All this time I have been looking for Ann Glenn (born Thomson) when I think I should have been looking for Ann Genn of Winnipeg. She graduated as a nurse in 1957 and has a brother William Thomson. Michael MURRAY married Jane HYDER in Australia in 1868. Eventually I found them in Ontario,Canada. No male children survived to carry on the Murray surname but the girls did their best by popping the Murray name in wherever they could. I cannot find a marriage for the oldest daughter Catherine, or Kate, who did not survive early adulthood. Next born Edith Mary married a James Andrew Dow. I wondered how her name appeared as a witness to so many marriages in Canada until I discovered she had married a minister of the Presbyterian church and was doing her duty as his wife. In 1900 she was calling herself Edith Murray Dow. Her daughter Helen died in horrific circumstances in Enderby, BC and she also lost her son to illness at age 32, and her husband at about the same time. When she died at the age of 91 there was no-one close enough to give all the correct details on her death certificate.

The next child born to Michael and Jane Murray was a son, Thomas William, but he and next born son Richard Michael both tragically died young on the same day in 1878 of scarlet fever. Richard had a twin sister Ellen Maud who was brought up in England by Jane's sister, Ellen Maddison. Eventually Ellen and her husband George adopted Ellen. At the time of her marriage she was called Ellen Maud Murray Maddison.
Susan Elizabeth was next in line. She kept me guessing about her identity as her name varied from Elizabeth to Lizabeth and then Lizbeth and I think she too slipped Murray into the middle of her name. She married Harry G Thompson who was a customs officer for T Eaton and Co. They had twins Marjorie Jean and William Murray (just keeping the name alive). William Murray Thompson married a lady called Helen and there my trail stops except for the fact that the person responsible for their funeral arrangements was Ann Genn. So where are you Ann Genn? I have so much to ask and I hope a little to tell.

Michael and Jane Murray next had a son named Howard Ayling but I can only find a birth record and nothing else. Mildred Edna was their last child. She remained with her father into adulthood. Her mother had died in 1902 and maybe it was then that she and her father moved from Whitby to Toronto and lived with her sister Lisbeth and her family. Mildred's father Michael Murray died in 1914 and at the age of 41 she married John Alexander Copland, a widow, one time owner of the Harrison Tribune. I cannot find a record of their deaths.

The Murray family's roots lie in Ireland but Mildred had an uncle Thomas John Hyder in Australia, a minister in the Anglican Church. He was prolific with his pen and left his mark wherever he went. I imagine that he would have corresponded with family in Canada and I am hoping that someone with a sense of history has retained some fragments of the past. Is it you Ann Genn?