Anglo-Celtic Connections

On Wednesday, 22 March 2023, a new website from former Librarian and Archivist of Canada, Ian E. Wilson, appeared.

Notable aside from being attractively designed, it covers his career and writing, and also an extensive section on Sir Arthur G. Doughty, the first Dominion Archivist of Canada. By way of tribute, 22 March is the anniversary of Doughty’s birth in 1860.

At the bottom of the main page are links to some of Wilson’s publications. It includes Reflections on Archivists and Genealogists, the 2012 Houston Memorial Lecture, published in FAMILIES, vol 52, #1. Feb 2013. He wrote “Throughout my career, I have found genealogists to be amongst the most enthusiastic, informed users of archives and our most effective lobbyists.”

Another link is to publications of The University of Waterloo Stratford Institute which Wilson headed after retiring as the first Librarian and Archivist of Canada in 2009.

The longest section is a bibliography,  a step towards an understanding of the career and the vision of Sir Arthur G. Doughty. Over 90 published and unpublished works to which Doughty contributed either in whole or in part are identified.

Of the nearly 3 million updates to Find a Grave on Ancestry in the past quarter, 1.38 million are for the UK and Ireland. That’s unusual as it’s more than the US.
The percentage increase for the UK and Ireland (9.02%) isn’t quite as large as for Mexico (9.81%).

Region	Records Mar 2023	Records Dec 2022	Increase
Canada	9,537,884	9,417,361	120,523
U.S.	172,012,462	170,992,351	1,020,111
UK and Ireland	16,712,454	15,329,390	1,383,064
Sweden	367,538	356,925	10,613
Norway	216,182	206,975	9,207
Mexico	61,512	56,015	5,497
Germany	2,398,513	2,275,506	123,007
Italy	312,025	287,125	24,900
Brazil	135,589	132,690	2,899
Global	14,005,716	13,711,794	293,922
Total	215,759,875	212,766,132	2,993,743

A collection of 1,586,354 Church of England Hampshire parish register entries of births and baptisms running between 1813 and 1921 briefly appeared, then disappeared on Ancestry. Alphabetically the parishes range from Abbotts Ann to Yateley, including 17 Bournemouth and 14 Winchester parishes – those for Southampton are lacking.

The records, from the Hampshire Record Office, were name searchable with links to the originals which were browsable.

What happenned? They may be back by the time you see this.

In the meantime, Findmypast has over 600 thousand transcript records for baptisms from the Hampshire Genealogical Society. FamilySearch has over 2 million parish register entries and Bishops transcripts for BMBs of all types with transcriptions viewable for registered readers and images viewable at FSCs and affiliate libraries.

Here’s an example of the information you’ll get from a search of this database which is new to Ancestry. It’s a basic index.

There’s the same data at the Archives of Alberta site, with additional births registered up to 1903, at https://provincialarchives.alberta.ca/how-to/find-birth-marriage-and-death-records/birth-indexes . There you need to select the first letter of the surname, then scroll through the index, some hand written, to find the year the person was born in order to locate their name and registration number. Then order a digital copy of the full records delivered by email for $5.25.

Ancestry provides a more flexible search —  by first name or birth place if that’s all you know.You still have to order through the Archives of Alberta site to get the full information.

Senior product manager John Alexander describes “how FamilySearch is training AI to read and transcribe information from billions of historical documents at an uncanny rate” in an article from Deseret News.

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 21 March

2 pm: Ottawa Branch OGS Virtual Genealogy Drop-In.
https://meet.google.com/nvz-kftj-dax

2:30 pm: Democracy’s Data: Reading Hidden Stories in the 1940 (US) Census, by Dan Bouk for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/8052097

7 pm: BMS2000, Researching Your French Canadian Ancestors, for OGS Nippising District Branch.
https://nipissing.ogs.on.ca/researching-your-french-canadian-ancestors/

8 pm: Uncovering Immigrant Origins Through Cluster Research, by Dana Palmer for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/uncovering-immigrant-origins-through-cluster-research/

WEDNESDAY 22 March

2 pm: PERSI 2.0: The New PERSI for Everyone, by Sunney Morton for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/persi-2-0-the-new-persi-for-everyone/

THURSDAY 23 March

6:30 pm: Researching in UK Archives from Abroad, by Helen V. Smith for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/8056427

FRIDAY 24 March

SATURDAY 25 March

Did you register for Gene-o-Rama or Irish Family History Research Day?

Now indexed on the UK National Archives Discovery catalogue are personnel cards from 417 boxes in the series WO 416 — War Office: German Record cards of British and Commonwealth Prisoners of War and some Civilian Internees, Second World War.

Roger Kershaw’s blog post on the completion of the project mentions, “Of the 185,000 opened records, 100,000 relate to British Army personnel, 5,200 to Australian forces, 2,800 to New Zealand forces, and 4,600 to South African forces.”

No Canadians? Yes, there are. Search Canad* and find 4,494 hits.  I searched for a Canadian Reid as an example. 

It turns out Stanleigh Lowry Reid was from Ottawa, son of Irish-born Frank and Ellen Lowry Reid. The entry shows he died so there are entries in records from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission,  Canadian Virtual War Memorial and a service file.

 

One project reports progress among the Library and Archives Canada’s Co-Lab Challenges.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary is 5% complete, last month 3% complete.

Expo67 remains 0% complete.

Summiting Mount Logan in 1925: Fred Lambart’s personal account of the treacherous climb and descent of the highest peak in Canada remains 13% complete.

Women in the War remains 1% complete.

Arthur Lismer’s Children’s Art Classes remains 0% complete.

John Freemont Smith remains 93% complete.

Canadian National Land Settlement Association remains 98% complete.

Molly Lamb Bobak remains 93% complete.

Diary of François-Hyacinthe Séguin remains 99% complete.

George Mully: moments in Indigenous communities remains 0% complete.

Correspondence regarding First Nations veterans returning after the First World War remains 99% complete.

Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 remains 96% complete.

Legendary Train Robber and Prison Escapee Bill Miner remains 99% complete.

Japanese-Canadians: Second World War remains 3% complete.

The Call to Duty: Canada’s Nursing Sisters remains 93% complete.

Projects that remain 100% complete are no longer reported here.

Other unidentified Co-Lab activities not part of the Challenges may have seen progress. 

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

The Globe Flight Time Map
The approximate estimated time it would take to fly from any location on Earth to anywhere else on the planet.

The Museum of Failures

The Museum of Broken Relationships

Ancestry wins contract to digitise MoD records
The National Archives have announced that the contract for digitising the military records that are in the process of being transferred from the Ministry of Defence has been awarded to Ancestry. Three million records for personnel who served after 1920 will be made available exclusively at Ancestry between 2024-2029. (via Peter Calver’s LostCousins newsletter).

OurDigitalWorld Newsletter – March 2023

Thanks to this week’s contributors: Ann Burns, Anonymous, Brenda Turner, Donna, gail benjafield, Jean Kitchen, Joanne, Kenneth R Marks, Nick McDonald, norm prince, Robert Ross Halfyard, Susan Gingras, Sylvia Smith, Teresa, Unknown, William Cookman

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!