had been overtaken by rebels and eventually blown up, and not one piece of paper had been saved. (Papers in use in the Reading Room were saved, however.)
If you get a chance to hear him talk, and you do have Irish in your ancestry, please take a minute to listen, because he gives very good lectures, and the questions asked by the audience were fabulous.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
A Canadian Family
Evelyn Yvonne Theriault has a site on the Internet <http://acanadianfamily.com> full of family history.
Evelyn's family came from a diverse background of the Luces from the Channel Islands; the Theriaults - Acadians from Poitou, France; and Mignier dit Lagaces from Quebec.
In addition, she has added some early French-Canadian Pioneers of Quebec, and BMDs of some of these people.
She says that one of her goals in setting up this website was to bring the importance of postcards in the study of family history, in addition to photos.
She takes part in a blog carnival (a virtual magazine, if you will) celebrating postcards entitled, "A Festival of Postcards", which was originally started by the Footnotemaven <www.footnotemaven.com>.
The deadline for the next one is Aug. 20th, and will be entitled "Water".
Evelyn has postcards from previous festivals of "Wheels" and "Main Street" for you to look at on her site, as well as postcards of Quebec and New Brunswick.
Evelyn's family came from a diverse background of the Luces from the Channel Islands; the Theriaults - Acadians from Poitou, France; and Mignier dit Lagaces from Quebec.
In addition, she has added some early French-Canadian Pioneers of Quebec, and BMDs of some of these people.
She says that one of her goals in setting up this website was to bring the importance of postcards in the study of family history, in addition to photos.
She takes part in a blog carnival (a virtual magazine, if you will) celebrating postcards entitled, "A Festival of Postcards", which was originally started by the Footnotemaven <www.footnotemaven.com>.
The deadline for the next one is Aug. 20th, and will be entitled "Water".
Evelyn has postcards from previous festivals of "Wheels" and "Main Street" for you to look at on her site, as well as postcards of Quebec and New Brunswick.
Friday, August 7, 2009
The Empress of Ireland
On August 6, 2009, the Honourable Jim Prentice—Canada's Environment Minister and Minister Responsible for Parks Canada—marked the historic significance of the Wreck of the Empress of Ireland by naming it as a National Historic Site of Canada.
The Empress of Ireland went down in the St. Lawrence River in the summer of 1914 after colliding with another ship named the Storstad during heavy fog.
She as on her way to Liverpool, England from Quebec City with 1,477 people on board - only 462 people were saved.
It is the worst sea tragedy that Canada has ever experienced, and it has "marked an entire generation, and we have to make sure that it is not forgotten," said Minister Prentice at the ceremony on Thursday.
You can read the history of the Empress of Ireland and see who her passengers and crew were on the that day by visiting <http://www.sea-viewdiving.com/shipwreck_info/empress_of_ireland1.htm>.
On this website, you will find a history of the tragedy as well as a video of the ship.
There were 87 passengers in the First Cabin, with 51 lost at sea; 253 in the Second Cabin, with 205 people lost at sea; 717 people in the Third Cabin, with 584 people lost at sea; and of the 420 crew members, 175 were lost at sea.
In addition to having the names listed, one will also find out where the passengers and crew were from, whether they were lost or rescued, and what happened to them — if they went back home (e.g. Toronto), if they sailed on another ship at a later date, or if they were lost, what happened to the body.
There were over 100,000 immigrants who came to Canada on the Empress of Ireland during her lifetime, and these days, close to a million Canadians can trace their ancestry back to being on the ocean liner.
The structure of the ship is still intact as it lays at the bottom of the river near Point-au-Pere, and today it is a world-renowned diving site.
The wreck is supervised by Parks Canada.
The Empress of Ireland went down in the St. Lawrence River in the summer of 1914 after colliding with another ship named the Storstad during heavy fog.
She as on her way to Liverpool, England from Quebec City with 1,477 people on board - only 462 people were saved.
It is the worst sea tragedy that Canada has ever experienced, and it has "marked an entire generation, and we have to make sure that it is not forgotten," said Minister Prentice at the ceremony on Thursday.
You can read the history of the Empress of Ireland and see who her passengers and crew were on the that day by visiting <http://www.sea-viewdiving.com/shipwreck_info/empress_of_ireland1.htm>.
On this website, you will find a history of the tragedy as well as a video of the ship.
There were 87 passengers in the First Cabin, with 51 lost at sea; 253 in the Second Cabin, with 205 people lost at sea; 717 people in the Third Cabin, with 584 people lost at sea; and of the 420 crew members, 175 were lost at sea.
In addition to having the names listed, one will also find out where the passengers and crew were from, whether they were lost or rescued, and what happened to them — if they went back home (e.g. Toronto), if they sailed on another ship at a later date, or if they were lost, what happened to the body.
There were over 100,000 immigrants who came to Canada on the Empress of Ireland during her lifetime, and these days, close to a million Canadians can trace their ancestry back to being on the ocean liner.
The structure of the ship is still intact as it lays at the bottom of the river near Point-au-Pere, and today it is a world-renowned diving site.
The wreck is supervised by Parks Canada.
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