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Getting Ready To Celebrate Loyalist Day

Loyalist Day in Ontario is next weekend, June 19th, the day that we celebrate our loyalist ancestors' lives and their courage and struggle for freedom and new beginnings in a new homeland. The purpose of this day is to further educate the people of Ontario about loyalist history and how the values and principals of our ancestors shaped our nation.

I would like to commemorate Loyalist Day this year by taking a road trip to Elgin County Library and look for information about my 2nd great grandfather, Benjamin Haines. I am working on my certification and if I can find any death records for him that would be extremely helpful. He is the key to my loyalist lineage, if I can get another source stating that he was the son of Nathaniel Haines UEL it would ensure that my application is accepted.

I have a record of Benjamin's Order in Council  in Nov. 1835 and the book "An Annotated Nominal Roll of Butler's Rangers 1777-1784 With Documentary Sources" by Lt. Col. Wiliam Smy, OMM,CD,UE, where he is listed as one of Nathaniel Haines' children who were granted land as children of a UE Loyalist to prove my lineage at this time.

I would also like to visit Rodney Cemetery and find out where my 2nd great grandmother, Sarah Haines, is buried  and photoraph her gravestone, if she has one. I'll check to see if Benjamin is buried there too. Maybe there is a burial date in the cemetery records.

I would like to get a copy of his obituary in the local newspaper archives if possible, I don't have an accurate date of death for Benjamin, just that he died between 1881 and 1891, Sarah is widowed in the 1891 census living with her two widowed sons, Joseph and Edward.  While I'm there, I'll look for Sarah's obituary in 1892 as well.

It is also "Juneteenth", a day set aside to celebrate freedom from slavery and injustice. So June 19th is going to be a special day for a lot of people around the world. It just happens that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is on the way, just outside of Dresden, Ontario, so I would like to stop there on the way back if there's time, in celebration of Juneteenth. I haven't been there since I was a child.  

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