Month: January 2024

A few niche additions to FMP’s offerrings this week.

Britain, Jewish Commercial Directory 1894
This new set contains 4,171 records from 1894. Transcriptions and images are available. 233 are named Cohen, six named Smith. You get first and last name, occupation, place and street. The original publication is organized by place and street.

Scotland, Buchanan Society members 1725-1948
Find 1,053 records, documenting members of Scotland’s Buchanan Society between 1725 and 1948. The transcribed information is first name(s), last name, year,  occupation and address. Be sure to look at the linked original, which may show the relationship to others in the collection. Males dominate the contemt while there are some women included — 28 Marys.

Ireland Memorial Inscriptions
In this new-and-improved set, you’ll find 682 photographs and transcriptions spanning over 300 years from  1711 to 2019. Included are Arbour Hill, Christ Church Cathedral, Huguenot, and St Patrick’s Cathedral cemeteries in Dublin.

Last Friday, I blogged, “I’m doubtful there were as many as 100,000 home children, as properly defined, who arrived in Canada between 1869 and the start of WW2.”

I’ve now come across the following from the 1930 Annual Report of the Department of Immigration and Colonization.

The total to 1930 of 95,016 emigrated by the various agencies is more than I anticipated. Add to it 1,018 names included in the LAC database to 1939 and the total is 96,034. Not quite 100,000, but close.

Those are the official figures. They must be the truth is they come from the government!

Are they actualy children as described by the column heading?

A sample passenger list for 1900 showed 2.2 percent were age 19 of older. If applicable to the whole it reduces the total to an estimated 93,900.

In Britain the Elementary Education Act (1870) required that children aged between five and 13 should be able to attend a school. In 1880 a further Education Act made school attendance compulsory between the ages of five and ten.

Older than 13 and they would be expected to enter the workforce, as did both my parents in the late 1920s.

It’s debateable whether those past the school leaving age were properly classed as children. About 20% of that 1900 group were beyond school leaving age. The terminology used for those older was often juveniles or young people. 

This index provides information about historic properties in the United Kingdom and Ireland and their owners between 1222 and 1967. The properties in the index have been converted into public accommodations. The index, 481 records, is searchable by property location, property name, and associated family surnames.

Sadly my ancestors, showing a regrettable lack of consideration,  failed to be wealthy enough to appear.

The FreeBMD Database was updated on Monday, 22 January 2024, to contain 290,006,167 unique entries, up from 289,764,153 on 22 December.

The years with more than 10,000 new entries are 1992-1994 for births, 1991 – 1994 for marriages, 1993 and 1995 for deaths.

When estimating the number of home child descendants living in Canada and the proportion of the present population they constitute, it’s essential to account for “leakage.”

How many home children and subsequent generations left Canada? Was it in more significant numbers than the general Canadian population? Having moved at least once, so being less firmly rooted, they may have been more inclined to seek greener pastures by returning to their roots in the UK or trying their luck in the USA or further afield.

There’s some pertinent information in an undated confidential publication from the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Canadian Immigration Policy and Backgrounds, which includes data as late as 1937. To summarize:

1901-1911:  Immigration was  1,847,651. The net
growth in the immigrant population was 887,461, so 960,190 were lost, perhaps no more than 90,000 of those to death. That’s 47% lost to emigration.

1911-1921: The text mentions, “In 1921, only 50.3 percent of the survivors of the 1911-21 immigrants were still in Canada.” That means by the end of the decade, 49.7% of immigrants were not residents, which would include war dead.

1921-1931: “From calculations based on the Censuses of 1921 and 1931, on the percentage of immigrants still living who arrived in any decade and are still in Canada, we find only about 26.3 percent, or 1 in 4 remain for a period of over 30 years, 38.8 percent for 20-30 years, around 42 percent for 10-20 years, while a little over 50 percent. remain after from one to ten years.”

A reasonable conclusion is that estimates of the percentage of home child descendants in today’s population that do not account for emigration from Canada will be wild overestimates.

 

For orders over $25, save 20% on all in-stock items & digital books until Saturday 27 January at midnight EST!

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A reprint of Pinks Cemetery (Mountain View), Hull Township (Gatineau), Quebec, has just been released. Recorded by Bruce Elliott and originally published by Ottawa Branch, Ontario Genealogical Society, 1973. This reprint is by Global Heritage Press, Ottawa, 2024.

 

Choose from selected free online events in the next five days. All times are ET except as noted. Assume registration in advance is required; check so you’re not disappointed. Find out about many more mainly US events at Conference Keeper at https://conferencekeeper.org

Tuesday 23 January

2 pm: Ottawa Virtual Genealogy Drop-In, for OGS Ottawa Branch.
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/virtual-genealogy-drop-in-2-2024-01-23/

2 pm: How to trace your French ancestors with MyHeritage resources, by Marie Cappart for MyHeritage and Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/how-to-trace-your-french-ancestors-with-myheritage-resources/

2:30 pm: Researching Family in the Digital Public Library of America, by Carla Cegielski for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/9729158

Wednesday 24 January

2 pm: Essential Keyboard Shortcuts and other PC Tech Tools for Genealogy, by Peggy Jude for Legacy Family Tree Webinars. 
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/essential-keyboard-shortcuts-and-other-pc-tech-tools-for-genealogy/

2:30 pm: Implications of Hardwicke’s Marriage Act in Genealogical Research, by John Wintrip for the Guild of One-Name Studies.
https://one-name.org/hardwickemarriageact/

Thursday 25 January

7 am: Les derniers développements dans la recherche des données historiques sur MyHeritage, par Elisabeth Zetland pour MyHeritage et Legacy Family Tree Webinars. 
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/les-derniers-developpements-dans-la-recherche-des-donnees-historiques-sur-myheritage/

1 pm: Satirical Cartoons: A History, by Martin Rowson for Gresham College.
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/satirical-cartoons-history

6:30 pm: Using City Directories to Break Down Brick Walls, by Susan VH Fabian for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/9721987

Friday 26 January

Saturday 27 January

5:30 am: Using Prisoner of War Records, by Roger Kershaw for TNA (UK).
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/family-history-using-prisoner-of-war-records-tickets-753883153807

 

Recently published books acquired by various Canadian public libraries (Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, Winnipeg). The Toronto catalogue is not available. Holdings are likely incomplete – check with your local library. Novels and special interests are excluded.

Ancestor Trouble: a Reckoning and a Reconciliation
Newton, Maud
First edition
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S38C8277746
(CPL, EPL, HPL, MPL, OPL, VPL, WPL)

Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of An American Family
Webster, Rachel Jamison, 1974-
First edition
https://ottawa.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S26C1512425
(CPL, EPL, OPL, VPL)

Build your family tree : a guide for Canadians with local and global roots
Butler, Lynne
First edition
(EPL, MPL, OPL, WPL)
https://epl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S5C2491770

Family Photo Detective: Learn How to Find Genealogy Clues in Old Photos and Solve Family Photo Mysteries
Taylor, Maureen Alice,
Updated edition
https://ottawa.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S26C1532555
(OPL)

Finding Your Family Tree: a Beginner’s Guide to Researching Your Genealogy
Morgan, Sharon Leslie, 1951-
First edition
https://ottawa.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S26C1532556
(CPL, OPL)

Genealogy of a Murder: Four Generations, Three Families, One Fateful Night
Belkin, Lisa, 1960-
First edition
https://ottawa.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S26C1511979
(CPL, EPL, HPL, OPL)

Generation by Generation: a Modern Approach to the Basics of Genealogy
Smith, Drew (Andrew Martin), 1956-
First edition
https://ottawa.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S26C1532560
(OPL)

 

Most of the time, I write about new databases that are of no interest to me or most readers. Life is like a box of chocolates — joy when a new collection appears online for an area of your family history interest. I had one on 18 January with the 15,054,046 names in the North Riding of Yorkshire electoral registers addition on Ancestry.

It includes the major communities of Middlesbrough, Redcar, Whitby, Scarborough and Northallerton and a host of smaller ones like Great Ayton, which is in my family history.

I found my grandmother from 1945 to the year before her death, missing the war years. Her mother, under her married name Cochrane, was included in 1918 and 1919 recorded with her second husband but leaving the new mystery of where they were in the 1920s and most of the 1930s.

The registers include the names of registered voters in the Riding and their place of residence.  Depending on the year, you may find a full street address, the name of a house, the name of the street, or the name of the polling district. Registers weren’t produced in 1916 and 1917 or from 1940 to 1944 because of the two world wars.

The originals are at the North Yorkshire County Record Office, let’s not forget to acknowledge the work of the organizations that preserved and made available the original records, Ancestry almost certainly used OCR to compile the collection.

 

 

There are several factors in estimating the number of descendants of home children from statistics. You have to take into account the number of descendants of a home child, and then their descendants, and so on. At each stage there will be “leakage”.

On average, each home child had a certain number of offspring. Is that the same as for the same age cohort established in Canada?  Could a traumatic childhood have meant home children had fewer offspring on average? It could have meant they died younger before having as many children as the population at large.

Did home children leave Canada in greater numbers than the general Canadian population? Having moved at least once, so being less firmly rooted, they may have been more inclined to seek greener pastures by returning to their roots in the UK or trying their luck in the USA or further afield.

When it comes to the number of descendants it doesn’t matter whether the parent is male or female, but a complicating factor is if the mother and father are both home children.

Say each home child had three children; if both the mother and father were home children, then there would be three home children descendants rather than six.

How often do we have the situation of a home child mother and father? How might they make acquaintance? Perhaps at a church or social event in a small community.

Let’s look at a scenario.

100 boys go to a dance at which there are 100 girls. One of the boys is a home child. How does the chances of him making the best connection with a home child girl depend in the number of home child girls?

If there are no home child girls at the dance it’s zero. If one then it’s one in a hundred, 1%, and so on.

Now suppose twenty home girls are invited to a dance and eighty a non-home-girls. Similarly twenty home boys and eighty non-home boys. What is the probability that at least one home child boy and girl hit it off?

The answer is probability 0.34 or 34%. The calculation is based on conditional probability and the binomial distribution.

It’s probably greater as young people of similar background would likely find commonality of interest enough to be encouraged to get to know each other better than a random person.

The calculation assumes the chance of meeting is random and independent. But it could well be that someone goes to a dance with a buddy, he or she gets to meet someone who also came to the dance with a buddy, and the two buddies are introduced.

While I’ve heard of two home children marrying and having children I know of no statistics. If you do please leave a comment.

All these factors suggest fewer home child descendants than indicated by naive estimates.

OGS Toronto Branch hosts leading genealogist, as well as newspaper editor and publisher, Dave Obee, for its first online monthly meeting of 2024 on Monday, 22 January, at 7:30 pm.

We likely agree with him about remembering the basics of genealogical research. But do you agree when he recommends foregoing the fun of the latest bright, shiny things, like AI?  Would he have said the same thing when DNA came on the scene? Let’s not fall into the trap of prioritizing the negative, which is the bread and butter of the news business.

https://torontofamilyhistory.org/event/the-road-ahead/

Note: The image was produced by DALL E 3.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Ancestry has added a collection of 114,110 Winnipeg, Canada Burial Records Index, 1878-2022 for Brookside, St. Vital and Transcona cemeteries sourced from  https://legacy.winnipeg.ca/cemeteries/search/default.stm

Ontario – Librarians propose provincewide digital library
Base funding for libraries from the province has not increased in more than 25 years.

Popular Toronto neighbourhoods & landmarks in the early 1900s

JPEG, GIF, or PNG? Image File Types Explained and Tested

Digital Sundial.