Month: April 2023

Montgomeryshire Monumental Inscriptions
7,413 records are added from 16 chapels, churches, and cemeteries in the county. The county total is now 138,429 records from 76 places, 29 of which have the initial letter L. Dates range from 1286 to 2019. The records are transcriptions by the Mongomeryshire Genealogical Society containing background information on the cemetery.

Middlesex Monumental Inscriptions
This update is 6,233 additions from Hounslow Cemetery between the years 1839 and 2022. There are both transcriptions and images in this Middlesex MI collection, totalling 77,100 entries,

Essex Baptisms
122,464 additional transcriptions, ranging from 1638 to 1922 from 154 churches across the county, from Abberton to Writtle, All Saints, make the total collection 2,955,525 entries. Information includes father’s name and occupation, mother’s first name and residence.

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Agree and you have access to:

Nova Scotia, Canada, Marriages, 1763-1945 — 567,153 records.
Nova Scotia, Canada, Deaths, 1864-1877, 1890-1970 — 974,206 records
Nova Scotia, Canada, Births, 1840-1921 — 401,920 records

The Globe, Wednesday 19 April 1865. The death was registered in the June quarter.

Saturday, 8 April 2023 – Meeting is HYBRID!

Live at Knox Presbyterian Church (Lisgar & Elgin). For online attendance register HERE

9:00 am – 10:00 am:  Education Talk
Practical Tips for Repair and Care of Family Treasures – Presenter: Kyla Ubbink 
Whether your collections consist of documents, photographs, artwork, or heirlooms, applying archival principles safeguards their preservation for future generations.  Kyla will provide some handy and practical methods to help ensure the longevity of your collections.  These will include archival enclosure and housing options, guidelines for storage, and methods for basic cleaning, de-acidification and dealing with mould and musty odours.  Kyla operates Ubbink Book & Paper Conservation which provides professional conservation, restoration and preservation consultation services to institutions, galleries, antiquities dealers, collectors, researchers and genealogists.  Find out more on bookandpaperconservation.com.

10:00 am – 11:30 am:  Feature Talk
Canadians on Vimy Ridge, April 1917:  Resources and Research – Presenter: Glenn Wright
It has been more than 100 years since Canadian troops captured Vimy Ridge on Easter weekend 1917, a victory that resonates with Canadians to this day.  Glenn will review the common and not-so-common resources for researching and documenting your ancestor’s role in what was one of the most significant battles of the First World War.  Glenn is a frequent speaker at family history and genealogical meetings throughout Ontario and beyond.  His primary interest is the Canadian men and women who have served in our wars. He is a past president of BIFHSGO.

Note that Kyla will be an exhibitor, and Glenn a speaker at Ottawa Public Library Genealogy Day, Monday 1 May

Hot off the Press…

Crawford Cemetery, Dalhousie Township, Lanark County, Ontario
By Iva Hendrick and Barbara Griffith
Originally published by Ottawa Branch, Ontario Genealogical Society, 1977

Souvenir of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Commemorating OLD BOYS’ REUNION at Cornwall August 11-15, 1906 [Stormont County, Ontario]
By The Freeholder (newspaper)
Originally published by The Freeholder, Cornwall, 1906

Highland Line Cemetery, Dalhousie Township, Lanark County, Ontario
By volunteers from Ottawa Branch, Ontario Genealogical Society
Originally published by Ottawa Branch, Ontario Genealogical Society, 1978

Also added this week…

Africa’s Children: A History of Blacks in Yarmouth Nova Scotia

Places of Worship Peterborough County [what records exist for churches of all denominations, where records are, etc]

The (UK) Police Gazette, published  under various titles, has many references to personal names of missing persons, criminals, army deserters and those deported and imprisoned make it a useful source for genealogical purposes. Surviving coverage is spotty.

TheGenealogist has now added issues for the years 1901, 1911, 1921 and 1931 with over 56,000 individuals and 20,802 further aliases.

Ancestry has the same years, plus 1834 and 1885.  Also the Supplement “A” to the Police Gazette, issued fortnightly,  containing names and aliases, short criminal histories, descriptions and methods of persons who were considered to be expert and travelling criminals between 1914 and 1931.

The British Newspaper Archive, and Findmypast, have issues for 1829, 1858, 1880, 1898, 1916-1918.

According to the wikipedia article Police Gazette (Great Britain and Ireland) at least 61% of the total run of issues from 1772 to 1900 survives, archived by the initiative of local police forces, as well as by the British Library. Many of the Supplements between 1914 and 1965 also survive

According to an entry in its catalogue, the British Library has copies for 1858, and 1877-2003. Issues for the past 75 years are closed.

You perhaps heard that the National Library of Australia Trove database was under threat from termination of funding.

There’s good news. Funding pledge saves National Library’s Trove from closure threat.

When communities rally governments take notice, that’s why why genealogical and family history societies need to nurture relations with like-minded organizations.

MyHeritage adds another scottishindexers collection, 83,012 records of decrees and processes that were started in order to find the paternity of a child in Scotland, from the year 1750 onwards into the first part of the 20th century.

Records typically include the name of the pursuer (usually the mother), case year, residence, the child’s gender and date of birth, name of the defender in court, defender’s occupation, and court name.

A decree was the court’s decision regarding the father of the child, and the processes were the paperwork concerning the case. For more information, visit www.scottishindexes.com.

The FreeBMD database was updated on 31 March 2023 to contain 287,797,659  unique records, updated from 287,549,647 at the start of the month. 

Years with more than 10,000 additions are, for births 1992, and 1994; for marriages 1991 – 1993, for deaths 1990, 1992 – 1993, 1995.  For earlier years the addition of 1,800 unique deaths for 1870 is notable.

Choose from selected free online events in the next five days. All times are ET except as noted. Those in red are Canadian, bolded if local to Ottawa or recommended. Assume registration in advance is required; check so you’re not disappointed. Additional mainly US events are listed at https://conferencekeeper.org/virtual.

Tuesday 4 April

1 pm: Who Benefited from the British Empire? by Martin Daunton for Gresham College.
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/benefit-empire

2 pm: Ottawa Virtual Genealogy Drop-In, by OGS Ottawa Branch. 
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/virtual-genealogy-drop-in-2-2023-04-04/

2:30 pm: Researching Your Ukrainian Roots: An Introduction, by Kate McKenzie for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/8241702

7:30 pm: Breaking Down Brick Walls – Case Studies, by Stephen Wood for OGS Durham Branch.
https://ogs.on.ca/events/durhams-april-4th-2023-meeting-breaking-down-brick-walls-case-studies/

10 pm: Looking for ‘Aliens’ Down Under: A Guide to Australian Naturalisation Records, by Kristy Love for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/looking-for-aliens-down-under-a-guide-to-australian-naturalisation-records/

Wednesday 5 April

10 am: Researching Your House History, by staff of the National Library of Scotland.
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/researching-your-house-history-tickets-565312574127

2 pm: Covering Your Bases: An Introduction to Autosomal DNA Coverage, by Paul Woodbury for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/covering-your-bases-an-introduction-to-autosomal-dna-coverage/

7:30 pm:  Times of our Lives: Huron County history during the years of the Baby Boomers, by David Yates for OGS Huron County Branch. 
https://huron.ogs.on.ca/events/huron-branch-times-of-our-lives-david-yates/

Thursday 6 April

6:30 pm: Your DNA Match is Adopted: Now What? by Sara Allen for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/8102212

7 pm: Ancestral Mapping Using Google Earth Pro , by David Joiner for the Ontario Genealogical Society.
https://ogs.on.ca/april-webinar-ancestral-mapping-using-google-earth-pro-david-joiner/

Friday 7 April

2 pm: Tick Marks and Number Counts: Understanding and Using the Slave Schedules, by Renate Yarborough Sanders for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/tic-marks-and-number-counts-understanding-and-using-the-slave-schedules/

Saturday 8 April

9 am: Practical Tips for Repair and Care of Family Treasures, by Kyla Ubbink for BIFHSGO.
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEqf-GtrT8tEtSiSwnrozAfZAARD0q5F2FQ

10 am: Canadians on Vimy Ridge, April 1917: Resources and Research, by Glenn Wright for BIFHSGO
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEqf-GtrT8tEtSiSwnrozAfZAARD0q5F2FQ

At 7:00 pm on Zoom, two short presentations by well-known Canadian genealogist Dave Obee hosted by OGS Leeds & Grenville Branch.

The first topic is a timely one – Getting Ready for the 1931 Census! The 1931 national census is due to be released in June, 2023 — and since it will probably not be indexed right away, we need to get ready. Pick your priority people and get to work! This session offers ideas for identifying the census divisions and subdivisions where you will find your relatives. Using digitized census reports and mapping tools, you will be able to narrow your search options.

In the second presentation, Dave will take us Beyond the Online Basics: A Genealogical Guide to Digital Collections. There are billions of scanned pages on the Internet — a collection that few physical libraries could match. The problem is that many pages relevant to your research can be difficult to track down, since they are not on the usual genealogy websites. This session provides ideas on how to find the documents that will help you learn more about your families, or the local histories of the areas where they lived.

To join this presentation, visit leedsandgrenville.ogs.on.ca for the link to register or click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUvc-2urz4qH9MlJAslt_6cNC2S0wPFfvD6

Everyone is welcome!

How can you ignore a database with nearly half a billion records?

The MyHeritage collection Historical Books – Index of Authors and People Mentioned, 1811-2003 names persons mentioned in various English-language public domain books as well as the names of authors of these publications. It has 494,147,034 entries from over three million digitized books.

The index includes the following searchable information: the title and the year of publication, name of the author(s), birth and death year of the author(s), the names of all the individuals mentioned in the publication, the publisher and the subject(s) of the publication can also be found in most records.

I started checking other large databases. Here are the results – an odd mixture.

While The Wayback Machine is in first place, there’s a lot of repitition as it archives web pages many times. The 534 times bifhsgo.ca has been saved between 25 October 2001 and 19 March 2023 means there’s a lot of duplication.

If size matters this reinforces the importance of using Google, or a general search engine.

Looking down the list you will see titles for places with no connection to your family history. For those size doesn’t matter, but maybe you’re looking for someone who dissappeared to end up who knows where.