Month: March 2023

This new title has more than one million names (1,077,550 to be precise) compiled from 164 record collections of 14 parishes, unions, and other institutions in the City of Westminster.

Records in this collection, which may also be browsed, may include:

• Name
• Maiden name
• Age
• Gender
• Marital status
• Name of person apprenticed to
• Event date
• Arrival date
• Departure date and place
• Death date and place
• Birth date, parish, and county
• Marriage date, parish, and county
• Parents’ names
• Mother’s maiden name
• Parents’ marriage date, parish, and county
• Spouse’s name
• Spouse’s maiden name
• Spouse’s birthplace
• Next of kin birth date, age, relationship, and parish
• Second next of kin birth date, age, relationship, and parish
• Third next of kin birth date, age, relationship, and parish
• Fourth next of kin birth date, age, relationship, and parish
• Fifth next of kin birth date, age, relationship, and parish

Bill passed on Wednesday, 8 March, aged 92. Along with his wife Jeanette, he was a much-respected member of the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa.

His obituary in the 18 March Ottawa Citizen records that “He developed an authoritative database of the genealogy of the Titus family (his mother’s line) that extends back 400 years and contains almost 200,000 names. Never one to do anything superficially, he developed expertise in the application of DNA analysis to genealogy and discovered that he is related (by marriage) to James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.”

Small in stature, big in heart, with a wry sense of humour, Bill founded the BIFHSGO DNA Special Interest Group and was named to the Society Hall of Fame in 2015.

Of the 108,125 applications in this Australian Imperial Force First World War collection sourced from the National Archives of Australia, 1,970 were from England (567 London, 47 Birmingham). Elsewhere there were 430 from Scotland, and 367 from Ireland. And 38 were from Canada with birthplaces across the country, and even more exotic places like Winnipeq and Montreah!

 

The 512,140 records in this collection, sourced from the Tyne and Wear Archives, are transcripts and images of congregation member lists, registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials from non-conformist churches — Congregational, Presbyterian, and United Reformed.

The majority, 361,715, are from member lists. The images in the samples I reviewed showed a residence address and an indication of attendance and remarks such as death.

Most of the records are from the last quarter of the 19th and first quarter of the 20th centuries.

Saturday’s presentation, starting at 1 pm,  is Canadian Records available on FamilySearch and Ancestry, by Lianne Kruger.

This session will review how to find what Canadian records are available, search for ancestors, view the documents and write source citations for both FamilySearch and Ancestry sites. The Canadian pages on the FamilySearch Wiki will also be explored, along with how to create a Table of Records.

Lianne Kruger is a professional genealogist and speaker specializing in Canada, homesteading for U.S. and Canada, video recording family history, and using technology in all aspects of genealogy such as Google Maps, Google Drive and Evernote. She is a member of the board for mitoYDNA.org,  on the Ancestry.ca advisory board and the webmaster, database and social media chair for Alberta Genealogical Society (AGS). She previously served six years as 1st VP of AGS and two years as President of Red Deer Branch. She earned the AGS President’s award in 2020. Lianne is a member of Associate of Professional Genealogists, AGS, Ontario Ancestors, and National Genealogical Society.

The meeting is hybrid, live in the City of Ottawa Archives, 100 Tallwood Drive (Room 115) and on Zoom.  Register in advance for the Zoom presentation at:

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYvdu2srT4uE9H46ySqmVcb2HaDTsriCBPf

Reminder: Gene-O-Rama will be held virtually on Saturday, 25 March 2023 with six sessions from four top-rated speakers. Ticket holders can view the recorded sessions until April 30, 2023. Details and Tickets at https://geneorama.ogs.on.ca/

The newspapers.com collection of digitized and full-text searchable English newspapers was augmented in 147 titles in the past month. Most were updates. The new papers are: Medway Standard (1993–1996), Fleet News (1987–1988), Fleet Mail (1987–1988), Farnham Mail (1990), Farnborough Mail (1987–1990), Hinckley Free Press and South-West Leicestershire Gazette (1897–1898), Camberley Mail (1987–1988), Hull Packet (1799–1804), Nottingham Daily Express (1897), Manchester Evening Chronicle (1897 – 1908), Grimsby Target (1986 – 1999), Reporter for the County Borough of Salford (1897), Payne’s Leicester and Midland Counties Advertiser, and Commercial Agricultural Report (1850), Cheshire Observer and General Advertiser for Cheshire and North Wales (1854 – 1863).

Also updated were 16 newspaper in Wales and 14 in Scotland. There were no additions in Ireland or Northern Ireland.

For Canada, with 376 papers in the collection, seven from the Publishers Extra collection have been updated in the past month with content from 2023. They are: The Province (Vancouver), Calgary Herald, Leader-Post (Regina), Edmonton Journal, Windsor Star, National Pest, Gazette (Montreal).

Inland Revenue Wills & Administrations 1828-1879.

The collection contains indexes for the years (1828-1879), with surviving registers for 1828-1839 that contain extracts from the original documents. Most original documents were destroyed in 1922 when the Irish Public Record Office was blown up.

The following is the information contained in the records. The first three appear in both the indexes and registers, but the registers include more information:

Name and address of deceased
Name and address of executor or administrator
Court where probate was granted
Date of death
Date of will
Relationship of executor/administrator to the deceased
Value of estate
Description/inventory of the estate (occasional)
Names of beneficiaries (occasional).

96 entries include the keyword Canada.

Ireland Calendars of Wills & Administration 1858-1965 is updated with a further 591,011 transcriptions for three northern registries of Armagh, Belfast and Londonderry (Derry) up to 1965.
The detail varies from will to will, you’ll normally find the name of the deceased and their death date, the names of any beneficiaries and the county.

922 entries include the keyword Canada, 24 the word Ottawa.

Hosted by FamilyTreeWebinars.com and MyHeritage, the free marathon will begin on Thursday, 13 April at 5pm EDT  and end on Friday, 14 April at 6pm EDT.

You may know some of the speakers — Michelle Leonard, Daniel Horowitz, Paul Milner, Janice Nickerson, Melvin J. Collier, Thomas MacEntee, Gena Philibert-Ortega, Michelle Patient, Fiona Brooker, Kinga Urbanska, Fran Kitto, Helen V. Smith, Shauna Hicks, Andrea Bentschneider, Zbigniew Stettner, Natalie Bodle, Judy G. Russell, Nicka Smith, Lisa A. Alzo, Jill Morelli, Ugo Perego, Michael D. Lacopo, J. Mark Lowe, Cyndi Ingle, Elizabeth Shown Mills.

More here.

A news release from FamilySearch confirms and adds a bit of detail.

On June 1, 2023, Canadians can expect to browse the digitized census images by geographic districts and sub-districts on the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) website. Following the initial release, LAC will work collaboratively with Ancestry® and FamilySearch International to create an advanced searchable database for Canadians, and those with Canadian heritage who wish to look for their ancestors.

In this collaborative effort to increase access to the 1931 Census of Canada, LAC has digitized all 234,687 pages of the census and Ancestry will apply its state-of-the-art handwriting recognition technology to the digital images to create a full index of the entire census. FamilySearch will then review the computer-generated index to ensure a complete and accurate index of all fields at a level never achieved before. The images and indexes will be available and searchable online for free through Census Search, Library and Archives Canada’s new one-stop shop for national census records. The images and indexes will also be available on Ancestry.ca and FamilySearch.org.

Do you have a list of searches you’re itching to try? Where in Canada was that elusive relative? Who else was in the house? Who was living in your house in 1931?

A blog post “Historical thinking: using the census in primary teacher education” from Cheshire Archives and Local Studies has ideas on other activities the census can facilitate.

Apothecary— according to the OED “The earlier name for: One who prepared and sold drugs for medicinal purposes—the business now (since about 1800) conducted by a druggist or pharmaceutical chemist. ”

This collection of 41,984 entries contains registries of apothecaries in Ireland between the years 1736 and 1920. Sourced from the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, records may include the following information:

Name
Age
Address
City
County
Registration date

Most records are handwritten in ledgers, though newer records may be printed.

 

From 14 – 19 March, the MyHeritage Irish record collection is available to search for free, Apparently, it’s a celebration of a certain Saint — Patrick perhaps?

There are 13.6 million records in 110 titles in the Irish collection. The largest are the 1901 and 1911 censuses with more than 4.3 million records each; a marriage collection from 1609 to 1898 with nearly 1.5 million names, and Griffith’s Valuation, 1847-1864 with 1.25 million entries.

At the other end of the scale are 500 records from the Register of the Parish of St. Peter And S. Kevin, Dublin, 1669-1761.

If you’re starting researching Irish Ancestry, a site recommended by an experience local Irish researcher is https://www.irelandxo.com/ireland-xo/news/researching-your-irish-ancestry

The following is a press release on an announcement by Minister of Canadian Heritage Pablo Rodriguez.

https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/minister-rodriguez-announces-reappointment-of-leslie-weir-as-librarian-and-archivist-of-canada-879902211.html