William Pitt Adams

This is rather interesting: Isabella's and George's son William Pitt Adams was born in Chester in 1884.  Why? 

His siblings, Alice and Sam, were born in (what would become) Bournemouth ahead of him, and his brothers John, Frederick, Leonard, and Reginald were born in Bournemouth after him.  What was Isabella, and perhaps the rest of the family, doing in Chester in 1884?  Could this have anything to do with a possible return to Liverpool after going to the U.S.?  Look how close Chester is to Liverpool.  If this was the case, perhaps Isabella did not know she was pregnant in the spring of the year - I cannot imagine she would have set out to cross the Atlantic to look after her brother if she knew she was pregnant - and William was born after her return, at the end of October.

If I ever manage to find out if it was Isabella that went to America, and if 1884 was the year, then we can connect these events.  Or, there is an entirely different reason why she/they were in Chester at the time... but, what?

Picture credit: http://www.onlinegalleries.com/antiques/d/chester-by-louise-ingram-rayner/91871

Slow Going



Steamer, Quebec City, c.1870

Steamer, Cleveland 1875

Dead leads and dead ends have been the continuing theme of my recent research.  I have nothing substantial to relate at all, other than that I found a detailed family listing of Bartholomew Pearce's wife's family  for Cousin J., which has everyone on it up to the present family members, who live around or in London, Ontario!  Once again my old paths have been crossed with people connected to us of Portland origin.  The odd thing about this family listing is that they have Bartholomew's wife married to someone else on it, and I have not been able to find when he died, or anything else about him.

My latest mother lode of a discover has been the website for The Maritime History of the Great Lakes.  There are thousands of images and old newspaper transcriptions available here of all things related to shipping in the Great Lakes, and I have only just begun to look at it this morning.  I have lost my initial optimism that we will be able to find out anything more specific about how Bartholomew made it from Quebec to Cleveland, but it is possible to see how he could have  (if it was by inland steamer), by examining the pictures and articles in this repository of information.

Now, as today is the only day that everyone can get together this week, we are having a family feast/late birthday celebration for one of my nieces out at the farm - and it is a beautiful day for it - so, I must get to the preparations of my contributions now, and leave the Great Lakes for another day.

image credits: http://images.maritimehistoryofthegreatlakes.ca/1452/data?n=1,  http://images.maritimehistoryofthegreatlakes.ca/454/data?n=39, http://images.maritimehistoryofthegreatlakes.ca/1067/data?n=48

More About Steamships

I stumbled across a very good website this morning, and among other things, there was a transcription of the shipping news from the old Quebec Mercury newspaper on the day Bartholomew Pearce arrived.

Monday, May 22, 1871
Arrived, May 22:   S S Nestorian, Aird, Liverpool, May 11, Allans, Rae & co., mails, 855 pas and gen cargo for Quebec and Montreal:

Mail Steamship Arrived. –The S.S. Nestorian, Capt. Aird, from Liverpool, May 11, arrived in port at half-past three o’clock this afternoon, with the mails, 47 cabin, 808 steerage passengers and a general cargo for Quebec and Montreal.

And below is the text of an 1880 advertisement for the Allan Line, which was the steamship company that brought the most immigrants to North America in the last decades of the 19th century.  It gives a lot of information on the procedures and conditions of the passage, keeping in mind that this was 9 years after Bartholomew traveled and things might not have been exactly the same.

GOVERNMENT ASSISTED PASSAGES

AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS TO QUEBEC, AT œ5. FEMALE DOMESTIC SERVANTS AT œ4.

ALL APPLICATIONS FOR SUCH PASSAGES ARE TO BE MADE UPON SPECIAL FORMS, WHICH CAN BE OBTAINED FROM THE UNDERSIGNED, OR ANY OF THEIR AGENTS

Intermediate or Steerage Passages can be engaged by payment of a Deposit of One or Two Pounds on each berth, with Name and Age of each passenger. Post-office Orders to be made payable to the undersigned, Steerage Passengers are provided with comfortable sleeping compartments, and they are recommended to hire the Outfit supplied by the "Allan" Steam-ship Company, which consists of Woods' Patent Life-Preserving Pillows, Mattress, Pannikin to hold 1.5 pint, Plate, Knife, Nickel-plated Fork, and Nickel-plated Spoon. The Charge for the use of these articles for the Voyage is 6s. per Adult, and 3s per Child between the Ages of Two and Eight Years; leaving Passengers to provide bed-covering only, a rug or blanket being sufficient.

Intermediate and Steerage Passengers are allowed ten cubic feet of Luggage free for each adult; for all over that quantity a charge of 1s. for each cubic foot will be made. Packages of baggage must be distinctly addressed before being shipped.

BAGGAGE TAKEN FROM THE OCEAN STEAM-SHIPS TO THE RAILWAY CARS FREE OF EXPENSE.

Intermediate and Steerage Passengers embarking at Liverpool must be at the Office of the Agents, ALEXANDRA BUILDINGS, JAMES STREET, not later than Eight o'clock in the Evening of the day before the advertised date of sailing, by which time the balance of the Passage-money must be paid.

Passengers embarking at Londonderry will have to report themselves at the office of ALLAN BROTHERS & CO., Foyle Street, Londonderry; and Passengers embarking at Queenstown will have to report themselves at the Office of JAMES SCOTT & CO., the evening before sailing date, any time up to Eight or Nine o'Clock. The Steamers being under Mail contract, sail punctually on their appointed dates.

All Passengers will have strictly to conform to the rules laid down by the Company. Passengers' Boxes (if required on the Voyage) should not exceed fifteen inches in height.

AN EXPERIENCED SURGEON IS ATTACHED TO EACH STEAMER.

Intermediate and Steerage Stewardesses are provided by the Company, to attend to the wants of Female Passengers and Children. Through Tickets issued to all Inland Towns in Canada and the States. For further particulars apply to:

JOHN WARD, Stationmaster, Bandoran.

Liverpool, February, 1880.

Report credit: http://jubilation.uwaterloo.ca/~marj/genealogy/children/inthenews.html#1871
Image credit:  http://www.photoship.co.uk/JAlbum%20Ships%20Misc/Miscellaneous/slides/
Advertisemnt credit:  http://www.proni.gov.uk/index/exhibitions_talks_and_events/19th_century_emigration_to_the_north_america_online/at_the_port/advertisements.htm

Wrong Again

  

When I found the same ship's list on the LDS site, it listed the passengers in nice, clear text, not 19th century handwriting - and the one following Mr. Pearce was a "Miss. Peaton", not a Miss. Pearce after all.   Just when it was looking promising.

Back to the old drawing board.

I wonder...

 

Is this it?  The reason I could not find an Isabella Pearce on any of the ships' passenger lists the first time around was because she may have been listed as "Miss Pearce" - as in the Miss. Pearce on the above record - the fifth from the bottom.  This Miss. Pearce (listed as a spinster) and apparently travellng with a Mr. Pearce, who may have been a brother (?) was aboard the SS Circassian, and arrived in Quebec on the 22nd of September, 1873.  It fits.  But is it her?  I realize that this image is total crap to look at, and I shall try and make it better when I get home to my own computer. 

Happily, I can confirm that there is an Isabella Pearce showing up in the LDS records of Canadian ships' passenger lists, but, I would have to pay to see the record.  I found that an hour ago and have been trying to figure it out another way now, as I am not going to get to an LDS family research center in the next week.  We're onto something though.  Once A.R. mentioned in yesterday's email that she'd been speaking with a cousin of my grandmother's, who also remembered the story as being that it was Isabella that went to America, I decided to have another try at finding her on a ship's list somewhere.

And if this is our Isabella, who was the Mr. Pearce she was travelling with, I wonder?  And did he stay in North America?

The Next Generation

It's official: I am a great-aunt.  Young Trot made his way into the world a week later than expected yesterday, with a little encouragement from his waiting medical team.  Mother and child are doing fine.  And so begins the next generation of the family!!

And no, they have not actually named him Trot.  Read   David Copperfield. My favorite character in all of Dickens is Betsey Trotwood.

In other (less significant) news, I harvested my grapes yesterday afternoon and have over 42 lbs of them for H. to make  a lot of grape jelly.  I cannot abide grape jelly, so off they go to someone who can make use of them.  Then the dogs and I had our own little harvest festival afterwards with a glass of wine (me) and the hounds being allowed to scoff all the fallen grapes once I had cleared up the unripe and withered ones.  It was one of the last glorious days of summer in the garden - around 30 degrees -  and I was home from work early enough to enjoy most of it.

Not a thing to report on the genealogy front.  I haven't done any work on family research in the last few days.

How to Get to Cleveland in the 1870s

Cleveland in the distance taken from Euclid May, 2012

So... there you are, a sea-weary new immigrant fetched up in the port of Quebec in 1871.  What do you do next?  Have you already got a final destination further on, and arrangements made to get there?  Have you got a job waiting, or  a vague promise of one that is certain to materialize when you present yourself?  Were you chosen for emigration, and perhaps had your passage paid, because you have a skill the New World needed in abundance?  [Stone masons certainly fitted into that category in the late 19th century.]  Quebec City was the main transfer point for European immigrants heading to the mid-west and western United States during the last four decades of the 19th century, as it was linked by waterway and railroad right out to the Pacific by then.  Apparently, the ship fares to travel to Canada were cheaper, which was a major factor in choosing to come through Quebec rather than a U.S. seaport.

Bartholomew Pearce could have made his way from Quebec City to Cleveland either by railroad or by an inland passage lake or river steamer.  It would be very interesting to find out what happened after he landed in Quebec, but other than finding out his port of entry into the U.S., and then perhaps being able to infer from that how he traveled, there may not be an awful lot more to discover at the moment about any of this.  It wasn't until 1895 that something called "St. Albans records " were started, which recorded all immigrant  border crossings from Canada into the U.S.

There is a webpage I've just found devoted to "Visions of a City in 1872" on the Cleveland Area History blog.  These are two views of the city at the time Bartholomew Pearce arrived.  

picture credits: http://www.clevelandareahistory.com/2011/03/visions-of-city-in-1872.html

Ships' Lists and More Mysteries

Passenger ship docked  in Liverpool 1884

Here's an update on what I've been doing whenever I've had a few spare minutes during the past couple of days: searching ships' passenger lists for any sign of one of Bartholomew Pearce's sisters or mother travelling to Canada or the United States on her way to look after him when he was very ill.  A.R. emailed me this past weekend and recalled a memory she had of something Gangan (who was my great-grandmother, if you are reading this and do not know the family name for her),  had talked about years ago, and to the best of A.R.'s recollection it was this: one of Bartholomew Pearce's sisters (she thought it might be Isabella), or perhaps his mother, had gone over to America to look after him when he was very sick with some unknown affliction.  This is pretty interesting if you think about it: it wasn't like jumping on a plane these days to be with someone if they need you.  And it must have been something chronic, because by the time letters went back and forth across the Atlantic and arrangements could be made for a ship's passage for someone, Bartholomew would have been fully recovered from a passing illness.  Perhaps whoever it was that went over had intended to emigrate and then changed her mind.  Cousin J. said that he died of "malnutrition and stomach cancer" in 1909, so it wasn't a terminal illness that we are talking about beforehand.

So far, I have only been able to find one possibility, and that is a record of a Mary Pearce, aged 50 (which would be consistent with the age of B's sister Mary, born 1844), on a passenger list on the SS Parisian which arrived in Quebec May 12, 1895.  Again, this would be strange, because by then B's wife and children had long since arrived and joined him and they were all living in Cleveland - so he would have had his family to look after him.  I think that if someone had dashed off across the Atlantic to nurse him, it would be in that period before his wife and children had gone over.  But, he and his wife, Jane, did have 8 children, so any help would have been mercifully received I expect.   It's early days yet... more will be revealed.

Cousin J. has generously mailed me a copy of all the research she has collected on the Pearce side of the family, so there will soon be more to add and/or correct about what we know so far when that arrives in the post.



photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10741688@N06/3454422046/in/photostream

The SS Nestorian

Using information from the freshly minted addition to the known family (who I shall call Cousin J.), I found an image of the ship that Bartholomew Comben Pearce sailed on to the new world.  The SS Nestorian left Liverpool on May 11, 1871, stopped at Londonderry May 12th, and arrived in Quebec City on May 22nd, 1871.  This photograph was taken in 1867, the web site says, which was the year of Confederation.  Canada was less than 4 years old when Bartholomew Pearce arrived in Quebec.

And I went to the Library and Archives of Canada website for immigrant ships' passenger lists and found an image of the original listing of Bartholomew's name on the Nestorian's passenger list.  His is the fourth from the bottom.  He is 31 years old, a "Lab", meaning laborer (we know from Cousin J. that he was a stone mason in Cleveland, and from Portland censuses that he was a quarryman), and the tick mark in the illegible column sub-categorizes him as English and something else I cannot decipher.



image credits: http://www.theshipslist.com/pictures/nestorian1867.shtml, http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/genealogy/022-908-e.html

Bartholomew Comben Pearce



This is very exciting.  I have had email contact this week from a direct descendent of Isabella's older brother, Bartholomew Comben Pearce, and this distant cousin sounds lovely.  She lives in Cleveland, Ohio, which is even more fun, because of my connection with that part of the States, and has got all kinds of information to share, as she has been working on family research since the 1980s.

Bartholomew Comben Pearce immigrated to the U.S.A. in 1871, via Quebec (not sure how long he stayed there yet), and lived out the rest of his life in Cleveland, working as a stone mason.  So, now we know the fate of the first of Isabella's siblings.  I shall update and correct all information as I get it, and I think there might be quite a lot, from the sounds of things.

By the way, this is the same person that I had tried to contact using an out of date email address last year that I refer to in the September 26th, 2011 blog entry.

photo credit: isleofportlandpictures.org.uk