Family Histories

The following is the front page in our new book.

Overview & Layout

This book traces the descendants of Michael Shiels & Bessie Broun from about 1700 in Scotland to present day in Scotland, Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand.

The Shiels surname is quite unique because it has “No D”. Most people would spell our name SHIELDS and I think spelling it SHIELS makes us special. As you will see in the book, John Prentice Shiels, gave up saying “No D” and legally changed his name to SHIELDS! There is no one left in that branch to carry on the name.

Many of the North American “Shiels” are descendants of Thomas Shiels & Barbara Jean Cranston from Coulter, Scotland. Three of their sons, Thomas, John & George, and their daughter Jean all emigrated to North America. Another son William remained in Scotland, however some of his children & grandchildren also went to Canada.

There are other Shiels families across Canada that are descendants of James Shiels & Ellen Neilson. They came to Canada about the same time as our ancestors, however we have since proven their roots are not connected.

Most family history is based on stories passed down from generation to generation. The Shiels Family is no different. The early stories were recorded in 1949 when Jack Shiels of Cranbrook, Ontario wrote a journal of the family history back to the late 1600’s.

Jack was nearly 80 years old and had a couple of small strokes before he finished his document so we expected there would be a need to check the details. Jack’s version of the early history leads us from Micheal & Jessie (Scott) Shiels through Dan & Bessie (Brown) Shiels, Thomas Jeff & Jane (Saxton) Shiels and on to Thomas & Barbara Jean (Cranston) Shiels.

We have included a summary of Jack’s version below as a reference; however, we have found several errors that we have corrected in this version. Most of the changes from the original version include early history, that we can now verify, and addition of many new branches descending from Micheal Shiels & Bessie Broun. There were names that were incorrect and a couple of missing generations that have now been proven with the help of modern internet-based tools. We must however thank Jack Shiels for getting us all started.

With modern technology including Ancestry and other genealogy programs, we are now able to verify family connections through DNA testing. To highlight these connections, anyone that has completed their test and is connected to your author, has DNA behind their name.

Throughout this document, we will assign everyone with their generation level based on the number of generations down from Michael Shiels. G1 is the first generation and is used for Micheal Shiels. His children will be G2, grandchildren G3 and so on. In addition, major groups are broken into sections and the header at the top of the page will identify the section.

Thank you to all the families that gave their own stories for us to include here. A special thank you goes to my wife Judy. She has been by my side for more than 50 years and without her help and encouragement, this version would never be completed.

Although this book will tell you about your past, we wrote it for future generations of Shiels descendants so they too can look back and see how far we have come. Good luck reading and we hope you enjoy this look at your history!

Prepared & published by Dan Shiels  dan@shiels.ca

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada