Knowing the stories of our ancestors makes them come alive for us. Isn’t this one of the greatest attractions of genealogical research? They tug at our imaginations and inspire our admiration: without their incredible courage, we would not be who we are. We all have them: stories passed down in our families of interesting, eccentric, tragic, and even infamous relatives. But how many of these stories hold up to the scrutiny of genealogical research? Among my own friends in the world of genealogy, certainly less than half turn out to be true. Oh, but those who do…
Three years ago, I received a brief family history from a distant McMillan cousin: six handwritten pages covering more than a hundred years from the family’s immigration to colonial America and subsequent settlement. This story contained two amazing stories, which when combined made me wonder. The second involved an incident from the War of 1812. Ananias McMillan, a soldier stationed with his family in Detroit, along with his 12-year-old son Archibald, was fetching their cow one night when Indians shot and scalped him. to Ananias, who then kidnapped Archie. Months later, the US Army effected the release of the boy and returned him to his mother.* The account had enough names, dates and places to investigate and determine its truth. But that first story…
Sophia McMillan (1843-1909), the author of the story, wrote just four sentences about her great-grandfather’s tragic arrival from Ireland:
“He started this country with his widowed mother and newborn baby, when he was 14 years old. They were shipwrecked along the way. His mother, understanding the situation as a mother, gave her son a chance at life, threw her purse to him, he prayed that God would make haste if he came to this country: a few moments later he saw two pieces of the ship come together, crushing the mother and baby, and sink, never to rise again.I have heard his daughter, my grandmother, say he always saw that view when he closed his eyes, and the roar of the oceans was always in his ears.”
That horrible scene, along with the kidnapping and kidnapping of the Indians, made me dismiss these stories as family myths told around the fireplace for evening entertainment. But after checking the Detroit story with the city and county histories, my mind went back to that wreck. Unlike the second account, this first seemed to lack enough detail to investigate. No date, no name of the ship, no location of the disaster. But the age of 14 turned out to be the key. Knowing the date of death and the age of Sophia’s great-grandfather, Jonathan, I was able to pin the shipwreck to around 1737, and certainly the location had to be off the New England coast, as Jonathan had survived and ended up in Maine.
AmericanAncestors offers an external database of early American newspapers, including The Boston Newsletter and The Boston Evening Mail. Within 10 years of 1737, only one shipwreck was reported off the New England coast: loss of snow** katherine. Sailing from Port Rush in Ireland on June 4, 1737, the katherine was approximately one mile off the coast of uninhabited Nova Scotia Sable Island at about 1:00 a.m. on July 17, in bad weather, high winds, and waves. After the tiller broke, the sea washed over it and wrecked the entire boat. Passengers were thrown into stormy water among the pieces of the broken ship, and 98 drowned.
The surf washed 104 survivors ashore, where another four died when struck by the wreckage. In the morning, they buried their dead and began to repair the badly damaged boat. Three days later, the ship’s captain and six other men set out in the launch for Canse, Nova Scotia, 110 miles away. They survived the trip and formed a rescue team, returning to Sable Island six days later.
This had to be the shipwreck Sophia had written about, an event that occurred 106 years before she was born! But the details that came down through the generations – the origin of the voyage, the age of his great-grandfather, the ship breaking, throwing the passengers overboard – allowed this incredible event to be verified as family history, not just an entertaining tale. for winter evenings. And what a remarkable event: elements of the titanic disaster along with the stranding of the Shackleton Expedition and final salvation. I have to be amazed at the tenacity of these people, so determined to make a better life for their descendants. I weep for the Mother and her baby crushed by debris, I marvel at the courage of the men who set out to row across 110 miles of open sea, and I wonder at the terror of the survivors left on Sable Island, speculating about your chances. for rescue
Knowing the stories of our ancestors makes them come alive for us. Isn’t this one of the greatest attractions of genealogical research? They tug at our imaginations and inspire our admiration: without their incredible courage, we would not be who we are.
Family genealogy research isn’t just for professional genealogists, but sometimes a hired genealogist can really help trace your ancestry. If you need the assistance of an ancestry genealogy service to improve or expand your genealogy research, to determine if the stories are family history or family legend, consider contacting a professional genealogy service. Trained and experienced genealogists can help you with ancestry searches and confirm facts vs. fiction.
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*A full examination of this story and the steps that led to its confirmation can be found in the Spring 2012 issue of american ancestors“From Family Myth to Historical Account: The McMillan Incident in 1814 Detroit”.
**A type of square-rigged vessel, similar to a brig but with a triple sail aft of the main mast.