Anglo-Celtic Connections

Have you ever been walking through a cemetery and had a grave marker catch your attention? You wonder about the person it commemorates.

I’ve stumbled upon a series of YouTube Shorts, 2 minutes in length, that follow a common pattern, investigating the person beneath the gravestone. Included are videos or images of places around King’s Lynn, Norfolk, that were important in the person’s life.

The latest is about George Robert Mann, who emigrated to Canada, joined the CEF, was sent to England, married, and died on 3 February 1919. View it here.

On his CEF attestation paper, Mann provided his Canadian address as Bethany, Ontario, a community situated on Highway 7 between Peterborough and Port Perry. His occupation was listed as a labourer.  It’s a reminder of the thousands upon thousands of immigrants to Canada from the UK who signed up with the CEF and the many who didn’t survive to return after the war.

Global wasn’t kidding in their last announcement when they mentioned their immediate priority would be Eastern Ontario books. Here they are:

A Collection of Lanark County, Ontario Marriage Records 1817-1967

Narrative of a Voyage to Quebec and the Journey from Thence to New Lanark in Upper Canada (1821)

The Lanark Society Settlers: Ships’ Passenger Lists – Glasgow Emigration Society 1821

Perth-On-The-Tay, A Tale Of The Transplanted Highlanders

The Picturesque St. Lawrence River, Kingston and Cape Vincent to Morristown and Brockville (1895)

Pioneer Sketches of The District of Bathurst [Upper Canada]

Vol 1 – The Lanark Era – Births, Marriages and Deaths 1895 to 1911

Vol 2 – The Lanark Era – Births, Marriages and Deaths 1912 to 1936 [Also accounts of returning WWI soldiers and many who did not return]

Vol 3 – The Lanark Era – The Missing Issues, to 1930, (1903, 1916, 1920-29, 1930)

Vol 4 – The Lanark Era – Births, Marriages and Deaths 1936 to 1939

Pakenham, Ottawa Valley Village 1823-1860

Pakenham, Ottawa Valley Village 1860-1900

The Bathurst Courier, Extracts From The Bathurst Courier 1834-1857

Vol 1 – Genealogical Extracts from the Perth Courier and Bathurst Courier Newspapers 1834-1867

Vol 2 – Genealogical Extracts from the Perth Courier 1870-1889

Vol 3 – Genealogical Extracts from the Perth Courier 1890-1899

Vol 4 – Genealogical Extracts from the Perth Courier 1900-1909

Vol 5 – Genealogical Extracts from the Perth Courier 1910-1914

Vol 6 – Genealogical Extracts from the Perth Courier 1915-1919

Vol 7 – Genealogical Extracts from the Perth Courier 1920-1924

Vol 8 – Genealogical Extracts from the Perth Courier 1925-1929

Wow!

Next, the focus shifts to Ireland & Scotland resources, plus 27 volumes of County Surrogate Court Indexes (for wills) of Ontario, and more Lanark County, Ontario, cemeteries.

Choose from these selected free online events; it’s yet another week of thin pickings. All times are Eastern Time, unless otherwise noted. Registration may be required in advance—please check the links to avoid disappointment. For many more events, mainly in the U.S., visit conferencekeeper.

Tuesday, 15 July

2:30 pm: Finding the Records for Impossible Genealogy, by Linda Yip for the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
acpl.libnet.info/event/13836071

8 pm: Civil War Records: What is a Reasonably Exhaustive Search? with Craig R. Scott for Legacy Family Tree Webinars
familytreewebinars.com/webinar/civil-war-records-what-is-a-reasonably-exhaustive-search/

Wednesday, 16 July

2 pm: Tracing Scots Ancestors Before 1855 by Alison Spring for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
familytreewebinars.com/webinar/tracing-scots-ancestors-before-1855/

Thursday, 17 July

6:30 pm: Discovering Pennsylvania Dutch Ancestors, by Jeanie Glaser for the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
acpl.libnet.info/event/14008274

Friday, 18 July

2 pm: Strategies for Sorting Out and Documenting Mexican Names and Families, by Colleen Robledo Greene for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
familytreewebinars.com/webinar/strategies-for-sorting-out-and-documenting-mexican-names-and-families/

Saturday, 19 July

Ancestry is now offering a premium membership. As they’ve named it, Club 1890, it hints at helping find workarounds for those struggling with the missing 1890 US census. To be clear, that’s not explicitly mentioned.

The annual cost is $5,000 US.

What’s included? Is it worth it? Ancestry already offers various layers of service, including a Canadian-records-only layer, and the relatively new PRO Tools. US genealogist Amy Johnson Crow has investigated, explains what’s being offered with this premium service, and shares her concerns.

I agree with Amy that Ancestry has every right to market its services in whatever way it sees fit. However, her concerns about the company’s direction are worth more than a thought.

Have you searched for and located a previously unknown immediate or closely related genetic relative using DNA?

If so, you may be able to help Prof Barbara A. Mitchell of Simon Fraser University with her study funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for 2023–2027. The project “Aging Amateur Family Genealogists: Linking Lives and Long-Lost Relatives” focuses on the psycho-social impacts of discovering previously unknown family members, drawing upon historical and archival records, family stories/memories, and home-based DNA kits.

Genealogists aged 55 and older are being sought to complete a web-based survey consisting of three questions, which should take less than half an hour to complete.

Find out more at https://www.sfu.ca/gerontology/research/agegen2.html

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Technological Unemployment
Dan Gardner on Kurt Vonnegut and the long history of a jobless future

Cooking for all Seasons
Community cookbooks are a thing.” Favourite” recipes are collected and published with the person suggesting them given. One compiled from suggestions by employees and friends of Environment Canada (Downsview) was published in October 1994, Cooking for All Seasons, and has recently come online. It jogged my memory of several former colleagues. If an ancestor’s organization, church, or similar community group compiled such a book, it should not be overlooked as a source for adding a personal touch to a family history.
Has a genealogy or family history society produced such a publication?

Teeth record the hidden history of your childhood climate and diet

Global Genealogy Website News
Rick and Sandra Roberts continue to work on completing the transfer to a new website at GlobalGenealogy.ca/. The original website, launched in 1995-96, has been permanently replaced by a new, modern website that offers advanced functionality, precise search, intuitive browsing, easy checkout, immediate automated downloads of PDF books, discounted shipping, and immediate tracking of physical items. Many of the most popular titles have been added to the new site, with approximately 1,000 more titles to be uploaded. The immediate focus is on adding dozens more Eastern Ontario titles.

International Bomber Command Center: Losses Database
TheGenealogist has incorporated this record set documenting individuals who lost their lives while serving with Bomber Command.  The records are linked to the IBCC database, which is compiled from over 6.2 million pieces of data, providing information for each individual, often including a photo.
● 67,140 Records
● Covers 1936 to 1968
● Gives over 100,000 names of Parents, Spouses, Siblings and Children

Ancestry Updates
UK, British Army World War II Medal Cards, 1939-1945 was updated on 9 July with 834,078 records.
Ireland, Railway Employment Records, 1870-1940 was also updated on the same day with 306,881 records.

The Contronym Conundrum
By Claude

I dusted off my dusty shelf today,
Which left me quite perplexed—
Did I add dust or sweep it all away?
English leaves me vexed!

I clipped a coupon, then I clipped my hedge,
One saved, one cut apart—
The same word walks a contradiction’s edge,
Language is quite an art!

“I’m finished!” cried the student with his test,
But was he done or through?
Or did his teacher finish him instead?
Words can mean one thing—or two!

So when I weather storms or weather fades,
And fast means quick or stuck,
I marvel at these verbal masquerades—
Contronyms! What luck!

 

Did you notice? Over the next few days, southern Ontario will experience hot and humid conditions. The temperatures and humidex will meet or be extremely close to heat warning criteria. A shift in the weather pattern is anticipated on Thursday.  The UK and other parts of Europe have also been experiencing sweltering conditions.
Summer can get to be too much of a good thing, and it’s only going to get more so as climate change takes hold.
In a new Storylines video, How to Maintain Your Writing Motivation Through the Summer Months, Lynn Palermo at The Family History Writing Studio recommends specific actions to change the pace while maintaining writing momentum. However, if you retreat into an air-conditioned room or space, you may find yourself becoming more, not less, productive.

This week’s update features over 6,600 new photographic records, additions to monumental inscriptions for Middlesex and Yorkshire, and more than 200,000 newspaper pages.

Passenger Ship Photographs: 5,528 photographs, prints, paintings and photos of models covering the years 1870-1960. Ships in this set include Maurentania, Aquitania, Titanic, Athenia, Olympic, and Britannic. Many are not the large trans-Atlantic liners. There are many photos of the same ship.

Findmypast Photo Collection: 1,465 photos of England, Wales, and Scotland have been added for the period 1880-1900. There are now 14,112 photos in the collection

Yorkshire Monumental Inscriptions: 2,702 new inscriptions from 1635-2009. The total of transcriptions is now 341,589

Middlesex Monumental Inscriptions: 1,541 new inscriptions from 1653-2007. The total for the collection is now 87,469, many with linked images.

Newspaper Archive Expansion: 202,203 additional pages.

New titles are:

• Dean Forest Mercury, 1889
• Evening Journal, 1890
• Harrogate and Claro Times and Knaresborough Guardian, 1907
• Leyland Guardian, 1986-2004
• Life, 1879-1905
• Provincial News (Lydney), 1910
• St. Andrews Gazette, 1914-1915
• Trade Unionist, 1892

Updated titles are:

• Cambridge Daily News, 1905
• Cheltenham Journal and Gloucestershire Fashionable Weekly Gazette, 1824
• Cork Examiner, 1856, 1877–1880, 1887–1893
• Faringdon Advertiser and Vale of the White Horse Gazette, 1862–1865, 1867, 1869, 1873, 1877, 1897, 1900, 1923–1942
• Glasgow Evening Times, 1882–1883, 1885–1887, 1889–1893
• Grays & Tilbury Gazette, 1884–1888, 1890–1896, 1898, 1909–1911, 1913–1920
• Illustrated Police Budget, 1893–1896, 1908–1909, 1911–1912
• Maidstone Telegraph, 1930–1938, 1958
• Morning Advertiser, 1873–1876, 1892–1895, 1899
• Salisbury Times, 1910–1937, 1940–1949, 1960–1962

CRKN made a lot of additions at canadiana.ca on 8 July. Although I was curious about why a collection of works by Oscar Wilde, originally published around 1910, would be the largest part, and even some by him in translation to German, there are a few additions I found more interesting.

Here we go again. The Carney government has directed cabinet ministers to identify areas for reduced program spending by 7.5 percent in the fiscal year that begins next April, 10 percent the year after, and a cumulative 15 percent for 2028-29. If expenditures are to meet NATO’s targets, stimulate the economy and protect social programs, the money must come from somewhere.

What does that mean for Library and Archives Canada?

The 2025-26 Main Estimates allocated $208,150,119 to Library and Archives Canada, representing a 4.2% increase from the previous year’s $199,806,690. LAC’s expenditures support three statutory responsibilities:

Providing access to documentary heritage
Acquiring and preserving documentary heritage
Internal Services

Here’s the fundamental financial data for each, with the 7.5% decrease applied equally across all categories in the right-hand column.

Category	Expenditure Type	2024-25 Amount	2025-26 Amount	Percent Increase	2026-27 Amount
Providing access to documentary heritage	Operating	$37,820,020	$56,786,182	50.15%	$52,527,218
Providing access to documentary heritage	Capital	$44,790,676	$35,252,002	-21.30%	$32,608,102
Acquiring and preserving documentary heritage	Operating	$67,100,827	$67,199,899	0.15%	$62,159,907
Acquiring and preserving documentary heritage	Capital	$7,791,921	$5,727,792	-26.49%	$5,298,208
Internal Services	Operating	$43,147,246	$44,259,244	2.58%	$40,939,801

It’s improbable the cut would be across the board. How much will small p politics play into it? Would it be politically acceptable to curtail or downscale the opening of Ādisōke next year due to budget cuts?

As with plants, periodic pruning of an organization is healthy. Could we see fewer LAC blog posts, such as “Pineapple-cheese salad from the 1950s“, reconsideration of the priority of hosting a Creator in Residence, or termination of the failing Co-Lab challenges?

Will we see consolidation, resulting in a reduction in the number of managers? No doubt some of them possess skills that could be employed in priority areas outside LAC. There is presently one vacant director position and seven acting directors at LAC.

Will LAC seize the opportunity?

 

Episode 26 of Mark Thompson and Steve Little’s podcast (posted July 7, recorded mid-June) covers some fascinating developments in AI and genealogy. The hosts discuss recent updates from Gemini and Claude, share insights from their RootsTech panel on responsible AI, feature an interview with Jessica Taylor from Legacy Tree Genealogists, and discuss the announcement of ChatGPT 5.

I share their enthusiasm for Google’s Gemini—after trying it during a free two-month trial that’s now ending, I’m impressed enough to continue with a paid subscription. Given their high praise for Claude’s Sonnet 4, I decided to test it by having it review this very post. The result? Only minor refinements were needed, which (it suggests) speaks well for both the original draft and Claude’s editorial restraint.

Where to listen: You can find Episode 26 on most podcast platforms or visit https://blubrry.com/3738800/ for direct access and links to previous episodes.