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Subject: [Bos-St] Omar Pasha and your family's history
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 10:46:30 -0500

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An interesting tale unfolded for me a few years ago and I thought
I'd share it. With Christmas and family gatherings looming large,
it is timely.

The trail began to unfold for me in a small cemetery about 100 yards
from the shores of the Bay of Fundy when I found a gravestone for
Omar Pasha Brown. "What an unusual name," I thought. "I wonder
where it came from?"

Omar Pasha Brown (1855/6-1915) was a deep sea captain who hailed
from St. Martins, N.B. In the late 1870s and 1880s, he sailed for a
trading firm in Saint John, "Francis Tufts & Co." (no relation to
self). Correspondence between the two men shows that Omar, not
unlike many other St. Martins men, sailed many times to England
and the continent and also down the Atlantic seaboard as far as
New Orleans and he was familiar with ports in South America.

It turns out that Omar was named for a man from the Balkans. Omar
Pasha was a pedlar who travelled from village to village selling
cloth, needles and spools of thread. All reports are that he was a
kindly man and well received wherever he went. Omar, himself, was
named for a Turkish ruler in the Balkans a millenium ago. Whenever
he came to St. Martins, a bed was waiting for him to spend the night
before he continued on his meek trek through the social
historical landscape.

The Vaughan family in Nova Scotia falls under the scope of this story,
too. Daniel Vaughan left the province in 1796 to settle in St.
Martins. Daniel was one of 13 children and a nephew of his settled in
the Eastern Townships of Quebec about 1800. One of the guests who
stayed periodically with the family was a travelling pedlar named
Omar Pasha. Was he the same man?

In the 1970s, a lady in Ottawa visited an aging man, Wilson Stinson,
from just south of the present city on the River Road in Gloucester.
Born in the 1880s, Wilson grew up on the banks of the Rideau River
and then, about 1903, went to what is now Thunder Bay, Ontario. The
woman not only interviewed Wilson, but taped the interview. During
the first hour, she got him to talk about his neighbours. Who were
they, who did they marry, who were their children and where did
they go? That hour on tape is a tremendous source of genealogical
information. Wilson also spoke of events of the times, so a
historical record was made at the same time.

The second hour of the tape was devoted to the very early days of
Fort William, Ontario (now half of Thunder Bay) in the 20th century.
As a young man, Wilson went there to find a job and he spoke of the
granaries and unions and he spoke about going up this terrible road to
get to his primitive summer cottage/camp. From his description, I
think it possible you will find it on your map today with the
name of "Trans-Canada Highway" attached to it.

But Wilson also spoke of a kindly pedlar who used to come by every
few months to sell spools of thread to his mother and for $2.00, or a
swath of pretty material, he stayed overnight and had breakfast in the
morning.

I have no idea if this was all the same man, or whether rural Canada
was inundated with Omar Pashas, but the tape Wilson made got me to
thinking how we are losing our history. If great-aunt Mildred or uncle
Jake comes to visit you over the holiday season, get him/her to talk
about the family and the community they grew up in and for heaven's
sake, get it on tape. It's priceless. Otherwise, there's Mastercard.

Merry Christmas to all,

Bill

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