From Dean to Dand

Book excerpt: From Dean to Dand follows the Hathaway patronymic from its inception in the Forest of Dean in Wales, when it was recorded in the Domesday Book. The family spread across England before crossing the Atlantic to the American colonies. One branch of the diaspora, the author’s ancestors, migrated north into Upper Canada and then west onto the Canadian prairies. The story traces that branch of the Hathaway family as one small thread in a tapestry woven from shifting political, social, and economic forces. Perhaps the real story in these pages is the tapestry and its story of the courage to face social, political and economic change, the energy and resourcefulness of those whose stories launched all of ours.