Amasa Killam – Root and Blade

Doing this project, I’m trying to learn about a few different things this year. As I progress into Month Two of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks and the Next 150 Challenge, I find I am slowing down. Not in learning, necessarily, but in pace and in the volume of what I am trying to take in. I noticed I am starting to read in a more focused way and thinking more deeply about each thing that I study. An article I read this week was an example of this.

On Twitter, I’ve read some really good and provocative threads lately about family – who our “real” families are, what we can know or not know, how family is severed in the trauma of forced separation, death, genocide, migration, emigration, war. How family can re-connect or re-discover someone lost and try to heal. How sometimes that is not possible at all.

We have examples of many of these things in my own family history – most humans must, I think – but what is undeniable for me is that so much that was “lost” is fairly easily searchable and found. Not every time, but it is there for the most part. It really is not that hard to do genealogical and family history research when you are a North American settler from Europe. The system is set up for us, by us, about us.

The article I read this week pointed out that the many records and sources that make my favourite hobby fun for me, even when confronting what is broken and painful, will not be in any way an easy experience for others. “Settler Records, Indigenous Histories: Challenges in Indigenous Genealogical Research” by Stacey Devlin and Emily Cuggy really gave me pause and if I’m honest, made me cry. What can undo the damage of the past?

I turned back again to my own family. I decided to choose a single individual for this week’s theme, “Same Name”: Emma Josephine Killam. The reason is that she shows up twice in my maternal grandmother’s family tree – once on Nana’s father’s side and once on her mother’s side.

When I first saw this in my growing online tree years ago and realized I was looking at the same person, Nana (who died eight years ago this week, may she rest in peace) laughed and told me her mother and father liked to sometimes joke that they were actually cousins. And they were, too, by marriage.

Emma Josephine Killam was born to Amasa Killam III and Amy Rand in the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia, on November 16, 1835 [1]. Her father was descended from the New England Planters who settled on land unceded by the Mi’kmaq, but occupied by French Acadians regardless. When the English colonial forces forcibly removed the French, the New England Planters moved in. Emma’s mother Amy was sister to the Baptist missionary and linguist Silas Tertius Rand, who was first educated at home by his father and then went on to become a minister amongst the Mi’kmaq, learning and writing several First Nations languages in his efforts to convert the Mi’kmaq and other Indigenous Peoples to Protestant Christianity.

Whenever I get stuck on this particular family line, my go-to is the venerable internet source, The Sprague Project. It’s not flawless, at least not for my family line, but it is very, very good and certainly far better than my own half-rebuilt online trees. The Sprague Database tells me that Emma Josephine Killam was the fifth of six children. Her next eldest sibling, William Henry Killam, born March 18, 1833, grew up to marry Amanda F. Woodman. They then became the parents of many Killam children, including my great-grandfather, Dr. Harold Edwin Killam, who married Ora Louise Webster.

If I was any good at genealogy, I would write this all out properly, but I haven’t learned how yet. Here’s a little drawing, though, because I think it helps. At least it helps me.

Ora Louise Webster was the daughter of Samuel Webster and Louisa D. Robinson. Ora’s maternal grandfather, Benjamin Enoch Robinson, remarried after Louisa’s mother, Abigail Tupper Patterson, died (I did toy with making Tupper my “same name” topic – we sure have a lot of Tuppers). Benjamin’s second wife was none other than Emma Josephine Killam [3], who then became Ora’s step-grandmother as well as being Dr. Harold Killam’s aunt.

Benjamin Robinson and Emma Killam were married October 21, 1864 in Cornwallis, NS. He was a 45 year-old widowed farmer at Aylesford. She was a 29 year-old “tailoress” from Cornwallis. Nana said that her Killam aunts were “wonderful needlewomen.” They could apparently make anything. (I have several Killam cousins today with those same gifts and they are amazing!) An interesting side note is that Rev. E.M. Saunders was their minister – at the time of this wedding, he would have been the young father of Marshall Saunders, who grew up to write the best-selling horse story, Beautiful Joe.[4]

I just decided I need to start a page of books mentioned on this blog because I think I am going to want it later. Before I do that, though, I should note that Benjamin and Emma had at least two surviving children together before his death on July 9, 1900. [5] Based on the 1871 and 1881 Census of Canada records, they were Della Robinson, born about 1866, and Myron Robinson, born 1876.

I don’t know why, but I have always loved this particular census record. I love the way the census taker wrote down “Emmer,” which I’m sure is how Emma’s name would have been pronounced. I love seeing my great-great grandmother Louisa recorded as a girl of 17. Five-year-old Abigail was the last child born to Benjamin and Abigail Robinson, and was named for her mother. Adelia (Della) was the first child born to Benjamin and Emma. And I love seeing the extended family unit, even though I wonder if it would have been a tricky blend in real life. Benjamin’s 90 year-old mother was living with them, and I think that Deborah Patterson would have been a sister of Benjamin’s first wife. Perhaps she was caring for the children after her sister’s death. Later, Louisa named my great-grandmother Ora, after the name Deborah, and I wonder if she was thinking of her aunt (it was also Louisa’s grandmother Deborah Patterson’s name).

After Benjamin’s death, Emma Robinson lived out her years in Aylesford, Nova Scotia, with her daughter Della (Adelia), who had married James Burton Nichols. Emma died on October 16, 1921, at the age of 85 and is buried in the Old Morristown Cemetery. [7]

I am still irritated with myself that I did not get good enough pictures in the Old Morristown Cemetery during a 2015 visit to Nova Scotia. I do love seeing my mom’s arm there in the picture though, because I know she is explaining about our ancestors to my children (who still complain about how many cemeteries we visited that year.) This is Benjamin Robinson’s lovely marble monument. I don’t have photos of the whole monument, or the other sides. Hopefully someone will go back with me again.

NOTES:

[1] Library and Archives Canada. Census of Canada, 1901. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: Library and Archives Canada, 2004. http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/census-1901 . Year: 1901; Census Place: Millville, Kings, Nova Scotia; Page: 10; Family No: 106 (via Ancestry.ca)

[2] Judith Fingard, “RAND, SILAS TERTIUS,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 11, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed February 8, 2020, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/rand_silas_tertius_11E.html.

[3] Nova Scotia Historical Vital Statistics. https://www.novascotiagenealogy.com/ItemView.aspx?ImageFile=1826-2&Event=marriage&ID=84814

[4] Gwendolyn Davies, ed. Fiction Treasures by Maritime Writers: Best-selling novelists of Canada s Maritime provinces 1860-1950, Formac Publishing, 2015. p. 337.

[5] Date is from his monument in the Old Morristown Cemetery, Morristown, Nova Scotia.

[6] Library and Archives Canada. Census of Canada. 1871; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Census Place: Aylesford South, Kings, Nova Scotia; Roll: C-10542; Page: 45; Family No: 165 (via Ancestry.ca)

[7] Nova Scotia Historical Vital Statistics. https://www.novascotiagenealogy.com/ItemView.aspx?ImageFile=93-29&Event=death&ID=173970