A few weeks ago, in August, I decided to see what ancestry.com had new for Canada. (usually they don't have anything) I found that they had the 1891 census. Knowing that I have Hugh in 1881 living in Durham, Restigouche, New Brunswick and in 1900 in Skykomish, King, Washington, I have always wondered how he came into the United States. His father, and two of his sisters had settled in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, so I thought it was possible that he had come into the country through the eastern U.S., but then again, he was living in Washington, so he could have come west through Canada down into Washington. I just didn't know, but I had thought that the latter was probably correct. I just wasn't sure if he even had anything to do with his father or that side of the family.
One Saturday in August, I looked his name up in the 1891 Canadian census, it it came back with a top result of a Hugh McIntosh in Kamloops, Yale, British Columbia. It was the right hit. He was 24 and it listed New Brunswick as his birth place, and it listed his employment with the Canadian Pacific Railway as a Brakeman.
I was so excited, that pretty much summed up that he had come into Washington from British Columbia, probably to work for the Great Northern Railway.
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It was nice to finally have some kind of verification that Hugh worked for the Canadian Pacific Railroad, I have tried several times to get verification from the CPR, but it seems they refuse to acknowledge that their railroad was built by our ancestors. They won't even tell me if they have any employee records that date to the 1890's. It is really sad, they should make these records if they exist available to the public. The response that I get is this,
"Please be advised that employment records are not held in the Archives department. These records are in the custody of Pension Services who have informed us that the records are not open to research." - CPR Archives
It would be nice to know for sure, or be able to get a time frame that he might have worked for them. I think they are robbing our railroad heritage from us. If they can't service requests, you would think they would hand over the records to the Archives of Canada or a Historical Society that could properly preserve them.
I wonder if anyone has had a similar battle. Let me know. Thanks. I've kinda given up on this for now. Maybe if I went in person, it would be a different tune, probably not. Hopefully something will change.
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