Marriage, July 9, 1874, Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, between Elizabeth Stymest Bartlett http://wikitree.com/wiki/Bartlett-7643 and Joseph Prichard Jr. http://wikitree.com/wiki/Prichard-675. Heritage was important to Elizabeth, known as Lizzie. When my father was a child, Lizzie told him the family was descended from Anneka Jans and Jasper Stymest. She claimed the family once owned half of Manhattan. My father paid attention to his grandmother. His parents died by the time he was 12 and Lizzie died when he was 19.
When I became interested in family history this was all my father could tell me. Lizzie wouldn't be the first person to claim a lost family fortune. When I researched I learned Loyalists Jasper Stymest and wife Milcah Mekeel fled New York in 1783 to begin a new life in near wilderness which was built into the city of Saint John by the evacuees. Never mind that Milcah's father was a Patriot. Families were often split apart during wartime. However, the Anneka Jans part was nonsense, only the slightest connection to family members.
Many families use these stories to ease pain over current disappointments. I decided to research Lizzie. She was the daughter of a railway conductor and grew up in the now prosperous port city of Saint John. In 1874 Lizzie married into wealth. Joseph Prichard Jr. was the son of a ship owner and iron merchant. Three years later a great fire swept through the city destroying most of it. Many fortunes were lost and Saint John never recovered its prominence. In 1880 two of Lizzie's children died of diphtheria. In 1891 Joseph suddenly decided to take his family, Lizzie, one son, two daughters, across the continent to settle on the rural Saskatchewan prairie. In 1894 Lizzie, pregnant again, returned to New Brunswick with her daughters. The son remained with his father.
They never divorced, instead became estranged. I located a few letters from Joseph and included the text of one on his Profile page. He died penniless in 1917. I think Lizzie's hardships in life produced her insistence on an extraordinary heritage. She passed her fantasy on to my father who in turn caused his daughter to start documenting lives of ancestors as they really existed. Here, Dad is sitting in Lizzie's lap.
