Introduction

Hi there!

Welcome to "Dear Jack."

I have an amazing collection of postcards that my great-grandparents, Jack and Nellie (Steele) McCurrach started in 1909.  From buildings to mountains, shorelines to the Scottish highlands, the postcards illustrate the views that my great-grandparents and their friends and family had in the first decades of the 20th century.  The notes written on the back range from the trench-side appreciation for a box of candy, to a birthday greeting for a baby girl.  Covering primarily North-East Scotland and British Columbia, the collection illustrates the early part of Jack and Nellie McCurrach's relationship - courtship, emigration, their first child, and war.






The postcards are like the warp threads strung on a loom, and the research I've done along with them is the weft.  Together they create a tapestry of intertwined lives and countries.







Please join me on this journey of discovering people, place and past.


Start off with the first post here!


The People
I understand that the names and such can be confusing.  Here's a hard to understand primer:  Jack McCurrach and Nellie Steele were my great-grandparents who married in Vancouver in 1912.  John and Susanna McCurrach were Jack's parents.  Alexander (Alex), William (Bill), Belle, and Ann were Jack's brothers and sister.

Nellie's mother and father were Alexander Milne Steele and Helen (McKenzie) Steele.  Nellie's siblings were Alexander, Elizabeth, James, Robert, William (her twin), Archie and George.  Gladys, Jim and Peggy were Jack and Nellie's children.  Gladys was my grandmother.  I'm Sandi (Sauer) Ratch.

Dick, who is mentioned a lot, is a friend of Jack and Nellie's and the son of a friend of Susanna and John McCurrach.

(when I have the time and inclination, I will post a family tree to try and make it a tad easier to understand)