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Messages - MelLavoie

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1
Canada / Re: ethel may Lloyd
« on: Wednesday 24 September 14 04:01 BST (UK)  »
just an update...
for anyone following this post.

As the pieces of the lost records are coming together like a puzzle things are starting to make sense.

Ethel May Reid carried her mother's maiden name when she was born due to the fact her parents were not married at the time. They did get married soon after her birth.

Did Ethel really remember sitting on her grandfather's lap when she was a small child?
She  certainly may have because her grandparents (Reids) lived two doors down the street from her. 

FYI- Ethel was apprehended at the age of 5 and sent to Canada by Barnardos and Barnardos knew she had living grandparents in Hereford. The grandparents were not informed of what Barnardos was doing with Ethel as they apparently feared Ethel would have been taken back by her grandparents.

In the report recently received by Barnardos Ethel parents were stated as being not reputable people.
In information I've received from the UK, Ethel father was a coal delivery man and he was severely injured when kicked by a horse. The family was thrown into poverty and had to enter a workhouse. They were not reputable people only because of poverty.

The ten year gap between Ethel and the birth of her siblings was likely due to her father's injury.

Sadly Ethel passed away in the year 1986 and she never knew of her brother and sister that were still alive and looking for her.

Ethel May Reid was sent to Canada at the age of 10 years old in 1909 and it's taken until 2014 to learn she was the daughter of Ethel May Reid and John Lloyd. Maybe 105 years is not that long but for this family it has been far too long to learn the truth of her beginnings. Too many people have passed away before knowing the truth about their ancestry including Ethel May Reid/Lloyd.

As this thread comes to an unexpected ending, a thank you must be given to Kaycee for the original post and  to each and every one of you that has helped us with our search.

Thank you,
from Mel and the other descendants of the Reids and Lloyds.     

2
The Common Room / Re: The Stigma of being illegitimate & female in 1800
« on: Monday 22 September 14 11:34 BST (UK)  »
Would it not make sense if a stigma existed it was because a person's self esteem?

If born in a society where children are accepted by the the adults in the society whether or not the parents were married then the stigma may exist at a much lower level than in some other societies. To be labeled as being illegitimate would have been a label attached to a person by other people. I wonder if the existents of the stigma would be more prevalent when people in a society felt a need to support their own ego at the expense of others. Example "You're a bastard I'm not" inferring I'm better than you are. But if someone knew they were born of parents that loved each other and did a good job of teaching their children the stigma may not exist at all or at a very low level until exposed to criticism by others.

Any one that carries the stigma with them throughout their life would undoubtedly have low self-esteem. A person deemed illegitimate but with a high level of self esteem could respond to judgmental people with the words "I might be from parents that were not recognized by a church or the state as being married but I have no need to support my ego at the expense of others. If being a 'bastard' lowers me in your eyes then remember it is I that has the advantage and not you. I might be a bastard but I'm not an idiot!"

3
Canada / Re: ethel may Lloyd
« on: Saturday 20 September 14 15:12 BST (UK)  »
Kaycee,
I'm not sure if you've seen this yet or not but in case you haven't this photo of Ethel and Sylvester Holden is on Ancestry.com.
Because it's always nice to be able to put a face to a name I've posted it here. The baby in the photo is Charles Mervin Holden their oldest child and my uncle....also Karen Holden's father-in-law.
As Karen said earlier in these posts we have relatives in the UK and some of them may be not that far from you. She knows them much better than I do.
Mel
 

4
Canada / Re: ethel may Lloyd
« on: Friday 19 September 14 21:27 BST (UK)  »
I've wanted to say how strange this is after all the searching and finding nothing because of one simple word. The missing word being that of a last name, Lloyd. To the Lloyd family the missing word was Reid.
In our family we never knew either of our grandfathers as they both passed away before any of us were born. Our knowledge of them exists only because of records and of being told about them through our relatives that knew them. We've been told about them and many times with fond memories and I can't but wonder sometimes about we missed from not knowing them. We did know our grandmothers and one of them we knew as Ethel May Reid or as we called her Gramma Holden. Both our grandmothers passed away during the 1980's. Not long after one passed away the other left us. On our father's side of the family there was lots of knowledge of our ancestral history here in Canada and what was once known as the new world to the people of Europe.
Our father's side of the family has been traced back to Normandy in France and it can be traced back further than the early 1600's when the first French settlers were coming here to this new world then called Kanata meaning a village by the natives.  Jacques Cartier adopted the name Canada for the world he discovered.
Three hundred years after our father's side side of our family arrived here from France a ten year girl from the UK was put on a ship and shipped to the New World. She was taken from her family with thousands of other young children and sent out to populate this new world for the British Empire. Before she taken and placed on the ship Silician her connection to her past was deliberately severed. She would live her life as many others would, never knowing who she really was or where she was really from. The connection to her past severed with the use of one word, her last name.
My mother handed me a book in the late 1980's. "You should read this." She said. "Your grandmother was one of them."  The soft covered book was The Little Immigrants, the telling of orphans shipped from the UK to the New World. Even though Ethel My Reid could not be found in that little book it sparked an interest to find our past that originated somewhere in Britain.
In my living room is a small table with rosewood inlays on it's top. In my closet is a photo album that has within it photos of our gramma Holden, Ethel May Reid and memories of her being severed from her past. She was a stout woman as was my mother who never grew past being five feet and eleven inches tall. Things are different now as that one word we know as a last name has been discovered. No longer is Ethel May Reid severed from her past as we now know she did have a family in the UK. and she was not the only child in her family. But for her it's too late, she has left us and she will never know her beginnings. It feels different here now to as with the discovery of her past a closure ends a search and new chapter begins. I've heard it said you never know who you are until you know where you've been and where you come from. It's so difficult to find the words to describe this difference now to what it used to be. What once was a feeling of being incomplete because of not knowing now is being replaced with new thoughts, new questions and new feelings. It is taking a bit to get used to being not only a Reid but also a Lloyd with living relatives overseas. Additions will be added to family trees with the discovery of new information. The family tree of the Lloyds, Reids, Pugh, Holdens, Lavoies, Sharpe, Sine and many others. I only know a few of them. Maybe in time others will surface. This is the end of an era as as a new era begins. Until then it is a time of transitions and it is taking time to adjust.   
   

5
Canada / Re: ethel may Lloyd
« on: Thursday 18 September 14 22:30 BST (UK)  »
Thank you Susan and thank you all for your help in searching ...very much appreciated
 :) :) :)

6
Canada / Re: ethel may Lloyd
« on: Thursday 18 September 14 17:36 BST (UK)  »
From Mel in Canada
Hi !!   

7
Canada / Re: ethel may Lloyd
« on: Thursday 18 September 14 17:22 BST (UK)  »
Hi Kaycee

Thank you for posting again and wow ain't this somthin. We got us sum relatives on the udder side of the pond we neber knew of.
I am going to use the private message system and send my email address as well as my facebook link.

For the benefit of other people reading this thread, I'd like you to know that Ethel's ancestry has been looked into by people before. No-one has been able to find the connection to her past in the UK. We have known the frustration of hitting a dead end for a lot of years. Last year I searched through one census after another all over the UK using the LDS site, Ancestry and others. I was able to find her in the Canadian census but no further back in time than when she landed here in 1909. My hunt for her records was for an Ethel May Reid or Reed that was born in the UK. Last summer I spent hours every day on my computer and writing down records in a book. There were at least three women helping me search. They were members of the British Home Children Advocacy Group in Canada. Needless to say my notebook starting to fill page after page with possibilities and now when I see it sitting here in front of me ...I see pages and pages of notes that are all roads to dead ends.

We grew up knowing Ethel's last name was Reid and nothing else. In my search last summer the closest possibility I found was an Ethel born near Newcastle on Thyme. In the end I gave up looking as all possibilities were all too quickly becoming dead ends and Ethel May Reid could not be found. The only place left to turn to Barnardos and it was my understanding they wanted to be paid to release birth records. I'm retired and on a limited income and I simply can not afford their costs of about $150.00 Canadian. After searching for about six weeks I had to give up. All roads led to dead ends and I could not afford Barnardo's fees.

It was then realized by Karen and myself that Barnardos offer basic records for free to Canadians and Australians but, you had to be a direct living descendant of the person being searched. My youngest brother Keith and his twin sister Annette were following my research. We were warned that many other people had tried to search for these records but no-one found any success as record searches led to dead ends.
Doug Holden in Kamloops and his wife aunt Bea sent Annette a copy of Ethel's birth certificate to my sister who sent me a copy of it. At that time I had a copy of her death certificate. I knew when she came to Canada and about the Lang family and the Morton family in Canada. Using family memories and census records I was able to learn some things about her life in Canada. I started a family tree an My Heritage and it has over 250 people on the tree. I reached the limit as a free member. In time Karen turned to Charles Holden, (her father in-law and my uncle) Ethel's son to send to Barnardo's for birth records. It was only then we learned Ethel Reid was in fact Ethel May Reed Lloyd from Hereford UK.

Now we learn we have relatives in the UK that may be able to add to our record search....wow !!


I did a search and stumbled upon this thread and there was Ethel May Reid/Lloyd and she wasn't a Geordie after all. From half way round the world searching, there in the UK not that far from Hereford in Aldershot UK lives relatives to Ethel May Reed Lloyd. The little girl that carried her mother's maiden name at birth due to her parents not being married when she was born. If a young girl of 15 years old was experiencing life and learning then it makes sense some people could judge and brand her as being an unfit parent. 

Thank you Karen for your help and yup after all these years Ethel May Reid did come from the UK !!
Please bear with me ...lol ...sorry Barnardo no cash coming from us we don't need you...sorry :P  we master the helm of our own ship from here on in ;)
 

8
Canada / Re: ethel may Lloyd
« on: Wednesday 17 September 14 21:09 BST (UK)  »
There could very well be some confusion about her real birthday as she was given the wrong birth certificate. The certificate she was issued stated she was the daughter of William Alfred Reid and Eliza Ellington of Aldershot. Ethel May Reid of Aldershot remained in England though and raised a family. Her birthday was Dec 28,1898.

From the info becoming available it's too bad our grandmother never got a chance to know of and communicate with her brother and sister.
Thirty years ago I was told Ethel was found on a doorstep during the Boer War and her aunt raised her until eventually placing her up for adoption. The doorstep she was told was that of her aunt. Her father passed away in the Boer war....what we were told.
Our grandmother always  maintained she remembered sitting on her grandfather's lap as a young child but according the info from Barnardo's she was born to in-reputable parents and she was apprehended at age 5.
It may have been she did remember her grandfather but wondering which one. 
Is It true her parents were in workhouse in Hereford ?

9
Canada / Re: ethel may Lloyd
« on: Wednesday 17 September 14 18:56 BST (UK)  »
According to my math when Ethel was born her mother was 15 years old. I don't know when he father was born any help with this is appreciated.

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