Terry has told me that the descendants of Harry Eustace and Daisy Boorman (his grandparents) had a tradition for many years: a large family gathering every Christmas day in Victoria BC.  I can only remember attending one such event at the home of one of Terry's first cousins, probably the Christmas before Terry and I were married in 1974.  We had drawn names ahead of time, so gift giving was limited to one person each, with a price limit (perhaps $10?) as well.  The gathering was more about socializing and eating and, as expected, it was crowded and noisy and thoroughly enjoyable!  Unfortunately, these Christmas family gatherings fizzled out in subsequent years (as these things are wont to do when there is a change of generations), as numbers swelled and cousins focused on their own growing families and busy lives.

So in 1979, Terry's mother Joyce decided to host an extended Boorman family gathering.  I think she realized that the Boormans were losing touch with one another, and this was one way to remedy that.  Joyce's first husband Bill Boorman had passed away years earlier, in 1966 at the age of 55.  She had remarried and they had moved into a brand new waterfront condo at Laurel Point in Victoria, so she booked their large common social room for the reunion.  Of Bill's 4 siblings, only two were still living: Jack attended with his family, but Sheila and her husband could not.  But 9 of the 12 of Daisy and Harry's grandchildren, including Terry, were there with their families.  Terry and I prepared a large family tree sheet with what information we had from personal knowledge and what Joyce could tell us.  We prepared formatted labels for everyone to write their basic information on (name, birth, marriage ...) and then stick on the tree in the correct location.  (We still have this large poster, but many labels are coming unglued after all this time.)  We took lots of family group photos and enjoyed talking about family history as well as our current lives.  I for one was expecting our first child!  And the pot luck buffet was good too.

Some time after the reunion, Terry's Uncle Jack Boorman brought some information and copies of old family photos over to our house one afternoon (we were living on Allenby Street then), which Terry borrowed to make copies (working in a print shop came in handy!).  This was before the days of consumer scanners, unfortunately, so the quality suffered at bit.  These photos included group shots of the Victoria militia's 5th Regiment (taken about 1897), which included Terry's grand-uncle Walter William Boorman.  There was also a photo of the Johnston & Kerfoot Outfitters store in Vancouver, connected to Terry's grandmother's (Daisy Louise Johnston Boorman) family.   According to the Changing Vancouver website, I have since learned that Johnston & Kerfoot Outfitters was located at 108 Cordova Street, pictured doing a booming business in 1898.  According to this site, it was Daisy's father James Johnston (who died young in 1900) and her mother's brother William Kerfoot who opened the store.

The early 1980s were for raising a young family and for learning and using the emerging  personal computing technology.  I created a rudimentary family tree program (using my 2 years of computer science studies to teach myself "BASIC" programming on our early Apple II computer).  Of course when I later migrated to more sophisticated software such as the LDS's PAF program, I had to retype all the family information into it.  This happened more than once over the years!

Terry, on the other hand, was spurred on in his family research by his good friend Gary, whose own father was meticulously researching their family history.  Terry talked more with his mother about the Boormans as well as her own Thomas line.  At some point Terry joined the local Victoria Genealogical Society for 2 or 3 years.  In the 1990s with the emerging internet, he even posted some queries on genealogy forums.  It took over 2 years to get a response, but this connected us with John, a distant cousin of Terry's who lives in England and who had done a lot of research on the Boormans of Kent.  How wonderful!  John also put us in contact with other researchers in England and Australia, who kindly shared information with us as well.  About this time, Terry also received a letter from Rita in the mail, who had sent letters to all Boormans in the local phone books, trying to find relatives.  Terry was apparently the only one to reply.  It turned out that she is Terry's 3rd cousin, living relatively close on the BC lower mainland.

In 1999, 20 years after the first reunion, Terry decided it was time for another reunion to share our expanded information and to catch up on current family information.  Joyce (Terry's mother) and Peter (another Boorman "outlaw" were the only 2 of the immediate "older generation" to attend; his Aunt Sheila and Aunt Mary were unable to attend.  We were glad to welcome a few more distantly related individuals.  Rita came with her brother Peter and his wife Elaine, as well as her 1st cousin Evelyn.  Terry's 2nd cousin Alan attended, the grandson of grand-uncle Walter William Boorman.   Susan represented the Albert Sidney Boorman family.  And we were thrilled that for the first time in too many years, all 12 grandchildren of Harry and Daisy Boorman were able to attend with their families.  Although most still live in the Greater Victoria area, one cousin came down from Campbell River and another flew up from California.  It was a great reunion, sharing old photos, taking new ones with our new (and unfortunately low-resolution) digital camera, meeting the next generation as well as others from neighboring branches, and updating our large (literally) family tree further.  Everyone was asked to complete a family group sheets.  We're still talking about this reunion.

The next year was the start of a new century and a period of intermittent research and connections.  Terry met with his cousin Pam and borrowed more of her father Jack's old family photos for copying.  Rita went on a trip to England in 2002 and shared her photos as well as her research results.  We had a visit from a Boorman researcher from Australia - we still haven't figured out if or how Nigel is related, but the quest continues.  Nigel's website is no longer online, and much of the information he shared with us was hand-coded html text charts!  Through Rita, we also connected with Betty, another 3rd cousin who also lives on the Island, and had some pleasant visits.    In 2010, cousin Pam held a luncheon for the Boorman female cousins at her lovely home in Victoria.  We had a very enjoyable visit, but no definitive plans emerged for another larger reunion.

In 2012, friends of ours were planning a trip to England in time for the Queens Diamond Jubilee.  We had never been to England and it was definitely on our "bucket lists", so we decided to join them.  Before leaving, I decided to re-familiarize myself with our Boorman tree and reestablish connections, as I had been focusing mostly on my own family tree for the past decade.  I realized there was now much more to learn about the Boormans online, with access to new indexes, information and contact opportunities. I loaded our updated Boorman file onto my little netbook for reference during our holiday.  During our trip we spent four days in Maidstone Kent, with day trips to both Staplehurst and Headcorn - all important loctions for our Boorman ancestors.  We were lucky to meet a kind and helpful  lady, a member of the Staplehurst Historical Society who had been part of their monument transcription team 20 years earlier.  She was able to show us two surviving Boorman gravestones - we could barely make out the name Boorman, so we wouldn't have been able to find these graves without her.  We had hoped to meet up with John on the trip, but unfortunately the timing didn't work out this time.  We also saw Bath, Oxford, Hastings, Salisbury and London in our three and a half weeks in England.  Lots more still to see.  More information on our trip to Kent can be found on our travel blog.

Since we've been home this past year, I have kept in contact with John and others via email, and collaborated with other new contacts and researchers.  Our database is growing rapidly, and it is truly so rewarding to continue expanding our knowledge of our Boorman heritage.

My maternal grandmother, Nell Andrew, was born a Richardson and had a keen interest in family history.  I wasn't her only granddaughter to later show an interest, and  I am so glad that one of my first cousins wrote down the following story when she was talking to "Granny" about our Richardson ancestors.  This particular short segment of oral history (and accompanying notes) gives us priceless clues to the Richardson emigration and travels in the 1800s, although I am still trying to unravel some of the "facts" at the heart of this story:

So how to make sense of this?  This story would fit what we now know about the family if the “Edward” was actually “Edmund”, uncle of Sydney and the brother of Louis Richard (b. 1836, a different person than Louis James b 1864, Sydney’s brother). There seems to be a bit of ambiguity here as to the generations, as Ed, Louis Richard, Henry and Damaris were some of the children of Henry Proctor Richardson I (1789-1850) and not the children of his son Henry Proctor Richardson II (1825-1905)  Also, the Maori’s are in New Zealand rather than Australia (so where did they really travel)?  The travel dates are not specified is this story, and it is unclear whether “Edward” took his brothers and/or his nephews on travel adventures because the names appear in both generations. So let's look at the options:

Regarding Ed’s first trip with Henry to Australia:  

• If it was with Ed’s brother Henry Proctor II, he was born 1825, only 2 years after Ed.  They would both have been young men in the early 1850’s, having a travel adventure with inherited money before settling down.  We don’t yet know if or when Edmund married, but we do know that his brother Henry Proctor II married Elizabeth Harris in Mar 1853 in Lambeth London, leaving Edmund free to travel with another relative to Canada in 1854.  
• If it was a younger Henry (his nephew and Sydney’s brother Henry Proctor III b. 1855), they probably wouldn’t have traveled until the 1870’s or 1880’s when Henry was old enough . We believe that Henry Proctor III was born in England and  married a Jane Denning in Metcalfe Ontario in 1880, but don’t yet know when he emigrated.  So if he is the Henry who traveled to Australia and back to England, he would have had another trip to Canada in time to marry Jane in 1880

Regarding Ed’s second trip with Louis to Canada:  

• If it really was Louis James, his nephew b 1864, then he would have been 18 in 1882 - this would have been about the time that his brother Sydney emigrated to Ontario.  
• If it was Edmund’s younger brother Louis Richard b 1836, he would have been 18 in 1854 - this is an appropriate date to be traveling with money possibly inherited in 1850. We have found a Lewis Richardson age 35, born in England and a cheesemaker, listed in the 1871 Canada census, living in Adelaide Ontario with his wife Catherine (age 45, 10 years his senior) and 5 children: Ann 14, Emily 13, Henry 9, Catherine 7, and Lewis 4.  All children are listed with the surname Richardson and born in Canada, but it is possible that the first 2 are from her previous marriage (marriage record not yet found).

Another part of the puzzle here is that the above Sydney Richardson, son of Henry Proctor II, "moved from England to Ontario Canada in 1880 as a teenager, learned the cheese-making business there before moving to PEI in 1882. He bought his house in St. Eleanor's from Jacob Howatt. The house was then situated on the south-east corner of the school playgrounds - it has now been moved to Glenn Drive."  This information likely came from Nell Andrew as well (I probably recorded this back in the 1980s when Granny was one of my few sources - I am now much better at recording sources!).  Later when trying to substantiate Sydney's immigration, I found him still in England in 1881, living with his parents in Weston Longville, Norfolk.  The most promising passenger list I've found contained the following entry on ancestry.com:
"Sydney Richards   Male   [age:] 17   [Date of Arrival:] 21 Aug 1882   [vessel:] Thames   [port(s) of arrival:] Halifax, Nova Scotia; Montreal, Quebec   [departed from:] London, England   [Roll:] C-4532 - film says destined for Montreal."

So although the dates in the story are a tiny bit off, it is likely that Sydney lived for a short time in Ontario (probably 1882-1883) to learn the cheesemaking craft, then moved to PEI sometime before 1885 when he married Miss Ella Compton.  I have uncovered a letter from 1883 which likely instigated Sydney's move to PEI.  The letter was from a Charles Andrew, on behalf of the St Eleanors Farmers Club, to Samuel Wood at Newtonville, Ontario, asking that he (Samuel) take the letter about the cheese factory to “some factory that you know”, looking for someone to start up a cheese factory in Prince County, PEI.  The letter was apparently fowarded to John Waddell in Orono, Ontario, who replied.  [Note that the Charles Andrew was the grandfather of Harry Charles Andrew who later married Sydney’s youngest daughter Eleanor.]

But why did Sydney immigrate to Ontario and learn the cheesemaking trade?  It now seems likely that other Richardson relatives came before him, and if they were also in the cheesemaking trade, so much the better.  As noted above, Sydney's uncle Louis Richard Richardson b 1836 was living in Ontario in the 1871 census, and may have been there since the 1850s, judging from the ages and birth locations of his children.  I think it a very good bet that Louis helped Sydney get settled with a job when he first came to Canada.

Sydney and his family on PEI lost track of his English and Ontario relatives - he rarely talked about them, although he was likely the one who returned to England for a visit in 1899  and made notes of family names and dates from the parish register.  Sydney's mother died in 1902 and his father in 1905, both in Derby.  When I was growing up, I never heard anything about Richardson relatives in Ontario or England.

So back to sorting out the first story, now that all my clues are on the table.  I think that Edmund's second trip (to Canada) was with his younger brother Louis Richard Richardson [not Louis James as the story says] sometime in the 1850s.  Louis likely stayed on in Ontario and was recorded in the 1871 Canada census with his family.   That means that Edmund's first trip (to Australia) was with his brother Henry in the early 1850s (before Henry was married in 1853; his nephew Henry was born in 1855).  Thank goodness that Henry and Edmund escaped the run-in with the Australian aborigines, or I wouldn't be here today!  I still don't know what happened to Edmund.