Janet (Aspinall) Jackson

For week two of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, the prompt is "Favourite Photo". I love finding photographs of my ancestors. So often it's difficult to find more than bare bones facts about my ancestors, as found in vital records, censuses, and the like. Having a photo of them really brings them to life! One that I'm especially fond of is this one of my great grandmother, Janet (Aspinall) Jackson.

Janet was born in 1894 in Southowram, which is just outside of Halifax, West Yorkshire. She was the third of four children of Jonas Aspinall and Sarah Hannah Fretwell.

She immigrated to Manitoba, Canada, in 1920, and in 1922 she married my great grandfather, Herbert Jackson. He had lost his first wife in 1921 and been left with a 3-year-old and a newborn baby, and Janet had moved in to help take care of them.

Janet gave birth to her first child, Charles, in 1925, but he only lived to be one year old. A few years later they had Leonard, my grandfather.

Janet died in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1968. She was 73 years old. She is buried in Boyd Cemetery, in Minto, along with Herbert, his first wife Emmeline, and baby Charles.

Revisiting my research on Janet Aspinall this week has filled in a few gaps, and I improved her biography on WikiTree a bit, but I still want to know more details about her! This has definitely motivated me to ask my grandpa for some stories!

Tune in next week for week three of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, when the prompt is "Longevity"! I'll be writing about the longest-lived of all my great grandparents.

Alphonse Richard

Welcome to my first 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks post! I had originally intended to start by writing about each of my great grandparents in a specific order. However, now that I've learned that this challenge is officially happening and there are weekly prompts we're supposed to use to pick an ancestor, I've decided to be a little more flexible. I'll still be doing one generation completely before moving on to the next, but I'll determine the order within that generation based on the prompts.

For week 1, the prompt is "Start". So, I chose Alphonse Richard, because when I started my family tree in high school, it was the Richard line that led me down the rabbit hole, resulting in a lifelong genealogy addiction.

Seriously, how cool is this picture?!

Alphonse Richard was born in Dakota Territory in 1889, the son of Albert Richard and Arthemise Ducharme. In 1899 the family moved north to St. François Xavier, Manitoba.

In 1910, Alphonse married Bertha Daigneault, daughter of Narcisse Daigneault and Domitilde Perras. They had 7 children, including my paternal grandmother, Clemence Richard.

Alphonse died in Saint-Boniface, Manitoba, in 1960, and is buried in Green Acres Memorial Gardens just outside the city.

For more details about Alphonse's life, plus all my sources, take a look at his WikiTree profile. I keep that up-to-date with all my research.

Taking another look at Alphonse's life has been a great start to the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. I thought of him as someone that I was "done" researching, as much as that's ever true. I knew his parents, his siblings, his wife, all his children, and had lots of sources for him. But when I looked at his WikiTree profile, I hadn't edited it in 3 and a half years! In just a few days of focusing my efforts on him, I got more photos of him from my aunt who has been digitizing her photo collection, found his obituary in the Winnipeg Free Press archive, took a look at all his census records and found a few new details in them, and totally revamped his profile, writing a nice bio and improving my source citations.

Tune in next week for week 2 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, with the prompt of "Favourite Photo"!