University of Toronto\u2019s Rare Book Library<\/a>, Katherine meets with librarian PJ Carefoote and sees one of James\u2019s poems, as well as a peevish begging letter written when James wanted his father to fund an army commission.<\/p>\nThe Reverend Matthew Richey, Katherine\u2019s 4x great grandfather, was an important figure, prominent in the Canadian Methodist church and the first principal of Victoria College, University of Toronto.<\/p>\n
Katherine sees portraits of Matthew and his wife, Louisa.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is the kind of high-class ancestry that I\u2019m going for,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
The couple spent most of their lives in Nova Scotia on the Atlantic coast, where Matthew was a \u201csaddlebag preacher\u201d, who rode around different communities.<\/p>\n
Like Katherine\u2019s comedy, his work meant being a good performer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a horse,\u201d Katherine says, \u201cuseless to me, I don\u2019t ride it to gigs, but I might start.\u201d<\/p>\n
In archives in Nova Scotia, Katherine sees Louisa\u2019s \u2018cardiphonia\u2019, a kind of scrapbook, which suggests she wanted a passionate letter she had written to Matthew destroyed.<\/p>\n
Katherine finds it difficult to believe that women in the 19th century knew about sex but, says historian Renee Rafferty Solani, they discussed intimacy with female relatives, it\u2019s just that few records of these conversations survive.<\/p>\n
Louis was from New York and Matthew from Ireland, so Katherine is still no closer to an English connection.<\/p>\n
This she finds by tracing the lives of her 5x great grandparents through a different branch, Giles Hosier and Grace Newell, who lived on the Canadian Atlantic island of Newfoundland in the late 1700s.<\/p>\n
They owned a \u201cfishing room\u201d in the port of Bonavista, where cod were landed and processed.<\/p>\n
They did well, but then their son, William, sailed to the town of St Johns to fetch goods to trade.<\/p>\n
On the return voyage, the ship was lost with all hands.<\/p>\n
The family was ruined.<\/p>\n
Giles, it\u2019s said, died of a broken heart only weeks later, soon followed by a second son.<\/p>\n
Giles was from Dorset.<\/p>\n
Back in England, Katherine learns he was descended from her 8x great grandfather, Nicholas Cobb, a well-to-do publican in the village of Corfe Castle, who turns up in records as once speaking \u201cfraudulous and scurrilous words\u201d about two local magistrates.<\/p>\n
Now Katherine can tell Violet she\u2019s English and from a castle.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe won\u2019t know it\u2019s a village. We won\u2019t tell her.\u201d<\/p>\n
More seriously, Katherine is delighted to have traced her grandmother Dorothy\u2019s family history.<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n
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