A p o l o g i e s
A catalogue’s tight format inhibits spelling out spousal contracts and a recent vogue of retaining a maiden name by itself or in some irregular combination with a hus-band’s surname. This text adheres to genealogical style. My wife for example appears as Caroline Marie (French) Wallace b. 1928 St. John’s, Nfld. For some but not all broken alliances I show a maiden name prefixed by née [a few have survived three marriages]. Concede, please, that clarity and format must take precedence over recent political cor-rectness. Following on, a parent with closer blood ties to us normally is identified along with offspring. This may also reveal a child of a previous alliance without undue fuss.
More apologies: words other than English aren’t always italicized and not all are ac-cented; bracketing may look eccentric to professionals; convenience winning out. Al-though I have tried my best to check each line; errors no doubt lurk in some. Corrections or additions by readers will be welcomed even more accompanied by facts or edu-cated guesses identified as such. My address is on both first and last pages.
Two old spinning words are used on occasion in our Catalogue. In England ages ago a distaff held wool for twisting into yarn. The implement was so common in homes that it came to represent female matters in general. And “descent by distaff” covers an-cestors on the mother’s side. Spear is used for ancestors on the father’s. Men of the cot-tage did much of the weaving until big factories arose to mass produce cloth. In them women instead operated the machines, while retaining the old hearth label of spinster. It long survived in courtrooms as well in the sense of a single woman considered beyond fruitful i.e. marrying days.
“…History is an account of what happened in the past. Learning history, therefore, requires knowledge of events. It is impossible to make sense of such events without absorbing sufficient factual information and without being able to place events in a clear chronological framework – which means knowing dates. No amount of imaginative sympathy for historical characters or situations can be a substitute for the initially tedious but ultimately rewarding business of memorizing what actually happened….”
[Margaret Thatcher 1993]
“The man who knows and dwells in history adds a new dimension to his existence; he no longer lives in the one plane of present ways and thoughts, he lives in the whole space of life, past, present and dimly future.” [Archaeologist Flinders Petrie]
“Every Scottish man has a pedigree. It is a national prerogative, as unalienable as his pride and his poverty.” [Sir Walter Scott]
“History is memory. Even in our callous, heedless society, we protect children who have no memory and the elderly who have lost it. Our own Canadian tendency to forget who we are and how we got here puts us at similar risk – but where is the kindly member of the family of nations who will help us out? Some countries – Bosnia, North-ern Ireland, India come to mind – are sometimes accused of having too much history, as though Kosovo, the Boyne, or the Mogul emperors are still with us. The truth is that people in those societies have overdosed on very little history, finding only symbolic glory, triumph or martyrdom, forgetting the savage pain and loss, and, equally, the un-memorable years of peace, prosperity and routine that, we are told, make Canada’s history so dull. Do we really need a mountain of skulls to make Canada interesting? [Historian Desmond Morton 1998]
I n s t a l m e n t s
Should, for example, senior grandson Eli Wallace encounter a clannish Scot [and they are legion] here’s the gist of how Eli might introduce himself :
Eli Stephen Howard Howard Thomas John Thomas Wallace.
Thus Eli has presented seven generations of Canadian Wallaces so that yon Scot can begin to calculate relationships if any within those layers. Some ancestor of his might have enjoyed friendships with some members of this particular family in decades or centuries past. Did they feud back in Ireland or Scotland; or were they allies? Lucky Eli, Scots children no longer must memorize ancestors back 50 generations.
Forebears and kin accumulated over merely half a dozen generations are many.
Therefore our Catalogue of Kin appears in sections.
• First, our immediate family including children and grandchildren;
• Second, ancestors, to put it broadly, including my wife and me;
• Third, relatives more or less contemporary, also including us two again;
• Fourth, the meaning or at least some background for just about every name, in alpha-betical order. Many entries provide a good read, and
• Fifth, Holy Celts is a section naming and describing saints of the old Celtic Church.
The first section reminds us once again of birth dates and anniversaries! The After matter includes books recommended to help those seeking other validated names. Warn-ing! Guesswork clouds some name-your-baby paperbacks in bookshops and libraries.
“Names have a protective as well as an evaluative halo: last names establish the outer perimeter of your private encampment, first names the inner perimeter.” [Kaplan/Bernays]
“A good name is better than riches.” [Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote 1615]
“The name of a man is like his shadow.” [Ernst Pulgram 1954]
“The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.”
[Marshall McLuhan 1911-80]
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