Sources: Where I began

Why did I ever think my great-great grandfather and great grandfather were in the crimping business in the first place? For the simple reason that I found a historian who said they were.

My father used to check the phone book every time he went on a business trip to see if there were any people who might be related to us there. I Google my relatives' names for the same reason. I often come up with something but rarely do I hit a vein as rich as I did with Denis Costigan.

I hit an academic article entitled, "Masters and Friends, Crimps and Abstainers:
Agents of Control in 19th Century Sailortown" by Judith Fingard. As of today it's still available online. I strongly recommend the article for anyone trying to get a sense of what life was like in Saint John's sailortown.

And what does it say of my great-grandfather? Very little but the one thing it does say is very important.

The dissolution of the sailors' homes did not, for example, represent a victory for the boarding house keepers; by the turn of the twentieth century they too were disappearing from sailortown or turning their houses into working class tenements. With the decline of the sailing vessel, most seamen became visitors rather than short-term residents and sailortown, as their predecessors had known it, ceased to exist.

Backing that claim up, is a footnote and, for anyone doing family history of the Costigan and Warner families of Saint John New Brunswick, it's a real game changer.

By 1901-2, the boarding houses of three of the leading keepers of the 1880s had been turned into housing for themselves and various families of onshore workers. See the listing by streets for John Abbott and John Bartlett of Brittain street and Dennis Costigan of Pont street, Saint John City Directory, 1901-2.

There will be a lot to specify here. For now, suffice to say that we have a serious historian who has not just linked Denis Costigan with the crimping trade, she's identified him as a leading figure in that shady business.

It's not a surprise to me that my ancestors were sometimes on the wrong side of the law. My mother was always ashamed of them. In addition, my browsing through microfilm of old Saint John newspapers finds more mentions of family members related to various legal difficulties than you would expect to find for law-abiding types. This, however, is something of another degree.

As I've said before, I find this all very romantic. It's like finding your descended from pirates.

Sources: First man at the fire

Cities used to burn down. The most famous example of this is the Great Chicago Fire but it is far from alone. The Saint John fire of June 1877 was big enough to merit a Wikipedia entry.

A number of books were written about the fire or mention it and at least one, The Story of Firefighting in Canada by Donal M. Baird says that my great-grandfather Denis Costigan was the first witness to the fire.

It was on Wednesday, June 20, 1877, a day that had dawned cloudless and with a promise of more of the exceptional heat that the city had basked in for 6 solid weeks. Not a drop of rain had fallen for a month and temperatures had been 75 to 80 degrees for some days. A gusty wind blew up clouds of dust from the streets as the day progressed. It was very unlike Saint John, its weather normally variegated, with moderate temperatures, cool rain and fogs interspersed with clear days, always affected by the conjunction of warm land air with the cold waters of the Bay of Fundy. The unusual dryness had evidently resulted in some fires in the woods to the north and west, and smoke from them was plain to be seen, delaying the realization by many that a major fire was burning in the city, even after the fire alarms sounded.  

Getting a start on a long buggy trip early in the morning was Thomas Marter, the aging Fire Chief, accompanied by a member of the city fire committee – they were heading upriver to buy several new horses for the fire department. They would not be back until after 6 p.m. As the day got underway, industry came to life with the sound of the caulking hammers from the shipyards in Portland and the whine of the big sawmill of Kirk and Daniel at the very head of the harbor on the west side of the North Slip, where the head of Long Wharf is now.  

In the early afternoon about 2:30, a young coalheaver, Dennis Costigan, looked up from his work and caught a glimpse of a small flame on the roof of Henry Fairweather’s storage shed on the opposite wharf. He told his fellow workers and ran around to the other side of the slip. "The flame was about a foot and a half in width on the roof", he said, "I ran down the alley and got on the roof. I tore up a board and tried to make a hole in the roof to put the fire out. Just then I heard the York Point fire bell ringing. I think I was on the roof for about a quarter of an hour. I stayed until the hose came. I did not get the fire out. It ran up the roof and I got down. The hosecart came and they put the hose inside the barn." 

This is from notes I took once upon a time. Unfortunately, I don't know where I found it. I didn't read the actual book so I must have seen it online. Perhaps at this link.

A couple of things of note. There were not many Costigans in Saint John, fewer than thirty and there was only one Denis Costigan (spellings of Denis, Dennis and Dennie vary in documents of the period). He would have been 32 in 1877. That is not young and certainly was not by 1877 standards. I have no record of him being a coalheaver but his actual profession is a complicated story I will get to later. For now, suffice to say that he declared a number of different jobs over the years so coalheaver is plausible.

Not mentioned in this story is the fact that Dennis Costigan was a member of the fire department. Another book, History of the Great Fire in Saint John, June 20 and 21, 1877 (p. 353) by Russell Herman Conwell tells us that Costigan was one of twelve members of Hose Company 3. Why would Costigan head off to fight the fire alone instead of joining his company? What did he think he was going to do up on that roof with nothing but his bare hands?

Name change

I've changed the name of the blog. The "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion" name has been applied to my other blog. This blog now has a name that matches it's URL.

In the future, I will use this blog solely for family history posts, which was it's original purpose. It has a very limited readership, getting only 2-5 page fews per day as opposed to several hundred for my other blog.

Why "A Crimp's Diary" because my great grandfather Denis (Dennie) Costigan and my great-great grandfather James Costigan were crimps.

This is a sensitive issue with some of my relatives. That is not surprising but I think it's far enough in the past that we can get over it now. Besides, it's very romantic and I like romance.

I will move all posts not related to family history over to the other blog and then delete them over the next few days. I may also change the design of this blog.