Hi Folks, Hope everyone's enjoying their last summer weekend. Hard to believe September's here (and how much more backed up I am!!) I'm surprised there hasn't been any feedback from all the reunions that took place in Antigonish County!! C'mon!! Doesn't anyone have any stories to share? ;-) Here are the obits from The Casket, June 16, 2004. As always, complete obits sent upon request! MacDONALD, Kathleen - Halifax, died June 6, 2004. Born in Antigonish, she was a daughter of the late Judge Allan and Christine (MacKINNON) Macdonald. [photo] RICHARD, Winston Joseph - 43, Charlos Cove, Guysborough County, died June 10, 2004. Born in Charlos Cove, he was a son of Ethel (MANNETTE) Richard (Francis), Thorburn and the late Basil Richard. GOWER, E. Margaret - 94, Truro, died June 11, 2004. Born in Quincy, Massachusetts, she was a daughter of the late Charles and Christina (PILKATON) GUTHRO. FRASER, Florence Harriet - 88, Dartmouth, died June 4, 2004. Born in Dartmouth, she was a daughter of the late Alexander and Elizabeth (CONRAD) Fraser. (Son Frank, Antigonish) BARRETT, Joseph A. - 78, Lower Sackville, died June 11, 2004. Born in Beaver Bank, he ws a son of the late George Willoughby and Florence (ETTER) Barrett. ALLEN, R. Thompson "Tom" - 81, Pugwash, died June 12, 2004. Born in Pugwash, he was a son of the late Manford and Beatrice (PAULEY) Allen. RHYNOLD, Douglas Gerald - 68, Phillips Harbour, Guysborough County, died June 12, 2004. Born in Phillips Harbour, he was a son of the late Martha Rhynold. SKINNER, Chester R. - 74, Toronto, formerly of Sunnyville, died June 5, 2004. IN MEMORIAMs Bobby FARRELL who passed away June 6, 1985 Daniel Alexander "Sandy" MacPHERSON {2} [photo] who passed away June 16, 2004 Jean (Wallace) PURDY [photo] who passed away June 16, 2003

At 07:23 PM 9-4-2004 -0400, Linda Darling wrote: >C'mon!! Doesn't anyone have any stories to share? ;-) OK - you got me. What I Did On My Summer Vacation by Joe We had the usual grand time visiting Nova Scotia. We drove up this time - Albany, NY to the Antigonish area, plus Halifax, a bit around Hants County, and a couple of stops in New Brunswick. We put a total of 3000 miles (4.800 km) on the car. One of the things driving up enabled us to do was to visit Campobello, where we saw the FDR family retreat. FDR is a distant cousin, so I take a passing interest in him. http://www.nps.gov/roca/ Observations: - The people in the Maritimes are the nicest, most hospitable people in the world. Antigonish gets particularly high marks here. - We missed the tall ships at Halifax (http://www.novascotia.com/tallships/), but they moved on to various ports around the Maritimes, and we saw several of them in Port Hawkesbury and Arichat. The best to visit was Mircea, of Romania. She was anchored in Arichat harbor, and we were ferried out to her. But of the several ships we say, they didn't rush you through, and the crew was available to visitors. - On that same trip, we met John Donald Cameron, who runs a music shop in Port Hawkesbury. John Donald is brother to Cape Breton musician John Allan Cameron (http://www.iandavies.com/jacam-profile.htm) and a pretty fair musician himself. John Donald will ship to the States; contact me offlist for details. - We're very fortunate to be researching in Antigonish County. The resources there post, say 1850, are tremendous. Even the earlier resources are pretty good. - It's interesting to visit a place where people not only know you. They know their own great-grandparents, and odds are, they have an idea who *your* great-grandparents are. (The two may even be the same!) - Antigonish Heritage Society: -- Lister Marleen Hubley has done a listing of one of the cemeteries in the Ohio area, which is on sale as a fundraiser for the Society. It's Can$10 and available in the Museum. (http://museum.gov.ns.ca/musdir/antigonishheritagemuseum.htm) -- We also met Paul MacDonald (of the 'Big Christopher' MacDonalds of Heatherton) at the museum. Paul is working on a project to prove that all the pioneer families eventually intermarried. (This meshes neatly with my Unified Field Theory of Antigonish Genealogy: given long enough to work on it, I'll be able to link everybody who has ever lived in Antigonish County to everybody else.) -- Jocelyn Gillis of the Museum is a treasure; if you're travelling there, make sure to introduce yourself. The Museum's genealogy collection is good, and Jocelyn is quite familiar with it. - Acadian Heritage; Acadian World Congress/Congrès Mondial Acadien 2004 -- On our first visit to the Maritimes in 1995, Acadian heritage was there, but not nearly as evident as it has become in the past couple of years. This was particularly obvious this year with the Congrès. Acadian flags were everywhere - a French tricouleur with a gold star in the upper part of the blue stripe (the one near the flagpole). And there were reunions all over the province. So if you haven't been in touch with your cousins recently, or even your occasional same-surname correspondents, do get in touch, as I'll bet that they have lots of new data. More information at http://www.cma2004.com/ -- If you missed the 2004 Congrès, we saw billboards for one coming (in 2009?), to be held in New/Nouveau Brunswick. -- Listening to the CBC, we heard a commentary from an Acadian who grew up speaking French in southern Nova Scotia. He told of his sister, who moved to Montréal to pursue nursing education. Somebody approached her on the street and, in French, asked directions. She replied, again in French, giving the directions; the original questioner replied in English, 'You're not francophone.' Gives an interesting perspective. -- We had supper one day at La Cuisine Acadienne in Louisdale, CB. Unfortunately, most of the menu was /not/ Acadian; fortunately, however, the meat pie was, and it was wonderful. You could also get a poutine there, but you had to ask. Poutine is french fries with gravy and cheese; from what I've read, its origin is in Québec. These are artery-clogging to be sure, but good as an occasional treat. - Personal genealogy work -- We didn't get quite as much done this trip as I wanted; however, we did make a fair amount of progress on the M(a)cDON(N)EL(L) family of Saint Andrew's. I still haven't had time to put any of it together - our older daughter is off to college, and our younger daughter moved high schools and is playing soccer, plus work. However - I do have photos of "Heatherton Cemetery - Old Section" as identified here: http://www.rootsweb.com/~pictou/hethold.htm If you have any questions about any of them, I can potentially arrange for you to get pictures of the stones. I don't think, however, that they'll ever make the web. My 2002 grave pictures, predominantly CAMERONs and MacBride MacDONALDs, are still posted at http://makowiec.org/maritimes/2002/ -- I connected my wife's family to a group of CHISHOLMs from the Heatherton/Saint Andrew's area via the aforementioned MacDONNELLs. This family includes Jolene Chisholm; if you've done any work through Immaculate Conception Church in Heatherton in the past decade, you've run into her. -- This family also connects somehow or other to lister Don MacFarlane's family; Don, I owe you an e-mail. -- This family of McDONNELLs goes back to Nine Mile River in Hants County. The immigrant ancestors were Donald McDONNELL, who was married to Mary SCOTT. Donald lived to be 104 and died in 1858. I found what should be his grave in Nine Mile River, plus what should be a bunch of his descendants at Enfield. Enfield is just north of Halifax airport on the 102, and I suspect will be a growing area as Halifax expands out. I have a lot of data, but as of right now it's uncorrelated. If you want a look at what I have, please write. -- And as long as we're beating this topic into the ground, the family goes back to Glengarry in Scotland; Donald McDONNELL and Mary SCOTT emigrated in 1790. -- I will be going through stuff and posting it when I get time. - Apropos cemetery pictures: If you have any thoughts of doing a cemetery inventory, ***please*** do it now; if you can't do the full thing, at least gather the raw data. Acid rain is doing its thing, and stones I recall seeing several years back are now approaching unreadable. And when you go to pick out your own stone, or one for a loved one, pick the dark grey granite. Observation suggests that it lasts the best. Joe -- Joe Makowiec can be reached at: http://makowiec.org/contact/?Joe http://makowiec.org/