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This is my daughter's great-great-great grandfather, Charles Birch, Sr. (1816 - after 1886). Charlie left England for Ottawa, where he held down a civil service gig for a while. Sadly, he lost that job. Through voluminous correspondence, he petitioned various ministers to get reinstated. We think his efforts were for naught. For some reason, he opted to change the spelling of his surname, substituting a "u" for the "i." We suspect that this was done to escape some debt obligations. We'll never know for sure. The annotation to the left of center ("My Dear Father") was applied by his son Henry, who settled in Wadena, MN.
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