Researching Family History

I recently signed up for one free month of Ancestry.com, in order to research our family history and to see if there might be a huge inheritance out there waiting for us.  Using the Ancestry.com website, I was surprised to find that so many ancestors on both sides of the family came from Canada.  Of course, I already knew that my Great Grandfather Charles St. Pierre (my mother's grandfather, seen in the photo on the right) was from St. Eustache, Quebec (near Montreal), where the family farm was located.  He and his family, including his wife and five children, (including my Grandmother Louise) would drive to Chicago during the winter where he would work as a carpenter, and they would go back to the farm in the summer.  "Pa," as he was known, eventually sold his share of the farm to his brother Dolph, and the family settled permanently in Chicago after that.  His son Eddie, a housepainter, died young, and one sister, Allie, stayed in Montreal, while my Great Aunt's Babe and Irene, as well as my Grandmother Louise, remained in Chicago.  But when I tried to delve into the Canadian records to find out more (like whether we stand to inherit that farm now worth a fortune), the Ancestry.com web site said I had to buy their international package, at a cost of something like $160.  What a ripoff.

In any case, Pa lived in the basement of my Great Aunt Babe's house at 85th and May on the south side of Chicago until he passed away at the age of 99.  He was born in 1853, and although I never knew him, my sister Susan did, and told me he gave her nickels whenever she visited.  I tried to find the house when I went back to Chicago a few years ago, but could not identify it.  It wasn't until I found Pa's application for US citizenship online (which contained a very weird clause that demanded that Pa never pledge loyalty to George VI), that I learned the actual address.  Sadly, via the internet, I found out that the house is a wreck, which I am glad my cousin Shirley never learned.  She was the last relative on my mother's side that I still talked with, and grew up in that house with my Aunt Babe, her father Byron, sister Betty, and her brother "Little" Byron, who weighed at least 250 pounds most of his life.  Shirley got married to Jack London at that house in the early 1950s, and before she passed away Shirley told me to look for her after her death on the steps of that house at 85th and May, as seen in the photo of her and her father Byron on her wedding day.  I still intend to go back there one of these days to see if she really is sitting there, and also will continue the search for my rightful inheritance, once I find out how to access Canadian records without paying that $160 Ancestry.com ransom.