Recently I met, via e-mail, a descendent of John Alteman and  Martha Ruller. Her name is Marilyn Brown. She and I are 3rd cousins, sharing the same Great Great Grandparents, William George Ruller and his wife Eliza Holgate, who imigrated to Canada from Yorkshire England in 1842. Marilyn is the newest member on this Ruller YaBB page.
The first photo is of John Alteman's farm, near Bradwardine Manitoba in the Rural Municipality of Daly.
It is reported in the Book; Bradwardine and District 1880 - 2003, that John Alteman was born in Berlin, (now Kitchener) Ontario in 1855. At the age of 17 years, (about 1882) he came west with Joseph and Mary Anne Darragh. They departed from Walkerton, Ontario to Southampton from there by boat and train to Portage la Prarie Manitoba and then by steamship up the Assiniboyne River to Halls Bridge. From there they walked to the Harding District.
John found a place, NE 27-11-22, a few miles south east of the present day town of Bradwardine and decided that was where he wanted to homestead. This place, with it's large hills and hollows, would become known to this day as "Frog Hollow."  (I believe the farm is still owned and operated by descendents of John and Martha.)
John married Martha Ruller on March 26th 1884 in Bradwardine.
The picture, attached above, is of John Alteman's farm at "Frogg Hollow" and all of his family.
Please feel free to add to this and subsequent  postings with more history and photos about this Alteman branch of the Ruller family tree.
Mel Ruller

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Thanks so much for the picture.  I t did take a long time but was worth it.
In one of the other pictures from Marge it is identified as Edith and George Graham but believe that it is Edith and George Johston.  George Graham her first husband was killed by run away horses.
At the moment I am very busy locating all the neices and nephews of Albert Alteman.  You will note that I found one in Toronto, Ethel Alteman, daughter of Edith.  She lives in the Salvation Army retirement home near the Grace Hospital and sounds like a very alert person.  Of his original 8 neices and nephews 5 are still alive and 3 are passed away, one of them being my mother.  I hope I have saved the picture to my files.  Thanks again,  Lyn or Marilyn

I passed through Bradwardine this summer and by luck, acquired a copy of a new book published last year, "Bradwardine and District, 1880 to 2003" In it are many references to the Rullers as several of them settled there. It seems apparent that this area was William George Ruller and Eliza Holgate's final location, on a homestead next door to John Alteman's homestead in an area of R.M Daly, Manitoba which became known as "Frog Hollow" to this day!

Marilyn Brown, an Alteman descendent, sent me the attached photos of  "Grandma and Grandpa," that has been handed down through their families. I was able to positively identify the people in the photo as William George Ruller and Eliza Holgate, because I have 16 x 20 inch copies of the same photos that have been handed down through my ancestors and identified as William George Ruller and Eliza Holgate! See more photos in following posts.

My ultimate goal is to discover if William George Ruller and Eliza Holgate are buried in this area and if we could get photos of their grave stones. I have not located them in Tarbolton cemetery which I visited this past summer. But there are other cemetery's in the immediate area.

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Attached is a photgraph taken today, of me, Mel Ruller, holding two 16 x 20 inch, hand drawn,  charcoal sketches, that have obviously been copied from the two photos of William George Ruller and Eliza Holgate that are in the possesion of Marilyn Brown of Manitoba. I'm in Elora, Ontario. I actually have a duplicate of the photograph of William George Ruller, but not one of Eliza.

In the next two postings I'll attach copies of the two 16 x 20 sketches to compare with the original photos shown in the previous post.

There are several interesting conclusions from these hand drawn sketches.

1. There must have been travelling artists offering their services to pioneers to make large sketches from photos supplied by the customer. I've seen other big sketches like these and in fact I have two more, one of Montezuma Brothers and one of his wife Hannah Cunningham.

2. The Ruller/Holgate sketches above were obviously taken from photos of quite different dates, because the sketch of William is of a much youngr person than Eliza.

3. Our ancestors apparently made lots of copies of their favorite pictures to distribute to their immediate descendents at least. I have seen a few other examples of multiple copies of the same pictures showing up amongst descendents who are geographically far removed.

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Here is a digital image of the 16 x 20 inch hand drawn charcoal sketch of William Ruller.

Compare this sketch with the photograph provided by Marilyn Brown in a previous post

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Here is a digital image of the Large, hand drawn,  charcoal sketch of Eliza Holgate.

Compare this to the original photograph that Marilyn Brown provided, that this sketch was made from, that was posted previously.

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