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Return to Unknown Family
How is the Smith Family Related
Searching for Uncle Fred and Aunt Ada
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One day my mother showed me an old chockolate box that contained photos that she obtained when she and my father cleaned his mothers house. She said the small chockolate box had been inside of a trunk that had been stored in an outside shed, the rain and snow had destroed most of the contents of the truck, but she salvaged this box.
I remember several boxes of grama's stuff that sat in our garage on the farm for over 10 years, after my parents moved to town thoses boxes where stored in thier basement for about 33 years. It was over a year after we moved mom out of her house that she started to sort through that stuff. When she showed me the box of photos she thought we should just toss them into the trash since she did not know anyone in the picturs and they where not labled and looked quite old. She assumed everyone in the family who know anyone in the photos would have long since passed away.
I thought that it would be a good task for us to try to indentfy any of the photos that we could, but I was unsure where to start searching.
We thought that the photos may have been taken by my grandmother Nellie, there we several photos thaken on the front portch of the same house and it appeared they where taken over seveal years based on the changing size the children. The head count seemed to be wrong to match Nellies family, their seemed to be an extra kid.
I took some of the photos to my 1st cousin Freda, and she identified that house as the family homestead. Freda's father Bill (Nellie's brother) took over the family farm in 1932 and Freda was born and raise at that house. Freda also identifed Fred Smith and his boys in several pictures. She dug out a photo she had of who she called Uncle Fred and Aunt Ada and their family, but she did not know if Fred was realy an Uncle or if or how he was realted in the family.
I put the photos aside thinking that somewhere alone the line the Smiths would pop out in the family, but over the next year they did not apear in any of the stuff I looked at.
I was thinking that there seemed to be a connection with the Smiths and the Cunningham family over about a 50 year span and they must be related somehow. I first thought that maybe Fred's Wife Ada was posibly my great grandfather, James Cunningham's sister.
When I was telling my cousin Linda the Uncle Fred and Aunt Ada story, she took an interest in seriously looking for them. She found a marrage record for Fred and Ada proving that Ada was not a Cunningham.
That recorded showed Fred's Parent as Thomas and Martha Smith and that he had been born in Norval Ontario. We then found that Thomas Smith married Martha Cunningham in Norval in 1958 and that Thomas was a Reverend.
That sparked a memory from the marrage records of James Cunningham and Sarah Henry, married in Elora Ontario in 1889 by Reverend Thomas Smith and the witness were Martha Smith and Louisa Smith. At this point be think that Martha was the sister of James Cunningham's father. This would mean that James Cunningham marrage records refer to James's Uncle Tom and Aunt Martha.
So that would make Fred Smith my 1st cousin 3x removed.
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On November 14, 2024 we commemorate the anniversary of the following events that occurred in the history of the Cunningham Family and descendents:
1903 - Oliver Cunningham was born.
1893 - Albert Bertram Mudge was born.
2001 - Nichole Elizabeth Catherine Macdonald was born.
1891 - David Cunningham was born.
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