Finding skeletons in your closet

The exact originals of my husband's Great Great Grandfather and his family are a mystery. Family lore suggests that Louis Adamore was Irish and born somewhere around 1824. His wife Margaret was either Scottish or Irish and her maiden name has been suggested as both Sage and Laige. I have been unable to confirm either.

Their son George Lewis is my husband's line. There were several other children. Ellen (DOB circa 1861) married an M. Griffey and died in 1889 in Chelsea, Mass. John (BOD circa 1866) and William (DOB circa 1869).  Both boys moved to the USA as well.

While investigating the family, I did came across some interesting information about Margaret - she had a definite problem with "the drink"and saw the inside of the court room a number of times. This is a photo of the Court House being constructed on Spring Garden Road about 1865. Not sure if this is where Margaret would have gone but from the look of the following three items in the Morning Chronicle (Halifax, N.S.),  things went from bad to worse.


Date: March 20, 1865
Margaret Adamore charged with being a common drunkard, was excused upon the condition that she takes the temperance oath.

Date: May 31, 1865
The case of Margaret Adamore, charged by her husband with being "a common drunkard and notoriously misemploying her time to the detriment and prejudice of her family" was continued until today. This woman has frequently been before this court charged with the same offense. 

Date: Sept 18, 1866
Margaret Adamore given in charge by her husband for being a common drunkard and misappropriating articles from the shop, was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment in the common jail.


I didn't find any mention of her after that so not sure if she reformed or not.

Have fun looking for your family's skeletons.

The wreck of the S.S. Florizel

One of the most interesting things about doing genealogical research is being able to put individuals in an historical context. Here is an example. Until I started working on my husband's Newfoundland roots, I had never heard of the S.S. Florizel. Commissioned in 1909, she served primarily as a passenger ship. During a raging storm on February 24, 1918, she ran aground on Newfoundland’s southern shore (off Horn Head)

Only 44 of the 144 aboard survived. My husband's 2nd cousin twice removed, James McCoubrey, son of Adam McLarty McCoubrey and Mary Ann Maddick was among those who lost their lives.

Excerpt from the Twillingate Sun and Northern Weekly Advertiser
The same seaman also witnessed the drowning of W.F. Butler, Mrs. Butler and James McCoubrey. When conditions became unbearable, they tried to get to the Marconi house. Mrs. Butler was between her husband and McCoubrey, each of whom held her hands. When they made the attempt, a sea caught them full force and this was the last seen of them.
  For more information on the S.S. Florizel and the disaster, check out the following websites. http://branchlines.tripod.com/id33.html http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cannf/ss_hist.htm http://www.newfoundlandshipwrecks.com/Florizel/Documents/florizel_documents.htm  
Until next time.....

From Ireland to Newfoundland

Working on both my husband's family tree as well as my own has reminded me that some people make a bigger historic imprint than others. My family for instance were primarily farmers who lived in rural communities. As a result, my information on them has come mainly from census records, local information and family connections. On the other hand, many of my husband's ancestors became business owners and politicians. Because of their higher status, they have tended to turn up in other sources such as newspapers, books, etc.


My husband is descended from Andrew McCoubrey and Elizabeth Rixon who emigrated to St. John's Newfoundland from Ireland in 1819. His line is from their daughter Phoebe who married George Allen Corbin. As the McCoubrey family prospered, their descendants became well known in St. John's society.


Thanks to the work of Amanda MacCoubrey, a portion of the McCoubrey/Rixon family tree can be found at http://www.islandregister.com/maccoubrey1.html.  Andrew and Elizabeth's son, John Williams McCoubrey, is noted in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online as follows:

McCOUBREY, JOHN WILLIAMS, newspaper proprietor; b. of middle-class Protestant parents in Waterford, Ireland, in 1806; d. at St John’s, Nfld., on 10 Oct. 1879.

      In 1819 John Williams McCoubrey’s family emigrated to St John’s, Newfoundland, where he was apprenticed to a well-known printer, Robert Lee Jr. After his seven years as an apprentice he went to work for John Shea’s newspaper, the Newfoundlander, apparently both as printer and as journalist, until 1832, when he founded his own newspaper, the Times and General Commercial Gazette.

      McCoubrey had no trouble with the colonial authorities, despite the tight control of the Newfoundland press at the time. Throughout his career he avoided the political and sectarian controversies usual in the journalism of St John’s, and achieved a reputation for impartiality and personal integrity. A rival newspaper, the Public Ledger, records his support for Conservative candidates in the 1842 election. The incident in his life most celebrated by the obituarist in his own newspaper was his refusal to compound with his creditors, at great personal expense, after the fire of 1846, when his business was almost wiped out. Perhaps the most fitting last words on his career come from an anonymous correspondent to the Times, who wrote on 17 Oct. 1879 that he had never known McCoubrey “either through the press or otherwise utter one word to wound the feelings of any man, no matter to what creed or party he belonged.”

E. J. Devereux

Public Ledger (St John’s), 4 Oct. 1842. Times and General Commercial Gazette (St John’s), 1832–94. “Chronological list of Newfoundland newspapers in the public collections at the Gosling Memorial Library and Provincial Archives,” 18-page typescript compiled by Ian McDonald (copy at the Reference Library, Arts and Culture Centre, St John’s). E. J. Devereux, “Early printing in Newfoundland,” Dal. Rev., XLIII (1963), 57–66.

More on this family in another post.

Let me introduce myself

I've heard it said that Genealogy is where you confuse the dead and irritate the living. Since my family is tired of being irritated, I thought I might engage some of you out there instead. I've been working on tracing my family and that of my husband for a few years now.

My family reaches back to Scotland from Nova Scotia and includes names like Inglis, Stewart, MacDonald, McLaren, MacPherson and McLean to name a few. My husband's family is a bit more diverse. Some of them are Loyalists (Albro, Foster, Edes) while others made a stop in Newfoundland (McCoubrey, Corbin) on their way from England, Scotland and Wales (Wells).

I will be using this blog to share tips, solicit ideas and maybe just share some of the cool things I've found through my searching. If you have any comments or ideas, I'd be happy to hear them.