Chronicle 2020

PROFILES

Finding strength in roots

CAROLYN PURDEN ANTHONY 1959 By Tara Dermastja Scott 1997

Imagine standing in the fields once farmed by your ancestors. Or rifling through old, oversized records in a dusty parish looking for any sign of your family name. Carolyn Purden Anthony has done this and more as she has gone back to her roots and explored her family tree. “It’s like living in a giant detective story,” she says of her favourite pastime. Born in England in 1941, Carolyn moved to Canada with her family in 1952 and attended Havergal from 1954 until 1959. She has spent half of her working life as a journalist and the other half owning a communications business. About nine years ago, inspired by research started by her father, Carolyn began digging into her past. Along with her partner Bill Hanna, she has managed to trace her family name back more than 400 years. “I started this when I was running my business, so it definitely gave me an outlet and a consuming interest, especially in those fallow periods where no work was coming in,” Carolyn says. Multiple trips to Birmingham, England over the last several years have not only given Carolyn and Bill quick vacations from life in Brantford, ON, but also the chance to coop up in parishes and libraries, flipping through county records. Since the local parishes didn’t keep complete birth, marriage and death records prior to the 1600s, not all the information could be easily found. Messy clergymen’s handwriting, doodles on the records, and the same names used from generation to generation have added to the difficulty of tracking family members down. “So much of this has been pure luck,” she says. In Radford Semele, a small village outside of Birmingham, Carolyn was able to walk the land

once owned by her ancestors. The farm has long since changed hands because her family went into metalwork when the industrial revolution began. Still, an impromptu conversation with someone nearby gave her the chance to step inside the farmhouse they owned long ago. “You really get into people’s lives,” she says. For people interested in exploring their own family tree, she advises, “Talk to older generations. Get the basic information and write it down.” She also recommends resources like Ancestry.ca. As soon as she signed up, she was contacted by someone tracing her mother’s side, which includes family from Scotland. “I’ve uncovered relatives I didn’t know I had,” Carolyn says. After almost a decade spent investigating her roots, there’s still more to be done. And just as she has continued her father’s research, perhaps her children Stephen and Jennifer will continue hers. “It would be nice if someone were able to take the family tree further back than I have,” Carolyn says. While the tree has taken her on a fascinating journey, Carolyn also spends time seeing her grandchildren, gardening, reading and practising photography. She took up pottery four years ago and is a member of the Brantford Potter’s Guild. What started as one of many hobbies will eventually turn into a book, but only for her family to whom she feels so connected. “Doing the family tree made me realize I’m here just through a fluke of fate,” Carolyn says, “and only because every person in the long, long line of my ancestors, back to the earliest days, had a child who was a survivor.”

PHOTO: W.B. HANNA

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