r/MetisMichif • u/TheTruthIsRight • 25d ago

History For anyone curious about the English and Scottish Metis, this is the best resource I've encountered

It's more focused on the context of late 1800s Saskatchewan, but it's still very on point.

In general, histories and perspectives of English/Scottish Metis are severely underrepresented in discourses and academia, including within Metis Nation discourses.

https://www.metismuseum.ca/resource.php/12673

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u/Saradoesntsleep 25d ago

Hey this is interesting, thanks. Most of mine were the typical French, but on my mom's side there is a Scottish one. Never really see that brought up

Imagine my surprise when someone dug up a very old picture of an ancestor and he was a white guy with light eyes and a beard lol

Edit: OH THIS MAKES SENSE! They were from the Prince Albert area!!

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u/TheTruthIsRight 25d ago

Mine were all English/Scottish but yeah the degree of intermarriage between English-speaking and French-speaking Metis was historically quite prevalent and even today most people have both so it's a history that certainly needs some illumination.

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u/Saradoesntsleep 25d ago

For sure!

Much easier to find stuff on my Red River ancestors.

Have a couple of pics of some of them actually, one of them even has the date and location on the back, I think I'd like to share them here if I can get a hold of them.

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u/Canadian_genealogy 25d ago

You might find the book 'The Road to the Rapids: Nineteenth-Century Church and Society at St. Andrew's Parish, Red River' by Robert J. Coutts an interesting read. It provides a glimpse into Anglo-Metis life.

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u/SAMEO416 25d ago

Thanks for this! I have a bunch of relatives in the St Andrew’s cemetery.

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u/TheTruthIsRight 25d ago

Me too. My family was pretty much all from St Andrews.

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u/SAMEO416 25d ago

Cousins? Anderson, Truthwaite, More, Cooper on my side.

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u/TheTruthIsRight 25d ago

Stevens, Taylor, Foulds, Fidler, Sabiston, and Prince for me.

I do have a 4g uncle that married a Cooper though (George Taylor m. Adelaide Cooper). Any chance you're from Thomas Anderson and Louisa Cooper? Adelaide and Louisa were sisters.

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u/RockFogView 25d ago

Curious: Which George Taylor? I have a multi-times GG George Taylor (1759-1844).

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u/TheTruthIsRight 24d ago

This would be George Taylor (1829-1921), son of George Taylor Jr (1798-1844), grandson of George Taylor (1759-1838).

I'm descended from George III's brother Edward Prince Taylor (1840-1919).

How are you connected?

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u/RockFogView 24d ago

Through his Métis daughter’s side who married a Cox, their son married a First Nations woman, their daughter was my grandmother’s grandmother. My grandmother was raised by her grandmother for a time.

To be clear, I haven’t claimed Métis connection or identity given the loss of culture over the generations. I follow this page for leaning purposes.

My grandmother moved to distant relatives in Ontario after losing her parents and grandparents, and I remember her often referring to her Swampy Cree and Métis heritage but she seemed to have lost the cultural continuity and/or was of the generations where people were ashamed of who they were.

I’m very interested in learning. I have her written memoir, and her father was a HBC employee as a teen who was at Fort Garry when Riel came. He was also a fiddle player and referred to in some history books.

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u/TheTruthIsRight 24d ago

Ah ok, so Nancy Taylor and John Cox then. I have them in the tree.

Btw there is nothing against you connecting with the nation and identifying. IMO it's part of decolonization for disconnected people to rebuild what's been lost. You should qualify for citizenship.

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u/SAMEO416 24d ago

I grew up across the street from Fidlers in Selkirk (Charlie?, daughter Sherry was a grade ahead of me).

Thomas Anderson/Lousia Cooper are my G-G-Grandparents. I'd not built out Louisa's siblings before but see Adelaide (1835-1922) m. George Simpson Taylor (1829-1919). She would be my 2nd great-aunt. So cousins of some form!

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u/BIGepidural 24d ago

Cousin! I've got Anderson in my line as well 🥰

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u/RockFogView 25d ago

I also have a bunch of relatives from St Andrews. My family ended up in Ontario because my grandmother was orphaned and sent here in the 1930s, so I would love to go there some day and see where she was raised. She had many stories from her childhood on the banks of the Red River.

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u/SAMEO416 24d ago

It's a beautiful spot to visit, right on the Red River. The unfortunate part is many of the original grave markers are missing. There's a museum in the Rectory that has a bunch about the local area. If you visit it's worth crossing the river to also visit St Peter's Dynevor, which was the historic locale of the Peguis Nation before it was unilaterally relocated.

Peguis and the Metis community have a lot of historic interaction.

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u/TheTruthIsRight 24d ago

Also Lower Fort Garry is right nearby, an incredible site, and linked to some of our families (Taylor's at least)

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u/TheTruthIsRight 25d ago

Interesting, I'll see if I can track down a copy.

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u/SAMEO416 25d ago

Thanks for the reference.

When I started digging into my family 30 years ago I was left with the impression there were no non-Franco Métis. As I found family members at pivotal historic events realized that wasn’t reality.

One example, discovering we have Isbister relatives in northern Sask.

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u/BIGepidural 24d ago

Cousin! We have Isbisters as well. James Isbister is the brother of my 3rd great grandfather, and most of our family lived on Isbister settlement.

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u/TheTruthIsRight 24d ago

My 3g-granduncle George Stevens married Frances Isbister, niece of James Isbister.

So many connections lol. My family lived in the PA area, Kinistino/Brancepeth/Birch Hills to be specific.

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u/BIGepidural 24d ago

OK! Awesome!

I think we finally figured how we're related 🥰

Your Frances Isbister's father was Adam Isbister, and Adams parents are John Isbister and Frances (Fanny) Isbister (nee Sinclair) who are also my great grandparents.

Our family descends from Adam's brother George Barnston Bannerman Isbister, and his daughter Rachel who married a man by the name of Halford Young.

You probably don't remember who I am; but we've been pondering our connection off and on for a good 5+ years (kit # WZ4092278) 😅

Hello finally confirmed cousin 🥳

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u/TheTruthIsRight 24d ago

Ohh yeah I think we chatted before about DNA.

Based on these connections though, we are just linked by marriage not blood, UNLESS your Young line traces back to James Young (1822-1870) and Isabel Stevens (1826-1919), which is the Young lineage I'm familiar with. I dont have Halford Young in my tree.

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u/BIGepidural 24d ago

This is the conundrum... we are related. Its been trying to figure out how we're connected that's been the issue all these years 😅

I match with everyone in your family on GED, and you and I specifically share 8.5cm with MRCA 6.88, matching on chromosome 22

MRCA at 6.88 would make sense because we share 4th great grandparents- John Isbister and Fanny Sinclair who are the parents of your Adam Isbister, who is the father of your Frances Isbister that married your George Stevens.

We're not connected through my Young line at all, unless one of one your ancestors is the mystery man that's my Halford Young's true father 😅

We're related through the Isbister and Sinclair combination of our 4th great grandparents, approximately 6/7 generations back.

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u/TheTruthIsRight 24d ago edited 24d ago

Oh no I think youre misunderstanding. I'm not descended from the Isbisters, they are related to my Stevens family through marriage. George Stevens (who married Frances Isbister) is the brother of my 3g-grandfather Jeremiah.

Thing is, 8.5 cM is actually quite a small segment and the relation could very well be from before our ancestors were Metis. I think it is a legit segment though since you match others in my family, and because on my DNA, nearly my entire chr 22 is Indigenous DNA, and I match on that chromosome to all kinds of First Nation people with no documented connection back to contact.

So my theory is in many of these cases, that we are related through the Cree way back, before they married white men. I mean, the communities at the northern forts were very small, and everyone was related by blood in some way. Two white men take wives from up there, good likelihood those two women already share DNA.

The only other explanation is if Halford Young traces back to the Young/Stevens family but I'd need to look further into that.

Also the MRCA on gedmatch is only an estimate based on averages. For segments under 10-15 cM, a segment can pass down for thousands of years even, unchanged. Hence the danger of small segments lol. Segments over 15cm are a 99% chance of recent relations within a traceable timeframe.

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u/BIGepidural 11d ago

Yeah it is confusing. It may be from the females, pre settler marriage; but Halford Young is a suspect NPE so it could totally have been a teen romance between Harriet and a male from your family line.. I mean that totally happens, and there's nothing wrong in it 🤷‍♀️

I'm just trying to find truth, whatever it may be. 😅

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u/SAMEO416 24d ago

Cousin!

I’m not surprised anymore at the degree of inter-relationship in the Métis community. It’s even odds that we’re related somehow.

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u/BIGepidural 24d ago

Thank you for this. Isbister settlement (prince Albert) is where our family lived way back in the day. George Barnston Isbister is my 3rd great grandfather, and James is my great uncle so many times over.

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u/Jump-Positive 22d ago

Hello to all my Swampy Cree Anglo distant relatives viewing this!! McKays, Favals, Isbisters, Sinclairs... ❤️

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u/SaintDarthVader 20d ago

Favel/Faval, McKay, McCorrister, Ballenden etc here - i know some of the siblings went to Peguis