Home | Ancestor Index | History | Forum |

JAMES CURTIS BIRD (1773-1856)

Please feel free to post your questions or exchange information.
gnstill
Site Admin
Posts: 2248
Joined: Mon Jul 26, 2010 8:12 pm

Re: JAMES CURTIS BIRD (1773-1856)

Post by gnstill » Tue Jun 30, 2015 9:24 am

Welcome aboard Dorothy! I have your entire lineage in my files, including your Great-great grandparents at this link:

GEORGE DONALD (1816-1895)

JLTimm
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Jan 24, 2016 1:15 pm

Re: JAMES CURTIS BIRD (1773-1856)

Post by JLTimm » Sun Jan 24, 2016 3:12 pm

Hi there!

I was just curious if anyone would have information on James Curtis Bird's adoptive daughter Margaret. I would be interested in obtaining information if available.

Thanks!

gnstill
Site Admin
Posts: 2248
Joined: Mon Jul 26, 2010 8:12 pm

Re: JAMES CURTIS BIRD (1773-1856)

Post by gnstill » Sun Jan 24, 2016 4:28 pm

I haven’t reviewed the related information for a long time, but I believe this Margaret married around 1809 to John HOURIE (1779-1887) from the Orkneys.

lauramay
Posts: 11
Joined: Thu May 14, 2015 1:22 pm

Re: JAMES CURTIS BIRD (1773-1856)

Post by lauramay » Thu Feb 11, 2016 2:40 pm

Bird wrote:lauramay, theres a book?
Hi Bird:

If you want info on the book, you may email me at efamily5@yahoo.com

Lauramay

gnstill
Site Admin
Posts: 2248
Joined: Mon Jul 26, 2010 8:12 pm

Re: JAMES CURTIS BIRD (1773-1856)

Post by gnstill » Fri Feb 12, 2016 11:34 am

New Family Page for Margaret BIRD & John HOURIE at this link:
JOHN HOURIE (1779-1857)

JeremyWhite
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun Aug 28, 2016 10:10 pm

Re: JAMES CURTIS BIRD (1773-1856)

Post by JeremyWhite » Mon Aug 29, 2016 2:24 pm

It's a minor detail, but I believe that Mary Kelly Lowman Bird died in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, England, not "Chestnut, Herefordshire, England".

I shall have firm words with England about having two counties that are only one letter apart.

- Jeremy White
jeremywh@hotmail.com

gnstill
Site Admin
Posts: 2248
Joined: Mon Jul 26, 2010 8:12 pm

Re: JAMES CURTIS BIRD (1773-1856)

Post by gnstill » Tue Aug 30, 2016 7:05 am

Thanks Jeremy – correction made

GarnetHGB
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 3:08 am

Re: JAMES CURTIS BIRD (1773-1856)

Post by GarnetHGB » Wed May 26, 2021 6:53 pm

I am curious if anyone has bothered working out any of the family tree below that of Thomas Bird, a son of James Curtis Bird and the Cree woman Mary Anne Oo'Menahomisk Bird?

I have begun to suspect that I am a possible descendant of Thomas Bird, but I might be completely off track because I have no idea just exactly how to connect Thomas to me.

What I believe I have managed to find is that he married Ellen or Helena McDermot; and although I have not found it claimed anywhere, one of their children surely must have been Sarah Anne Bird. I say that because I have no idea from where else ─ i.e., parentage ─ she may have descended.

Sarah married my great grandfather George Barcelo in Winnipeg or the Red River Settlement in 1879, and they later moved to North Dakota in 1884 where they had the typically large family that seems to characterize families back then.

I know enough about George Barcelo, and that his own father in Montreal was probably born in 1820. But Sarah has been a dead end for the past few years until I learned within the past two weeks that her grandfather was Andrew McDermot and she had three uncles whom I saw identified in a newspaper as "A.G. Bannatyne, John McTavish and Jas. Logan".

Since one of Andrew's daughters apparently married a Thomas Bird, that put me on the trail of the Thomas who is the subject of this message. Surely they are the same man?

He would then have been half Cree; and Ellen McDermot herself may have been as much as 25% aboriginal Indian because Andrew McDermot's wife Sarah McNab (Ellen's mother) was supposedly Métis.

I am 71 years old, and this is the first I have ever seen that seems to declare indisputably that I have aboriginal Indian blood. My own father Hector never suggested that this was a possibility in our ancestry, so I am unsure if even he knew ─ provided it is indeed true, of course.

Unfortunately, I have no one now to ask about any of this. All of my paternal aunts and uncles have long ago died.

Consequently, if anyone happens to have worked out any of Thomas Bird's family tree lineage directly below him, I would love to know if my guesses as outlined above are accurate. Did he and Ellen generate Sarah Anne Bird ─ the same Sarah Anne Bird who married my great grandfather from Montreal, George Barcelo?

One fly in the ointment where Sarah's mother is concerned has been a gossip snippet that I found in an old North Dakota newspaper ─ the Courier Democrat, December 14, 1905. Sarah had died on April 23 earlier that same year.

This was all that was printed:
Jno. Welsh and mother arrived in the city last week from Manitoba and are guests in the family home of U.S. Customs Collector Geo. Barcelo. Mrs. Welsh is the mother of the late Mrs. Barcelo and has resided in Winnipeg for the greater part of her life.
Sarah's mother is not named, unfortunately. But if it was Ellen Bird (née McDermot), how is it that she has a son with the last name Welsh? Wouldn't that also be her married name, and not Bird?

The only solution to that riddle would be that she had remarried after Thomas Bird had died, and thus was now Ellen Welsh. But I can find no trace of any such person.

Anyway, I emphatically do not expect anyone to go to any trouble with any of this ─ it's my dilemma, after all. I just thought that perhaps someone might have had some of the family tree worked out that succeeded Thomas Bird and could definitively prove or even disprove the connections to George Barcelo that I have outlined.

Thanks for reading this long-winded post.

Update August 25, 2021:


The missing detail concerning the true identities of the parents of my great grandmother Sarah Anne née Bird was provided after I enlisted the assistance of the Manitoba Genealogy Society for a fee of $75. I was reluctant to do this, but it paid off and ended some months of fruitless frustration.

The couple whom we had been believing were her parents were actually her grandparents ─ we had been unable to detect a generation.

Sarah Anne's father was indeed a Thomas Bird, but it was the son of the Thomas Bird that we had in mind (and of course, his wife Ellen McDermot).

The younger Thomas Bird had married Elizabeth Brown, a daughter of Peter Brown of the Orkney Islands, Scotland; and Elizabeth's mother was Sarah Bremner, who was a descendant of Magnus Twatt, also of the Orkney Islands.

So it seems that there are a number of historical figures in the genealogical background over the few generations preceding Sarah Anne.

sixsigmametis
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2023 9:46 am

Re: JAMES CURTIS BIRD (1773-1856)

Post by sixsigmametis » Mon Jan 16, 2023 1:52 pm

The widely circulated photo of James is unlikely of him. This in reference to posting: Re: JAMES CURTIS BIRD (1773-1856)
Post by Bird » Mon Feb 02, 2015 9:00 am It is very likely that of a Rev. Andrew Browning Baird. Two points of evidence: Regional Municipality of Waterloo: https://generations.regionofwaterloo.ca ... inkID=1334
Alberta Archives: https://hermis.alberta.ca/paa/PhotoGall ... tID=A16846

PHOTOGRAPHY IN CANADA - first recorded photography in the west including Red River was the Humphrey Lloyd Hime expedition in 1858 https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/ ... lloyd-hime James had been deceased for about 2 years and at age 81 likely not looking like the photo claimed to be of him

I have removed his photo from my WikiTree profile for lack of evidence it is him: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Bird-6060 I am third great grandson of James Jemmy Jock Bird: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Bird-6059

Cheers!! Pishshapmishko!

Post Reply