The Kinship of Neighbors and Friends

 Historically speaking, the Hossack connection to the Gillespie family appears to have been more than just as a passing acquaintance. 

In early Quebec, a wholesale grocer company was formed called Hossack and Woods, or Hossack Woods & Co.  The Woods part of this company relates to our Woods family, nephews of my gggg-grandmother, Jane Woods, who was the second wife of our progenitor, John Gillespie.  This Woods-Hossack connection is further highlighted in the name of James Hossack Bert Woods, 1867-1941, son of Alexander Woods and Elizabeth Banfield.

The Gillespies and the Hossacks were neighbors along the St. Charles river at Little River, Quebec (Petite Riviere is the little river St. Charles flowing into the St. Lawrence from the north and the west just below Quebec City).  The Gillespies rented from the Hossacks for awhile, and then James Gillespie helped to restore the Hossack family home in later years.  Many letters between Gillespies and Hossacks who lived in Quebec and Michigan have survived.  

Research into the Hossack family who were Gillespie neighbors in Quebec has lead back to Moray, Scotland and a search among DNA matches of several Gillespie testers has revealed at least one small match to Hossacks of Moray. But I also found DNA matches who trace back to a Hosick family in Markethill as well as a Hozack family in Mullaghbrack, Armagh, close to where our Gillespie family group last lived in Northern Ireland. Were any or all of these families somehow related to Gillespies before becoming neighbors in Quebec?

Whether Hossacks are blood relations to the Gillespies is probably only relevant (to me) if the two families came from the same area of Scotland. But perhaps the two families were "only" neighbors and friends.  I am reminded of the number of people in my life to whom I am not blood-related but who are, for all that matters, my family. Such people often alter the course of our lives for the better and without them the quality of life would be far less bright.  It makes me wish DNA could measure love and connection as well as biology.