Eye on the Esplanade: Your ancestors’ stories in the Archives

By Medicine Hat News on June 29, 2018.

People contact the Archives every day with a variety of unique topics they want to research. Whether it is simple things like a business’s or building’s history, a genealogical question, or more complex projects involving many factors, we’re ready to help.

I don’t like to say that I have a preference, but I definitely do. I love researching people. When patrons come in to the Archives and get to learn something about one of their ancestors it is the most personal, often the most touching, and sometimes hilarious part of my job.

While curating our current Archives Vignette exhibit, The Tales of Slippery Annie, I thought a lot about the huge number of people who have come and gone from our city who have left little to no trace in the Archives’ collection. The topic of the vignette is Annie Moran, who became notorious for her drunken ways, but she left almost no paper trail; no pictures, no directory listings, and no obituary. This is often the case when we are looking up ancestors, which can be incredibly discouraging. But never fear; I love a good challenge! Sometimes when we’re pushed to dig a little deeper we find the most interesting information. We can delve into genealogical database websites or search newspapers to try to find out more. We can’t find out where your great-grandfather was employed? That’s too bad, but often people are delighted to find great-grandpa’s name in the Medicine Hat News in the list of donors to the Christmas Toy Drive, or alternatively, in the Police Beat column explaining his latest driving infraction. Most of the first-hand information we have about Slippery Annie, in fact, came from Medicine Hat’s newspapers; for instance, the article detailing her drunken wedding nuptials came from the Oct. 27, 1892 edition of the Medicine Hat Times.

Often the unexpected stories we discover about the less well-known people of Medicine Hat’s history are the most interesting; helping people connect the dots so they can make sense of their family history is a gift. The personal connection you make with a researcher when they find something special about their ancestor is indescribable, especially if they came in expecting to find very little information.

Even if you think that your relative didn’t have a starring role in the history of Medicine Hat, come in and look them up! You never know what little (or big!) stories they might have hidden in their past.

Kim Unrau is assistant archivist at the Esplanade.

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