RobinHood
07-23-2007, 10:01 AM
Hello all,
Some of you may have read my posts on the local issues forum. If you haven't - I'm an English Permanent Resident of Canada - ready to move over to Saint john as soon as my UK house sells. I live in Yorkshire, Northern England, and was born in Kirklees. Indeed I was born an "arrowshot" from Kirklees Priory which houses the grave of one Robert, Earl of Huntington - otherwise known as Robin Hood (hence the iSaintJohn alias).
However, I am not a "proper" Anglo-Saxon - my father's side all originate from the Emerald Isle and most moved to the Yorkshire mill towns during the potato famine. The ancestor who's surname I share moved over more recently "because the police were after him" as an elderly relative told me. Indeed a bit of genealogy research, after leaving university, showed my Great Great Grandfather was a friend and confidente of James Connelly - shot by the British after the Easter Uprising in 1916.
Other research avenues lead to the discovery that many of my distant relatives from the West of Ireland (Sligo in particular) - ended up living in New Brunswick and landed in Saint John. Old letters I've uncovered show that refugees who had "a little" money - escaped the famine by paying for passage on empty lumber ships returning to Canada (after unloading their cargo in Sligo Bay). The "very poor" - walked the 70 mile pre-railway distance to West Yorkshire after been dropped off in Liverpool - the remainder carried on to Saint John.
So if your surname is McShane/Macsean, Lowe or Martin - the odds are you're related to me. I'm a little late (160 years) but I'll soon be calling Saint John my home :)
Some of you may have read my posts on the local issues forum. If you haven't - I'm an English Permanent Resident of Canada - ready to move over to Saint john as soon as my UK house sells. I live in Yorkshire, Northern England, and was born in Kirklees. Indeed I was born an "arrowshot" from Kirklees Priory which houses the grave of one Robert, Earl of Huntington - otherwise known as Robin Hood (hence the iSaintJohn alias).
However, I am not a "proper" Anglo-Saxon - my father's side all originate from the Emerald Isle and most moved to the Yorkshire mill towns during the potato famine. The ancestor who's surname I share moved over more recently "because the police were after him" as an elderly relative told me. Indeed a bit of genealogy research, after leaving university, showed my Great Great Grandfather was a friend and confidente of James Connelly - shot by the British after the Easter Uprising in 1916.
Other research avenues lead to the discovery that many of my distant relatives from the West of Ireland (Sligo in particular) - ended up living in New Brunswick and landed in Saint John. Old letters I've uncovered show that refugees who had "a little" money - escaped the famine by paying for passage on empty lumber ships returning to Canada (after unloading their cargo in Sligo Bay). The "very poor" - walked the 70 mile pre-railway distance to West Yorkshire after been dropped off in Liverpool - the remainder carried on to Saint John.
So if your surname is McShane/Macsean, Lowe or Martin - the odds are you're related to me. I'm a little late (160 years) but I'll soon be calling Saint John my home :)