Week #2 Challenge

There are a lot of challenges in genealogy, but the biggest one I deal with is researching Newfoundland records. Newfoundland became Canada’s newest province in 1949, after being a Colony of England and then a Dominion of the British Commonwealth. I call it home.

Newfoundland is an island off the east coast of Canada, in the North Atlantic Ocean. My paternal grandparents were both born in the UK, and my mother is from Nova Scotia – as were both of her parents – so I never really considered myself a “true” Newfoundlander like my friends even though I was born here. That is, until I started researching my family history. Mom’s maternal grandfather John Thomas Rose (Papa to me) may have lived in Nova Scotia, but he was born in Newfoundland in 1902. All of my roots in Newfoundland are through him.

I have managed to trace several of Papa’s branches back along the south coast and to Fortune Bay in the 1700s, making them some of the original settling families. However, these communities were quite small, generally fishing villages, and there were few churches to keep written records. Some of the records that were kept have been lost over time, through fires or other means. This results in large gaps in the records.

There are also no regular census records, even though Newfoundland was an English colony. Census records that were kept were often not nominal, or only recorded head of household. Additionally, they were often regional, so if there was a census available at a certain time period, it may not be for the area I’m looking for.

Another complication, which is common in many areas, is the abundance of people with the same names. However, in an isolated population like Newfoundland, there are additional difficulties because most people worked in the same industry (fishing), belonged to the same religious denomination (Anglican), and their family members had the same names as the other local families.

Papa Rose’s paternal grandparents are long-standing brick walls for me, due to a combination of common local names and sparse records. DNA indicates my connection to other Rose descendants, but with such a relatively small, isolated population along that coast, and since my known ancestors were among the original settling families, I could be related to those DNA matches any number of ways. Some of my Shared Ancestor Hints on Ancestry indicate three or four common ancestral lines!

I’m unsure if I’ll ever break through my Newfoundland brick walls, but if I do I suspect it will be due to connecting to DNA matches who have information that may have been passed down through their families. Here’s hoping!