The naming tradition is ongoing

Maybe this will be the year we get to Glen Morris.
A trip to Canada isn’t on the agenda at the moment, but you never know.
And even if we do go looking for Glen Morris, there may not be much to see.
According to the maps, it’s little more than a crossroads a few miles north of Brantford, Ontario.
But it was there — family genealogists tell me — that my great-great grandfather built a stone house in 1853.
And the last I heard, the original stone building still stands, though it’s been added onto more than once. It’s been a farmhouse, and it’s been a bed and breakfast. But what it is today is anyone’s guess, and I’m not sure how they’d react if I knocked at the door and said my great-great granddad built the place.
Genealogy is something I enjoy looking into, but only after someone else has done the work. It’s intriguing to know who one’s ancestors were and how they happened to land in this country. But the laborious detective work, sorting through old documents, having leads turn into dead-ends, and all that have never really grabbed me.
I’d much rather just know. That probably makes me a product of our instant breakfast, microwave culture, but I can’t help it. That’s the way I’m wired.
Still, I’m incredibly grateful to those who have done all the shovel work to unearth the facts. Much has been done by distant Ronald cousins in Saskatchewan, of all places. Much was done by my Aunt Janet Hine and was added to by her son Ron.
Thanks to them I know on March 18, 1807 — 207 years ago Tuesday — Hugh Ronald was born in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Scotland. Hugh was the son of John James Ronald, also born in Kilmarnock in 1766. (There’s a pattern on repeated names in among my ancestry that shows a startling lack of imagination. Hugh, James and John were particular favorites over generations.)
As a young man, that Hugh from Kilmarnock decided to emigrate to Canada, probably first to Nova Scotia then later to Ontario. Also on board the ship to North America was young Jane McKie. She was nine years younger and also born in Kilmarnock. Whether they knew each other before the voyage isn’t known, but I imagine some genealogist somewhere is looking into it.
At any rate, the young couple married on Dec. 4, 1834 — two years before Jay County became a legal entity — in Galt, Ontario. Galt itself no longer exists. It was merged with about three other nearby growing towns to become what is now Cambridge, Ontario.
Like most families of that era, the young couple was prolific. They had 10 children, though four of them did not survive childhood. Both great-great grandparents are buried in Glen Morris Cemetery, the genealogists tell me, not far from that old stone house.
James (that name again) was the fourth child, born in 1841. He married a Margaret Gillespie when he was 32, and they had two sons named — you guessed it — Hugh Norman and James Caven. By then the family had moved to Michigan back in the days when the borders were porous and Michigan land was cheaper.
That Hugh was my grandfather, who would go on to serve as pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Portland. His son — my dad — was yet another Hugh Norman.
Family legend has it that I almost became Hugh Norman Ronald III, but my father balked. He’d never liked the name Hugh as a kid, hated being called Norm or Norman, and was weary of being “junior.” He wasn’t going to saddle another boy in the family with a name he’d never really cared for.
My name was, it turned out, a compromise. But they didn’t really stray from the family list; my given name is John. And my grandson born on Christmas Eve? His middle name is James.
So the tradition continues.[[In-content Ad]]