Elaine Walton started working on her family tree a few years ago when she came across a historical website. After thorough research and many discoveries, the tree grew to 1,947 family members with the roots now going as far as the year 1724.
Later, due to lack of time, Walton's project was put on pause. But the current quarantine made her pull the books back out again and continue on bringing historical pieces together.
“It was in the spring of 2018. There was a free trial at MyHeritage that you could go on, I think I saw it on Facebook. I had some information (about the family history), so I put it in and it seemed like it was really good,” Walton said, recalling the days of the beginning of her project.
Her maiden name is Miller, so she continued with researching her family after the first month; she also had a lot of information about her husband’s family, so she started working on that.
“I had some pictures from his aunt and different relatives. One of his cousins has started a little book and kept track of some of that stuff, so I put all that in. And when I put stuff in, I could get more, back further dates, earlier dates. So I found it quite interesting,” said Walton.
That summer she decided instead of just doing a tree, to do a scrapbook to be able to add notes and put pictures in. One step led to another, and the family decided to go and look for graves to illustrate the project with some pictures.
“I started out with (my husband’s) family first. His great-grandparents came (to Saskatchewan) from Ontario. We found a grave, and it was out by Benson, a little graveyard, there were only five graves in it and they had fenced it off. But the weeds were taller than the fence, we couldn’t even see what was there. So we spent that summer cleaning it up and fixing the grave so I could get decent pictures,” said Walton.
She continued exploring graveyards in the area, and she made pictures of all the graves of her husband’s great aunts on down. And then she turned towards her own history.
“My dad’s family came from Russia and they homesteaded here. That would be probably my great-grandfather. I knew where he was buried, and the whole family was there, but the grandmother wasn’t there,” recalled Walton.
She went to the Estevan Public Library to read more about local history, and they helped her a lot by bringing in the needed books, which helped her to trace her grandmother’s grave in Odessa.
“One Sunday, we went up there and we walked the graveyard until we found her grave. It was really exciting,” said Walton.
She assumes that her grandmother went to Odessa after grandfather had died because one of her daughters lived there. But Walton hasn’t been able to locate where they went from there and find other relatives on that side yet.
Last summer turned out to be quite busy, so the project didn't see much progress. All materials were put aside until recently when the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine allowed more spare time and Walton decided to use it to keep her project going and growing. This time she wanted to focus more on her father’s side of the family and the local connections she has.
She collected a lot of information about the Millers' side, but she doesn’t have many pictures of her ancestors because her dad’s mother died when he was really young. She said she plans to try finding some through relatives and has been also using libraries in the area to rent the books. But going further Walton realized that for the sake of her research she’d need to have those books in her possession full-time.
“The more you get into it, the more people you know you are related to. So I then want to try to read up on them,” said Walton.
While some of her ancestors lived and are living in other countries such as Germany, the U.S., Russia and others, many of the relatives were spread over southeast Saskatchewan and now Walton is looking for more information about them.
“My dad’s family way back then, those people had 13-14 children. So it’s been a lot of work. As you go back and see some of the girls and guys who they married, it just opens up. I figured out a lot of people who I didn’t even know I was related to here in Estevan. It’s been really exciting,” said Walton.
If anyone has any history books from Torquay, Tribune, Goodwater, Alameda, Lampman or other smaller local communities that they are willing to give away or sell to help the historical project grow, they can contact Walton at 306-636-2121.
