The Family of John Boyce and Mary Van Camp

I have been going back through my tree and trying to fill in the information for brothers and sisters of my direct line. I have found that this is necessary if I want to connect with relatives through DNA tests. It is amazing to me how many people do a DNA test with little to no information about their ancestry. And there are a lot who can only go back 2 or 3 generations. So if I hope to make any connections with these people, I need to know what names I should be looking for in the 20th Century.

I have been working on my Van Camp line. I am starting with Peter Van Camp (or Van Campen) and Femmetje (or Phoebe) Bergen. Peter is one of my United Empire Loyalist ancestors. He and Phoebe had 9 children, 4 sons and 5 daughters. I have been working on his oldest daughter Mary Van Camp. Mary married Johannes Buys. I have not found a marriage record but I have found baptismal entries for their 2 oldest children in the Dutch Reformed Church in Schaghticoke, New York. The name Buys has morphed into various names depending upon the branch of the family. This branch seems to have settled on Boyce.

I started with a list under the name, ”Boyce, John of Matilda” in Loyalists in Ontario by William D. Reid.[i] Reid lists 15 names under John Boyce of Matilda. I have been very skeptical that these were all children of John Boyce and Mary Van Camp. These are individuals who applied for a grant as a son or daughter of a Loyalist. Grants were given to children who had reached the age of 21 or girls who had married. So if a young man is applying for a grant in 1836, we know that he was born at least in 1815. Most of the pedigrees on the Internet list the following children for John Boyce and Mary Van Camp: John(b 1767 in NY), Phoebe(b 1769 in NY), Peter(b 1772 in NY), Matthew(b 1775 in NY), Simon (b 1778 in NY), Jenny(b 1784), William(b 1786 in Matilda), Sarah(b 1788 in Matilda), and Mary(b 1789 in Matilda).

I decided to locate the grants for all people listed under John Boyce and determine if I could sort out any relationships. I went to the Archives of Ontario (See my posts on the UEL toolkit here.) I looked up Boyce and Boice and made a list of all individuals from Matilda or those on Reid’s list. I was missing several but, since women are listed under their married and maiden names, I searched for Jenny Pedge and found her under Bice. I found 3 others listed under Bice and one woman listed as a Baice. I found everyone on the list except for Elisher (Eleazer?). But since Elisher and William had the same dates for filling, I was hoping to find his in the documents.

I found lots of interesting information. One of the Mary’s on my list stated she was the daughter of John Brundage and was married to Peter Van Camp. I found an Elizabeth under Boyce but not on the original list. She stated that she was the daughter of Peter Prunner and married to John Boyce. I could not find requests from Peter, John or Simon but did find them from Sarah and Jenny. From reviewing all the rest of the grant requests, I was able to determine that John Boyce,Jr. was also a United Empire Loyalist since children born in the 1810s could not be children of Mary Van Camp. She would have been in her 60’s at the time. I even found one grant request where the child identified her father as John Boyce, Jr. I am just not sure of an entry for Mary. Was she the daughter of John Boyce and Mary Van Camp or the daughter of John Boyce and Elizabeth Prunner?

Not bad for a day’s work. Now I have to get all this information documented in my database and the documents labeled and filed.

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[i] Reid, William D. The Loyalists in Ontario, The Sons and Daughters of the American Loyalists of Upper Canada, Hunterdon House, Lambertville, New Jersey (1973). Reprinted by Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., Baltimore.

Howard Baldwin, My Dad

At the January meeting of our local genealogy society, our speaker was David Kendall, the author of “When Descendants Become Ancestors: The Flip Side of Genealogy” (available on Amazon). His premise is that as genealogists we should be documenting the events in our lives for our descendants so they don’t have to wonder about things. This got me thinking that I know a lot about my direct ancestors, my parents. Besides living with them for 18 years, I have heard many stories about their lives that I should write down for my children and grandchildren. I decided to start with my father. My children were still fairly young when he died so I am fairly certain they never heard his stories about his childhood.

My father was born and raised in North Dakota. I think of him as a farm boy but his father didn’t really farm until my dad was 13 or 14 years old. Prior to this time, he managed a farm implement store first in Grand Forks and then in Langdon, ND. My grandfather had the personality of a successful salesman. My father remembered getting their first Model T when he was about 9 years old. One day his father said, “Howard, come with me. I need to catch a train.” So my Dad got in the car and rode with his father to the depot. Once they got there, my grandfather told him to drive the car home. So my Dad drove the car home. One problem though - he didn’t know how to stop it. I asked, “What did you do?” He replied, “I prayed real hard all the way home that I wouldn’t meet another vehicle and when I pulled into the yard, I yelled for Ed (his big brother).” He learned real quick where the brake was.

They moved to a rural township before 1925 and my grandfather started farming. I know that Dad went to St. Thomas to live with his grandparents when he attended the first year of high school. He was very homesick so did not go back for more schooling. He completed high school in Grand Forks, graduating from University High School which was part of the University of North Dakota. For many farm children, it was the only way to get the required courses for admittance to the University. After graduating from high school, Dad continued into his undergraduate work and earned both BA and BS degrees, graduating in 1937 and going directly into medical school.  While he was in Grand Forks, he worked for his uncle in the summer. Uncle Bill Baldwin’s farm included vegetable farming and he hired my father to drive his produce to market. This was Grand Forks about 40 miles south of St. Thomas. My Dad told me he drove this ratty old truck that was always breaking down and continually needed fixing. One day after he had made his delivery, he was returning to St. Thomas when he realized he didn’t have any brakes. North Dakota is very flat; you can see for long distances in every direction. As he was driving, he noticed a horse and buggy coming toward the intersection ahead. It looked like the horse and the truck were going to meet in the middle. He tried to slow down as much as possible using the gears and he prayed real hard. The horse just cleared the intersection before the truck arrived. Phew.

Another job he had as an undergraduate was selling aluminum cookware. Aluminum was a new material for cookware and Dad sold this product by going into homes and cooking a meal. Usually the hostess would invite several friends and neighbors to come and eat too. Dad always was a good cook and very personable. He was one of the top salesmen for the company and they offered him a permanent job when he finished school but he wanted a career in medicine so he turned them down.

The University of North Dakota Medical School is a two year program. After completing these 2 years, students have to go elsewhere to complete their clinical training. My Dad went to New York Medical College which was affiliated with Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital in New York City. This is where he met my mother. Dad found an unheated attic room and managed to complete his training with very little money. He would go to a restaurant and order tea. Then he would take the hot water and add catsup to make tomato soup. He ate lots of cheese sandwiches because they were cheap and had protein. He told me it was so cold in his attic room that he would have to study by flashlight under a pile of blankets. He vowed that he would never be cold again. I remember how fussy he was about the furnace. He wanted the most reliable, most efficient furnace. And outside of an ice storm or two, it was never cold in our house.

It is humbling to know how much our parents sacrificed and how hard they worked to become the successful people they were. All I know is his hard work made my life very comfortable and secure. Thanks, Dad.

Building an UEL Toolkit, Part II

In my last post, I talked about building a toolkit for researching my United Empire Loyalist (UEL) ancestors. Find it here. I started by listing three books I consider invaluable resources for searching for Loyalist ancestors. Today I want to list some of my favorite websites. My Loyalists were primarily from New York State so I have not paid any attention to the large amount of information on Loyalist who settled in New Brunswick and Newfoundland. I know that ships took Loyalists from along the eastern seaboard from Charleston to Boston on to New Brunswick and Newfoundland. Most of these Loyalists stayed in these eastern provinces.

The UEL Association of Canada has a website with a lot of good information. This is usually my first stop to find my Loyalist ancestor. First, they maintain a list of all know Loyalists. They tell you if your ancestor is on the list, was on the list and was removed, or removed and reinstated. For a lot of the entries there is very little information. If a Loyalist has been proven, that means a descendant has proved his lines of descent and is a member of the UEL Association. For some entries there is a gold mine of information. For instance, if you happen to be descended from Peter Van Camp, like I am, his wife and children are listed, his military service is there, his death date and place are given and one of his proven descendant’s line back to Peter is also given. So a lot of information. But this site has more than just a list of Loyalists. It has lists of Loyalist Regiments with links to several web pages and resources you can use in researching your ancestor’s involvement in the War of American Independence. There are also links to websites where modern military units have encampments and reenactment of battles. The UEL Association has a good overview history of each Loyalist unit and has links for further research. Find the UEL Association web page here.

No Loyalist research can be complete without looking at Upper Canada Land Petitions. Fortunately, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has placed the digital images of all these petitions on line. Ken McKinlay, in his blog Family Tree Knots, has written an excellent description of how to locate these petitions. You can read his blog here. He gives you links to the LAC finding aid and the actual petitions. These have been archived by LAC and can be difficult to find. Read Ken’s blog and bookmark his links and you will never have to struggle with the question, “How did I do this, anyway”. Spellings of names in the finding aid may not be what you are expecting so be prepared to get out your list of alternate spellings; you will need it. Also daughters of Loyalists are listed with both their maiden names and married names. This can be helpful especially if you have a last name with a lot of alternate spellings. I have used this to my advantage on more than one occasion.

Another website that has a lot of information is Olive Tree Genealogy, developed and maintained by Lorine McGinnis Schulze. She has information on Loyalists, as well as Native Americans, Palatines, New Netherlands, Ships Passenger Lists and American and Canadian Military. I use this site for New Netherlands, Palatines and Loyalists. Lorine provides links to other sites. If you are looking for early New York church records, this is a good place to start.

I hope these links help you in your search for your Loyalist ancestors. 

Building an UEL Toolkit

Rootstech 2015 is over. There are a lot of great training videos posted to their site. I would recommend that you take advantage of this opportunity to listen to some great lecture and increase your knowledge base. One of the videos I watched is Building a Research Toolbox by Thomas MacEntee. I like to bookmark sites that I find useful but have run into a couple of problems with using the bookmark feature in my web browser. First, I tend to get a lot of bookmarks. Even when I try to categorize them, they tend to get lost. The other and bigger problem is that they are not portable. I don’t have my bookmarks with me at the library, for instance. Then I have to spend time trying to find that website with all the answers. So I watched Thomas’ presentation and decided to make a toolkit for myself. You can watch the rootstech videos here. Thomas gives you a link to his toolbox and encourages you to take it and personalize it for your own use.

I decided to try and make a toolbox specifically for my UEL research. So far I count 7 direct ancestors who are listed on the UEL lists, never mind assorted uncles and relatives by marriage. If I were Canadian, I would have lots of opportunity to join a lineage society.

Here are the resources I have found so far by category.

Books:I go back to these 4 all the time.

1. Merriman, Brenda Dougall, CG; “Genealogy in Ontario: Searching the Records”, Fourth Edition; Ontario Genealogical Society; 2008. There is a newer edition of this book, the 30th Anniversary Edition, 2013. Chapter 11 is devoted to Loyalist Ancestors and discusses Loyalists lists, military service, land grants, claims for losses and the UEL Association of Canada. Merriman’s book is a good place to start. If you are doing a lot of research in Ontario, you may wish to purchase a copy for yourself. It is $30 and can be purchased from the Ontario Genealogical Society. A search on world cat located 2 copies of this book within 10 miles of my home.

2. Reid, William D., “Loyalists in Ontario; The Sons and Daughters of The American Loyalists of Upper Canada”; originally published by Hunterdon House, Lambertville, New Jersey, 1973 and republished by The Genealogical Publishing Company, Baltimore. Reid was an archivist for the Province of Ontario. During his career, he accumulated information on land grants given to the sons and daughters of the Loyalists. They are arranged by family groups and are invaluable information for the genealogist. I also own this book; I use it constantly. Also available in my local library.

3. Crowder, Norman K., “Early Ontario Settlers”, Genealogical Publishing Company, Baltimore, 1993. This book is also in my personal library and is also available locally. Crowder has taken military records, muster rolls and provisioning list from 1783 - 1789 and reproduced them in an indexed book. Crowder provides extensive notes on his sources so you can determine exactly where the data on your ancestor was found and validate it yourself. His Bibliography is also worth a review.

4. Fraser, Alexander,Provincial Archivist, “Second Report of the Bureau of Archives for the Province of Ontario, 1904”, L.K. Cameron, Toronto, 1905. This report includes all the loss reports filed by Loyalists and recorded in Canada. These reports were given in person to the committee and each Loyalist presented a witness to the committee to corroborate his testimony. I purchased this book on CD from Quintin Publications. It is available in its entirety on archive.org. You can get information on relatives such as parents, where the Loyalist lived in the United States, where he currently resides and a good idea of his net worth before the war.

I have too many resources for one post so I will continue this later.