Welcome to

Albert County Gen Web

“Our Ancestors of Albert County”

New Brunswick, Canada

As the new Host to Albert County GenWeb & the owner of Our Ancestors of AlbertCounty, I have merged the two sites together as one, in the hope of a new beginning for the next generations. I also hope you will find helpful links and other information as you research your ancestors.

Also and foremost I would like to take this opportunity to thank Bob Sweet, and Mike and Donna Harvey for all their hard work in developing Albert County GenWeb, as well as Scott Kletke who was the previous host, and all others that lent a helping hand in the past. 

On this page I hope to provide information about “Who” I am and what inspired me to help others with their research. The following thoughts from an unknown author are most appropriate.  It’s titled “We are the Chosen”

Most families know a great deal about their ancestors; others know very little. This site is an attempt to record what I have learned about the history of Albert County families. In these modern times, families are scattered across the country, if not the world. One of my goals for this web site is to assist descendants to remain connected, even though they live miles apart.

My name is Sheila (Geldart) Hannah. I was born and raised in Oshawa, Ontario. My parents and their ancestors were born and raised in Albert County, NB since early 1800’s. I have been working on and off for many years in genealogy, and love all the time I have spent doing so. And now I would like to take this opportunity to take what I have learned and still learning, to help others in their research of their ancestors in Albert County.

A dear friend had told me once, that I can do anything when I put my mind to it, so I hope he is right. As he helped me in so many ways in my research and now I will need your help to make this site what will be a new beginning in our family ties, and together we can make it grow to help all genealogists in finding helpful links and history of their ancestors.  I’m looking forward to meeting and helping others in genealogy. I also hope that this site can become a real AlbertCounty community resource as well.

Most of this information was obtained from Albert County GenWeb, talking to living relatives and from researching public records. In the course of doing this research, I discovered that I have more relatives than ever thought possible!

This is a work in progress, so please contact me if you have any information that pertains to Albert County NB that might help in our research of Our Ancestors.

We are the Chosen

In each family there is one that seems called to find the ancestors. To put flesh on their bones and make them live again; to tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve.

Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the story tellers of the tribe. All tribes have one. We have been called, as it were, by our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us: “Tell our story”. So, we do. In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before now and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told the ancestors, “You have a wonderful family: you would be proud of us.”  How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say.

It goes beyond just documenting fact. It goes to who am I and why do I do the things I do. It goes seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference and saying I can’t let this happen. The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh. It goes to doing something about it. It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family.

It goes to keep pride that the fathers fought and some died to make and keep us a Nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us.

It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth, without them we could not exist, and so we love each one, as far back as we can reach. That we might remember them. So we do.

With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are they and they are the sum of who we are. So, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place I the long lone of family storytellers.

That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore the memory or greet those whom we had never known before.