Rich family history
A book launch for the fivevolume genealogy series, Beech Hill Roots, is set for Oct. 16 at Bishop Hall in Greenwich.
A Yorkshire immigrant couple, William and Elizabeth Ward were true pioneers. William (1750–1844), became the head of a long line of descend- ants in North America.
He was a 24-year-old farmer who arrived in Halifax in 1774 with his wife and 18-month-old son Moses. They settled south of Kentville in an area then called Beech Hill and had 12 children. In 1942, Beech Hill was renamed North Alton.
The team of volunteers who contributed to the Ward genealogy was dedicated. They traced over 15,000 descendants. Included in the $225 series, which is 2,776 pages long, is a 500-page index, maps and photos.
Alma Lockhart Russell began collecting Ward genealogy in a simple scribbler when she was teaching in Blue Mountain in 1940. Later, when she was married and living in Halifax, Russell began visiting the provincial archives to continue her search. After she was widowed, she spent more time and filled three bookcases with binders.
“I had such a passion,” the Coldbrook native chuckles. “I thought they should have a bed down there for me.”
Sandy Bishop, who’s been a keen genealogist for over 30 years, kept the door open to branches of the family and allowed her home to continue to be a hotspot for research.
Published by the Bishop Genealogical Committee, due to Avard Bishop’s Ward grandmother, the series benefited from research conducted by Wards from Brampton, Ont.
Dale and Anne Ward were in Greenwich recently to celebrate the culmination of over 30 years of work. Together, they tracked down Wards in all 10 provinces and over 40 U.S. states.
Dale speaks of 173,000 names on his Ward database and five ways he found connections to the Bishop family.
Jim Eagan of the Middleton area calls genealogy “sort of like therapy’ in his perspective. Eagan is convinced that all of the Annapolis Valley is interconnected.
Sheila Levy of Kentville comes from a large extended family and she now knows she has 300 cousins.
Peggy LeBlanc, who served as project co-ordinator, recalled how the Beech Hill research was initially pegged at six months work. It ended up taking four and a half years and the collaboration of many people, she noted.
While not a member of the Ward family, LeBlanc was moved by several of the family stories she encountered. They included war losses, children wiped out by diphtheria epidemics and changing place names.
The series, which weighs 20 pounds a set, was printed in Kentville by Gaspereau Press. The launch is set for Oct. 16 from 2–4 p.m. The books are already on sale at Noggins Corner Farm Market.