Newspapers.com’s over 1 million pages in 28,537 papers have 86.6% of the pages for the USA, 5.5% for the UK, and 5.0% for Canada.

Location	Pages	Papers
USA	949,594,328	25,408
UK	60,810,363	1,023
Canada	55,293,167	654
Australia	25,271,465	1,241
Ireland	2,742,799	27
New Zealand	1,671,506	169
Panama	1,106,574	5

Here’s the distribution of pages by year for the total corpus

A notable Canadian addition in the past month is 30,337 pages of the Parry Sound  North Star from 1879 to 1996.

The following updated UK papers include issues before 1925 and with more than 5,000 pages.

• Isle of Wight County Press (1884–2023): 260,782 pages
• Southern Daily Echo (1888–2023): 714,465 pages
• Darlington and Stockton Times (County Durham ed.) (1911–2023): 127,823 pages
• Daily Echo (1900–2023): 840,930 pages
• Bucks Free Press (1856–2023): 343,490 pages
• The Herald (Glasgow ed.) (1820–2023): 416,503 pages
• Evening Times (1881–2023): 145,434 pages
• Dorset Echo (1921–2023): 561,466 pages
• South Wales Argus (1892–2023): 649,128 pages
• The Mail (Millom and South Copeland ed.) (1913–2023): 397,598 pages
• The Bolton News (1867–2023): 552,926 pages
• The Guardian (1821–2025): 1,193,878 pages
• Evening Standard (1897–2025): 2,387,072 pages
• Craven Herald and Pioneer (1874–2023): 108,289 pages
• The Greenock Telegraph and Clyde Shipping Gazette (1882–2023): 201,069 pages
• Northern Echo (1870–2005): 104,038 pages
• Cumberland and Westmorland Herald (1860–1998): 87,271 pages

Choose from these selected free online events. All times are Eastern Time, unless otherwise noted. Registration may be required in advance—check the links so you’re not disappointed. For many more events, mainly in the U.S., visit conferencekeeper.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

The Deportation Comedy Hour

Library and Archives Canada has introduced a new set of research basics pages. There’s a focus on visiting LAC.
If a collection search at the LAC website is returning a “403 – Forbidden: Access is denied” message, try turning off any VPN you have running. LAC informs that the cause is ” technical difficulties due to additional pressure on LAC’s servers that power Collection and Census search. This is due to AI bots crawling our site.”

Where Were They Buried?
The London Westminster & Middlesex Family History Society has posted a series of short YouTube videos, the most recent and most viewed is for Edmonton. https://www.youtube.com/@LWMFHS/videos

Error Establishing a Database Connection
The management of the Ontario Genealogical Society is surely as tired of seeing this message when they click on www.ogs.on.ca as the rest of us. Please be patient. Remember, The British Library has been operating on a temporary website for almost two years since a major outage due to a hacker attack. UPDATE – as of 9 am on Sunday the service is restored.

Home Guard Nominal Rolls
The East Sussex Record Office announces that registers showing name, date of enrolment, date of birth, address, previous service for WW2 Home Guard battalions from Brighton, Hove, Haywards Heath (then in East Sussex), Lewes, Crowborough, Hailsham, Eastbourne, Hastings and Hartfield are now being digitised and will become available to view on computers at The Keep.

Looking for Something Different?
The 28th Ottawa Fringe Festival is on: 12-22 June 2025

 

Lincolnshire, Workhouse Guardians’ Minutes
These 8,849 pages cover the years 1836 to 1901. for situations that involved an expenditure. For instance:

11 April 1839. The clerk reported that he had applied for, and obtained an order against John Smith of Rippingale, on behalf of the parish of Corby, for the maintenance of the bastard child of Mary Musson, a pauper belonging to the latter parish, as directed on the 21* ult. (ante. p. 381) [Page 399]

The collection is now 37,395 records for Boston Union, Bourne Union, Caistor Union, Gainsborough Union, and Holbeach Union

National Burial Index For England & Wales
The 4,263 new records, from 1662 to 1851, bring the collection total to 17,316,953 records. Typically find: full name, date of their burial, denomination, parish, and perhaps age at death.

Newspaper Pages Added
The 148,000 new pages. making a total of 92,642,385 pages, include three new titles.
Academy: A London-based publication focused on literature, science, and the arts. 59514 pages,
Bradford Daily Argus: Covering 1893-1914 and 1920-1923, 36316 pages.
Largs & Millport Herald: Explore 160 pages from the years 1883-1884.

Tying in with the other Lincolnshire addition this week, the following papers have been updated, including the Lincoln Gazette (1873), Boston Independent and Lincolnshire Advertiser (1898, 1912), and the Louth and North Lincolnshire Advertiser (various years 1904-1950).

Also, the Aldershot Military Gazette (1891-1917, 1919) received significant additions.

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9 am: Annual General Meeting

10 am: Great Moments

From Penrhyndedraeth to Peterborough: Digging Deeper into My Welsh Ancestry, by Laurie Dougherty
A Cautionary Tale: How I Built a Brickwall with DNA, by Barbara Tose
A Genealogical Revelation: From an Only Child to a Family of Nine, by Andy Desjardins

Details are at https://www.bifhsgo.ca/events

PLUS – A BOOK GRAB

Before the meeting and over the break at 9:30. Tables will be set up with extra books that have been donated by Patricia McGregor, and by the family of former member John Hay, that need to find a home. You never know when you will find a treasure. It is free; a token donation would be appreciated.

Thanks to the 100+ people who attended my presentation for the Bruce County Genealogical Society on Monday evening.

One of the questions asked was whether the drought in the Prairies in the 1930s, known as the Dirty Thirties or Dust Bowl, extended into Ontario. I didn’t know, although I  said I suspected it did.

Here’s a comparison between Regina’s and Toronto’s annual precipitation from 1929 to 1939, the number in the top line is the climatological average annual precipitation in millimetres.

Year	Regina	397.64		Toronto	789.9
	Annual	Diff	% Diff	Annual	Diff	%Diff
1929	283.1	-114.54	-28.8	939.8	149.9	19.0
1930	263.9	-133.74	-33.6	654.6	-135.3	-17.1
1931	262.1	-135.54	-34.1	694.1	-95.8	-12.1
1932	430.2	32.56	8.2	940.4	150.5	19.1
1933	480.8	83.16	20.9	605.4	-184.5	-23.4
1934	316.2	-81.44	-20.5	627.1	-162.8	-20.6
1935	486.1	88.46	22.2	680.9	-109	-13.8
1936	291.2	-106.44	-26.8	711.1	-78.8	-10.0
1937	218.6	-179.04	-45.0	835	45.1	5.7
1938	382.8	-14.84	-3.7	651.4	-138.5	-17.5
1939	334.3	-63.34	-15.9	703.7	-86.2	-10.9
Median	316.2	-81.44	-20.5	694.1	-95.8	-12.1

Both show a median annual precipitation deficit for the period. Regina had 6 years that were 20% below the long-term mean of 397 mm, whereas Toronto had two such years, below 790 mm. For only one of the years, 1934, did both cities have 20% less precipitation than the climatological average.

That is probably further into the weeds than most family historians care to venture.

In case you want to venture a bit further, for agriculture, precipitation is only part of drought. Hot, dry conditions mean greater evaporation, so less moisture for crops. That’s quantified by the Palmer Drought Severity Index. Decadal maps are available at https://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/fc-data-catalogue/read/4 . The earliest is for 1951-1960

Even over a 10-year average, conditions across the southern Prairie provinces ranged from severe drought to very wet. For annual and shorter periods, the variation would be greater. For instance, for 1929, there was a 29% precipitation deficit at Regina, a 40% deficit at Medicine Hat, but at Lethbridge precipitation was 17% above average. 

Check out current conditions, as of the end of May, at https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/agricultural-production/weather/canadian-drought-monitor/current-drought-conditions#a5

Although chances are your Prairie ancestor had a hard time during the Dust Bowl, maybe they were among the few that Mother Nature blessed with just enough rain or snow to maintain a harvest.

 

 

Is it time to update your newspaper obit searches? On Monday, Ancestry added to the data on these Newspapers.com obituary indexes

Place	Records
Canada	47,187,373
Australia and New Zealand	5,842,149
UK and Ireland	32,051,053

 

This is to mark the founding of the United Church of Canada, inaugurated on 10 June  1925 in Toronto, Ontario. The Methodist Church, Canada, the Congregational Union of Canada, and 70 percent of The Presbyterian Church in Canada entered into a union. Also joining was the small General Council of Union Churches, centred largely in Western Canada.

Find more about the United Church’s history at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Church_of_Canada

Choose from these selected free online events. All times are Eastern Time, unless otherwise noted. Registration may be required in advance—check the links so you’re not disappointed. For many more events, mainly in the U.S., visit conferencekeeper.

The British National Meteorological Office Library and Archives (NMLA) holds many ship weather reports. Included are a few Atlantic crossings to Quebec between 1869 and 1871, the early steamship era. They give an idea of how challenging the voyage might have been for landlubbers.

There are weather observations from vessels of the Allen Line, nine vessels across 36 separate voyages. The ships, with arrival dates at Quebec, are:

AUSTRIAN – Four voyages documented: June 6, July 18, August, and October 9, 1870

EUROPEAN – Three crossings available: July 25 and September 10, 1870; April 27 and June 20, 1871

HIBERNIAN – Four 1869 arrivals: May 24, July 5, August 16, and September 29

MORAVIAN – Seven voyages spanning two years: Five arrivals in 1869 (May 17, June 28, August 8, September 19) and three in 1870 (August 21, October 3 [two separate entries], November 13)

NESTORIAN – Five 1869 crossings: April 26, June 7, July 19, August 28, and October 10

OTTAWA – Four 1870 voyages: June 9, July 19, August, and October 12

PERUVIAN – Eight documented arrivals: Five in 1869 (May 31, July 10, August 23, October 4, November 16) and three in 1870 (August, September 26, November 9)

Find more details by searching ships meteorological log Quebec at https://library.metoffice.gov.uk/Portal/Default/en-GB/Search/SimpleSearch. The NMLA will send an image of the original records by email on request.

Manage your expectations — as shown by the extract below, the handwritten material can be faint and challenging to interpret. You should be able to discern from the winds, reported in the third column from the right on the Beaufort Scale, whether a voyage encountered rough weather.

Aside from the Peruvian, these ships were all of less than 2,500 tons, so passengers would have a hard time in heavy weather; that was my experience in a ship ten times the size.

I’d been hoping to be able to profile data from Global marine surface meteorological variables from 1851 to 2010 from comprehensive in-situ observations. However, for the past few days, there’s been a warning notice “Download form temporarily closed due to temporary issues reaching the data provider’s servers.” Could that data provider be affected by US government actions?

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Wildfire Smoke Forecasts and here.

UK Railway Work, Life & Death Project
On 5 June 69,000 records of railway staff accidents were added into the Railway Work, Life & Death project database – freely available as a spreadsheet at https://www.railwayaccidents.port.ac.uk/?sdm_process_download=1&download_id=429

Documentary Heritage Communities Program Awards 2025-26
In the recent round $1.425 million total was awarded to 37 projects
Three projects in the Atlantic provinces
Nine projects in Quebec
Six projects in Ontario
Five projects in the Prairie provinces
Twelve projects in British Columbia
Two projects in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon

In Ontario, the Grenville County Historical Society was awarded $48,933 for the Grenville County Newspaper Digitization Project.

Persephone is blogging this month.
https://postitnotesfromhades.blogspot.com/

Thanks to the following for comments and tips: Anonymous, Gail B, Glenn Wright, Nick Mcdonald, Teresa, and Unknown.