the genealogy book
, on Peter Whitteker (1771-1843),
On my birth mother’s side: my fifth great grandfather, Peter Whitteker (1771-1843), of whom little is known, as claims Whitteker – Whittaker: Family of Dundas County, Ontario: A Genealogical Study (1989), prior to his landing in Dundas County, Ontario circa 1794. And yet, the same volume mentions how Peter married American-born Margaret Catherine Barkley and relocated from those United States into Upper Canada between the birth of the second and third of their eventual ten children. There is a further array of information, but much of it unverified, and contradictory. A suggestion that he left his grown son, Peter Jr., to run the farm they settled in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, “and came to Canada with the United Empire Loyalists after the American Revolution.”
This mysterious Peter (senior), who is buried in St. John’s Lutheran Cemetery, Riverside Heights, Dundas County. Just along the Ste. Lawrence River, not far from where he landed, lived. My birth mother’s sister, Elaine, who provided me my copy of the photocopied Whitteker – Whittaker: Family of Dundas County, Ontario: A Genealogical Study, a genealogy that is wonderfully indexed, allowing me to discover that my friend Kelly, who had long been our server at Parkdale’s Carleton Tavern for my Factory Reading Series events, is my fifth cousin. I think all genealogies should be indexed, by the way; it saves so much research time. Upon being informed of the link, Kelly’s mother replied: oh yes, I know the Adams. They lived just down the road.
It was Elaine who provided my first baby photos, snapped as she and my birth mother visited me in foster care, somewhere in Cornwall. Those ten months between birth and when she put me up for adoption. Photographs that Elaine took of me at three months, on my birth mother’s knee. Elaine, who said her own mother thought that I resembled my birth mother when she was a baby. My first glimpse of myself as an infant, adopted with no record of anything. No trace. To become someone new. To emerge as a toddler, and move forward from that. Until Elaine, I had not been a baby.
Until Elaine offered pictures, we unable to understand who my youngest took after, when she was born. Who does she look like. She didn’t look like anyone, until she looked like me, from those baby pictures. Until she looked just like Elsie. Her head round and square, like a snowman.
As the book offers: “Unfortunately, little could be found of the historical background of the Whitteker’s. It is known however that they originated from Germany and that they were United Empire Loyalists.” The Whittekers, from whom I apparently was gifted my thick hair, and early cataracts. Those Whitteker eyes. That boisterous laugh.
Linda Whitteker, daughter of Henry Whitteker and Emily Dillabough, who married Gerald Adams, from whence my birth mother, third in a line of seven children. A farm Gerald worked the rest of his days, taking over from Henry. Lot thirty-six, concession six, Williamsburg Township, Ontario, some fifty kilometres west from where toddler-me landed. This land received from the Crown on December 6, 1844 by John W. Whitteker (1799-1884), who was Henry’s great grandfather. John, the fourth child of ten born to Peter and Margaret. All the way back to the beginning.