Newsletter - Nov 2004

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S. S. G. S. NEWS

November, 2004
South Shore Genealogical Society PO Box 901 68 Bluenose Drive Lunenburg NS B0J 2C0 Phone : 1-902-634-4794 Ext. 26 ssgsoc@hotmail.com www.rootsweb.com/~nslssgs Winter Office Hours: Wednesday and Thursday 1:00 to 4:30 PM Closed for December Zellers - Club Z#: 840345301

President's Report
On behalf of our Society and all those in attendance, I would like to thank Joan Parks-Hubley for her most interesting and informative presentation on her trip to Germany and France. She and her husband explored the areas and villages of their ancestors and brought back many mementos and pictures, which she shared with the group. Seeing such a presentation makes us appreciate what an interesting background we came from and why we have some of the customs we have in Lunenburg County. Thanks also should be extended to those who supplied the refreshments for us to enjoy while chatting after the presentation.
We also extend a BIG thank you to our volunteer "sitters" who kept the office open for the months of September and October. We will be closed for December. We reopen in January on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 1:00 to 4:30.
REMINDER:
The end of our year is fast approaching: Dues will be due! You will find a renewal form enclosed. You have a right to play a role in your Society. Be Pro-active! Offer your services, your time, your thoughst and your talents to your Society! Your Society will be truly grateful and more dynamic - and who knows you might even have fun and a few laughs along the way!
Sheila Chambers, President

NOTICE: Rare Genetic Disorder - Descendants of Johannes Lohnes (1719-1794)
I have a rare disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. I have been able to find four clusters of this disorder with each cluster sharing Johannes Lohnes and his wife as the first common ancestors. It took twenty-nine years for me to get a diagnosis. If anyone has the symptoms described below, please contact me for further information. I am disabled from working because of this and if my health ever improves, I would like to do my Masters degree thesis on this disorder and its inheritance. Thank you for your interest.
Joyce Morris
Box 816
Windsor, NS B0N 2T0
(902)798-2345
whuzzy@ns.sympatico.ca
ww3.ns.sympatico.ca/whuzzy
Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) is a genetically inherited collagen/connective tissue disorder. It has a wide variety of symptoms and it is easy for a person never to be diagnosed or spend years trying. A person may have an assortment of symptoms and severity.

- Hyper mobile joints - may sublux or dislocate
- Chronic pain and fatigue
- Stretchy skin
- Prolonged healing
- Pigmented scars (dark area around actual scar)
- Fish mouth wounds (cuts gape and split open)
- Cigarette paper scarring (thin white scarring. Tissue looks like cigarette paper)
- Uterine rupture (pregnancy, labour) or prolapse
- Prolapse of bladder or bowel
- Problems with local anaesthetics not working
- Hernias (hiatal or bowel)
- Easy bruising
- Easy and prolonged bleeding
- Brown bruises without injury (especially on legs)
- Arterial rupture, strokes. A cluster of deaths at a young age (35-50) from this was found in some relatives.

These are the most common symptoms, but there are others.

FINDING A DEATH DATE
If not through a keepsake poster or commemorative plaque, how do you find out when Great Aunt Ruby died?
By T.M. Punch, D. Litt. CG(C)
Most people interested in genealogy become stuck at some point, unable to find out when a family member has died. In some cultures, including the Cajun, funeral posters were put up in a prominent place within a community to announce a death and, by implication, invite concerned parties to the wake or burial. Among the German Protestants, funeral sermons were sometimes printed as souvenirs of a funeral. These Leichenpredigten were rare, but informative. Another way of marking death was the funeral hatchment, a shield hung in a church where an armiger - person with a coat of arms - was buried. These are rare in Canada, yet St. Paul's Church in Halifax possesses eight of them. Just as Protestants may have had a funeral sermon, many Roman Catholics who died were commemorated by funeral cards, useful as bookmarks in missals, asking for the recipient to pray for the repose of the beloved's soul.
If your family was not German nor Catholic nor armigers - and you've determined that relatives can't help you - it's time to turn elsewhere to find a family member's date of death. Many newspapers keep files of obituaries for the past 20 to 40 years...but the period before about 1960 can stretch back like a desert. What to do? Perhaps you know where the relative was buried and there is a headstone. Maybe Aunt Ruby belonged to a church you can identify and the church or the cemetery connected with its burial records.
Or consider this idea. For the past 120 years, funerals involved professional funeral directors, or undertakers as we once knew them, who maintain burial registers. Apart from names and dates of death, you might also find the cause of death, place of burial, names of next of kin and place of residence. Records from some funeral homes have been deposited in provincial archives, though it's more likely that they're on hand, either in their original books or in microfilm, at various local and regional museums, genealogical and historical societies.
If the person lived in a city or good-sized town, there will be sets of directories in the community or heritage related body. If you can find Ruby is listed in the 1942 directory, "Slippers, Ruby, wid (widow of) John." and she is not listed in 1943, it's possible that this is an omission from the directory (or it may be) followed by a more permanent disappearance. Check the directories for two or three years on either side of 1942 and 1943 to ensure that she was there until 1942 and gone after 1943. Note that directories missed people - or misspelled names - through carelessness or because there was no response at a specific address. But at least you can narrow down the likely period of death in which to focus a search through, say, the obituaries of newspapers.
You can sometimes learn a death date most readily by examining an index to probate records for the county or district where a family member lived - assuming that the deceased owned property. Since 1900, death dates were usually entered in indexes to estates probated. If not, and you find that there was a will, find the date of the will and the date of the earliest probate document and you'll know that the date falls within the period. For example, Ruby Slippers made her will on September 18, 1942, and a document on the estate file is dated August 8, 1943, so you have 11 months of obits to search through. If you know the province, but not the specific probate jurisdition, there will be notices in the province's Royal Gazette , inviting people with claims against the estate to put in their accounts. From these notices you can see which county/district applies.
A few initial ideas to keep in mind. Did the person belong to a society that might have noted the member's death in minutes, newsletters or bulletins? There were Masonic Lodges, Royal Canadian legions, Charitable Irish and North British societies etc. Leave no stone unturned. One man discovered that his grandfather was dead by a certain December because his estate made a donation to the Goodfellows fund, which appeared in a daily newspaper. Be prepared - with an open eye, ear and mind. Genealogical clues turn up in the darndest places.

Acquisitions at SSGS
-Uhlman-Johnson Families 1740-2004, donated by Malcolm Uhlman
-The Sea in My Blood, The Life and Times of Capt. Andy Publicover, donated by James & Marlene Richards
-The History of Pine Grove, donated
-Five Houses Cemetery, donated by Gertrude Mosher & J.J.F. Risser
-500 Brickwall Solutions to Genealogical Problems - Family Chronicle Magazine, purchased
-Dating Old Photographs 1840-1929 - Family Chronicle Magazine, purchased
-More Dating Old Photographs, 1840-1929 - Family Chronicle Magazine, purchased
-Christopher Lockhart Frellick Descendants, by Nancy Dorothy Howatt Wilson
-Updated Cemeteries CD - Mount Pleasant, Northwest Baptist, New Cumberland, donated by Clark Johnson
-The History of Middle LaHave by Gwendolyn Lohnes, 1946-1947, donated by Melba Lantz
-Bezanson Genealogy by Gordon H. Bezanson Jr.
-School Registers - Maders Cove, Trustees Register/Receipt Book, donated by Paul G. Ernst

NEWSLETTER
At our November meeting a motion was made to reduce the newsletter publications from 6 per year to 4. This is to be implemented to help defray the mailing costs that will be rising in January. The dates of the Society's Meetings are enclosed on a separate sheet so you can post it on your bulletin board/calendar.

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