Julia Austin on stage in a Shakespeare play
Toronto. Have you ever wondered about your ancestors? The American company Ancestry (with the Canadian link shown here), does a wonderful job of indexing an astonishing number of genealogical databases.
Before Ancestry, one had to visit city directories, or government archives and weed through addresses and census records on microfiche. I did both some 30 to 40 years ago. Census records where a challenge. You had to know who, when, and where to even ask for a possible reel of records. The records were not indexed and were often by street with some addresses skipped and recorded later.
But no records included photographs! Fortunately, family records often include photographs showing many of our ancestors well after they have passed on to heaven or hell or whatever. Photographs, often annotated or the people shown recognized by family members and friends, gave us insight into where we came from. Fascinating.
Years later, before her husband’s death in 1900, Julia and Henry Peneycad took a ride in this two wheel wagon propelled by a pony (automobiles were still in experimental stages and very, very expensive). The couple remained in England in and around London.
