52 Ancestors 2015: #25 Little House on the (Canadian) Prairie

I’m participating in “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2015 Edition” by Amy Johnson Crow of No Story Too Small.

For the 25th week of this challenge, I used the optional weekly theme (The Old Homestead) and chose to write about the prairie home of my parents-in-law Bill and Ann Demoskoff.

Demoskoff family home in late 1952

Bill and Ann lived in the central Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Their house wasn’t an ‘old homestead’, but it was their first home as a married couple. Since the house was purpose-built, I decided to record my husband’s childhood memories and conversations we had with his late father about their Prairie family home.

Before he married, my father-in-law Bill owned some property (two quarter sections, each 160 acres) about ten miles north of Pelly, located in Saskatchewan’s Aspen Parkland region. Since neither land had a house, Bill lived about half a mile away to the north of his quarter sections in a house he shared with a friend.

In the spring of 1952, Ann’s brother Larry asked Bill where he and his sister were going to live after their June wedding. My husband doesn’t know what his father replied, but whatever he said, it seems that Larry had other plans. He and his brothers Fred and Pete decided to build Ann a house as their gift to her. (She was their only sister and the youngest of the family.)

The brothers needed lumber, so they asked around to see if any farmers were allowed to harvest timber. Fred eventually found two loads of green timber and borrowed a neighbor’s portable planer to convert the timber to usable lumber. Larry, Fred, and Pete began by digging out a basement (on one of Bill’s quarter sections) using horses to drag out the dirt. They made forms and poured cement to make a foundation. After they back-filled the dirt to the foundation, they started framing the house. Later on, Larry got more sizes of lumber for finishing work, like cupboards.

My husband thinks the house was about 30’ x 40’. It had five rooms on the main floor: a living room, kitchen, pantry, and two bedrooms. A staircase in the living room led to the upstairs, which was divided in two large rooms that were used for storage. While they were young, my husband and his sister shared a bedroom on the main floor, but when he was about six years old, he moved upstairs where the south-facing room was converted into a bedroom for him. The bathroom (outhouse) was fifty feet down the hill at the back of the property.

The front door faced south towards the highway about fifty feet away. The kitchen, which faced north and east, had a wood-burning stove and a cast iron hand pump for water from the basement well. The house was wired for electricity, but Bill couldn’t afford the cost of residential power in the early years. Instead, a wind generator provided energy for indoor lighting.

My husband and his sister (seen above, ca 1963) and their parents lived here until the summer of 1964. That year, Bill sold his farm and moved with his family to the nearby town of Kamsack.

Copyright © 2015, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Tombstone Tuesday: William Demoskoff

William Demoskoff gravemarker

This past Saturday, June 13, we interred my late father-in-law’s ashes. Pop died earlier this year in January (William Demoskoff (1914-2015)), but we decided to wait until better weather for the committal service.

My husband, his only sister, her husband, their elder son, his wife, and myself gathered for a simple, private graveside ceremony in Grand Forks, British Columbia, on what would have been Pop’s 101st birthday.

We arrived at the Doukhobor cemetery on a bright Saturday morning. USCC (Sion) Cemetery caretakers Walter Hoodikoff and Larry Jmaiff had prepared the site. They also led the committal service that included traditional Russian greetings, recitations and prayers. The ceremony lasted about half an hour.

We replaced the old headstone with a new one that included both names of my parents-in-law.

Bill and Ann’s gravemarker reads:

Copyright © 2015, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Tuesday's Tip: Vital Records Aren’t Always Accurate

Author and genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills has stated that “as researchers, we can take no record at face value”. [1]

That statement is solid genealogical advice, but I didn’t think I would need to apply it to my father-in-law’s marriage registration record. After all, I figured that Pop – as the informant of his own marriage – would provide accurate and reliable details.

Except that I was wrong, because Pop hadn’t been fully accurate on that record.

Bill and Ann Demoskoff's marriage registration (cropped image)

About a year and a half ago, I thought it would be nice to send away for my husband’s parents’ marriage registration. We both knew when and where his parents married, because Pop told us when we asked him many years ago. He said he and Ann married on 1 June 1952 at her father’s farm near Kamsack, Saskatchewan.

When Michael and I told his father that we requested the registration and were looking forward to receiving it, he asked why we bothered to order it. The way he looked at it was since he had already told us when he married, we didn’t need to get it in writing, so to speak.

We received the “Registration of Marriage” record from the province of Saskatchewan in October 2012. [2] Something immediately stood out when we looked at it. The “Place of Marriage” was a land description: SE 1-35-32-W1, only, it wasn’t the description for Ann’s father’s property as we knew it. Her father George’s property was NW 17-31-32-1, and had been since 1918, and still was at the time of her marriage. What was going on? Where had Bill and Ann married?

Michael called his father to ask him. Pop, who was in his mid-90s at this time, gave it some thought, and proceeded to tell his son that he and Ann married in two places.

That detail didn’t make sense to my husband, so he asked his father for clarification. It turns out that the marriage ceremony took place on the Cazakoff family property at NW 17-31-32-1 like he originally told us, but that afterwards, the bride and groom and their guests had the wedding meal and festivities at another location – at SE 1-35-32-W1, where Pop resided as a lodger. In Pop’s mind, his marriage therefore occurred in “two places”. (For some additional information about Bill and Ann’s wedding, see Wedding Wednesday: Demoskoff – Cazakoff.)

The day after their wedding, Bill and Ann drove to nearby Arran, the rural municipality seat, to register their marriage. When he was asked for the “place of marriage”, he replied “SE 1-35-32-W1”, even though that’s where the wedding feast was held, not where the wedding ceremony took place. Now that he was of an advanced age with a somewhat poor memory, he couldn’t explain to his son why he gave the wrong location to the clerk that day in June 1952.

Here’s what I learned from this exercise:

• Don’t solely depend on a family member’s memory for dates and places of events.
• Order vital records where and when you can.
• Check the received records for inconsistencies.
• Get clarification for questionable details.

And most of all, don’t take ‘records at face value’ :-) 

Sources:

1. Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace (Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2007), 33.

2. Province of Saskatchewan, marriage registration, no. 001562, William W. Demoskoff – Ann Cazakoff marriage, 1 June 1952; Department of Public Health – Division of Vital Statistics, Saskatchewan.

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

52 Ancestors: #15 Ann Cazakoff – How Doris became Ann

Amy Johnson Crow at No Story Too Small has issued herself and her readers a challenge for 2014. It’s called “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks”, and as Amy explains, the challenge is to “have one blog post each week devoted to a specific ancestor. It could be a story, a biography, a photograph, an outline of a research problem — anything that focuses on one ancestor”.

For the 15th week of this challenge, I chose Ann Cazakoff (1926-1980).

Ann Cazakoff, about 1942

Ann is the late mother of my husband, Michael. She was born on 11 March 1926 at her parents’ homestead property in St. Philips RM near Kamsack, Saskatchewan. [1] Ann was the ninth child and only daughter of George Cazakoff and his wife Polly Poznekoff, Russian Doukhobor immigrants. I recently wrote about George and Polly for 52 Ancestors; their stories can be read here and here, respectively.

Interestingly, Ann’s name at birth was not Ann. It was Avdoty, a “popular form of Evdokiya”, which means ‘benevolence’ or ‘kindness’. [2]

Ann was known as Avdoty in Russian and as Doris in English. (For a list of Russian to English names among Doukhobor immigrants, see Russian-English Names Cross-Index at the Doukhobor Genealogy Website.)

When she was very young, Ann was sick for “almost a whole year” and “could not sit up in the bed”’. A relative told her mother “why don’t you change her name [… because] Doris isn’t her name”. After her name was changed to “Annie” she got better and started walking. [3]

My father-in-law Bill told this story to his son Michael and I a few years ago. Bill didn't remember too many details, since many years had passed when Ann had originally told him the circumstances of how her name was changed.

Sources:

1. Province of Saskatchewan, birth registration no. 3076 (1926), Avdoty Kozokoff [sic]; Vital Statistics.

2. “Russian Female Names Among the Doukhobors”, Doukhobor Genealogy Website (http://www.doukhobor.org/Russian-Feminine-Names.htm : accessed 10 April 2014), entries for “Avdot’ya” and “Evdokiya”.

3. Bill Demoskoff (Grand Forks, British Columbia), telephone interview by Yvonne Demoskoff, 25 January 2011; transcript privately held by Yvonne Demoskoff, [address for private use,] Hope, British Columbia, 2011. Bill spoke from personal knowledge of the time his wife Ann told him why her name was changed.

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Wedding Wednesday: Demoskoff – Cazakoff

Bill and Ann Demoskoff Wedding, 1952

Bill and Ann (Cazakoff) Demoskoff, my husband’s parents, married on 1 June 1952 at her father George’s property in the Lily Vale School District, a few miles northwest of Kamsack, Saskatchewan.

The couple had known each other for a few months. They met through Ann’s brother John who told Bill, “I have a sister you may want to meet”. Bill agreed to meet Ann at a restaurant in Kamsack. They got along right away and found they were compatible. Soon, Bill began to drop in on Ann at her parents’ home. After a brief courtship, they decided to marry.

Bill, nearly 38 years old, and Ann, 26, were Doukhobors. They chose to marry in the simple and traditional ceremony of their faith. (Doukhobor marriages were recognized by the province of Saskatchewan since 1909.)

After receiving her father’s blessing, the newlyweds and their guests travelled a short distance (about 20 miles) to where the second part of the festivities took place. Here, Bill’s mother Luchenia and his married sister Mable, who were waiting for them with other guests, had prepared a meal – borscht, vegetables, and roasted meat.

Bill and Ann were blessed with two children, son Michael and daughter Margaret. (Maggie would later wear her mother’s off-white satin dress at her own wedding 28 years later.)

Ann passed away in 1980, but Bill is still with us. He will be 99 years old tomorrow. Michael and Margaret are giving him a small, family luncheon this Sunday.

Copyright © 2013, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Sunday's Obituary: Ann Demoskoff

Last Tuesday, I posted a photo of my mother-in-law's gravemarker. Today, I'm following up that post with a scanned image of her obituary.


Ann Demoskoff obituary, 1980.

Source: "Ann Demoskoff", undated clipping, 1980, from unidentified newspaper; Demoskoff Family Papers, privately held by Yvonne (Belair) Demoskoff, British Columbia, 2012. Yvonne acquired an assortment of family memorabilia in January 2012 from her father-in-law Mr. William (Bill) Demoskoff, including the obituary of his wife Ann, who died on July 27, 1980.

Note: Ann's place of birth is incorrectly shown as "Kamsack, Sask.". She was born at home on her parents' farm near Pelly, in Lily Vale District, Saskatchewan.

Copyright © 2012, Yvonne Demoskoff

Tombstone Tuesday: Ann Demoskoff

Ann Demoskoff (1926-1980)


My mother-in-law, Ann Demoskoff, was born at home on March 11, 1926 in Lily Vale District, Saskatchewan. She was the youngest child and only daughter of George W. Cazakoff and Polly J. Poznekoff, Doukhobor emigrants from Russia. Ann married William (Bill) Demoskoff at her parents' farm near Pelly, Saskatchewan on June 1, 1952. Ann died on July 27, 1980 in Grand Forks, British Columbia, where she and Bill moved to in the early 1970s. She is buried in the U.S.C.C. Doukhobor Cemetery in Grand Forks. 

Copyright © 2012, Yvonne Demoskoff.