Anglo-Celtic Connections

The Untold Stories on Cenotaphs

On Monday evening, at 7:00 pm via Zoom,  a timely presentation for OGS Leeds and Grenville Branch by Blake Seward,

Irish Accent Challenge

Ancestry updates Find a Grave Index Updates

End of month updates for Germany, Norway,  Sweden,  Global, Italy, Australia and New Zealand, Canada, and Mexico,

Archives of Ontario RG 1-100 Patent Plans Update

Ken McKinlay has posted a highly detailed description of the new access to these early Ontario land records.

Reclaiming wellness: Key factors in restoring optimal well-being in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging

According to this study reported in PLOS One, one-quarter of older adults with suboptimal well-being can improve to the point of regaining optimal well-being. Strategies for regaining optimal well-being include engaging in an active and healthy lifestyle —such as maintaining a healthy body weight, not smoking, becoming physically active, finding ways to address sleep problems, preventing and managing chronic diseases, maintaining psychological and emotional wellness, and fostering social wellness.

A poem by Thomas Hood

No sun – no moon!
No morn – no noon –
No dawn – no dusk – no proper time of day.
No sky – no earthly view –
No distance looking blue –
No road – no street – no “t’other side this way” –
No end to any Row –
No indications where the Crescents go –
No top to any steeple –
No recognitions of familiar people –
No courtesies for showing ‘em –
No knowing ‘em!
No traveling at all – no locomotion –
No inkling of the way – no notion –
“No go” by land or ocean –
No mail – no post –
No news from any foreign coast –
No park, no ring – no afternoon gentility –
No company – no nobility –
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member –
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!

Thanks to the following individuals for their comments and tips: Alison Hare, Ann Burns, Basil Adam, Brenda Turner, Glenn Wright, John Webb, Ken McKinlay, Kyla Ubbink, Leslie Anderson, and Unknown.

Leicestershire Electoral Registers 1836-1970

This collection of 10,420,906 records documents voters across Leicestershire for over a century. Find names, addresses, years, and districts for residents of Leicester city and the surrounding towns and villages, great for extending the coverage and filling in between censuses.

Leicestershire Monumental Inscriptions

From the 1400s to the 2000s, 414 records for burials in churchyards, cemeteries, and mentions on war memorials. Transcripts and images may reveal other family members buried in the same plot.

Lincolnshire Workhouse Guardians’ Minutes 1837-1902

These 10,529 records document residents and applicants for poor relief. The minutes note out-relief payments, apprenticeships, settlement cases, and doctors who treated sick paupers. The Lincolnshire Family History Society compiled this collection.

Twelve Newspaper Titles

Five new titles join the archive, including Allen’s Indian Mail (London, 1843-1891) and Y Celt (Wales, 1881-1891).

I purchased a 150-year-old book at last weekend’s Ottawa Antiquarian Book Show. It had never been read. How do I know? Most of the pages were “unopened”, meaning pages were still connected at the edge.

I’ve had previous experience botching the job of cutting the edge, so I sought advice from the ever-helpful Kyla Ubbink, of Ubbink Book & Paper Conservation. She said I needed a very sharp knife, then offered to do it for me. I was delighted to take advantage of her professional expertise. The knife is at the lower left of the image.

The 1871 Burke’s Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland is now available through TheGenealogist.

This Burke’s is not about the titled peerage. It focuses on the “Landed Gentry,” the influential families who held land and local power but had no hereditary titles, notably the squires, magistrates, or clergy who effectively ran the parish.

The entries, in alphabetical order, include detailed pedigrees that may trace a family back several centuries. There’s extensive information on marriages, which helps connect to other families, university attendance, military service, and lists of children. They also name the family estates, which is a crucial clue for land records.

Finally, be a bit skeptical. L. G. Pine, who edited Burke’s in the mid-20th century, derided the fanciful family trees he published. He is quoted as saying:

“If everybody who claims to have come over with the Conqueror were right, William must have landed with 200,000 men-at-arms instead of about 12,000.”

The FreeBMD Database was updated on Tuesday, 28 October 2025, to contain 294,344,983 unique records, up from 294,106,424 at the previous update.

Years with more than 10,000 additions are: for births, 1993 and 1995-6; for marriages, 1995-6; for deaths, 1991, 1996-7.

A new, more modern FreeBMD website, with new features and more accessible, is now available. Try it at https://www.freebmd2.org.uk/

The original FreeBMD remains online,

Ancestry has just added an extensive set of Church of England parish records for Doncaster and about 50 nearby parishes  (e.g. Balby, Hexthorpe, Cantley), covering more than four centuries of baptisms, marriages, and burials, with over 2 million entries

The newly released collections include:

• Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1558–1812 (737,000 records)

• Marriages, 1754–1950 (652,000 records)

• Births and Baptisms, 1813–1925 (950,000 records)

• Deaths and Burials, 1813–2000 (183,000 records)

Block Review (BR) is the systematic review of a series of archived government records currently held in LAC’s permanent collection. BR was initiated in 2010. A post on the LAC website, dated 11 September 2025, lists 250 projects that examined closed government records to determine whether they could be made public. Each entry includes archival details, sample size, pages reviewed, and final or interim decisions.

Records Successfully Opened (151)

Many projects were completed with records fully released to the public. The Privy Council Office and Canadian Corporation for the 1967 World Exhibition had particularly high success rates, with entire blocks opened when no exemptions were found.

Other significant collections were opened after reviewers identified and redacted information protected under the Access to Information Act. This included substantial holdings from the Department of Trade and Commerce and the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Some blocks containing personal information were released under section 8(3) after review, including records from Finance and Veterans Affairs.

The BR sampling process accelerated decisions. For projects that resulted in release, typical sample rates ranged from 0.9% to 100%, with a median of 10%.

Stopped or Cancelled Reviews (40)

A large portion of reviews were halted when sampling revealed disqualifying content. Common reasons included solicitor-client privilege, affecting records from Finance, Transport, and Treasury Board, and sensitive personal information.

In several cases, initial samples showed no problems, but a deeper review uncovered too many potential exemptions to proceed efficiently.

Administrative & In-Progress 

As of 11 September 2025, 27 projects remain incomplete. There were 33 mystery projects, identified only as Unknown/No comment. One review was deemed not possible. Seven reviews were cancelled after discovering the Mikan database had incorrect information, and the records were already public.

It’s unclear how many of the 250 projects date back many years, potentially to 2010. How many are processed quickly and how many may have been languishing, perhaps for years? The BR system isn’t perfect; there is no perfect system. Would you rather err on the side of releasing information that should have been withheld because a sampling process was used, or withhold or delay the release of information that should be available?

In this episode, Mark Thompson and Steve Little cover: Nano Banana Comes to Photoshop, ChatGPT Projects Now Free, Citation Best Practices for Nano Banana, Sora 2 Goes Social, Claude Writes MS Office Documents.

Another insightful episode, recorded on 8 October. Find it here.

I’ve said it before; it bears repeating. Don’t delude yourself that just because a photo portrait is from the 19th century, it’s a true representation of the sitter. Photos were routinely touched up to make people appear as they would want to be seen. No wrinkles. If you insist that images manipulated by AI have to be cited as such, shouldn’t you also do the same thing for those old studio portraits?

As LAC is dealing with significant budget cuts, I’m wondering what to make of the following notice, posted without fanfare on 9 October.

Important notice
The call for proposals for the Documentary Heritage Communities Program  (DHCP) scheduled for this fall is postponed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Updates will be provided in due course.

There’s precedent. The DHCP was inaugurated in 2015, replacing a similar program cut in a previous budget crunch.

The DHCP objectives are:

Increase access to, and awareness of Canada’s local documentary institutions and their holdings, specifically:
– Conversion and digitization for access purposes;
– The development (research, design and production) of virtual and physical exhibitions, including travelling exhibits;
– Collection, cataloguing and access-based management; and
– Commemorative projects.

Increase the capacity of local documentary heritage institutions to better sustain and preserve Canada’s documentary heritage, specifically:

– Conversion and digitization for preservation purposes;
– Conservation and preservation treatment;
– Increased digital preservation capacity (excluding digital infrastructure related to day-to-day activities);
– Training and workshops that improve competencies and build capacity; and
– Development of standards, performance and other measurement activities.

Has LAC decided that the DHCP objectives are less of a priority than other activities?

The Board of Trustees voted on 19 October 2025 to award this designation to Alison Hare, CG^® Retired (2024). The announcement read:

Alison became Certified Genealogical Research Specialist (CGRS) 784 on 15 July 1999 (converted to CG on 15 July 2005). She served as a BCG trustee from 2009 to 2018. In 2008, she was appointed as BCG’s Judge Coordinator, an anonymous appointment where for over a decade she worked behind the scenes, including the implementation of rubrics for portfolio evaluations. She produced a judging procedure manual, guidelines for evaluation comments, and a renewal manual, with several revisions between 2011 and 2017. She worked on the ad hoc DNA standards committee tasked to produce the improved DNA standards approved in 2018, leading to the 2019 revision of Genealogy Standards. On 10 May 2019, she was presented The Donn Devine Award for Extraordinary Service to the Board for Certification of Genealogists (https://bcgcertification.org/about#alison-hare-cg).

Locally, Alison was active in both BIFHSGO, where she is in the Hall of Fame, and OGS.

Congratulations, Alison, and thanks to Brenda Dougall Merriman, also CG^® Emeritus, for stimulating this post.

Elissa Scalise Powell was also granted CG^® Emertus recognition.

Choose from these selected free online events. All times are Eastern Time, unless otherwise noted. Registration may be required in advance—please check the links to avoid disappointment. For many more events, mainly in the U.S., visit conferencekeeper.org.

Tuesday 28 October

2 pm: MyHeritage Secrets: How to Animate Photos, Preserve Stories, and Research Smarter, for MyHeritage and Legacy Family Tree Webinars
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/a-myheritage-webinar-3/

2 pm: Ottawa Virtual Genealogy Drop-In, for OGS Ottawa Branch
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/virtual-genealogy-drop-in-2-2025-10-28/

2:30 pm: Tracing Family Roots Through German Words, by Gabi for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Centre.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/14503801

7 pm: Taming the Digital Tiger, by Michael Nettleton for OGS Wellington County Branch.
https://wellington.ogs.on.ca/events/wellington-branch-taming-the-digital-tiger/

Wednesday 29 October

1 pm: “National” Family History Month Wrap Up, by Crista Cowan for Ancestry.
events.zoom.us/ev/AsDff-eAXq4N1kCgZ4KCKoH49RLpcyYhOCApqYj67drI3YT72jXw~AicdNsNiFQjU9lbijbwlFHfRnx9QDHwU0BVc8SLU3-eN8Veiy8MCN2TspQ

2 pm: Colonial New York Research, by Kory Meyerink for Legacy Family Tree Webinars
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/colonial-new-york-research/

Thursday 30 October

6:30 pm: Uncovering Truth Through DNA, by Nicole Price for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Centre.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/14504401

Friday 31 October

2 pm: Using Google Earth Web to Tell Your Family History Migration Stories, by Colleen Robledo Greene for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/using-google-earth-web-to-tell-your-family-history-migration-stories/

Saturday 1 November

OGS Records to Research: Exploring the Power of Archives

10:00am – Exploring Library and Archives Canada Online – Ken McKinlay

11:30am – Uncovering Family Histories in the Online Collections from OurDigitalWorld – Walter Lewis

1:30pm – An Apple A Day – Linda Corupe

3:00pm – Exploring Un-indexed Records with Family Search Labs: Unlocking Hidden Gems in Genealogical Research – Linda Debe

Free to OGS Members, $25 for non-members, with access to the recordings for 30 days.