World Enough and Time

My cousin Barbara has been visiting me from Durham, England.

We got to talking about family stories and genealogy. We each remember different bits of family lore learned from each of our mothers over the years. She had some bits of information I lacked: that the family came from the island of Sanday, for example - I had known only that they came from Orkney, and didn't know which part.

I started looking up a few names and places, and from the information we already had - disregarding Barbara's notes, which she hadn't brought with her from England - we extended our knowledge of family history back two generations, to Jerom Muir (1762-1841). Then I found a picture of the gravestone of my great-great-great grandfather and great-great-great grandmother, John and Elizabeth Muir.



This gravestone is in Malcolm, Ontario, in the Bruce Peninsula, at the North Brant Presbyterian Church - which as far as I can tell, no longer exists. They came to Canada in 1852.

I met their granddaughter, Margaret, whom I knew under the name of Aunty Garner - she was my mother's great-aunt, and her favourite relative. I remember her well. I remember going to her birthday party when she turned 100 in 1962. I was 90 years younger. I thought she was terrific. She showed me a painting on her wall, a watercolour her mother had painted as a child in Orkney.

This search is fun. I might find myself playing with genealogy a little more. I'm trying to find something about Aunty Garner's father, Peter Grant, who (it seems) came to Canada from Inverness in 1852 and married Elizabeth Muir in 1855. She may or may not have been known as Betsy.

It's hard to google for Peter Grant. The world has too many people of that name, and too many of them in Scotland and Canada.