Anglo-Celtic Connections

Material for the Ontario Genealogical Society Annual General Meeting, to be called to order on 5 June at 3:30 pm, is now posted on the Member’s Corner section of the Society website.

The audited financial statement ending 31 December 2020 shows an improved situation. The excess of revenues over expenses was $21K compared to a deficit of $85K the previous year. Both revenues and expenses declined significantly, but government funding for COVID-19 of nearly $90K swung the bottom line to surplus.
While membership numbers are not given a reduction of about 2.5% in membership fee income, the largest revenue component, was experienced.

The President, Executive Director, Branch and SIG reports show the Society quickly made changes to accommodate the changed reality. In particular, the switch to online meetings meant increased attendance from those living remotely from a branch.

Those who endured the election process at last year’s AGM will be pleased to know that so far one candidate is nominated for each of the vacant officer positions along with candidates for two of the three director-at-large positions.

Material for the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa Annual General Meeting, to be called to order on Saturday 12 June at 9 am has been sent to members.

The audited financial statement ending 31 December 2020 shows a substantial decrease in both revenues and expenses.  That’s largely the result of cancellation of the 2020 conference due to COVID-19, much of it rescheduled for 2021.

A surplus of $3K for 2020 was a decrease from $9K the previous year, yet better than the small deficient originally budgeted. Membership fee revenue declined 0.4% while memberships declined 9.5%. The fee increase that took effect for those paying after 1 January 2019 likely has something to do with it.

The reports from President Duncan Monkhouse and the Directors show the society quickly moving online with a series of excellent monthly meeting presentations, averaging an attendance of 150. The addition of socials, workshops and SIGs helped compensate for the missed social aspect of in-person meetings. As with other family history organizations operating online meant greater accessibility to those not living in the local area. 

Several Board positions remained or became vacant during the year meaning an extra burden on the Directors who had to deal with the unusual challenges of COVID and website issues.

An oddity of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database is that entries for alias names all show up as linked to the UK. I asked CWGC about this and here’s the response:

All ‘Regiments’ in our database are linked to a particular force as all our ‘Nationality’ statistics are generated from this information. Casualties that served under an Alias are nominally entered under the regiment title ‘Alias’ which just happens to show as United Kingdom forces. However, alias casualties do not get counted statistically (the system only counts their true name entry), but the system still has to have a Nationality force linked to it, which in this case happens to be the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, the system does not let us link ‘regiments’ to multiple nationality forces.

Were you in a school yearbook? If so how do you feel about what you can read years later? How many of your classmates can you recall?

This Canadian collection was originally reported on the blog on 21 July 2015. Ancestry’s information about this 10 May 2021 update (it didn’t go online at that date) is “Replaced old records with new updated records for 240 additional yearbooks.”

On 7 August 2020, there were 2,475,234 records in the database. With this update there are 2,318,578 records.  A decrease! What happened? What books are new? Ancestry keeps that a secret.

Ontario still accounts for the lion’s share — 1,648,511 records, in September 2016 there were 1,157,348 Ontario records.

For Ottawa, there are a good number of years for Ashbury College (1918-1988), Elmwood School (1923-1988)  and Carleton University (1943-1980). Others have just a few.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

How Perception Can Save Lives
There’s no exact parallel, but consider the impact of errors in identifying parentage in earlier generations of your family tree.

Transform an image into a pixel-ly visual

The controversial history of colourizing black-and-white photos
Family histories often add “colour” not explicit in the personal information available but surmised from context. Is colourizing family snaps any different?

Church of Ireland Gazette Digital Archive Complete (1856-2010)
All editions of the newspaper are freely available, electronically searchable with hits highlighted on the page image, at https://esearch.informa.ie/rcb

Beyond Bytown: The History of Public Transit in Ottawa, by Ottawa City Archivist Paul Henry.
When I first tried to get a ticket for this presentation on Wednesday 26 May at 7 pm they were sold out. Now, further tickets have been added. You might want to book soon in case they run out again.

Ancestry Library Edition free access via Canadian public libraries extended thru September 2021.

The golden ratio: an ancient Greek formula could be responsible for most hit musicals

Thanks to this week’s contributors: Anonymous, Barbara T, Judith H., Richard Ruggle, Unknown.

Additions to Findmypast this week are:

Scotland, Modern and Civil Births 1855-2019
Compiled from “a number of official and unofficial sources”, this collection has 2,579,212 transcript records. They came to FMP via FamilySearch Intl. There are very few after the start of the 20th century.

Scotland, Modern and Civil Marriages 1855-2019
These 1,068,518 transcript records focus on the years prior to 1875.

Scotland, Modern and Civil Deaths & Burials 1855-2021
This vast record set, 3,327,486 transcript entries, has a focus on the 1928 to 1956 period. The counties of Midlothian (Edinburgh) and Lanarkshire (Glasgow) account for two-thirds of the records.

They’re not a secret. London (England)-based Canadian librarian and genealogist Penny Allen highlights 42 blogs in an updated Canadian Genealogy Blogroll. They’re on her UK to Canada Genealogy blog.  Not a secret — but some of them are new to me, especially from Alberta.

Beyond blogs, Penny mentions Gail Dever’s  Genealogy à la Carte blog that has a Facebook for Canadian Genealogy page with a very long list of Facebook groups that concentrate on Canadian Genealogy.

 

While not as well known as the loss of records at the Four Courts the following year, on 25 May 1921, during the Irish War of Independence, the Custom House in Dublin was occupied and burnt in an operation by the Irish Republican Army. The Custom House, containing many centuries of local government records described as “priceless” and “precious and valuable,” burned for five days.

Presentations are scheduled leading up to the centenary, one of which is now past. All will become available on YouTube.

Thursday 20 May: Burning the Custom House, 25 May 1921. Part of the centenary programme. Two lectures: The Civilian Dead, with Brian Smith, and The Human Cost for the IRA, with Des White. Online. Free on Facebook at 3 pm ET.

Saturday 22 May: The Firemen’s Tale, with Las Fallon. Host: Burning the Custom House, 25 May 1921 centenary programme. Online. Free on Facebook at 3 pm ET.

Sunday 23 May: Caught in the Middle – Inside the Custom House 25 May 1921, with Mícheál Ó Doibhilín. Host: Burning the Custom House, 25 May 1921 centenary programme. Online. Free on Facebook at 3 pm ET.

via Irish Genealogy News.

National Records of Scotland was much delayed in publishing the list of most popular baby names for 2020. Issued in December in previous years I missed the report which appeared in March.

Isla and Jack were the most common names for girls and boys in Scotland in 2020.

Isla moved up 2 places in the overall rankings from last year, and became the most common name for girls for the first time. There were fewer girls named Isla in 2020 than in 2019, but Olivia (previously the most common, now second) and Emily (previously the second most common, now third) fell by greater amounts.

Jack remained the most common boys name for the 13th consecutive year. Noah rose by 6 places to be the second most common name for baby boys, followed by James which remained third.

In Rare names at risk of becoming extinct UK Family Tree Magazine covered research on baby names from name label manufacturer My Nametags. It examines trends, not the most popular names.

For girls, Aria and Harper were the fastest growing in popularity. while Gemma and Tia saw the biggest declines.

Boys names Kieran and Scott had the most notable declines while Albie and Arlo were the big gainers.

Now on MyHeritage you can filter DNA Matches to show only those in a certain Genetic Group. Use the new search field under Filter to select any of the 2,114 Genetic Groups your DNA test reveals.

I have 21,156 DNA matches from close to distant at MyHeritage. Filtering by Netherlands, Germany and England I have 6,078; by Netherlands, Germany and England 7,090; by England 4,653 and by Eastern and Central Europe, mostly Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus and Russia 9,859; and by Northwest England 1,464. Some of the matches are in more than one group — unsurprising, and there are many more in my one grandparental endogamous line.

 

New on the Ontario Genealogical Society website, a unified search capability across many of the library catalogues of OGS Branches.  Find it under the Libraries tab on the top banner.

Included are holdings of the OGS Provincial Library at the Toronto Reference Library, the British Home Child SIG, and various branches — Essex, Halton-Peel, Huron, Kawartha, Kent, Niagara Peninsula, Ottawa, Oxford, Quinte, Simcoe, Sudbury and Waterloo.

The detail available varies. Ottawa has more comprehensive descriptions of the branch library holdings than the other repositories.

A quick rundown of other library catalogue sites of interest.

Worldcat: 2 billion items
Aurora: LAC Collection
Voilà: Canadian National Union Catalogue via LAC
The British Library
US Library of Congress
FamilySearch Digital Library

Internet Archive Books
Google Books
HathiTrust Digital Library

and local public and university libraries.

Tune in on Saturday 22 May for the Scottish Indexes Conference. Find registration instructions for Facebook and Zoom at the link.
The schedule, calibrated to the Eastern Time Zone, is at https://www.scottishindexes.com/2021prog10EDT.pdf  There’s a wee hours option for night owls with the program repeated starting at 10 am for the rest of us.

The eight presentations, plus a Q/A Session include “Genealogy Without Borders” by Chris Paton and “Scots in Canada” by BC genealogist Diane Rogers.

Registration is free with an option for donations to help offset costs.