I found the marriage certificate for Emmanuel de Guehery and Marion Cuthbert, my great-great-grandparents. Both are from Chalk River. Emmanuel was born in Waterloo County, Ontario and was a fireman for the railroad. His parents were Rudolph and Goddlikin de Guehery. Marion was born in London, England. Her parents were Thomas and Margaret Cuthbert. Their marriage was 25 February 1884 in Pembroke. They were Presbyterian.
My distant cousin from Canada sent me some more information on the Downie family that he found. It includes a death record for my great-great-great-grandmother, Margaret Ogilvie (Downie) Cuthbert, and pictures of two of her brothers, William and Anthony. He also sent a picture of another Cuthbert named John, but I don't know if that's a brother or a cousin (most likely a cousin since no "John" appears in other family records).
 Cuthbert 1901(1).jpg)
death record for Margaret Ogilvie (Downie) Cuthbert
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Until a few months ago, I was 1/2 Italian, on my dad's side, and 1/4 Irish and 1/4 French, on my mom's side. My mom's parents were both 1/2 Irish and 1/2 French.
Now, things are a little different. My dad is still full Italian. So that 1/2 is intact. My mom's side is a bit more complex now.
My maternal grandmother is a Wilson and Cruice. I now know that Wilson side is probably "Scotch-Irish" since census records list Samuel Wilson's parents as being from Belfast and since Samuel Wilson listed his religion as Presbyterian on his marriage record. The origins of the Scotch-Irish lie primarily in northern England and the lowlands of Scotland. They came to Northern Ireland in the 1600s. According to lore, the Cruice family escaped the French Revolution to Ireland. While we considered that part of the family "French", given that Patrick Cruice's wife is Bridget Sweeney, and given that Patrick Cruice's mother appears to be Mary Golden, both decidedly non-French last name, it seems likely that the Cruice side is more like 1/4 French and 3/4 Irish.
My paternal grandfather is a Burke and de Guehery. The Burke family is Catholic Irish, but we don't know what the Brady family is (Anthony Burke married Maria Brady), but we'll list her as Irish until we know more. We now know more of the history of the de Guehery family. Margaret de Guehery's mother was Marion Cuthbert, who was Scottish. Her father was Emmanuel de Guehery, who was 1/2 French and 1/2 German.
So that makes me:
1/2 Italian (1/8 Palmeri, 1/8 Giambrone, 1/8 Millonzi, 1/8 Parisi)
7/32 Irish (1/16 Burke, 1/16 Brady, 1/16 Sweeney, 1/32 Golden)
1/16 French (1/32 de Guehery, 1/32 Cruice)
1/32 German (Mack)
1/16 Scottish (Cuthbert)
1/8 Scotch-Irish (Wilson)
I received the chapters on the de Guehery and Cuthbert families from the genealogy written by Johnston Clayton "Dinty" Elliott, entitled Some Branches & Twigs of an Elliott Family Tree.
.jpg)
My mother's father, my grandfather, was Donald Burke. His father, Arthur Burke, was Irish. His mother, Margaret De Guehery, was French.
Or so we thought.
For my initial pass at filling in our family tree, it was a treasure hunt whenever I poked around on ancestry.com, hitting the jackpot whenever I found a distant cousin researching part of my family tree. But as I grew more serious about genealogy, I wanted to make sure that any distant cousins I might find were as serious as I am about documenting records. So now I contact them directly. Some never respond. Many have. Now I have a small network of distant family sharing finds and working on the same problems.
One of these distant cousins is related to Margaret De Guehery.
I knew that Margaret's parents were Emanual de Guehery and Marion Cuthbert. I even had some very old pictures of Marion from my aunt. A search on familysearch.org had revealed their marriage record in Ontario, with Rudolph and Goddlibien de Guehery and Thomas and Margaret Cuthbert listed as their parents.
I also knew that the de Gueherys and Cuthberts had lived in Chalk River, Ontario, both from our own family history, and from the familysearch.org records I found.
What I didn't know was that the Cuthberts were Scottish.
At some point in my search a few years, I had found a Marion Cuthbert in England but rejected that as nothing more than a false alarm.
Well, my fourth cousin had discovered that both Thomas and Margaret Cuthbert had both been born in Scotland. Thomas in Bathgate. Margaret in Glasgow. At the same time, someone in the Upper Ottawa Valley Genealogical Group found Margaret's obituary in a search of their records for me, confirming that Margaret Ogilvy (Downie) Cuthbert had died at age 80 and that she was born in Glasgow, Scotland.
The family had moved to London, England, where Marion and some of her siblings were born. So my find from a few years ago was spot on.
We're Scottish. A small part Scottish, to be sure. After all, it's only my great-great-grandmother who is Scottish. But that's still 1/16.
My cousin also had some photos to share, including a group picture that includes my great-great-great-grandmother, a picture of my great-great-great-grandfather, and a picture of the Cuthbert family farm in Chalk River that had appeared in the newspaper.
He is a descendant of the gentleman at the left of the photo below, William Cuthbert, Margaret's son and Marions' brother. William took over the Cuthbert farm. What's kind of cool is that my cousin just recently bought the farm for himself and his family.
 and family.jpg)
Margaret Ogilvie (Downie) Cuthbert, my great-great-great-grandmother with William Cuthbert's family
.jpg)
Thomas Cuthbert, my great-great-great-grandfather
the Cuthbert family farm
Gravemarkers are an excellent source of basic genealogical information. I've called and written cemeteries and I've recruited my sister, who still lives in Western NY, to photograph markers for distant relatives who lived and died near Buffalo.
That's not an option when it's a family member who lived and died hundreds of miles away.
My mom's paternal grandmother was Margaret Ogilvie de Guehery. She was born in Chalk River, Renfrew County, Ontario. I had found a marriage record for her parents, Emanuel de Guehery and Marion Cuthbert on familysearch.org. To track down additional information on Margaret and her parents, I wrote several cemeteries and parishes around Chalk River.
Someone from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pembroke gave me a link to the Renfrew County Gravemarker Gallery: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~murrayp/renfrew/index.htm
While the search capabilities are relatively spartan, this seems to be a fairly complete visual record of all the cemeteries in Renfew County. My sincere thanks go to those who did all the hard work putting this gravemarker gallery together.
I was able to find gravemarkers for several relatives, including my great-great-great-grandparents.
my great-great-great-grandfather Thomas Cuthbert
born 20 Sep 1813 in Bathgate, Scotland
died 19 May 1893 in Wylie, Renfrew, Ontario
my great-great-great-grandmother Margaret Ogilvie Downie
born 11 Apr 1822 in Glasgow, Scotland
died 28 Jul 1901 in Chalk River, Renfrew, Ontario
Thomas and Margaret's son, William Cuthbert
brother to my great-great-grandmother Marion Cuthbert
born 6 Mar 1863 in London, England
died Jul 1943 in Chalk River, Renfrew, Ontario
The very first step in any genealogy project is to ask your parents and grandparents for any information.
Sadly, most of my grandparents were deceased when I started this, and the only one still living was in a nursing home. I remember putting together a basic genealogy when I was in school. I talked with my great-grandmother and she gave me the names of her parents and some of her grandparents. Like many school projects, that's long gone.
On my dad's side, I knew my grandmother's parents, Carmela (Parisi) Millonzi and Rosario Millonzi. My great-grandfather died when I was a few years old. My great-grandmother died when I was on a teenager.
My dad said his father's parents were Angelo and Maria Palmeri, but did not know Maria's last name. I might have met one of them when I was little, but I don't remember.
On my mom's side, I knew my grandmother's mother, my great-grandmother, Gramma Wilson. I might have met my grandfather's father, my great-grandfather, Grampa Burke. But maybe not.
My mom knew that there was something like a Cruice and a de Guehery, but wasn't quite sure how to spell the names, or who went with whom, so she had me get in touch with one of my aunts, who was the family historian. She sent me this family tree with another couple of pages with some of the birth and death dates.
After spending most of my efforts working on and off on digitizing and adding to my wife's genealogy, I used this as a starting point for uncovering my own.
Based on what we knew then, I was 1/2 Italian, 1/4 French, and 1/4 Irish. My mom's parents were both 1/2 French and 1/2 Irish. According to family lore, both French families fled the French Revolution, with the Cruice's escaping to Ireland and then to the US, and the de Guehery's escaping to Germany, then to Canada, and then to the US.
.jpg)
original Burke family tree