Submitted by Virginia Fox, President
The months go by and before we know it – “Time for a new report.” It is great to be able to record what we are doing, and we hope that soon we will have more people taking an interest in what is being done.
We have had a busy obituary committee working over the last month. Irene Nicholson has been super busy catching up on our obituary files. We have newspaper original obituaries filed in our holdings at the public library, mostly complete from the year 1979. These obituaries are from the Dauphin Herald and the Parkland Shopper. There are only two years where we have to catch up and that is 1985 and parts of 1990. We will be working on these in the coming months. Earlier obituaries are on microfilm that we have access to in our files. We have patrons coming into the library in Dauphin and utilizing them for their research. Indexing these obituaries is ongoing.
Irene directs us as to what needs to be done, and then we form a workshop to complete the filing. Not to mention the cup of tea afterward. Makes for a good day of accomplishment, all around.
We are now also recording and filing obituaries from Roblin as well as Grand View and Gilbert Plains. If there is anyone from Swan River who would like to help us to get started in filing obituaries from there; we would be happy to get that work done. But we need help in accessing the clippings and whatever other information is available.
We have received photos of the gravestone of Agnes C.G. McKenzie from her great-granddaughter, Shirle McGimpsy. Shirle also sent us a lovely photo of Agnes. Agnes’ married name was Farwell. She was born in 1872 and passed away in 1897. We are hoping to get more information about Agnes and her life from Shirle in the coming months. Shirle is a member of MGS as well as Dauphin branch of MGS. Thank you so much, Shirle. I have included the photos in this report.
We have had queries from the Sifton area and so very likely our work in the coming summer months and into the fall will be in that area. There are many small cemeteries and some large ones that need to be transcribed. Part of our work will be to find and access the burial records of the graves in these old cemeteries. As a result of a request that we have received from Kelowna, BC, we have learned of an old cemetery in the middle of a grain field that needs to be transcribed. Apparently, there are 40 graves there and many are without headstones. We look forward to seeing what we can do to find records of these people and then getting permission from the farmer who crops the field surrounding the grave yard to go out to this location after harvest to try to see what work needs to be done. We understand that there is a fence around this grave yard within the field.
We are very busy and we love this work. Our families are our most important possession and it is an honor to work to preserve the memories that are found within the grave yards of our province.
We are proud to showcase Shirle McGimpsy’s great-grandmother, Agnes C.G. McKenzie in these attached photos.
