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Annie MacKay (1876-1944) married Thomas Wilson Creelman (1879-1933) in 1915. Annie was the eldest daughter of Roderick MacKay (1849-1936) and Margaret (Maggie) Gray Murray (1852-1942) of Pictou County. The MacKays settled in Pictou County and called their homestead "Dunrobin." They had nine children: Annie (Feb. 20, 1876- September 24, 1944), Alexander (Nov. 24, 1877 – 1899), Murdoch Arthur (June 1881-Dec. 1971), Isabella Bertha (Nov. 25, 1883-Dec17, 1963), Katherine Mary (June 22, 1891-January 1963), Ina Ethel (February 3, 1894-June 4, 1986), Allister Murray (August 1900-February 12, 1922), Murdoch David (1880), Angus Herdman (1888). Alexander MacKay drowned while attending Dalhousie. Allister died of tuburculosis. Murdoch David and Angus died in infancy.

Annie MacKay and Thomas Creelman met in Halifax, where Thomas worked for The Imperial Oil Company, as an accountant and Annie worked as a part-time teacher. They married in 1915 and moved to Ontario where Thomas was transferred. He was employed with The Imperial Oil Company until he passed away in 1933. While he was employed with the oil company he was transferred to various places. He was in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto and Sarnia, Ontario, Winnipeg, Manitoba and he spent 5 years in South America. Annie and Thomas had one son, William MacKay Creelman.

William MacKay (Mack) Creelman, (1918-1985) was born in Sarnia, Ontario. After his Father died in 1933 he moved with his mother to Halifax. He completed his high school at the Halifax Academy in 1936 and came to Dalhousie to study math and physics. He received his BSc and 1940 and his MSc in 1942. We was a member of the Engineering Institute of Canada. After graduating from Dalhousie University in 1942 with a M.Sc. in Physics, Mack Creelman joined the Halifax Naval Group of the National Research Council which became the Naval Research Establishment (NRE) in the spring of 1943. He also joined the Navy. He continued with NRE until 1945 when he was appointed to the staff of the Commodore Superintendent HMC Dockyard as Supervising Inspector, Electrical Anti-Mining (Maritimes) responsible for all electrical mine countermeasures in the Atlantic Command. He retired from the Navy as a Lieutenant (L) RCN (R) in the fall of 1946 and joined the staff of the Manager, Electrical Engineering HMC Dockyard with the same duties as a naval officer.

Through his work at the Naval Research Establishment in Halifax, Mack met his wife H.G. (Nancy) Littlejohns (1923-1963). They married in June 1954, they had three children, June, David and William. Nancy passed away with cancer in July 1963.

In 1955, Creelman transferred to Naval Headquarters to head the degaussing section of the Electrical Engineer-in-Chief in Ottawa. Four years later, he was named head of the Passive Protection Section, Director Maritime Facilities and Resources at NDHQ. He retired in 1983 after 40 years’ service.

Please see also “Memoirs of WMC” MS-2-775, Box 8, Folder 13.

The O’Brien family were Nova Scotia mariners, beginning with Captain John O’Brien (b. 1789) and Mary Margaret Thomas (b. 1791), who had four children: Joseph (1813-1882); William Harrison (b. 1822); John Russell; and Hannah (d. 184-).

William and John sailed with their father before establishing families of their own. William settled in England, marrying a widow with one daughter; they had another daughter together. Poor health forced him to leave the sea and become a shoemaker. John Russell settled in Boston, Massachusetts, where he married Mary Caroline and had five children, two of whom died in infancy.

Joseph O’Brien became a master mariner and married Janet Russell, who was born in 1816 in Wallace, Nova Scotia. Joseph became captain of the Janet, which was lost on Rio de la Plata, Argentina, in January 1868. The insurance payout allowed Joseph to buy 32 shares of a new barque, the Eliza Oulton, built by John Oulton in Pugwash, Nova Scotia. Joseph and Janet had three sons and two daughters: John Russell (b. 1841); Thomas (b. 1845); Alexander (b. 1852); Margaret (b. 1844); and Primrose (b. 1854). All three sons became master mariners before their father Joseph O’Brien died in 1882.

John O’Brien was married in 1868 to Susan Elizabeth Morris, the great-granddaughter of the Honourable Charles Morris of Halifax, first Surveyor General of Nova Scotia. Together they had one child, Elizabeth Olga, who born in 1869 on the Eliza Oulton while in the Russian harbour of Poti on the Black Sea. John O’Brien died of yellow fever six months later on the Island of St. Thomas in the West Indies, and Susan returned home to Wallace, Nova Scotia, to raise Elizabeth with the help of her parents.

Following John’s death, Thomas O’Brien became master of the Eliza Oulton, and the youngest brother, Alexander, sailed as a mate. Thomas married Maggie, with whom he had three children, and lived in Pictou, Nova Scotia, while continuing to sail for a living. Alexander married and eventually settled with his family in California.

Margaret O’Brien accompanied her brother, John, and her Uncle William on a two-year voyage, after which she worked as a milliner, married David MacLean and moved to Stellarton, Nova Scotia, where husband established a medical practice. Margaret was widowed shortly after the birth of their only child in 1876.

The youngest O'Brien child, Primrose ("Sis”), married Nathaniel Purdy and moved to Waltham, Massachusetts.

The Oland family was involved in the brewing industry for more than one hundred years. John James Dunn Oland and Susannah Woodhouse Culverwell immigrated from England to Nova Scotia with their nine children in 1865. By 1867, they began brewing beer in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. The family tradition of brewing continued until they sold Oland and Son, Limited and A. Keith and Son Limited in 1971.

Members of the Oland family were active philanthropists and contributors to their Nova Scotia communities, supporting a variety of activities and organizations, including sports, art, education, agriculture, and the Army and Navy. Members of the family continue to reside in Atlantic Canada.

A comprehensive diagram of the Oland family tree can be found in G. Brenton Haliburton's What's Brewing: Oland, 1867-1971, A History (Tantallon, NS: Four East Publications, 1994).

The Leightons of Philadelphia originated with Archibald Ogilvie Leighton, who emigrated from the north of Ireland in 1906, followed shortly by his financé, Gertrude Kerr Hamilton, who was from County Sligo, in the south. Together they had two children, Alexander (Alec or Alex) and Gertrude ("Gussie").

Archie Leighton was one of eight children born to John Alexander (1841-1928) and Caroline Wilson (1889-1845), who lived in Ballycarry, Northern Ireland. Elizabeth Ogilvie (1870-1904) died without marrying; Margaret Currie (1872-1947) married John Allen Duff and had one daughter, Mary Allen; Caroline Mary (1874-1876); John Murray (1876-1940) married Elizabeth McF. and had five sons: John Alexander, High G.B., William James, Robert Ogilvie and Denis Ponsonby; Robert Henry (1878-1941) married Winifred Coupland from Winipeg, MB; Catherine Campbell (1881-1956) married Joseph Magowan and had two daughters, Caroline Wilson (Carrie) and Ruth Margaret; and Ruth (1884-1947), who remained unmarried and lived in the family home—"Springbrook"—until her death.

Gertrude Kerr Hamilton (Gertie) was one of five children born to William Hamilton (Faddy) and Gertrude Kerr Hamilton (Muddy), who lived in Balincar, County Sligo.The eldest, Wilhemina (Mina, Min, Midge or Mi) remained unmarried and stayed at home; George ("Maggog") married Jessie and had a daughter named Netta; Henry Albert Alexander (Harry) was twice widowed with one stepson, Philip; Angus ("Mooney") married Laura and had three children: Marguerite (Daisy), Angus Kerr, and Harry; and the youngest, Ethel Jean (Ettie, sometimes Jeannie), moved to the United States to train as a nurse and lived with Archie and Gertrude before settling in New Jersey. She married Lewis Link and had one daughter, Betty.

Alexander Leighton married Dorothea Farquar Cross in 1937 and had two children, Frederick (Ted) and Dorothea Gertrude (Doreen). In 1965 they divorced and Alex married Jane Murphy in 1966.

The Smith family of Halifax is best known for owning and operating prominent companies including A.M and Company, a Halifax-based fish merchant.

Family members include Lousie Smith and her daughters Olive Winifred and Clauda Louise Smith. Olive traveled in Europe, specifically Switzerland, and lived with her Clauda and Louise for most of her life. Olive Smith studied at both Acadia Seminary and Dalhousie University from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1911.

The Bigelow family was involved in shipbuilding in the Kings County region of Nova Scotia for five generations. Amasa Bigelow (1755-1799) arrived in Cornwallis c. 1762 with his New England Planter father and became a ship’s carpenter, later operating a sawmill on Deep Hollows Mountain. He married Roxana Cone in 1775. The eldest of their eleven children, Ebenezer (1776-1860), established a shipyard at Oak Point, Kingsport, where he designed, built and sailed a variety of small vessels. He was married in 1804 to Nancy Rand, with whom he had six children.

Ebenezer Jr. (1815-1899) followed in his father’s footsteps and in 1838 established his own shipyard in Canning, Nova Scotia. Over the next fifty years he was the master builder on 67 ships, from 12-tonne sloops to the 1164-tonne Arbela, designed by his son Gideon.

Ebenezer, Jr. married Waity Sanford in 1834 and had 10 children, three of whom (John, Gideon and Samuel) joined him in the Bigelow Shipyard, eventually taking it over after his death in 1889. They in turn were joined by Ebenezer, Jr.’s grandsons, Scott and Halle, whose vessels included 4 tern schooners and one steamship, the Brunswick (1909). The last ship built in the Bigelow Shipyard was the Cape Blomidon, which was launched in 1919.