Aaaaarrrrrrrrgh!

Too many Lemuel Drews!

In January I finally found the vital records for "our" Lemuel Drew family at the New England Historic Genealogical Society library in Boston. The Lemuel Drew family that our great-great grandmother Drucilla Drew Mack came from. The helpful folks at the library pointed me in the right direction and helped me find the correct roll of microfilm (and taught me how to use the microfilm reader too) from the Nova Scotia collection that would provide me with a copy of the listing for the Lemuel Drew family. And it did. Here they are:

(Click on photo to enlarge)

Only I'm not sure now that this is the right Lemuel Drew family. It seems that these Lemuel Drew fellas like to marry women named Mary. And they also like to name their sons Lemuel and their daughters Mary. Fiends!

So I started a spreadsheet of Drews, and collected as many as I could find in the Lunenburg area of Nova Scotia.

Actually, not so many... you see, the family that I am looking for was around in the 1700's and, on the census forms in that time period, only the head of household was named. The rest of the members of the family were indicated by number; as in 5 males and 3 females. Darn it!

In frustration, I retreated to the online databases that I normally use - Ancestry.com, Familysearch.org, and Americanancestors.org. Let's just say there was a lot of mumbling under my breath during many sessions at the computer. And no additions to the spreadsheet either.

So, I started trolling through the message boards on Ancestry.com. Ding ding ding - we have a winner! I found a website by following a message thread that happen to mention South Shore Association (from the Lunenburg area of NS). Not much new there until I clicked on a website owned by one of the members. He had a listing of a zillion surnames. YAY!  I now have lots of new information on some Drews, and some Cohoons. The spreadsheet grew a little...

Back to the census records in Lunenburg with new names to look up. Nope. Still too early. Now what? I went to the Nova Scotia GenWeb Project site (just Google it). What a wonderful resource that is! I visited there last year when I was looking for Mill Village and Liverpool Macks. I was able to download cemetery records for Queens County, as well as Vital Records for Liverpool. Not the actual documents, but a listing of names and dates. Certainly enough to get started.

Well, they have a huge listing for Lunenburg County as well, and I now have a nice collection of Drews for the spreadsheet, including a couple of will extracts. So this, combined with information gleaned from Simeon Perkins diary volumes one through five, I should be able to put the proper Drew puzzle together. I hope.

This is what prompted the whole search...

Drucilla Drew Mack's death certificate. It wasn't easy to find and it offers some disturbing information. Not that she died of old age - good for her! But who the heck are William J. Drew and Mary Manning?????

Burton was the informant for all the relative data... could he have been mistaken? It seems like he should know who his grandparents are though. But who am I to talk? I didn't know any of my grandparents except for Nana Mack (aka GiGi), and I only remember her as a kid, when she taught me how to knit and bake apple pies. She was 95 the last time I saw her. She passed away at 106. Good genes, huh?

So there you go. Even if you don't know your ancestors, you can get to know them. It just takes some work.