Show and Tell - 55th Carnival of Genealogy

Show us and tell us about an heirloom, a special photo, a valuable document, or a significant person that is a very special part of your family history. Don’t be shy now, show us what you’ve got! This is all about bragging rights so don’t hesitate to make the rest of us green with envy! This is your chance to brag, brag, brag, without seeming like a braggart (you can’t be a braggart when you’re merely following directions ;-)… so show and tell!

In the box of photographs that I began to scan during the Genea-blogger games, there was one that I am pleased to have. I do not know whether another copy of this photo exists and whether there would be another photo of this person ever taken.

It is a photograph of Robert Love, son of Thomas Love and Agnes Hamilton. Robert would be my great-great uncle. His brother, James, was my great-great grandfather.

As you see from the note, it tells of the tragic end to Robert. The photograph was in a box with other photographs that had originally been owned by Margaret Love. After her death, the photographs went to her niece and it was her daughter that gave them to me. Although it appears to be a photograph taken at a studio, there is no identifying mark. It was possibly taken in Dundas, Ontario before, Robert headed to Manitoulin Island to work.

Robert went to Manitoulin Island in September 1870 with his brothers Thomas and James and his half-brother William Vincer to work in the lumber camps at Michael's Bay.[1] The brothers bought farm land on Lake Mindemoya. Robert drowned when the Sea Horse, the boat, he was travelling on went down off Fitzwilliam Island (near Manitoulin Island) when he was going back to Southern Ontario to get his mother, step father and sisters. The date we have for this is 17 October 1871. The Sea Horse was schooner built in 1859. The boat was carrying cargo, quite possibly lumber. The location of the wreckage is not known. [2]

No death registration has been located for him.

[1] Information from family sources - including The Love-Vincer Family compiled by Mary Love, Effie Williamson and Pat Costigan. n.d and also handwritten notes by Margaret Isabel Love.

[2]Rick Salen & Jack Salen. The Tobermory Shipwrecks. Tobermory: Mariner Chart Shop, 1976. p. 74

The 3 Love brothers and step-brother appear on the 1871 census --
1871 Census of Canada, Ontario, Manitoulin District, Manitoulin Center, Division 2, Page 3, Library and Archives Canada microfilm C-10023.