Friday's Faces from the Past: Why Isaac Berk Landed in New Brunswick

Sometimes ancestors zig-zag to their destinations.

That's the case with my Grandpa Isaac Berk (later Burk), a skilled cabinetmaker who sailed from Liverpool to Canada on November 24, 1903, via the S.S. Lake Erie. 

Isaac got off the ship on December 5th in Saint John, New Brunswick.

 As the map shows, that's a LONG way from Montreal or New York, where he later lived--major metro centers where he could easily find work as a cabinetmaker.

Henrietta Mahler Burk & Isaac Burk, 1937

And, in fact, Isaac's trail next shows up in 1904, when he crossed the border into Vermont, on a train enroute from Montreal to New York City, where his sister Nellie (or Nella) lived.

So why did Grandpa land at Saint John instead of continuing further into Canada?

Thanks to a phone call from my Canadian 2d cousin, the granddaughter of my great-uncle Abraham Burke, I now know the answer.

The family story is that Isaac got badly seasick and when the ship came into New Brunswick, he got off as quickly as he could!

Isaac never again sailed anywhere, as far as I know--he always took the train.