Our Family · Meghan's side
The lives they made.
In the townships of Ontario and the neighborhoods of Philadelphia, earlier generations made homes, found work, cared for families and adapted to changing times. Long before their histories converged, each was living a life of their own.
The four grandparents
Four lives, each their own.
Roy and Mary grew up in Ontario; Frank and Regina in Philadelphia. Each had a history before marriage, children and the years remembered by their descendants. Open a biography to follow a life through its places, work and family.
Roy and Mary appear together in the same surviving family photograph. Frank's portrait is from the family collection.
Beyond direct ancestors, meet 52 extended relatives whose lives appear in Ontario and Philadelphia historical records.
Further back, the family tree follows all four branches. Follow the branches into Ontario, Philadelphia, England and Ireland; provisional connections are identified.
The Philadelphia branches
The city they called home.
Philadelphia was more than a destination on an immigration map. It was where generations worked, raised children, learned trades and built relationships. The Conlin, McDermott, Curran, Wurst and Leonard records preserve glimpses of those households. Some earlier migrations are documented; other proposed connections remain provisional.
Frank’s life took him from a city workplace into wartime service and back to civilian work. Regina’s long career at Muhlenberg College deserves equal attention. Their shared household was one chapter in two lives with stories of their own. Read about Regina’s working life ↗
Read the Conlin–McDermott historyThe story beneath the family tree
Different places. Familiar questions.
No one set out to become an ancestor. They were people living through the circumstances of their own time: making choices, doing necessary work, forming attachments, and sometimes leaving places behind. Their lives were not all alike, and neither were their opportunities.
01 / Ontario · King and Thorah
Homes made across generations.
The Ontario side leads through farmers, labourers and tradespeople in small communities. Levi Hilliard worked as a carpenter in a planing mill. Walter Mitchell served in the British Army in Malta, Bermuda and Halifax before building a life in Ontario and serving with the Canadian Army. Catherine Ayre, born in England, built her adult life in Ontario after an earlier transatlantic journey that is still being pieced together.
Follow the Ontario generations and the Brock–Bartlett family02 / Philadelphia · City neighborhoods
Lives made in a changing city.
On the Philadelphia side, the record places earlier relatives in workshops, factories and city households. In 1942, young Frank Conlin named his mother as the person who would know where to reach him. Regina McDermott, pictured in her 1943 school yearbook, went on to spend thirty-one years working at Muhlenberg College. Her career continued until retirement in 1993.
Follow the Philadelphia generationsThe tree shows how these branches connect. The biographies and stories offer glimpses of the lives within them—and leave room for the memories that records could never preserve.
Between two worldsExplore where earlier generations lived, worked and raised their families
An earlier Ontario life
A life that crossed an ocean.
Roy Hilliard’s mother Catherine Ann Ayre was born in Durham, England. A girl closely matching her details appears among children who came to Canada with a Barnardo party in 1904. The identification is strong but not yet certain, and the circumstances of her childhood are still difficult to recover.
Her life did not end at the point of arrival. In Ontario, she married Levi Hilliard and raised a family. Whatever the surviving records leave uncertain about her early years, her later life deserves to be understood in its own right.
Read Catherine’s full storyWhat survives · What we carry
Not simply where they came from. The lives they made.
A photograph of a couple. A school portrait. A name and address on a wartime form. A line in a register describing someone’s work. Each tells only part of the story, yet together they begin to give these ancestors their own presence.
Some questions may never be answered. Others can be revisited as family memories, photographs and documents come to light. This history belongs to the generations who lived it and to the people who will carry it forward.
Explore Meghan’s family tree ↗Read Meghan’s featured stories ↗Browse Meghan’s published records ↗Return to both family histories ↗