How food has influenced where our ancestors set down stakes.

"Pray for peace and grace and spiritual food. For wisdom and guidance, for all these are good But don't forget the potatoes."

These words, written by New England judge John Pettee, hearken back to the Pilgrim Fathers and the first Thanksgiving in America. Those pioneers gave thanks for having a harvest and enough food stored for the winter ahead.

Ancestors of every origin were at the mercy of their food supply. Western people would not settle anywhere they could not grow or regularly secure the grass crops on which they and their livestock depended. The Scots were renowned oat eaters given oats could be raised and ripened in Scotland. (Englishmen scoffed at the Scots' habit. Samuel Johnson, in his famed Dictionary wrote, "Oats-a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people." Johnson's biographer was the Scot James Boswell, whose father replied to the so-called Doctor Johnson: "That would explain why you have such excellent horses in England and such splendid men in Scotland.")

The Japanese ate a lot of fish given they lived on islands. The Chinese consumed rice since their environment supported rice crops. Much Mediterranean food calls for rosemary, basil and other herbs because these plants are native there. Human diet has been determined historically more by the locally available flora and fauna than by preference.

Before refrigeration and canning, people relied on foods that could be dried or salted for the winter months. Seasonings were used to disguise the fact that some food had smells and tastes that were not conducive to being eaten.

Consider the pig, an animal offensive to observant Jews and Muslims, but a highly prized creature elsewhere. As the local saying had it, you used everything off a pig except its grunt. Farmers raised a pig annually, to be converted into food each autumn. Some fresh pork was eaten, but much was smoked or salted to produce ham and bacon, hung in large portions and sliced off in rashers as needed. When all the "good stuff" had been used, the remainder was made into sausages to which salt and a selection of seasonings-such as paprika, pepper, sage, savory or thyme-might be added.

Some of our early settlers were issued weekly government rations, consisting of five pounds of hard tack, five pounds of meat, four ounces of butter, one pint of pease, 1/4 pint each of vinegar and oatmeal, and double that of molasses and rum. This diet would not suit vegans and lovers of fresh fruit at all, and such a regimen ignored the threat from scurvy caused by a deficiency of vitamin C.

The diet had been much the same during the ocean crossing, although each adult was issued a gallon of beer daily instead of rum. Given that water did not keep long in casks at sea, beer was a good choice, though temperance advocates would quail at men and women knocking back eight pints of beer every day.

People migrated to where there was food: the Israelites across the fertile crescent into "the promised land," Magyars from the steppes into Hungary. Many native peoples and desert tribes led nomadic or semi-nomadic lives, all relating to where food was to be found.

Until the 18th century, cereal grains were the staple diet of Scotland and Ireland. However, these were rapidly replaced by the potato, which was produced in abundance where soil and climate defeated less-hardy crops. The people of Ireland in particular grew increasingly dependant on potatoes, and in the 19th century disaster struck when blight caused several successive years of potato crops to fail.

The massive migration resulting from that tragedy is not merely a race memory. The millions of descendants of the famine refugees populate much of North America, including the Atlantic region. Partridge Island in Saint John Harbour, NB, is one focal point, but Deadman's Island on the Northwest Arm of Halifax Harbour, Gros Isle in the St. Lawrence, and many other places also bear tribute to the influence of the food supply on our ancestors' lives.

Dr. Terrence M. Punch is the resident genealogist on CBC radio and editor of Genealogist's Handbook for Atlantic Canada Research.