Roseneath Country Inn B&B …. www.rosebb.ca

Thanks to the super-sleuthing of Donna Collings of  The Garden of the Gulf Museum, yesterday Roseneath B&B guests Melissa and Dick Meyer of Vermont met long lost relatives with a California gold rush connection.                     

        In the late 1800s Jack Stewart of PEI married Melissa’s grandmother, then 18, en route across Colorado in search of gold.  She bore him a son Norman and a daughter who died in infancy, but Jack became ill and lost the ability to walk so his sisters brought him home to PEI while his wife returned to her home in Missouri.  Norman’s parents later divorced by mail, Jack remarried in PEI and in due course had four children.  Norman meanwhile grew up thinking his father had died.  Descendants of  Jack knew that he sent letters repeatedly attempting to keep in touch with his son but Norman learned his father was still alive only when he enlisted in WWI.
        When Norman was 89 living in New England, he married a woman of 69 who urged him to come to PEI to find his father’s family. When with their camper trailer they missed the last ferry of the day at Tormentine somebody suggested they drive quickly to Caribou.  As he got off the ferry at Wood Islands Norman approached a ferry employee, told him his name and inquired as to whether he might know of a Jack Stewart. He was talking to his half-brother! Unfortunately Norman died without leaving any record of who this half-brother was or where he might be found on PEI.

The Story Unfolds September 15  2008:
        When she heard the first part of this story Donna showed the Meyers how to search various PEI genealogical databases on-line.  When they told the ferry story, she suggested they phone Malcolm MacLean who’d worked many years on the Wood Islands ferries.  His reply : “That was my good friend Charlie Stewart.  Of course I know that story.” 
        Everybody was DELIGHTED! Furthermore when the Meyers visited Malcolm in Little Sands, they met his wife Betty who is a relative of  Jack (John James Stewart ) and who gave them copies of the family genealogy explaining that Jack. had been known locally as Utah Jack and that Norman had visited his half sister and half-brother a second summer before he died.  Today Melissa and Dick are meeting Heather (Stewart)  MacMillan of Wood Islands,  Utah Jack’s grand-daughter. Perhaps more details will be added to the tale.

        And if you have a question relating to genealogy of families of southeastern PEI, consult the helpful people at The Garden of the Gulf Museum!