Invariably, when I look for information on Emma's mother, Sophie, I come back to Daddy telling me that we are related to the late Chief Dan George.  My cousin Marv Houston, a grandson of Bill and Rosalie, has even said he had heard the same story about Dan, suggesting that his late father's "little black book" of handwritten family history probably has something about it in there.  My job there is finding his sister Rita, who is the current Keeper of the Book.

I'm learning about Dan.  In his biography, You Call Me Chief, there is much info that points to George connections with Burnaby, which is the next door neighbour of New Westminster, which was where Emma and her first husband married in 1878.

Emma, Bill, and their older brother Fred, were born in Moodyville, which is now part of North Vancouver BC, and if you haul out a map of the area you'll see that North Van, Burnaby, and New West are all real close to each other, separated by Burrard Inlet and the Fraser River.  Dan George's people, the Tsleil Watuth are also known as The Burrard Band.

Emma was living on "Burrards Inlet" in 1878 -- it says so right on her certificate of marriage.  She was 15.  I'm guessing she was living with Mom.  'Course, now the family story goes that Emma and Simon eloped on horseback.  If you look at their certificate of marriage, you'll see it wasn't registered until April 29 1878.

Another thing I've heard is that, back then, a Native woman lost her status if she married a non-Native man -- or more precisely -- she became a member of her husband's band.  A Scottish woman who married a Native man became Native as were all the children she had with him.  A Native woman who married a Scot became Scottish as were all the children she with him.  At least this is how it was explained to me by Mom, who had talked at length with Daddy about it (but, unfortunately, never in front of us kids).

This may explain why I'm having trouble finding information on Sophie, but going on the documents I've found so far, my choices for a connection with this George family are Daddy's two paternal grandmothers, Sophie and Isabelle/Elizabeth.  I lean heavily towards Sophie.

Sophie was from the "right" place, Burrard Inlet.  I look to Dan's family because I can't think of one reason on earth why my father would make up a story like that, especially when he had worked so hard to keep our Native heritage a secret from us.

I finally got a copy of the certificate where Sophie's surname was "not clearly written" and that surname is most definitely either GIORDAN or GEORDAN.  That should have been that, but there's still a few odd things.

Odd things like when my cousin Bridgie told me that back when Aunt Toots AND Dan George were still alive, Aunt Toots she heard a knock on her Tacoma Washington front door (on M Street), and upon answering the door, found Dan standing right there on her front porch.  She asked him in and they had, and I quote Bridgie, "a real nice visit."  Because I didn't hear about this until after both parties had departed this physical plane, the most important question was and still is, "Who was Sophie Giordan?"

As far as Aunt Toots' genealogy research goes, Uncle Ralph (Caillier) and cousins Patty and Sue have looked for her work but all that surfaced was a red foil covered box, measuring 7.5 inches by 11 inches, full of old family pictures, about half of which were just pictures, no names or dates.  The older pictures on this web site are from that red box.

So, for now, "Sophie Giordan" is the name of my great great grandmother.  In this, at least, I know I'm right; "Sophia A Native Woman" is the mother of the bride on daughter Emma's certificate of marriage.  And Sophie Geordan is the name of the mother on my great grand Uncle Fred's certificate of death.  I'm guessing that Sophie was born sometime between 1844 and 1847, somewhere on Burrard Inlet.  As for her Nation of origin, I think I can also safely say she was of the Coast Salish peoples.  So, until I can find evidence to the contrary, I choose to believe my father's stories about Dan; why would Daddy lie?  And why, when strokes had stolen his speech from him, did he cry when I asked him if he'd known more about Sophie than he had told me?

Back in October of 1995, I was introduced to an artist who said she was related -- by marriage -- to the late Chief Dan George.  After making three brief phone calls, she told me that Sophie was sister or cousin to Dan's father, and that, in the Old Language, one did not differentiate between "sibling" and "cousin", so getting any more definite information would be next to impossible -- it depended entirely upon what was remembered by living relatives.

Another source suggested that "cousin" is a word some First Nations folk use to refer to people of European ancestry and/or Americans, so I will simply say that Sophie was one of Dan's aunts.

And I've been corresponding with one of Dan's grand nephews, and thus far no one in the family recognizes either the name Sophie or the name Houston.

Almost all of this is guess work made with the few crumbs of documentation I have found.

IF the late Dan George had an aunt who was given the name Sophia . . .

IF that Sophia had three children by Scottish blacksmith Alfred John Houston . . .

Then my great great grandmother Sophie was probably of the Tsleil Watuth people (or the Burrard Band) of British Columbia's lower mainland.

Should any of my great great grandmother Sophie's relatives find themselves here, please, introduce yourself.  There is so very much I do not know and wish to learn so my brother's daughter and the children of my cousins can know who they are.  

Contrary to those family stories, Alfred John Houston did NOT come West with Peter Bartleman. 

Peter Bartleman came to Victoria, British Columbia, on the Norman Morison out of London, England, as a Hudson Bay employee.  The ship's passenger list shows no Houston of any kind -- though it does show that Peter brought his first wife with him.  The wilds of the Columbia District was not to her liking: some stories say she was on the Norman Morison when she made her return trip to London, some stories say she stayed but for whatever reasons, she "went a little crazy".

Anyway, back to Alfred.

At sometime after the birth of William, his youngest child, Alfred "returned to Scotland", or so say the family stories, leaving Sophie behind to raise their three children alone.  I've been told this was the fashionable thing to do then.

Back in the 1800s, companies like the Hudson Bay Company would encourage their employees to take a wife from among the Native people, regardless of the employee's marital status.  It was good for trade and made for convivial relations with the Natives.  The best case scenario was for the head trader to "wed" the daughter of the local tribe's Headman, but, out here on the West Coast anyway, even a wife from the middle class could gain a lower ranking trader important connections amongst his new in-laws.  To differentiate between the two wives, the Native woman was the "country wife".

When the man was done with the job he went there to do, he left, leaving behind the country wife and any children they may have had, often without a second thought; early in the fur trade, retiring employees were strongly discouraged from settling in the area they'd been working. 

Not all retiring traders left behind their country wives and families, a few took them with them, some took them to start fresh lives in a new place, but many "made provisions" for the welfare of their country wives and any children -- sometimes by "turning them over" to another trader. 

Not a real nice way to treat a human being, but <shrug> if none it had happened, I wouldn't be here.

Looking at the family story about Alfred and Sophie, I think Sophie may have been a country wife.

Perhaps, as with Peter and Fanny Bartleman, maybe Alfred was a mean drunk and Sophie took her three children and left him to his drink.

I don't know what brought Alfred John Houston to what is now British Columbia.  He was NOT a Hudson Bay employee, nor did he work for the Northwest Company; HBC had no Houston employees on the West Coast.

I don't know when he arrived in what was then called the Columbia District.  That he left "sometime after" 1866, isn't much help either.

So I've found only three apparent records of his existence.

One is an entry in the British Columbia Genealogy Society's publication Pioneer in British Columbia.  There he is listed as Alfred Houston, a registered voter living in Moodyville in 1866.  Below his listing is one for his youngest son, William Houston, and, below that, a listing for William's wife, Rosalie Christina Bartleman.

The second is his daughter Emma's marriage certificate, where he is listed as "Fred Huston".

The third is a photocopy of a newspaper article that a  cousin sent because she was just certain that the Fred Houston mentioned was our  Alfred John Houston.  It appeared originally in some Greater Vancouver newspaper on August 25, 1945, and reads: