Topic: Our Western Home – Annie Stone
Family Name Associations: Stone, Diceman, Keffer
Location: Barrie, Ontario
Mood: A little tired, I didn’t sleep well last night. Too much going on in my head and not enough room to think!
Music: Faith Hill – Breathe
This is probably going to be one of a few posts today. There’s so much going on my head is spinning. This sort of needs it’s own post, because honestly it’s huge. There is so much going on!
So, the chest in the basement, the ultimate glory in my Dad’s ability to hide historical, possibly genealogically important information in the farthest reaches of the universe…
We got into it last night. Corsets, old porcelain potty pots aside… There were photos found, and photos taken of the chest. The crown jewel. And Mum’s been doing a little digging of her own based on what the trunk reads.
Low and behold, Annie Margarent Stone was fostered in Canada by a program called ‘Our Western Home’, run in a converted prison near Niagara, Ontario. Brought as an orphan from England, she traveled by ship to Canada where she was cared for, taught, fostered or paid to learn useful skills and take care of herself as a working member of society. – Yeah, a history page is coming… I’m sooo behind, it’s going to take me winters to catch up! Like 3!
So we’re on an entire new journey now, to learn about who Annie Stone was, if she had siblings, what the circumstances of her leaving England were… And maybe, maybe if we can get back further past her own amazing life. Really, a whole new leg of information, just opened right up.
Immediate concerns are that we have a family note of Annie arriving in 1907, but on the marriage certificate in 1913 it claims her future husband, Lewis Fenton Diceman had known her for 8 years at the request for license. We’ll pin it all down, map it all out… But WOW.
Planned trips in the near future will include the King City Cemetery in York Region, as well as finally getting down to Glendale Memorial Gardens Cemetery in Etobicoke, where we’ve confirmed Goldie Diceman and Gilbert Keffer are buried. (Dad knew the location so finding the right place wasn’t too hard. And oh, he’s on file there! Good times I tell you…)
We’ll get some photos happening and woohoo, more accomplished on putting these trees in order 🙂
Right now I’m off to add graves to FindAGrave, and to keep at the mountain of research that’s running off my plate… Wow, it’s going to be a busy night.
