Our Kinship Lines

The kinship of three worlds

Kinship: How Our Family Lines Intertwine

A structural map of the eleven ancestral lines and how they interconnect across regions, eras, and cultural worlds.

Kinship is the architecture of our story — the framework that explains how many different peoples, migrations, and histories converge to form the family we belong to today. Our ancestry is not a single line but a braided river, fed by Cree and Saulteaux homelands, Métis communities shaped by the fur trade, Orkney and Scottish labourers who entered the Hudson’s Bay Company, English craftsmen who crossed the Atlantic generations earlier, and Norwegian settlers who followed the great migration into the northern Plains and western Canada.

These lines meet in the lives of our parents and grandparents, and ultimately in us — the descendants of the union between Ingvald Brager and Elsie Evelyn Bird.

our ancestry is not a simple vertical tree.
It is a multi‑lineage network, shaped by repeated intermarriage, shared communities, overlapping fur‑trade careers, and geographic convergence points.
This page explains how the eleven family lines relate to one another and why they form a cohesive whole.

I. The Eleven Family Lines

The Family‑Line Series is built around eleven major ancestral lines, each representing a distinct thread in the network:

Bird — Thomas — Sutherland — Cromartie — Hourie — Cook–Cocking — Spence — Batt — Park — Flett — Brager

Each line contributes something different:

Cree, Saulteaux, and Métis matrilines: the cultural and genealogical heart of the network
Bird, Thomas, Cook–Cocking, Batt: officer‑class HBC families with administrative and diplomatic roles
Sutherland, Cromartie, Hourie, Spence, Park, Flett: Orkney and Scottish labourer families who formed the backbone of the inland trade
Brager: the Scandinavian prairie homestead line that merges with the Bird line in the 20th century

These lines are not isolated.
They interconnect repeatedly through marriage, community proximity, shared HBC service, and Métis kinship systems.

II. How the Lines Interconnect

The eleven lines form a high‑cohesion kinship web, with multiple points of overlap:

Bird ↔ Thomas (marriage of Ann Thomas and George Bird)
Bird ↔ Sutherland (Mary Jane “Harriet” Sutherland marries into the Bird line)
Cromartie ↔ Hourie (intermarriage in the northern inland region)
Cook–Cocking ↔ Spence (Jerry Cook and Eleanor Spence)
Cook–Cocking ↔ Batt (through Betsy Cocking’s maternal line)
Park ↔ Cromartie (Catherine Park marries John Cromartie)
Flett ↔ Sutherland (Jane Flett marries James Sutherland)
Bird ↔ Cromartie (William Bird marries Mary Jane Cromartie)
Bird ↔ Brager (Ingvald Brager marries Elsie Evelyn Bird)

These repeated connections create a dense, multi‑layered network rather than a set of separate branches.

III. The Seven Kinship Clusters

Each family line belongs to one or more of the major clusters that define the network’s structure.

Officer Class Cluster
Administrative, diplomatic, and governance roles within the HBC
Lines: Bird, Thomas, Cook–Cocking, Batt

Orkney HBC Labourer Cluster
Boatmen, labourers, post servants, inland workers
Lines: Sutherland, Cromartie, Hourie, Spence, Park, Flett

Cree / Stone Indian / Métis Matrilineal Cluster
Foundational Indigenous and Métis women
Matrilines: Oomenahowish, Le‑lo‑es‑com, Stone Indian matrilines, Cree Chief’s daughter (Batt), Ke‑che‑cho‑wick (Cocking), Margaret Whitford (Flett)

Red River Métis Cluster
The central homeland where multiple lines converge
Lines: Bird, Thomas, Sutherland, Hourie, Cook–Cocking, Spence, Park, Flett

Northern Inland Cluster
Families living in the northern river systems where kinship was currency
Lines: Cook–Cocking, Spence, Batt, Hourie, Cromartie (early service)

Saskatchewan Homestead Cluster
One of the strongest geographic convergence points in the entire network
Lines: Bird, Cromartie, Brager (our immediate family)

BC Migration Cluster
The final westward movement and the modern continuation of the network
Lines: Brager, Bird descendants, Cromartie descendants, our parents, us

IIV. Why the Kinship Lines Matter

The eleven family lines are the backbone of the entire series.
They show:

how Cree, Saulteaux, and Métis matrilines anchor the network
how Orkney and Scottish labourers entered and shaped the inland world
how officer‑class families influenced governance, diplomacy, and mobility
how English and Scandinavian settler lines later merged into the prairie story
how repeated intermarriage created a single, cohesive kinship web
how the network moved from Hudson Bay → Red River → Saskatchewan → BC

The kinship lines matter because they reveal that our ancestry is not a single branch but a multi‑lineage system, shaped by overlapping communities, shared histories, and converging migrations.
They are the narrative framework that makes the Family‑Line Series a unified story rather than eleven isolated biographies.

V. How to Use This Page

This page is a map, not a narrative.
It helps readers understand:

how the eleven lines relate
where they converge
how they form a unified network
why the series is structured the way it is

For the full story, readers can move to:

the Master Narrative – Our Family Story – 3 Worlds
the individual Family‑Line Episodes – Our Family Line Series – Index
the Network Summary (Episode 12) – Our Network Summary
the Conclusion Reflection (Episode 13) – Conclusion Reflection