The People in my Family That I Don’t Know
This is a picture of my grandmother’s mothers house in River Glade, New Brunswick, Canada – I think that’s the way I should say it. I took a car trip to St. Peter’s Bay, Prince Edward Island a few years back to trace my ancestry. My father died two years ago, January 16, 2008, and in some of the things that he gave me years before his death, was this photo. I would have loved to have been there to see how the photographer took the picture. I imagine an 8×10 camera capturing this on a plate of some kind. I’m not sure of that, I’ll have to do some research on it.
My grandmother lost her mom at a young age. Her aunts raised her, but life was so tough in Canada that the whole family – who were farmers – moved to the United States in hopes to improve their lives financially. My grandmother was labeled a servant, it’s my guess that since her father had basically abandoned her that the family had to describe her that way to get her into the United States.
The young girl in the photograph just might be S. Adelia Chapman – Shellander. She died August 6, 1902, she was 48 years old. Her daughter was Lena, or it’s sometimes spelled Lenah Shellander, Lena was my grandmother. The other two people might be her parents, who were Benjamin and Elizabeth Chapman.
Another Place in Paradise 