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Here is a photo of Jennifer that Kathy took around 1975-6 at the Rosewood House in Salem, Oregon. Jennifer must have been on leave.  She was a Journalist Photographer in the Army.

Photo: submitted by Kathy Kellar, July 2010

I’ve been searching for the life and times of Effie R MacLean-Bigger.  MacLean is probably her 1st married name since she had a son b. 1929 by the name of Robert J MacLean and they were living in Portland during 1930. Effie’s husband’s name is unknown at this time.

Our search began with the Seattle Passenger and Crew List 1882-1957.  It had valuable  information: I discovered that Effie MacLean was a passenger aboard the Metagam Passenger Liner that was traveling Transatlantic from Europe to North America.

Effie’s  “Alien Certificate”  was a wealth of data – she was  18 yrs old,  5′ 2″ and 120 lbs, emigrated from Scotland  on Apr 1924, Port of Arrival was Quebec on June 1924 and a then a later port-of-call on Sept 5, 1924, was at Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

After months of travel, Effie finally entered into the United States through Blaine, Washington on Sept 7 1924.  This was such a break through in tracing the life of Effie MacLean!

Kathy and I began searching online about the history of the Metagama liner.  The word Quebec was hard to read on the “Alien Certificate” and everyone who looked at it couldn’t figured out exactly was was printed there.

Both Dondi and Becky said it looked like “Quebec”, and while I agreed, I said it couldn’t be because she landed at Vancouver, BC.   So Kathy started focusing  on ports that might solve this mystery.  During her searching, she discovered some clues that would began to unravel the Metagama and her ports-of-call.

On a previous voyage, The Metagama had left Scotland from Scotland’s West Islands, Lewis Isle specially, where the port-of-call was from  the town of Stornaway.  There were 3-4 small boroughs listed with MacLean passengers who boarded there.  This voyage was too early for Effie’s journey, but still a promising coincidence.

More sleuthing enabled us to discovered that the Metagama was involved in a ship wreck near Cape Race, New Foundland, Canada in June 1924.  Effie had boarded the Metagama in April 1924, so would have been a passenger on that same journey!

The Italian steamer, Camus, was bound for Halifax, France to deliver some wheat.  Due to very foggy conditions they rammed into the side of the Metagama passenger liner.  This produced a 15 foot gash and the  liner began taking on water.  Both ships were hauled to shore and the passengers disembarked and re-boarded on the Montreal Steamer.  The immigrants now were finishing up their journey cross the pond to the New World.  They set sailed up the S.t Lawrence River to the Port of Quebec.  Yes, The Port of Quebec !

We discovered that the Port of Quebec is the equivalent to our Ellis Island in the United States.  All passengers would arrive first to Grosse Ilse and then would be quarantined.  We can find no records that indicate that Effie was detained in their hospitals during her arrival of  June (20?) 1924.

By Sept 5, Effie MacLean has arrived in the Port of Vancouver, BC, Canada.  This was probably a Land Port.  I’ve been reading about Canada Railroad Transportation, and it was common to have immigrants from Grosse Isle take the rails to the west coast if they were entering the United States through the Dakotas, Montana or Washington State.  At this time I do not have more information on her potential travels across Canada to reach Vancouver, BC, Canada.  However, information I’ve read indicates I probably won’t either. Canada usually only listed the actual ports-of-call, not the train connections for the immigration records.

This was a very exciting break through for us!

Afterward we headed out to the burial site of Effie and Floyd Bigger and their daughter, Katherine.  Once again luck was on our side.  Even though the Cemetery office was closed – Dondi’s unbelievable  Irish luck,  found the tombstone in a sea of many graves.

This was a perfect end of a perfect day,

~Kal

Vicki and her little kitty. – 9/2009

Here is a pic I snagged off of Will’s Facebook (6/2010) .  Looks like he and his friends are having a great time at the beach.  He is standing 2nd one in from the right.

Photo taken in Gresham 6/2010

Daniel LaVallee, Matthew H., Dondi LaVallee, and Brian Kellar about to head down to the Clackamas River to go fishin’.

Cousin Kristen and Jeff flew over to Hawaii to celebrate their wedding with family this June 2010.  Here is one of the pics she posted on Facebook.  Not sure who Joycie and Pike Peters are on the left of the photo, but the bride and groom are on the right.