John McLeod, farmer in Lingwick, Quebec, married 1849. This is a scan of a crayon portrait which is a tintype, blown up and then embellished with charcoal artistry. I have the tintype from which this portrait (30 inches by 18 inches) is made. In the tintype he is seated with his pregnant wife, Sarah McLean, standing and he is rather dishevelled.So original photo taken in 1850′s. The artist cleaned him up for posterity. (Looks like my husband, his great great grandchild. Even the slight palsy.)
I have the crayon of his mother and a man and a woman who are probably his brother and sisters. Hoot Man.
Hmm. Bizarre coincidence. I am surfing the web, trying to find a programme of the Quebec tercentenary. There are a couple online, for sale, but no contents visible. Anyway, I found this picture of a programme on The Virtual Museum of Canada. Just a picture of the cover, so I closed it and then said.. Hey, Wait a minute!I went back to the page. It had ‘an ad’ on the bottom of the cover, “We recommend Boswell and Bros. ales and porter.” There’s a connection here to Tighsolas… The man in the picture above had a number of daughters, among them Margaret of the story Flo in the City (my husband’s great grandmother)and Sarah, who lived in Sarnia, Ontario. (Sarah had a tough life, with a sick husband and her letters to Margaret are full of complaints. Another sister, Christie, claims Sarah’s daughters are all selfish….a counter-point to the Nicholsons and their devoted daughters.)
One of Sarah’s daughters had a daughter, who married a military man, a Boswell, of the Boswell and Bros clan! The woman was very pretty, indeed, she was a Ford model. But she died in Kuala Lumpur in a car accident (where my own grandmother lived, incidentally) leaving behind a son, Desmond. Boswell remarried and the wife did not want Desmond around..
He was left to be raised by the grandmother in Westmount. The son went to fine schools and raced cars for fun, banged his head uup badly in a racing accident and became a hermit of a kind. He inherited his grandmother’s country home in the quiet little suburb and became a ‘local character’ and thorn in the side of local council because he let his house fall down around him until he was living in a tent. Sad story. My husband’s 4th cousin. He recently died at about 65.
