Anglo-Celtic Connections

There’s good news in the following responses from the Media Relations team to questions posed to LAC.

Q: Will the collection of published family histories presently available on open access continue to be available in the new facility?
A: Yes. In the new genealogy reading room, located on the second floor.

Q: Will the open access microfilms, including newspaper microfilms, presently available on open access continue to be available in the new facility?
A; Yes, unless digitized and made available online (and onsite on public terminals).

Q: Will the collection of city and other directories presently available on open access continue to be available in the new facility?
A: LAC is currently working on digitizing documents in high demand, such as the city directories. If digitization is completed, they may not be physically available onsite, but online (and onsite on public terminals).

Q: Will government documents such as sessional papers presently available on open access continue to be available in the new facility?
A: Yes, government documents presently available on open access will continue to be available in the new facility, unless digitized and made available online and onsite on public terminals. Please note that the published sessional papers have not been available in the public rooms for several years now, but can be requested from the service collection and are available online:
o 1867-1900: https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.9_08052;
o 1901-1925: https://prod.library.utoronto.ca/maplib/dmgis/ca1_ys_s27.htm.

Q: What provision is being planned for access to maps and photographs in the new facility?
A: The access to maps and photographs is planned to happen in the main reading room of the new building, in an area dedicated and adapted to consultation of specialized media.

Not receiving needed help is costly. It therefore stands to reason that help-seekers would want to maximize their chances of getting a “yes.” In two experiments, we found that seeking help in-person was far superior to seeking help through any form of mediated communication channel—including seeking help over synchronous, with- face video channels. Nonetheless, we found that richer media channels do still offer an advantage over text-based channels. Yet, importantly, help-seekers appear largely unaware of both these facts. These findings suggest that people may miss out on receiving needed help by asking for it in suboptimal ways.

That’s the conclusion from a study Should I Ask Over Zoom, Phone, Email, or In-Person? Communication Channel and Predicted Versus Actual Compliance, by M. Mahdi Roghanizad (Ryerson University), and Vanessa K. Bohns (Cornell University), published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

There’s a lesson for family history/genealogy societies that believe repeated pleading to the society membership for volunteers at meetings and in newsletters is an effective way to recruit the people they want.

There’s a new simplified search interface for England and Wales wills from 1858.

Previously you had to choose between three searches, an early period, a later period, or a soldier’s will. It was easy to forget to select the appropriate tab. Now there’s a single search form asking for the last name, year of death, and whether or not the deceased was a soldier who died while serving in the British armed forces between 1850 and 1986.

For more recent probate, where more information is indexed, you have the option of an advanced search, although as previously you don’t get as much information as for the earlier period.

There’s a help file at https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/help

The change is in Beta and feedback is requested. Lots of comments about deficiencies and missing data on social media. It did warn about being in Beta!

 

Choose from 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.

Tuesday 8 Feb: 1 pm: Municipal Records, by Fraser Dunford for Kawartha Branch OGS. Register via TraceyT@curvelake.ca/.

Tuesday 8 Feb. 2 pm: Virtual Genealogy Drop-In, from Ottawa Branch of OGS and The Ottawa Public Library. https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/.

Tuesday 8 Feb, 2 pm: What’s New in the MyHeritage Photo World, by Tal Erlichman for MyHeritage and Legacy Family Tree webinars. https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/whats-new-in-the-myheritage-photo-world/

Tuesday 8 Feb. 2:30 pm: Introducing the 1921 Census of England & Wales, by Jen Baldwin of FindMyPast for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center. https://acpl.libnet.info/event/6109977.

Tuesday 8 Feb. 7 pm: Love in War – War Brides of WW2, by Shiela (Sutton) Hewett for Thunder Bay Branch OGS. Zoom meeting ID 881 5668 3784, Password 532 137.

Tuesday 8 Feb. 7 pm: How Sisters Found Their Missing Sister; The Route They Took, by Beth Atkinson and Penny McDonald for Lambton Branch OGS. https://lambton.ogs.on.ca/calendar/lambton-county-branch-a-sister-found/

Wednesday 9 Feb. 7 pm: We are the Children: Coming to Terms with our Past, by June Girvan for the Historical Society of Ottawa. www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/activities/events/eventdetail/64/16,17,19,21/we-are-the-children-coming-to-terms-with-our-past

Wednesday 9 Feb. 7 pm: Researching in Colonial New England, by Ann G. Lawthers for Legacy Family Tree webinars. https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/researching-in-colonial-new-england/

Thursday 10 Feb. 6:30 pm: City Directories: More than Basic Facts, by Melissa Tennant for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center. https://acpl.libnet.info/event/6111750.

Friday 11 Feb. 7 pm: Remembering Their Legacies: Stories from Chatham-Kent’s Black Community, by Dorothy Wallace and Samantha Meredith for Kent Branch OGS. https://kent.ogs.on.ca/events/kent-branch-remembering-their-legacies-stories-from-chatham-kents-black-community/.

Saturday 12 Feb. 9 am: Introduction to Welsh Resources, by David Jeanes for BIFHSGO. www.bifhsgo.ca/events.

Saturday 12 Feb. 10 am: 1600 years of stories from St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, by Kristen Mercier for BIFHSGO.  www.bifhsgo.ca/events.

Saturday 12 Feb. 2 pm: Surviving the Famine: Tracing the Irish Famine Generation in Ontario, by Laura Smith and Charmaine Lindsay for Simcoe Branch OGS, https://simcoe.ogs.on.ca/events/simcoe-county-branch-surviving-the-famine-tracing-the-irish-famine-generation-in-ontario/

 

Gena Philibert-Ortega has produced an entirely new edition of this 68-page publication from Moorshead Magazines.

Contents include: Starting Your Research; She’s Not There; Making the Most of Online Searches; African American Newspapers; Her Life in Books; Finding Herstory in Archives; What is Her Maiden Name?; Introduction to Catholic Records; Finding Female Ancestors Pre-1850; Twentieth Century Ancestors; Cemetery Research; Community Cookbooks; Ten Records You Are Not Using; Female Ancestor Checklist; and Finding Female Ancestors: Glossary.

You will perhaps recall Gena’s talk “The Secret Lives of Women: Research Female Ancestors Using the Sources They Left Behind” from last year’s BIFHSGO conference.

Find out more.

In addition to the Canadian War Museum reopening on Wednesday (UPDATE – NOW POSTPONED) —

• Ottawa Public Library (OPL) offers additional enhanced in-person services in all open locations as of Monday. Enhanced services include reading newspapers and magazines, and limited seating. Masks are required at all times and customers are asked to maintain a distance of two metres inside OPL branches. Also, given limited seating and capacity, customers will be asked to limit their time reading newspapers and magazines so that others can also enjoy this reintroduced service.
• The MacOdrum Library at Carleton University is now open on all five floors. It’s officially for students and staff only, but perhaps you can be persuasive!
  https://library.carleton.ca/feature/what-you-need-know-about-increased-library-spaces-and-services-starting-february-7

The deadline is now past for presentation proposals for the 24-26 June 2022 OGS/Ontario Ancestors conference hosted by Ottawa Branch.  Program lead Gloria Tubman informs me invitations to chosen speakers will be sent in the next week.

On Friday 24 June, one of the major genealogy companies will host sessions under a separate registration. Attendees at the last Ottawa-hosted OGS conference will recall Ancestry held a dedicated day on the Monday following that conference.

On Friday evening the conference proper will commence “with an opening session unlike any you have attended previously.”

Saturday and Sunday you will be able to choose from 28 diverse, inclusive, and educational presentations given by Canadian and international speakers. Each day will offer you two streams with seven sessions each. Attendees will have access to the recorded sessions for 30 days.

Stay current with developments at the Conference 2022 home page at https://conference2022.ogs.on.ca/.

The conference organizers seek volunteers to take on various time-limited roles. See https://conference2022.ogs.on.ca/call-for-volunteers/.

Ages are only in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database when provided by the next of kin. How many lack age information?

I used as a sample the 666 Canadian airmen buried at Harrowgate (Stonefall) Cemetery as listed in the database.

There are 77 (11.5%) with no age given. Most do have a birthdate on the LAC Service Files of the Second World War – War Dead, 1939-1947 database.

Birthdates for all but one of the others, Joseph Donat Bedard, can be easily found. For Bedard, there’s only a baptismal record.

I wonder if present-day next of kin, who may be two or more generations distant, can have age information added to the CWGC database? Perhaps the CWGC imposes the same limitation that they do in their periodic appeal for relatives, without making it clear they mean grandchildren, nieces, nephews etc and that cousins, including first cousins, are too far removed.

We recognize and thank Queen Elizabeth II on the 70th anniversary of her accession to the throne.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

An adult view of Boris Johnson (strong language)

Control: the dark history and troubling present of eugenics
A presentation for the Royal Institution by author and excellent speaker Adam Rutherford. Watch on replay, the presentation starts around 11:20 minutes, at https://vimeo.com/663027160/13203d4cc1

The Interactive Map Jigsaw Puzzle

OGS/Ontario Ancestors eWeekly Update
Each free issue, arriving by email around 6 am ET each Saturday, is packed with news from the major genealogy websites and blogs and on forthcoming events.  Subscribe here.

10 facts about Irish gravestones

Canadian War Museum Reopening
The Museum will reopen on February 9, Wednesday through Sunday. You can book a timed admission ticket online. Proof of vaccination for anyone aged 12 and up is required.

Lack of access to data is hindering Canada’s efforts to achieve net-zero targets

Thanks to this week’s contributors. Ann Burns, Anonymous, Barry Read,  Brenda Turner, Brian Narhi, Dena, gail benjafield, Glenn Wright, Mike More, Rebecca Noall, Teresa, Unknown.

This year has seen additions to both the serials and Héritage collections at Canadiana.ca.

As previously, most of the 21 additions to the serials collection are niche with titles like annual report and minutes.  Notable are additions to the Victoria Times, now covering 1895 to 1911.

Two digital microfilms, T-16603 and T-16604 titled Records of entry and other records 1928-1929, were added to the Héritage collection earlier this month. They document Chinese-Canadians leaving, perhaps on business or vacation in 1928 and 1929. The racist intent that caused these 5,600 records to be kept shows how such discrimination can be genealogical gold. — they include photographs,

The latest article from Rebecca Probert, Professor of Law at the University of Exeter, in The Journal of Genealogy and Family History is Escaping detection: illegal second marriages and the crime of bigamy. Here’s the abstract.

Official statistics on the number of prosecutions for bigamy clearly cannot be taken as an accurate guide to the number who went through a ceremony of marriage with a second ‘spouse’ while still married to their first. Nonetheless, when we compare those who were prosecuted with those who were not, the differences that emerge should make us cautious in assuming that the offence was common. There is evidence to suggest that many of the unprosecuted may not have been bigamists at all, given how long they waited to remarry. Even those who did not wait may have believed or persuaded themselves that their first spouse was dead and that they were entitled to remarry. Others adopted tactics to ensure that their bigamous marriage would not be discovered, with most moving considerable distances before remarrying and a few adopting aliases to disguise their identity. The data from the sample suggests that it was the fact that most of these bigamies were undetected, rather than tolerance of bigamy within the community, that explains why they escaped prosecution.

Do you have bigamous marriages in your family tree?

I have two instances. One where the first wife remarried under her maiden name, eight years after the marriage to my great-grandfather, who had a subsequent and long common-law relationship. In a second case, the wife married as a widow nine years after the first marriage, and seven after they broke up. Likely unknown to her and despite significant efforts to track him down in the UK her first husband was very much alive in the USA.

Six two-hour lectures online by renowned military historian Tim Cook on Canada’s Great War and Its Legacy are being offered by Carleton University in the next Lifelong Learning Program.

Series Description: In this lecture series, renowned Canadian military historian Dr. Tim Cook will share his award-winning research on Canada and the Great War, on the home front and overseas, including hundreds of rare photographs, works of art, and archival material. There will be an emphasis on the soldiers’ experience from 1914 to 1918: how they coped and endured, and how they fought and clawed their way to victory. A new sense of identity was forged through the service and sacrifice of Canadians, even as the country was torn apart along existing and new fault lines. Canada was never the same. Together with Dr. Cook, you will also explore the contested memory of the war, including the impact of Canada’s 66,000 dead, the veterans’ experience, memorial making, and why we are still haunted by the war.

• Days: Thursdays, March 10, 17, 24, 31, April 7, 14
• Time: 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time
• Location: Zoom (This lecture series is offered via Zoom, which can be used on computers and mobile devices. We recommend you use a computer/laptop with high-speed internet. A camera and microphone will enable you to participate more fully, but they are not required. See our Support page for details.)
• Fee: $160 (HST included)
• Lecture Series Outline
• Registration opens Tuesday, February 15, 10:00 a.m., Eastern Time