“They’re mine!” she says with a laugh.
She spent 40 years compiling the genealogy of her family, tracing descendants from Archelaus of Barrington Township through Elias of Yarmouth County, to the 10th generation, until several dehabilitating strokes slowed the project.
That’s when daughter Cheryl Anderson began assisting this summer.
“We started with Mom on her bed resting, because she was very tired. I’d tell her you lay in bed and I’ll fill in some of this data.
“One day I said why don’t I just take it all home and do it Mom?”
“And I said, I’d be delighted,” finished Trask.
Interest in her roots was sown early by her father, Raymond Smith, who used to talk about his ancestor Archelaus Smith, one of the first settlers of Barrington, his great grandfather’s great grandfather.
“As an early teenager during the war, it was the custom to go to town on Saturday on the back of a three-ton truck from Port Maitland. We’d do our shopping and stop and watch the Salvation Army on the corner and then go to the library,” she said.
“Her father was curious to find the answer as to who Archeleus was,” added Anderson. “But they couldn’t find what they were looking for.”
Trask spent years with pencil and paper, painstakingly copying names and dates from the Archeleus Museum on Cape Sable Island, public archives in Halifax, Barrington, Yarmouth and Shelburne museums, the archives in Argyle, and every cemetery she could visit.
She assisted with research for Gwen Trask’s genealogy and sat side-by-side at the Yarmouth County Museum and Archives with good friend Dorothy Allan, delving into history.
“Mom was left-handed and Dorothy was right, so they could use the same one (microfilm unit). They had wonderful times together,” said Anderson.
The first Smiths arrived in Barrington in 1760. The year before, there was a huge tidal wave, six-feet above normal. It made the shoreline unsuitable for farming.
Archeleus, from Chatham, Mass., used to fish off Nova Scotia with others. It was arranged that his wife Elizabeth would arrive on a different ship, with their four children. Through poor communication, she arrived without his knowledge while he was at sea. Natives assisted her and the children with lodging and food for the winter.
Stephen Hopkins is another famous member of the Smith family, having married a Smith woman. A survivor of a shipwreck in Bermuda, he witnessed the Jamestown colony famine in 1609, was written into a Shakespearean play, and participated in the marriage of Pocohontas.
Anderson learned about researching your roots as the book grew.
“The smart thing you do is you start with yourself, because you know yourself and your family. It was fascinating to do because you can buy a computer program and tell it what you know but if you say when someone’s birth date is, you’d better be prepared to say why it’s so.”
“I told my husband, I felt like my head was spaghetti. I had to untangle the strands to match people up. I was spending 10-hour days on this.”
She found the book “Vital Records for Barrington Township,” compiled by Patricia A. Terry to be a valuable resource.
Published by Printwright Printing, 80 copies of “Our Smiths” have already been sold and the book is in its second printing.
The 118-page book sells for $15 (picked up) or for $19 shipped in Nova Scotia.
Contact Cheryl Anderson by email: cheryl.anderson@ns.sympatico.ca, or mail 184 Bridgetown, Nova Scotia B0S 1C0.
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