The Cowkeeper's Wish

The Cowkeeper's Wish Description

In the1840s, a young cowkeeper and his wife arrive in London, England, having walked from coastal Wales with their cattle. They hope to escape poverty, but instead they plunge deeper into it, and the family, ensconced in one of London's black holes, remains mired there for generations.The Cowkeeper's Wishfollows the couple's descendants in and out of slum housing, bleak workhouses and insane asylums, through tragic deaths, marital strife and war. Nearly a hundred years later, their great-granddaughter finds herself in an altogether different London, in southernOntario.

InThe Cowkeeper's Wish, Kristen den Hartog and Tracy Kasaboski trace their ancestors' path to Canada, using a single family's saga to give meaningful context to a fascinating period in historyVictorian and then Edwardian England, the First World War and the Depression. Beginning with little more than enthusiasm, a collection of yellowed photographs and a family tree, the sisters scoured archives and old newspapers, tracked down streets, pubs and factories that no longer exist, and searched out secrets buried in crumbling ledgers, building on the fragments that remained of familytales.

While this family story is distinct, it is also typical, and so all the more worth telling. As a working-class chronicle stitched into history,The Cowkeeper's Wishoffers a vibrant, absorbing look at the past that will captivate genealogy enthusiasts and readers of historyalike.