Hi from southern Ontario,
Chez moi/at home: what's been happening? Our weather is improving, it isn’t hot but warm enough at about 15 C, to turn off the furnace, if it’s chilly we can turn on the gas fireplace. Lots of daffodils and tulips are in bloom. The star magnolia in my front garden is about finished blooming, which delights my odd neighbour, as she blows the petals off the tree and then onto my driveway.
WikiTree and family history: I have been updating profiles last edited in May 2021, and then fell down a rabbit hole! May 2021 was when I was just getting started with what became the Alton Cemetery project. Now I realize that some of those old profiles are of people who were buried at Alton, and I can just improve the profiles and add them to the cemetery category, which is wonderful, what is more wonderful is that many of those profiles are connected or can be connected to most of the people already in the category.
And I finally figured out Robbie’s connection to the Huston (sometimes historically spelled Houston) family, that is the family which includes Walter Thomas Huston, Huston won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, directed by his son John Huston. He is the patriarch of the four generations of the Huston acting family, including his son John, grandchildren Anjelica Huston and Danny Huston, as well as great-grandchild Jack Huston. The Huston family originally settled in the village of Melville, which is about 4 kilometres from the centre of Alton. Melville includes Melville White Church and its’ historic very small cemetery, where many of Robbie’s other ancestors and connections are buried.
So, Robbie is 4th cousin to James Cameron yes the filmmaker and will have a connection to the Huston family, when I get all the other profiles created. Maybe he is also 4th cousin to Anjelica Huston, but I suspect the connection is more complicated.
What else: Just about everything has been planned for our East Coast trip in June/July. We have 2 nights booked in the old town section of Québec city. And then will be driving west along the north shore of the St Lawrence river, we hadn’t made any plans for places to visit before we arrive in Kingston, Ontario to spend 1 night with my brother before the last leg of the trip to home.
Then I realised we will be driving through/ past Trois-Rivières, the second oldest settlement in Québec, it has wonderful old buildings including a convent and a forge, so now I am planning a part day exploration of Trois-Rivières. Then we will have to visit the small town of Yamachiche which was the location of a United Empire Loyalist refugee camp in the 1780s.
In 1783 Robbie’s 5 x GGF, William McClellan, his wife Jane Unknown and at least one child are listed on the camp roster, as receiving food rations. Then we will drive to visit my brother, stay overnight and come home the next day.
That’s my story for today! I'm going to be running around like a mad person for much of the weekend, working on Horticultural Society Plant Sale preparations.
