After finally getting around to organizing my genealogy bookmarks on a social bookmarking website called Diigo, I decide to share some favourites on a new Top 20 Ripley Resources page. I love social bookmarking. Instead of storing your bookmarks on a single computer you store them online where they are accessible from any computer or device. You can bookmark a website on your iPhone and it shows up on your Windows computer. You can give the bookmark a title that's much easier to remember than a website address and fully describe it. The bookmarks are tagged with searchable key words rather than buried in a maze of folders and it's easy to create shareable lists. It's called social bookmarking because you can follow other Diigo users to see what they're bookmarking and you can create collaborative groups to collect bookmarks. If there are other Diigo users who would like to create a Ripley or Cumberland County group I'd love to hear from you.
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I was extremely sad to learn of the passing of Susan Hill on September 14, 2014. Anyone who has contacted the Cumberland County Genealogical Centre for help in the last 30 years has likely received assistance from Susan. I know she helped me a great deal in getting started with my research on the Ripley family. The first time I met her in person, she had just dropped in to the CCGC on her lunch hour and I think she skipped lunch to draw me maps with directions to the places she thought I'd like to visit. I've just been going through the emails we exchanged, marvelling at her sense of humour, her incredible knowledge about so many families, and her jaw-dropping "inside scoops". Like the time she dropped the bombshell that George Oxley's gravestone that says he's buried on Lot 19 was actually not located on Lot 19. Or the story about the firetruck that ran through the Old Burying Ground, knocking stones over. Or the time she relayed a message from a gentleman who had done a transcription of the gravestones in the Old Burying Ground so many years ago that he remembered bones sticking out of the ground. Susan's outstanding book, Some Cumberland County Nova Scotia Cemeteries, helped me find the graves of 4 generations of great grandparents. Susan said she hoped it had also been useful in fending off the mosquitoes. Susan was the one who introduced me to my second cousin Art Ripley and his neighbour Gardner Bud Hurley who have helped so much with Maccan research. Just this summer, she sent me the obituary of my 2nd great grandmother Rebecca Vickery which helped to establish a link to a Mayflower ancestor. I am grateful that Susan told me of her illness and that I was able to see her one last time this summer. I could never thank her enough, but I will be making a donation to the Cumberland County Genealogical Centre today in her memory and expressing my condolences to her family. Susan's obituary is posted on their front page. I've been sitting on the fence on this one for awhile now but Gord Ripley just tipped me over and into action. We've been discussing whether Margaret Horton is really the daughter of Robert Ripley and Isabella Beane. I recently acquired a transcription of Isabella's will and Isabella does not mention Margaret as one of her children. Isabella made the will in 1830 and, or course, Margaret might have died before then. However, in checking Robert's will, I noticed that all of the other children are designated as either "son" or "daughter" but Margaret is just plain Margaret Horton. While the other daughters' bequests were paid to their husbands, Margaret Horton's is paid directly to her. This could indicate that Margaret had already been widowed, but it could also mean that Margaret Horton is just plain Margaret Horton. Gord points out that none of Robert's other children named a daughter Margaret. She could be the wife or daughter of a Horton. I've also noticed that on the Amherst Census and Poll Tax records, an Abraham Horton is listed next to Robert Ripley. An Abraham Horton also witnessed Robert's sale of his River Philip grant. Abraham left a will in 1808 naming wife Charlotte and 3 sons Samuel, John, and Abraham who were not yet 21. No Margaret. It will be interesting to see whether we can place Margaret if we don't assume that she was first a Ripley. I've listed what I know on a new page: The Mysterious Margaret Horton
I think I've finally found my niche in genealogy. For some reason, I'm completely captivated by the idea of mapping out original settlements. I want to know exactly where old homesteads and leases were located and I want to visit those places and walk around on those lands. I'd love to create a virtual version of the old Maccan and Nappan areas on a website like Second Life to help me better visualize the community. When I paint, I'm only interested in painting landscapes. I wonder if it's connected. Two nights ago I discovered an online version of the 1795 report on the Maccan-Nappan leases made by Captain John MacDonald to J. F. W. Desbarres. The report on Maccan-Nappan begins at image 736 in reel C-1455. I was able to view a few pages as a preview but it seems the site requires a subscription. In trying to understand where the properties of my great grandfathers were located I will inevitably need to know the history of every property mentioned in the report and the family histories of their neighbours and this will be a valuable resource. I recently became very confused reading the description of the original Amherst Township boundary lines. According to the description, the western boundary was the Nappan River and the edge of a property owned by Adam Gmelin. However, I knew that DesBarres had owned that property. It turns out that DesBarres sued Gmelin for 200 pounds and acquired the land in a court-ordered sale. Whew and thanks to Peter Landry who posted this information as a timeline item in his online biography of DesBarres! Because it was 8,000 acres I'd originally assumed it was a grant to DesBarres and couldn't figure out how it was also granted to Gmelin. In the search I realized that this edge of property owned by Gmelin and running straight southeast 6 miles and 70 chains must be the Gmelin line that Myrtle Chappell talks about in Fenwick 1778 to 1978. This line runs north-south through Fenwick right past the Community Centre. So DesBarres' land extended from the Maccan River to Fenwick. This explains how both my 3rd great grandfather William Ripley in Maccan and my 2nd great grandfather Andrew C. Ripley in Fenwick could have acquired their property from DesBarres. See the Fletcher Lease Page on this website for more details.
I recently learned that Robert Salter Ripley's second wife Edith Hyatt was buried at the Union Grove Cemetery in Scotchtown N.S. A Maureen Jordan has done a fantastic job of photographing the stones in that cemetery and posting them online. In viewing Edith's gravestone for the first time I discovered that an adopted daughter Emma (Heffler) Ripley 1919-1938 is buried with Edith there. This is a person that we have never known about. I called one of the phone numbers on the website to thank them for putting the information online and ended up talking to a Keith Watts who happened to be the son of former New Waterford Fire Chief Earl Watts. Keith said the old Ripley store was likely in what they call 14 Yard, the oldest part of New Waterford and that fellow named Louie Allen, who also had a store there, would likely know all about the Ripleys. He also gave me lots of great information about the R. S. Ripley Firetruck and about the wonderful tradition of firefighters' funerals in New Waterford which has resulted in updates to the Photos and Robert Salter Ripley Obituary pages.
A few weeks ago I made contact with a Roberta Ripley who is married to a descendant of Robert Ripley and Isabella Beane through their son Henry Ripley. She and other family members were planning a trip back east to see Cape Breton and Amherst and do a bit of genealogy touring in addition to their other sightseeing. I asked Roberta to see what she could find out about the R. S. Ripley Firetruck in New Waterford which has led to the discovery that the firetruck is now in storage at the Firefighter's Museum in Yarmouth. Roberta sent me a photo of the photo hanging in the New Waterford fire station which I have posted on the Robert Ripley section under on the Photos page. Thanks, Roberta, and have a great holiday! Based on a conversation I had today with the son of a former New Waterford Fire Chief I have also made updates to Robert Salter Ripley's Obituary page. P. S. Happy Birthday! |
AuthorHi there! My name is Mallory Burton and I started researching the Ripley family in 2011. I'd describe myself as a careful amateur who's more interested in story than names and dates. I hope you enjoy my website and blog. I also have a public Mallory/Ripley tree on Ancestry with over 4,000 names. To contact me, please comment on any one of my blog posts. Archives
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