Isabel Woodland - Nurse's Graduation 1925

There is a certain type of individual that is drawn to recording one’s family history.

As I see it, family historians tend to be curious people.  They sense the importance of recording what has happened in the past.  And they tend to be collectors.

My grandmother Isabel (Woodland) IRVINE (1898 – 1989) was all of these.   She was a true family historian.

And Grandma had another talent.  She was a writer.

She would have never considered herself a writer in the true sense of the word as she scribbled out her recollections of homesteading and nursing in Saskatchewan. As far as she was concerned, she was recording the family history for posterity so it wouldn’t get lost as memories faded and people passed on.

But she was a writer.  She wrote in a warm conversational style as if she was sitting across the kitchen table from you as she recounted her stories.

Irvine Family Farm Yard, 20 miles SW of Young Sask, 1950s

Here are Isabel’s words about a stay in the small town of Young, Saskatchewan while her husband Bill Irvine was away for a few days.

“Sometime between two and four a.m. a knock came on the door.  They wanted me to come quickly because there was a sick woman at Mrs. Oakenfold’s and she couldn’t get in touch with the doctor.  I hustled down a couple of blocks and was just in time to deliver a son for the wife of Mr. Carlson, the local butcher.  When everything was over, Dr. Cook arrived from a hockey game in Watrous.

After delivering the baby in Young, I realized I would probably be asked to act as a midwife in the “Hills”, a name given to the area covering the Providence and Meuse School Districts.  I contacted the doctors in the surrounding towns:  Davidson, Neaston, Hanley, Young, Watrous and Simpson.  I wanted permission from them to take charge of the maternity cases in the Hills.

I received the okay from all of the doctors and, in addition they agreed to come if I needed them. As the closest doctor was twenty miles away with no cars or telephones, I knew there wasn’t much chance of getting help from town.  (This was between 1926 and 1936).

During this ten year period after my arrival at the homestead, I delivered thirty babies without a doctor or an anesthetic.  This was in the depression during the Thirties and I collected $10.00 to use for buying medical supplies.”

What a story!  Not only was Grandma a remarkable family historian and writer, she was a remarkable woman.  She delivered 30 babies for her neighbours and friends during a time when services were few and far between.

Even more remarkable, Grandma helped deliver me! (several decades later, of course!)

Baby Joan (the now grown up writer of this blog), Grandma Irvine and Joan's Mom Betty

We would not have this wonderful story today if Grandma hadn’t thought it important to record her experiences.

My Uncle Bob and I shared her words in the Women Pioneers of Saskatchewan Book 1 published in 2009.  Our biggest challenge was to condense all of the material Grandma had written in order to meet the publication guidelines.  Oh, that every genealogist and family historian would have such a problem!

Grandma…..Thank you for being “The One”.

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This post is part of Carnival of Genealogy’s 100th Edition – There is One in Every Family.  Congratulations to Creative Gene for 100 Editions of Carnival of Genealogy!

Genealogy Gems

We had our Canadian Thanksgiving last weekend and the family gathered in Vancouver BC to celebrate my Uncle Bob’s 80th birthday.

Bob is the genealogist and family historian of my Mom’s side of the family, the IRVINES…and he has been grooming me for years to step into his shoes.  Big shoes they are too.

He has done a phenomenal job of tracing and documenting the family and its various branches. Bob’s knowledge was also invaluable for an article we co-authored featuring my Grandmother Isabel Irvine (his mother)  that will be published in the Saskatchewan Genealogy Society’s 40th anniversary book, The Women Pioneers of Saskatchewan due out in November of 2009.

One of Bob’s most enduring legacies for our family is the transcription of his father’s (William John IRVINE) diaries. This was my Grandpa.  Grandpa wrote about the life and times of being a pioneer in Saskatchewan.   The weather, the crops, the politics (he was big into politics).  He wrote in those diaries for SIXTY Years. In the most awful handwriting too.

You may recall the romantic story of  my Grandma and Grandpa’s courtship in my blog post  The Mail Order Bride?  The details came from these diaries.

Bob has probably transcribed a third to half of the diaries and has now handed the task to me to carry on.  It is an awesome responsibility.

I’m considering the best ways to do this to share it with as much family as possible and also with the historians who may enjoy the recounting of the pioneer life.

It will be in a blog format I think, and I’ll start with the entries that have already been transcribed, then possibly move onto entries surrounding major events during those sixty years.

I want to honour this genealogy legacy that Uncle Bob has handed me and to honour all of his hard work as the genealogist and family historian.

I welcome any suggestions regarding how best to present this genealogy gem,  my Grandpa Irvine’s Diaries.

Please comment below.

My sister has red hair, my two kids have red hair and my husband used to have red hair. So did my Mom and Grandmother. My father in law too!

Red hair is the rarest natural hair color in humans (1-2% of the population) but you wouldn’t know it in our family. Redheads are found most commonly in northern and western Europeans and their descendents. The colour ranges from deep coppery tones to bright oranges and is the product of two copies of a recessive gene that has been associated with the melanocortin-1 receptor (MC1R), a protein associated with fair skin, red hair and ultra violet sensitivity.*

It shouldn’t come as any surprise to know that our family, are of northern European extraction.  Our IRVINEs are from Ireland and so were the KERRs, most likely via Scotland originally.  One of my grandmothers was a WILSON from Scotland.  The other, a WOODLAND, also with northern European roots. 

My husband’s AUMACK side of the family has been traced back to Dutch settlers on the Isle of Amager, in Denmark.   His father, a MILLER and also a redhead is thought to have English ancestry.

With all those redheads in the gene pool it wasn’t a surprise that our two children turned out to be redheads. 

How many of YOU have redheads in your family?  Are they of northern European extraction?  I’d love to hear your comments.

*Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair

Here is the story of my Grandmother, the MAIL ORDER BRIDE…

My grandfather, William (Bill) IRVINE arrived in Canada from Ireland in 1911 at age 19 to make his way in a new land.  At age 20 he took up a homestead of 160 acres in the rocky hills 20 miles south west of Young, Saskatchewan.  The going was tough.  The winters were long and harsh, the house (basically a shack) and barn were built with the labour of his own hands, the soil turned and the crops planted.  When old timers talk about having to walk uphill both ways, this is what they meant!

My grandmother, Isabel WOODLAND was born in April of 1898 in Ottawa, Ontario, the second daughter of Samuel F. WOODLAND and Isabel Mary NESBITT.  Her father was a planer and a millwright and they moved west to make a living after losing most of their possessions in the Great Ottawa Fire in the year 1900.  The family lived in BC for several years before returning to Ontario to her grandparents’ house after the death of Isabel’s mother in a runaway horse and buggy incident.  Her grandparents were living in Morrisburg, Ontario at the time.

Grandma was a strong woman; a person of conviction and she had a dream.  She wanted to be a dentist. This in an era where most women didn’t have professional careers (early 1900s).  In preparation for a career in dentistry, she worked as a dental assistant for three years.  Imagine her dismay when she discovered her senior matriculation didn’t qualify her for dental school.  She then turned to nursing and graduated number five of the first graduating class of the Ottawa Civic Hospital on June 10, 1925.

Grandma was also a family historian and in her later years she recorded this story….

Isabel’s story in her own words….

“A couple of days before graduation, there was letter for me postmarked Young, Saskatchewan. The letters had started some time earlier when my cousin, John Woodland, had given my address to his friend, Bill Irvine. This developed into a continuous correspondence and we got to know each other quite well.”

At this point my grandparents had never met face to face. They were penpals and a budding romance had developed, all by correspondence. (how they would have loved the internet!).

Isabel’s story continues…

“Bill had a good crop and decided to check on his mail-order bride. Arrangements were made by letter and he arrived in Ottawa in January 1926 for a visit at which time he proposed. I showed off my new ring when I returned to specializing at the Civic Hospital. Wedding plans were made for February 18, 1926. My cousin, Vida Smith, was my bridesmaid and her friend, Allan Boyd, was best man. My dress was royal blue cut velvet and Bill wore a navy suit.”

This is an interesting family story and we are fortunate to have it but the story gets even better.  At this point we turn to Grandpa’s diary.

Grandpa William Irvine kept a daily diary for well over SIXTY years….

Under a heading of “Things of Paramount Importance” he wrote:

“Miss Isabel Woodland Sept 26, 1925.

On January 7, 1926 we find the following entry shortly after his arrival in Ontario to meet his penpal Isabel face to face.

“Out to see Isabel. Our discussion never to part. Those pleasant moment I will never forget.”

Grandpa was in love…

And on January 12, 1926 we find another notable entry in his diary.  Grandpa was never a demonstrative man and I find this following entry to be particularly touching.

“Gave Isabel Ring. W( I  I) W”

with a circle around the two”I”s for William Irvine and Isabel Woodland.

On the day William IRVINE married Isabel WOODLAND, his mail order bride, February 18, 1926 he wrote:

“The greatest event in life, got married. Married bliss.”

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This, in my humble opinion, is what makes a family history.

Warmly,

Joan

P.S. Special thanks to several family members for your help.  You know who you are..:)

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The moral of this touching story?  Please include as many stories as you can in your roots research and reports. Paste them into the notes section of your family tree software, record them in a word document, or better still audio or video record the stories of the elders of your family.  Whether you publish a blog post or a long report for the extended family, these are the stories that will enrich your family tree and make it truly a family history.