Wednesday, July 21, 2010

My, what varied stories!


Ok....I was told by members of the New Brunswick branch of the family, that Henrietta Day always said that her family was from Newfoundland. This is not really a good thing in some ways because "Newfies" are the butt of jokes in Canada.

In discussing Mitchell origins by email with John Mitchell, he related the following:

"Grandmother Day I was told was descended from Dutch loyalists who migrated to St. John after the American Revolution. Most of the people in St. John (as you know) are descended from Dutch and English Loyalists who left New York and moved to Canada to stay in the British Empire." (In fact I did not know about the Dutch part John.)

The Ross children were under the impression that the Mitchells were originally from Canada, but their information was sketchy and based on the fact that Uncle Everett(their grandfather) was brought up there.

All of my research shows that the Mitchells were from Massachusetts originally, but since I cannot get beyond the placing of our grandfather in the orphange, that is still up in the air.

In discussing all this with my sister, she stated that she remembered our father saying that the Mitchells left Virginia during the revolution as Loyalists and moved to Canada. This is interesting because I just yesterday spoke to a William Everett Mitchell whose ancestors were from Virginia. This also was a hotbed of Mitchell activity tracing back to the first dozen years of English immigration to America...One Experience Mitchell being one of those who first came here from England.

Then I got this from John:
This is even more confusing because as my father always implied that the Mitchells were descended from people who came from Scotland by way of Nova Scotia and later moved down to New England. Also, he always implied was that the Maritime connection was what brought grand Pa and Grand Ma together. I think the solution to the riddle is in St. John somewhere Or maybe Halifax.

Then we have this from John:
Nobody's from Newfoundland, or if anybody was, they wouldn't admit it. The Mitchell story as I understood it was connected to the displacement of the Acadians by the Scots after the French ceded Acadia to England in the 1740s as part of a treaty to end one of the many French and Anglo wars of that century, The deal was that the Acadians would be rounded up and shipped to Louisiana and the English would be able to resettle the area with whom ever. The Brits gave the place to the Scots.


If I have enough lifetimes, I may be able to figure this out. Then what?

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