My family’s roots run to Stoney Island, in Shelburne County, Nova Scotia — fishing
country, where a surname can be spelled three ways in the same church register and
nobody thought twice about it.
Salt Water Roots began with a search of my own: looking for what my great-grandfather
left behind. Working through the official registries, I learned how easily a person
disappears from the record — not because nothing exists, but because it sits under a
spelling nobody tried. A Mac that became a Mc. A maiden name nobody wrote down. A
balance waiting under the name as it was recorded a hundred years ago.
Through this work, I was able to track down my father’s birth parents and my
grandmother’s father, along with answers to many other long-unanswered
questions about my own family. That is what this work can do — and it is why Salt
Water Roots exists: to do the same for other families.
Finding my family gave me what I had been missing my whole life: roots. For the
first time, I felt part of something much larger than myself — a long line of
people who worked these waters and passed my name down to me. And the calling I
had always felt to the ocean finally made sense. It was never wanderlust. It was
blood. Salt water runs through my veins — it always had. I was only ever finding
my way back to it.
That search became this business. I help Nova Scotia families — and the lawyers
working to settle their estates — run the search properly: every variant, every
registry, every result written down. Whether the answer is a found balance or a
documented negative, it is an answer you can rely on, and file.
Robin Bond
Founder · Salt Water Roots Genealogy
Every file is Robin’s own work, start to finish — she builds the variant
list, runs each registry search herself, and writes the report or proof packet
you receive.