It was almost like loosing a family member, although I don't want to try that one ...

Well, a Hewlett Family History wouldn't be complete without a mention of our favorite car, that we had to part with this year, and we would have never parted with it ... it died! For the winter the kids said we were a typical Mexican-American family or a Mexican-Mexican family (that sounds like a slur, but we can claim a little of Annie's heritage.) We had a car parked on our front yard ... who does that in Bountiful, but again, I, or we weren't ready to part with the mobile. It WAS a part of our life and almost like a journal in itself. We went everywhere with everyone in our Landcruiser. Sometimes on a Moab Jeep Safari we had water up to the center of the doors and had to rebuild roads so we could go up or down. The cruiser explored the Canadian prairies and Rockies, went from Utah, through, Montana, South and North Dakota and back again. The cruiser made numerous trips to the ranch and to the beach, and every one of our children learned to drive a stick shift in the cruiser. In the winter, we pulled tubes, made "donuts" in the snow in the church parking lot and rescued many stuck cars. You could pull anything out of anywhere with the cruiser. I was 8+ months pregnant with Ashlyn when Steve and I went for a drive in the high Unitahs. In retrospect it was not our smartest decision. Bump, bump, bump, along paved and dirt roads and even some trails. Ashlyn came not long after. My placenta had torn away from the side of the uterus and I hemorrhaged and Ashlyn had swallowed some fluid. They had to rush her to the NICU to suck out her lungs. There is some significance to the fact that she was the last cruiser driver.

The cruiser was never the same after Anthony, left it out of gear and it slide back into the rock columns of the Bountiful Cemetary. It was never the same after the oil plug dislodged, the engine seized and Dad didn't tell anyone about it and never got it fixed. It was never the same after the auto shop classes at Woods Cross High School rebuilt the engine. If only I had had time and the talents to lovingly restore it myself!

As a cruiser owner, I felt like I belonged to a special community. People would wave or give a thumbs up, just because we both were driving Cruisers. There is a Cruiser club and a shop on the west side of Salt Lake that only fixes Land Cruisers. I still see every Landcruiser that passes by. I notice it's dings or rust and mourn at the absences of both. We celebrated every major mileage change. I am weepy as I write this .... I feel like a part of me is lost! In fact, as I write this I want to go and find it.

We bought the car about a year before we moved from Salt Lake City to Bountiful. Steve just came home with it one day. It cost us $16,000, which was soooooooooooooooo much. Even now that seems like a lot. But it was the beginning of a love affair. Maybe that is why our children are unmarried ... they have already had one love! It is hard to get over a first love ............... We left on our first major trip to Expo 86 just as we were closing the doors on our little house in Sugarhouse. I cried then too, as I cleaned the floors in Stephanie and Brett's "peach" bedroom on Ramona Avenue. THE CRUISER TOOK US THEN TO VANCOUVER with Grandma Hewlett and Todd unbelted in the back. What were we thinking! The car was too small for us when we bought it, but as you know, love is blind.

I was driving in Salt Lake City a few weeks ago, and as I drove past a garage I noticed a land cruiser in one of the bays. It had the same rusts and same dents as our car. I was on the phone with Anthony at the time and I "screamed," quietly, hung up the phone, made a "U" turn, investigated and took pictures. It had different seats, it had different carpet in the back, but the signage that Ashlyn had taken off was off on this model. It also had a temporary license on it .... it felt like OUR landcruiser, and I am sure, if it was, the car, must have missed the laughter, music, jokes and Hewlett family personalities.

We did have one glitch on that first trip. We were ascending a large hill in Washington and the car began to overheat. And when we got to the first town we had to have the temperature gauge replaced.

Well, let's see, we went to California and the beach MANY, MANY times, even in December, when we were only going to St. George; to Canada MANY times, to Durango, to Denver (me for a friend's funeral), to Yellowstone, Montana, to the ranch, to the ranch, to the ranch, ranch, ranch, to Moab and many, many semi-dangerous trails. I know it has cruised the Boulevard more times than I even want to acknowledge. So many good times! I even gave birth to Ashlyn shortly after having Steve take me on an "off-normal" road ride in the Unitahs. It wasn't probably the smartest of ideas ... I hemorraged later, as the placenta had ripped away from the uterine wall and Ashlyn had to be rushed to the NICU unit as she had swallowed (maybe that isn't right) blood and was not breathing. Maybe her middle name should have been Toyota or Cruiser ... although Isabella seems so perfect now.

Stephanie took the cruiser to BYU for a short time, in between cars. Our last three kids used the cruiser as school transportation and Ashlyn's last year as a student at Bountiful High was given, by the administration, a "Keys to Success" card so that she would have a chance of winning a new car at the end of the year. We felt it should have been bronzed and left in the parking lot. By then everyone in Bountiful, or at least our family's friends, knew the car and often when I was driving it I would get honks and waves, because they thought the "youngins" were at the wheel.

The automotive classes at the school where I work have tried to fix it a couple of times, and I am not sure if that was a good idea. Some of the students even tell me it wasn't, and it wasn't cheap. They redid the engine and it has overheated ever since. The last time it only worked for part of a maiden voyage north on I-15, and then something exploded inside ... It's heart broke and so did mine. I know the boys and they tried .............!

Well, the Cruiser is gone now and we still think about it everytime we see a restored Landcruiser or one that is in good condition. One was parked outside Kneaders in Provo a few weeks ago. Ashlyn and I had gone for lunch and looked for a long time when we left. No car will replace the cruiser! It truly was a member of the family. We saved a bench seat and the front grill and Ashlyn saved a nameplate.They will become part of our family room landscape. It just seems appropriate! A memorial to the Cruiser.

We Are Scotland ...

I don't usually use these pages for music, but I don't want to ever forget these songs. I love Scottish music or music with images of Scotland. Maybe soon! Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o74NLHSx1cs


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOO5qRjVFLw&app=desktop

Here is another one for my Irish ancestors.  So many great renditions of this ....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfRielL3Q94

Margaret Rennie ... my 3rd Great Grandmother ... 6 - 35+ YEARS LATER

After at least six years of intently, purposefully looking, reading, online, microfilms and books and trip after trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and to archives and libraries in Canada, I have finally documented the wife of John Rennie (Rainnie/Rainie), an 1834 immigrant from probably Aberdeen, Scotland to Guelph Township, Ontario, Canada, and my 3rd Great Grandfather. For more information see my entry 7/30/13/.

I have looked everywhere! Did I say for SIX (6) + years, and in actuality much longer than that. I would get tired of the search and move on and then come back, because I don't give up and I had to prove her existence and their relationship, and because I was spiritually prodded.

I have documented her descendants in at least 4 Canadian provinces and at least 2 states. When I would go and take care of my mother while she was a patient in the care center in Winnipeg, Manitoba, I would visit the United Church archives in Canada and even made a short trip and numerous calls to Portage La Prairie, to search for descendants who lived there, eventually finding houses and headstones.

The 1906 Historical Atlas of Wellington County, states "RENNIE, JOHN was born Aberdeenshire, Scot. He m. Margaret Raeburn, and came to Canada in 1834. Issue: John (d.), Guelph; Mrs. George Lillie; James (d) Mildmoy; Alexander (d.), Nichol and William.
This historical atlas isn't always accurate, but everything I found for the rest of the family matched the information in the atlas. It all sounded right, but I couldn't find her.
The very early agricultural census of Wellington County pairs John Rennie with his son-in-law George Lillie, but no mention of his wife. They are listed above and below each other on adjoining lots. Today while researching the family of James Rennie and Elizabeth Esson Rennie in the 1861 census of Guelph Township I found Margaret, James' mother and wife of John.


"Margaret, 88 years old, born in Scotland, widow. James, his wife, eight children, and his mother living in a frame one storey house."


In 1861 this would be the house and property across the street from , "Fairview," the George and Jane Rennie Lillie property. Just two years later James and Elizabeth would sell the property to the Blyth family, whose descendants still live on the land and who hold the original deeds that state the land was sold to them by James and Elizabeth Esson Rennie.
This may be the only document that associates her with her family and gives an approximate year of birth and place.

It has been a long six "something" years, more like thirty-five+ years. I am very happy! I will actually sleep better tonight. That sounds dramatic, but I have lost sleep over the years and it came to me, when I really wasn't even looking ... Now where, specifically was she born and married and who were she and John's parents?



1861 Census Guelph Township, Wellington County, Ontario (snip of above picture)

 

So it is now six years since the initial post of Margaret Rennie and I have a very, very  important update. I would say it is a miracle! I was reading some Scottish newspapers and I am not sure how I found an death entry in a Scottish newspaper for Margaret Rennie but I did or it just showed up. From the British Newspaper Archives  

"At Irvineside, Nichol, on the 1st let, Margaret Raeburn relict of the late John Rennie, of Guelph Township, Canada West, aged 93 years. Deceased if a native of Boyndie, Banffshire, Scotland." 

Another generation, a place of nativity. I have never seen this before.