It’s that time again! I’m truly coming to enjoy spending my Sunday afternoons on the hunt for Bell. Then I can write about it for Monday!
I decided after last week, to just go ahead and search the Canada census in London, Ontario for a Bell Brodie to see what happened. I don’t have an Ancestry World Membership, so I’m making do with the FamilySearch indexes! No problem!
The birth year is estimated around 1835. If this is my Bell, that would put her as the right age to be a cousin of Jane Menzies-Love. Jane is the person who I originally believed to be the recipient of the letter.
I can’t get much more just from the indexes on FamilySearch until I transcribe who I believe to be in the household. I’m too pumped with what I’m doing to do that this second. I decided to keep going a little bit, just to see if it was worth the trouble. I went to Ancestry.com and just did a general search.
I just plugged in what I knew from the 1871 Canada census transcription. Isabella N Brodie and a birth year of 1835.
Results! I was very, very excited to see that the 1871 census came up along with the 1910 US Census. I was especially excited because it shows Isabella living in Detroit. I’ve got pictures in Llewellyn’s archives that have Detroit written on the back and I know family members traveled there also from her diary.
When I clicked on the 1910 census result to see what it said I was surprised and overjoyed with a few different things!
- The first thing that I noticed was that it showed Isabella’s parents were both of Scottish origin. Which fits perfectly with both the Menzies and Love side of the family.
- For some reason I can’t bring to mind immediately, the name Marjorie Peel is very familiar to me. I must have read it somewhere and not remembered where. {Note to self: You really should have taken better notes in the beginnning.}
- In the sidebar under suggested records I tried not to get too excited when I saw the 1851 Canada Census. It shows the name Isabella Ferris. Ferris being the maiden name of Jane Menzies-Love‘s mother!
My plan in my free time this week is to go through what I’ve found and organize it in a research notebook (digital and paper). There’s a lot of information coming in fast and furious now, so I don’t want to get so swamped in the search that I forget to properly document and makes notes from what I’ve found so far, if this is even my Bell. Though I’ve found some very interesting things already, so I’m leaning towards yes!
Previous Finding Bell Brodie entries:
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