Findmypast is offering a limited-time discount on subscriptions of up to 50% off.

Available until Sunday, 29 June at www.findmypast.com/subscriptions
UPDATE: There are reports of a      04 Error message with this link. Check again next week.

Britain and Ireland, Incoming Passenger Lists (1878–1960)

Over 16 million new records digitized from The National Archives (BT 26) have been added. If your ancestors arrived in Britain or Ireland by sea between 1878 and 1960, there’s a good chance they’re in these records.

You’ll see:

Their name, age, and occupation
Where they came from and where they were going
The ship’s name and route
And sometimes, who they were travelling with

Some are handwritten and hard to read; later ones are typed. You also get links to the original passenger manifests, which can be helpful if you’re trying to spot travel companions or extended family.

These records have been available on Ancestry for several years.

Updated: Britain & Ireland Naturalizations (1603–1700)

Over 400,000 records of people who became British subjects during the 1600s. If you’ve got early immigrant ancestors—especially Huguenots or settlers in Ulster—these might help. These include:

Denizations (granted by the monarch)
Naturalizations (granted by Parliament)

Expect inconsistent spelling, especially for French names. The originals were hard to read, so cross-check with other sources when possible. Most entries come from a 1911 Huguenot Society publication.

Newspapers

151,000+ new pages, with a strong focus on Scotland.

Ayrshire Express (1863 – 1887)
Border Standard (1886 – 1887)
Edinburgh Advertiser (1850 – 1855)
Fifeshire Advertiser (1870 – 1965)
Fraserburgh Advertiser (1858 – 1941)
Glasgow Property Circular and West of Scotland Weekly Advertiser (1879 – 1891)
Glasgow Saturday Post (1845 – 1864)
Lerwick Times (1872 – 1873)
Huntly Express (1864 – 1993)
Kelso Chronicle (1832 – 1881)
Northern Scot and Moray & Nairn Express (1880 – 1999)
St. Andrews Times (1937 – 1940)
The Scots Magazine (1739 – 2000)
Weekly Scotsman (1879 – 1892)

Croydon Post (1989 – 1999)
Gloucester Citizen (1876 – 1999)
Portobello Advertiser (1876 – 1896)
The Reformer (1870 – 1875)
Western Evening Herald (1895 – 1999)

A Landmark Decision
Due to rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology, FamilySearch are changing the assistance asked of volunteers.

Initial indexing of records from historical documents will now be done by FamilySearch’s artificial intelligence rather than by online volunteers. Then, volunteers will review to identify any errors made by the AI.

If, like me, you advanced your family history by using the FamilySearch Experimental Full Text Search, you’ll appreciate why the change is being made.

Commercial genealogy companies have been exploiting handwriting recognition technology (HWT) for a few years. This decision by FamilySearch marks a coming-of-age for AI applications in family history. 

This should be a wake-up call to all organizations, including Library and Archives Canada, that times have changed. There’s now the option to make massive collections of documentary heritage digitally searchable. Will we no longer be told that only a few percent of the holdings are online and searchable? Will organizations have the fortitude to seize the opportunity and reorder priorities?

The old school will continue to complain that HWT transcriptions are not perfect. They aren’t. However, I’ll take 80% accuracy in a huge mass of documents, with the ability for human correction, rather than 0% accuracy with no errors and no access.

Time Travelling with the HSO
In collaboration with Rogers, the Historical Society of Ottawa has recorded and now placed on YouTube 13-30 minute episodes of “Time Travelling… with the Historical Society of Ottawa.” They are:

Episode 1 – Paul Weber – “Go Exploring” https://youtu.be/4jbkQ1BVFEk

Episode 2 – Kevin Ballantyne – “Glimpses of ‘Forgotten Ottawa'” https://youtu.be/c4733IZ9yNE

Episode 3 – Rick Henderson – “Philemon Wright and his town” https://youtu.be/ueJn5cBM_yA

Episode 4 – Peter Atkinson, “Gord Atkinson: Ottawa’s Oldest Teenager” https://youtu.be/nPHqdAx0V7I

Episode 5 – Michael McBane – “Bytown 1847” https://youtu.be/mJEkeHB8ugg

Episode 6 – Jim Hurcomb “Ottawa’s Golden Age of Rock and Roll” https://youtu.be/dSuX48DwIUs

Episode 7 – Paul Couvrette “The Changing World of Photography” https://youtu.be/6EKCmDYS5zA

Episode 8 – Christine Jackson “From Steamboats to the NHL: The Cowley Family” https://youtu.be/lHwa7HRBCmc

Episode 9 – Leo Doyle “Ottawa’s Surprising Connections to Basketball’s Beginnings” https://youtu.be/RuIFu0qjkcw

Episode 10 – Jean-Luc Pilon “An Archaeologist’s Perspective: Uncovering the Ottawa area’s ancient past” https://youtu.be/UcdNCe7cBHI

Episode 11 – Jean-Marie Guerrier “Black History in Ottawa Streets” https://youtu.be/gjLxQOFjwO8

Episode 12 – Dominique Lajoie “Château Laurier : si les murs pouvaient parler” https://youtu.be/HtNk81ziyic

Episode 13 – Rick Henderson “Philemon Wright et son village” https://youtu.be/BVsDLomj2-k

Canada, Orders in Council, Indigenous “Indian” Enfranchisement Records, 1878-1972
Ancestry has now made these 35,464 records, sourced from  Library and Archives Canada Record Group 2, available. Records in this collection may include: Name, Name of Indian Band, Orders in Council (OIC) number, Date of enfranchisement (OIC approval date), Agency, Province or territory, Names and relationships of relatives.

Newspapers.com’s over 1 million pages in 28,537 papers have 86.6% of the pages for the USA, 5.5% for the UK, and 5.0% for Canada.

Location	Pages	Papers
USA	949,594,328	25,408
UK	60,810,363	1,023
Canada	55,293,167	654
Australia	25,271,465	1,241
Ireland	2,742,799	27
New Zealand	1,671,506	169
Panama	1,106,574	5

Here’s the distribution of pages by year for the total corpus

A notable Canadian addition in the past month is 30,337 pages of the Parry Sound  North Star from 1879 to 1996.

The following updated UK papers include issues before 1925 and with more than 5,000 pages.

• Isle of Wight County Press (1884–2023): 260,782 pages
• Southern Daily Echo (1888–2023): 714,465 pages
• Darlington and Stockton Times (County Durham ed.) (1911–2023): 127,823 pages
• Daily Echo (1900–2023): 840,930 pages
• Bucks Free Press (1856–2023): 343,490 pages
• The Herald (Glasgow ed.) (1820–2023): 416,503 pages
• Evening Times (1881–2023): 145,434 pages
• Dorset Echo (1921–2023): 561,466 pages
• South Wales Argus (1892–2023): 649,128 pages
• The Mail (Millom and South Copeland ed.) (1913–2023): 397,598 pages
• The Bolton News (1867–2023): 552,926 pages
• The Guardian (1821–2025): 1,193,878 pages
• Evening Standard (1897–2025): 2,387,072 pages
• Craven Herald and Pioneer (1874–2023): 108,289 pages
• The Greenock Telegraph and Clyde Shipping Gazette (1882–2023): 201,069 pages
• Northern Echo (1870–2005): 104,038 pages
• Cumberland and Westmorland Herald (1860–1998): 87,271 pages

Choose from these selected free online events. All times are Eastern Time, unless otherwise noted. Registration may be required in advance—check the links so you’re not disappointed. For many more events, mainly in the U.S., visit conferencekeeper.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

The Deportation Comedy Hour

Library and Archives Canada has introduced a new set of research basics pages. There’s a focus on visiting LAC.
If a collection search at the LAC website is returning a “403 – Forbidden: Access is denied” message, try turning off any VPN you have running. LAC informs that the cause is ” technical difficulties due to additional pressure on LAC’s servers that power Collection and Census search. This is due to AI bots crawling our site.”

Where Were They Buried?
The London Westminster & Middlesex Family History Society has posted a series of short YouTube videos, the most recent and most viewed is for Edmonton. https://www.youtube.com/@LWMFHS/videos

Error Establishing a Database Connection
The management of the Ontario Genealogical Society is surely as tired of seeing this message when they click on www.ogs.on.ca as the rest of us. Please be patient. Remember, The British Library has been operating on a temporary website for almost two years since a major outage due to a hacker attack. UPDATE – as of 9 am on Sunday the service is restored.

Home Guard Nominal Rolls
The East Sussex Record Office announces that registers showing name, date of enrolment, date of birth, address, previous service for WW2 Home Guard battalions from Brighton, Hove, Haywards Heath (then in East Sussex), Lewes, Crowborough, Hailsham, Eastbourne, Hastings and Hartfield are now being digitised and will become available to view on computers at The Keep.

Looking for Something Different?
The 28th Ottawa Fringe Festival is on: 12-22 June 2025

 

Lincolnshire, Workhouse Guardians’ Minutes
These 8,849 pages cover the years 1836 to 1901. for situations that involved an expenditure. For instance:

11 April 1839. The clerk reported that he had applied for, and obtained an order against John Smith of Rippingale, on behalf of the parish of Corby, for the maintenance of the bastard child of Mary Musson, a pauper belonging to the latter parish, as directed on the 21* ult. (ante. p. 381) [Page 399]

The collection is now 37,395 records for Boston Union, Bourne Union, Caistor Union, Gainsborough Union, and Holbeach Union

National Burial Index For England & Wales
The 4,263 new records, from 1662 to 1851, bring the collection total to 17,316,953 records. Typically find: full name, date of their burial, denomination, parish, and perhaps age at death.

Newspaper Pages Added
The 148,000 new pages. making a total of 92,642,385 pages, include three new titles.
Academy: A London-based publication focused on literature, science, and the arts. 59514 pages,
Bradford Daily Argus: Covering 1893-1914 and 1920-1923, 36316 pages.
Largs & Millport Herald: Explore 160 pages from the years 1883-1884.

Tying in with the other Lincolnshire addition this week, the following papers have been updated, including the Lincoln Gazette (1873), Boston Independent and Lincolnshire Advertiser (1898, 1912), and the Louth and North Lincolnshire Advertiser (various years 1904-1950).

Also, the Aldershot Military Gazette (1891-1917, 1919) received significant additions.

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9 am: Annual General Meeting

10 am: Great Moments

From Penrhyndedraeth to Peterborough: Digging Deeper into My Welsh Ancestry, by Laurie Dougherty
A Cautionary Tale: How I Built a Brickwall with DNA, by Barbara Tose
A Genealogical Revelation: From an Only Child to a Family of Nine, by Andy Desjardins

Details are at https://www.bifhsgo.ca/events

PLUS – A BOOK GRAB

Before the meeting and over the break at 9:30. Tables will be set up with extra books that have been donated by Patricia McGregor, and by the family of former member John Hay, that need to find a home. You never know when you will find a treasure. It is free; a token donation would be appreciated.

Thanks to the 100+ people who attended my presentation for the Bruce County Genealogical Society on Monday evening.

One of the questions asked was whether the drought in the Prairies in the 1930s, known as the Dirty Thirties or Dust Bowl, extended into Ontario. I didn’t know, although I  said I suspected it did.

Here’s a comparison between Regina’s and Toronto’s annual precipitation from 1929 to 1939, the number in the top line is the climatological average annual precipitation in millimetres.

Year	Regina	397.64		Toronto	789.9
	Annual	Diff	% Diff	Annual	Diff	%Diff
1929	283.1	-114.54	-28.8	939.8	149.9	19.0
1930	263.9	-133.74	-33.6	654.6	-135.3	-17.1
1931	262.1	-135.54	-34.1	694.1	-95.8	-12.1
1932	430.2	32.56	8.2	940.4	150.5	19.1
1933	480.8	83.16	20.9	605.4	-184.5	-23.4
1934	316.2	-81.44	-20.5	627.1	-162.8	-20.6
1935	486.1	88.46	22.2	680.9	-109	-13.8
1936	291.2	-106.44	-26.8	711.1	-78.8	-10.0
1937	218.6	-179.04	-45.0	835	45.1	5.7
1938	382.8	-14.84	-3.7	651.4	-138.5	-17.5
1939	334.3	-63.34	-15.9	703.7	-86.2	-10.9
Median	316.2	-81.44	-20.5	694.1	-95.8	-12.1

Both show a median annual precipitation deficit for the period. Regina had 6 years that were 20% below the long-term mean of 397 mm, whereas Toronto had two such years, below 790 mm. For only one of the years, 1934, did both cities have 20% less precipitation than the climatological average.

That is probably further into the weeds than most family historians care to venture.

In case you want to venture a bit further, for agriculture, precipitation is only part of drought. Hot, dry conditions mean greater evaporation, so less moisture for crops. That’s quantified by the Palmer Drought Severity Index. Decadal maps are available at https://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/fc-data-catalogue/read/4 . The earliest is for 1951-1960

Even over a 10-year average, conditions across the southern Prairie provinces ranged from severe drought to very wet. For annual and shorter periods, the variation would be greater. For instance, for 1929, there was a 29% precipitation deficit at Regina, a 40% deficit at Medicine Hat, but at Lethbridge precipitation was 17% above average. 

Check out current conditions, as of the end of May, at https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/agricultural-production/weather/canadian-drought-monitor/current-drought-conditions#a5

Although chances are your Prairie ancestor had a hard time during the Dust Bowl, maybe they were among the few that Mother Nature blessed with just enough rain or snow to maintain a harvest.

 

 

Is it time to update your newspaper obit searches? On Monday, Ancestry added to the data on these Newspapers.com obituary indexes

Place	Records
Canada	47,187,373
Australia and New Zealand	5,842,149
UK and Ireland	32,051,053

 

This is to mark the founding of the United Church of Canada, inaugurated on 10 June  1925 in Toronto, Ontario. The Methodist Church, Canada, the Congregational Union of Canada, and 70 percent of The Presbyterian Church in Canada entered into a union. Also joining was the small General Council of Union Churches, centred largely in Western Canada.

Find more about the United Church’s history at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Church_of_Canada

Choose from these selected free online events. All times are Eastern Time, unless otherwise noted. Registration may be required in advance—check the links so you’re not disappointed. For many more events, mainly in the U.S., visit conferencekeeper.