RootsTech offers 16 sessions classified as intermediate/
advanced/professional. Here’s my selection from the five available on Friday, 1 March.

3:30 pm ET:  Unearthing the treasures in the Irish Registry of Deeds

Natalie Bodle
The Irish Registry of Deeds based in Dublin has been in existence since 1708 and manages the legal registration of property. Less well known is that it is also a repository for genealogical treasures such as wills, property leases, marriage agreements, mortgages and trusts and that this archive has remained intact since inception. The millions of names in these records include the principal parties to the deed and also wider family members and witnesses. Lists of lessees and even those with neighbouring properties may be found. It is also possible to find records by location. Many of these records are available as microfilms on the Family Search website although they are not indexed there which means they are a lesser-known and under-used source. This webinar will cover different methods of searching within and accessing these valuable records.

3:30 pm ET: Beyond Parish Registers: Tracing your Anglican Ancestors in England

Nicholas Dixon
The majority of the population of England belonged to the Church of England from the sixteenth century until recent times. However, discussions of the role of religion in family history tend to focus on membership of nonconformist denominations. Hence genealogists can overlook the many ways in which ancestors might have participated in Anglican activity beyond the basic facts of being baptised, married or buried according to Anglican rites. This webinar will discuss the varieties of Anglican commitment, including confirmation, receiving communion, Anglican schooling, Anglican societies and parochial ministry. It will also offer advice on finding records of such activities in archival repositories and online resources.

5 pm ET: Brick Walls! Real? or Created Through Faulty Research?

Barbara Vines Little
As researchers, at some time—usually many times, we will find ourselves facing the proverbial brick wall. Some of these brick walls will, because of record loss or other reasons, be difficult, if not impossible, to overcome. We create others ourselves because we fail to understand a record or the law that created it, believe what we should not, or simply fail to look in the right place at the right time. This lecture looks at some of these pitfalls and false trails and suggests ways to avoid them and/or to uncover new leads that may take your research around them.

To put it another way: —

Irish deeds, a hidden store,
Bodle unearths tales of yore.
Wills and leases, whispers rise,
Families bound by legal ties.

Dixon delves where Anglicans trod,
Beyond the parish, seeking God.
Communion, school, the faithful way,
Their lives in records on display.

Brick walls loom, a daunting test,
Vines Little guides, dispels the rest.
False trails and pitfalls lie in wait,
Keen eyes reveal a clearer fate.

If you haven’t registered for the free online attendance, start at rootstech.org

 

A helpful note from Ireland, via Ann Burns, about First Steps in Finding Your Irish Ancestors.

From irelandxo.com, the contents might not be new to everyone, perhaps these are.

Sloinne.ie a comprehensive free database of surname spelling variations and district of origin

Guide to Irish Christian Names lists the formal name and its variations to include nicknames, the Latin and the original Irish name from which they all derived.

logainm.ie – for its excellent archive of old alternative spellings and placename aliases.

If the Gaeilge stumps you there’s always Google translate.

RootsTech offers 16 sessions classified as intermediate/
advanced/professional. Here’s my selection from the eight available on Thursday 29 February. 

10 am ET: Metropolitan Ancestors: Finding Families in Georgian and Victorian London

Nicholas Dixon
It can be particularly challenging for genealogists to locate individuals and families in the UK’s capital city and its environs. This is because of the high density of population in the metropolis and the fact that London families often moved between multiple addresses in a relatively short space of time. Given the number of people who migrated to London in the Georgian and Victorian periods, London records often need to be compared with those of other parts of the UK and other countries. This webinar will discuss the multifarious records that are useful to those tracing London ancestors, including directories, newspapers, court records, insurance records and local history publications. Using relevant and interesting examples from my own ancestry, it will suggest new ways of finding families in London.

11:30 am ET: Home Children – The children sent to Canada from the Home for Destitute Children in Liverpool

Ian Mooney
Many of our ancestors moved great distances by choice for economic reasons. Migration from Britain to North America was a well-trodden path. However, a less well-known programme of child migration, known as the ‘Home Children’ movement saw nearly 80000 poor children sent to Canada from Britain during a 70 year period from the 1860s.

Using case studies of children who were sent to Canada, the session will explore the sources that are available, in Britain and Canada, and piece together life stories for the most important people in the migration programme, the children.

3:30 pm ET: The ATGCs of DNA Analysis: Assumptions, Thinking Analytically, Guesses, and Conclusions

Kelli Bergheimer
How do you know in DNA analysis if you have proven what you set out to prove? How can you implement the genealogical proof standard into your daily work? Learn how to avoid the assumptions that prevent your progress. And learn to think more analytically about hypotheses and conclusions. Prerequisite: Participants should have a working knowledge of DNA testing to be successful in this class.

To put it another way :—

London’s whispers, secrets hide,
Dixon’s search, a guiding tide.
Mooney seeks the children sent,
Their stories through the records bent.
ATGCs with Bergheimer’s hand,
Assumptions fade, conclusions stand.
RootsTech’s Friday, knowledge gleams,
Unraveling past, ancestral dreams.

If you haven’t registered for the free online attendance, start at rootstech.org

What are you doing at 7 pm this evening?

This is a shoutout for what looks like a well-researched presentation about an obscure settlement scheme given by BIFHSGO President Dianne Brydon — William Dickson’s Settlement Scheme: Finding Ancestors in Dumfries Township 1820s-1840s for OGS Waterloo Virtual Branch.

In 1816 William Dickson purchased over 90,000 acres in the area between Galt and Brantford, east and west of the Grand River, and he set about settling his surveyed lots with fellow countrymen from the Borders area in Scotland. Over the following decades he, and his son after him, allocated land to hundreds of immigrants who took up his offer in what he named Dumfries Township (later North and South Dumfries Township, Counties of Waterloo and Brant). Although little has been written about this settlement scheme, records abound with rich detail about each immigrant family’s experience. The full picture is difficult to piece together as the records are distributed among archives and among collections within archives. This lecture will briefly describe William Dickson’s settlement scheme; use examples to show the types of land records he kept and the information they contain; show where to find the records; offer tips for searching within the collections; showcase useful ancillary records; and highlight gems found in historical secondary sources.

This webinar is open to all.

To register: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwuc-yurjkjGtBw1aowQZFJFY2vQD_uJDKR

 

I just started assembling the list of RootsTech online presentations I’d like to participate in starting Thursday, 29 February. It’s extensive, with conflicts in some of the time slots. Fortunately, all those being streamed will also be available on demand afterwards.

I started out looking at those tagged as intermediate/
advanced/professional and will post lists of those for each of the three days of the conference starting tomorrow.

There are many others I hope to catch, too. Check out the online schedule.  You can also search for presentations on a topic of your interest, like Canada, DNA or London, from Search the One-Demand Library.

You do need to register, it’s all free online.

I’m taking advantage of a slow news period, probably in the lead-up to RootsTech, to point to some resources for Ottawa history.

An excellent resource list updated a few days ago, is available from the Historical Society of Ottawa.

Education Resource List

It focuses on HSO’s resources, but mentions those of third parties, like James Powell’s blog

Today in Ottawa’s History

It does not mention, and probably should, Andrew King’s blog

Ottawa Rewind

 

 

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 20 February

2 pm: Ottawa Virtual Genealogy Drop-in, from OGS Ottawa Branch.
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/virtual-genealogy-drop-in-2-2024-02-20/

2:30 pm: Using Permanent.org: Preserving the
Digital Legacy of Your Family, by Kaitlyn Jarnagin for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/9958955

Wednesday 21 February

8 pm: Genealogy Smart Start, Things I Wish I’d Known, by Elizabeth Williams Gomoll for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/genealogy-smart-start-things-i-wish-id-known/

Thursday 22 February

7 pm: William Dickson’s Settlement Scheme: Finding Ancestors in Dumfries Township 1820s-1840s, by Dianne Brydon for OGS Waterloo Virtual Branch
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwuc-yurjkjGtBw1aowQZFJFY2vQD_uJDKR#/registration

Friday 23 February

Saturday 24 February

10:30 am: Documents + DNA + Method + a little bit of Luck, Combining Tools to Find Biological Family, by Elizabeth Gomoll for Niagara County Genealogical Society (USA).
https://niagaragenealogy.org/ncgs-february-2024-program-documents-dna-method-a-little-bit-of-luck-combining-tools-to-find-biological-family-by-elizabeth-gomoll/

EXTRA
Sunday 25 February
2 pm: Getting the Most From Online Newspaper Collections in OurDigitalWorld, by Jess Postgate for OGS Halton-Peel Branch 
https://ogs.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3e3cad1080cdad19159195373&id=5b09070215&e=c4bd59bd77

 

Under the provisions of the Empire Settlement Act (ESA), 1922, 130,000 immigrants came to Canada, married couples, single agricultural labourers, domestics and juveniles aged 14 – 17, were assisted. That’s according to the Canadian Council for Refugees,

That number is perhaps 11,000 greater than those recorded for whom warrants were issued, as shown in the lower curve in the figure. It peaks in 1927 and 1928 at close to 28,500.

The figure is from  ‘Leaven for the lump’: Canada and Empire settlement, 1918-1939, by John A. Schultz in Emigrants and Empire: British Settlement in the Dominions Between the Wars (Studies in Imperialism), Constantine, Stephen [Editor], Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 1990)

How many stayed? There was no systematic tracking. Schultz has patchy evidence.

Of the 18,790 (women) who went to Canada under the 1926 agreement, 1,517 eventually married but a similar number, 1,716, returned to the United Kingdom by choice or were deported. The others were trapped by the onset of the depression and remained on the rolls of the Women’s Branch which was responsible for their welfare. The romantic notion that young British women would find a virile Canadian mate and breed a future Empire race must have seemed a bitter farce to most.

Were they trapped, or just lost track of? Did they go the the US as so many other immigrants did?

Based on the total number of British immigrants in the graph through the whole period, I’m not convinced the program made much difference.  People likely just took advantage of incentives, loans and discounted rates for their passage. Wouldn’t you?

An in-person event on Wednesday, 21 February, at Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Cultural Centre, 355 Cooper Street.
Details and registration at https://heritageottawa.org/events/24-sussex-drive-residence-reticence

There are currently 3,875 items in Collection Search identified as Co-Lab-only contributions, an increase from 3,785 last month.

Two project amongst the Library and Archives Canada’s Co-Lab Challenges reported progress.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

How to navigate Order-in-Council records, part one: real life at LAC

TNA: 300,000 farm records going online

Introduction to County Research in England
Until 23 February, free access to this Family Tree Webinars presentation by Mia Bennett. A good refresher.

Oil and gas lobbyists have deep pockets and access to politicians, but an EU ban could be in the pipeline

 

 

5.1% of immigrants admitted between 1982 and 2017 emigrated within five years of landing;

This percentage rises to 17.5% 20 years after admission;

Annual probabilities of emigrating peak three to seven years after admission.

Those are the highlights of a Statistics Canada report Emigration of Immigrants: Results from the Longitudinal Immigration Database released on 2 February 2024.

The chart fills in the gaps.

This leakage of immigrants must be accounted for in estimating immigrant contribution to subsequent demographics.

The good news, not mentioned in the report, is that retention of immigrants may be higher than historically. However, the quality of historic data is questionable.

In the early 1920s an immigration branch official opined about the proposed Empire Settlement Act (ESA):

“In the past we have brought into this country immigrants by the hundred thousand only to discover at the next census that they had all vanished.”

That’s recorded in the chapter ‘Leaven for the lump’: Canada and Empire settlement, 1918-1939, by John A. Schultz in Emigrants and Empire: British Settlement in the Dominions Between the Wars (Studies in Imperialism), Constantine, Stephen [Editor], Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 1990).

It’s an exaggeration, but emigration of immigrants has long been a concern. Schultz includes the following

… of the 8,500 (Harvesters) sent, 6,876 had returned to the United Kingdom (in September), ending hopes that a large number would settle into permanent employment in Canada.

A much earlier Stats Can (Dominion Bureau of Statistics) publication I mentioned recently, Canadian Immigration Policy and Backgrounds,  includes data for the early 20th century. 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.”

COMMENT

The gap between 10 and 50 percent after 10 years is enough to drive a large truck through. If an immigrant arrives, gets rooted, perhaps marries a person who is rooted, chances are they’d have no motivation to emigrate. By contrast, some came to Canada with no intention of staying long term. Others came for the brighter prospects it offerred compared to the previous situation. Having moved once, if they perceive propects to be brighter yet by leaving Canada, then they would be more ready to do so. We can’t be sure.