Anglo-Celtic Connections

New from Pen and Sword, Paul Chrystal’s “Women at Work in World Wars I and II” examines women’s roles in Britain, filling the void left by men who went to fight, ensuring Britain’s survival and contributing significantly to the war efforts.

Chrystal meticulously details the discrimination and prejudice women faced despite their undeniable proficiency and industriousness. Through compelling anecdotes and thorough research, the book underscores the impact of women’s labour on the war outcomes and the broader societal changes.

Chrystal, a prolific British author, doesn’t overlook lesser-known areas where women contributed, like small arms manufacturing, emergency services, and even the controversial topic of prostitution during the wars. The book’s structure, divided into two parts corresponding to the two World Wars, allows for an in-depth comparison and highlights the continuity and change in women’s contributions across these periods.

Four copies are at the Ottawa Public Library, with 13 holds (one is mine!). It’s available for purchase from amazon.ca in both hardcopy and as an eBook. Google Books has a generous preview, the basis for this post.

Product details
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pen and Sword (4 April 2024)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 248 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1399071262
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1399071260
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 499 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.75 x 2.79 x 23.62 cm

This collection, claiming  289,555 records, just appeared. For now, here’s the description provided by Ancestry.

Voyage reports, business operation registers, and telegraphs have been combined into a single collection that can show a passenger’s destination, activities on the ship, and even accidents or illnesses that may have occurred. Colourful photographs and brochures showcase the ship’s design and the layout of individual rooms.

Documents and photographs of each ship’s crew are included, along with information on military personnel who sometimes travelled by steamship. This collection also documents the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company’s involvement in historical events such as World War I, World War II, and the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 in Japan. This collection has a wide variety of records spanning over a hundred years, so information on passengers and crew may vary.

Using this collection

If your ancestor travelled on a Canadian Pacific Steamship, you might discover the following information about them in this collection:

Date and place of birth
Occupation
Place of residence
Name of vessel
Date and place of departure
Date and place of arrival
Name of next of kin
To provide optimal service, the crew sometimes made notes about a passenger’s occupation, societal status, family, and purpose of travel. These notes can act as a short biographical sketch of your ancestor. Military personnel occasionally travelled on steamships, and their rank, company, and regiment may also be discovered.

If your ancestor worked on a steamship, this collection may tell you their occupation (or rating), date of employment, birth date, or place of usual residence. You may also find an employment history which summarizes your ancestor’s time with the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company.

The collection includes information on the voyage that brought me to Canada. Unfortunately, there’s no passenger list, but lots of detail on the journey, even down to information on passengers who needed medical attention.

Look for further posts on the treasures in this collection.

Bonne Saint-Jean-Baptiste.

At a session at the recent OGS conference, Ancestry mentioned that it has acquired almost 10 million indexes for deaths from 1926 to 1996 from the Drouin Institute. The collection should launch this year, and there may be other acquisitions from Drouin.

The Ottawa Public Library has free remote access to Drouin’s Généalogie Québec as well PRDH (Programme de recherche en démographie historique) for cardholders.

It’s so rich in content you likely wonder if you’re making the most of it.  That’s FamilySearch, the website, which is constantly evolving.

This evening at 7 pm ET take advantage of the presentation by Lynn Turner, AG®, FUGA, Director of the FamilySearch Library, who will present What’s New at FamilySearch.

It’s the first in a free four-part series offered this week by GRIP, the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburg. The other three highlight initiatives you may well not have heard of by genealogical entrepreneurs.

Tuesday, June 25, 2024 at 7:00 pm
How to do more genealogy in less time with Goldie May’s genealogy tools, by Richard K. Miller

Wednesday, June 26, 2024 at 7:00 pm
Family Tree Notebooks: A Simple Way to Get Organized, by Carly Lane Morgan

Thursday, June 27, 2024 at 7:00 pm
Unlocking and Sharing the Stories and Family History Behind Our ‘Stuff’, by Ellen Goodwin.

Find out more and register at https://grip.ngsgenealogy.org/grip-2024-virtual-evening-sessions/

This past week, 14,293 new photographs have been added to a collection that contains data on many individuals who served with the Coldstream Guards. Additionally, there are 256 transcriptions available from the British Navy’s 1817 mission to China, specifically from H.M.S. Alceste. Also, 5,331 new transcriptions have been added for those who fought in the Battle of Barrosa during the Peninsular War in 1811.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Exploring travel in England before the railway, from Teresa at Writing My Past.

Can you inherit memories from your ancestors?
The science of epigenetics suggests we can pass on trauma – but trust and compassion too. Perhaps epigentics accounts for the beliefs of descendants of some home children.

Congratulations to Librarian and Archivist of Canada Emeritus Guy Berthiaume, now a Knight of the National Order of Quebec.

Release discount for RootsMagic new users and updates until Sunday 7 July.

Photos from OGS Conference 2024 in Toronto

New online from the National Library of Scotland, the most detailed Ordnance Survey maps for post-Second World War England, Scotland, and Wales. No colour.

Houses are shown individually, often with the house number. Significant buildings, like churches, libraries and cinemas, are labelled. Bomb sites are labelled as Ruin(s).

Full detail and access at https://maps.nls.uk/os/national-grid/

Learn how to find and make the most of the NLS’s maps in an online interactive workshop at 9 am on Wednesday, 26 June 2024.

https://www.nls.uk/whats-on/navigating-the-maps-website-june/

The latest updates to the Canadiana Online collection, 45 items, range from local newspapers to British parliamentary papers, each offering unique insights into different aspects of Canadian life and governance.

The Irish University Press series of British parliamentary papers is particularly extensive. Published in the late 1960s, it includes selected  documents relevant to Canada, most for the mid-19th century. Find correspondence and reports on immigration, the clergy reserves, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and boundary issues between British North America and the United States.

For example, papers from 1847-48 and 1850-51 detail immigration policies, urgent as Canada was flooded with those escaping the famine, and railway developments, reflecting the significant socio-economic changes of that era.  Sadly, they are not full text searchable. There is a table of contents at the start of each volume.

Publications that might contain mentions of individuals or provide context for their lives are newspapers like “L’étincelle” from November 2, 1909, “Les cloches de Saint-Boniface” from 1923 to 1933.“The Montreal Tattler” captures a brief snapshot of Montreal’s society in 1844 through its eight issues. There’s also “Comet (Québec, Québec),” with issues from November 17, 1866, and February 29, 1868.

This new resource on TheGenealogist includes three centuries of obituaries for notable, mainly British, people.

They derive from three publications:

1. Index Society’s Obituary Notices (1880-1882): These notices cover a wide range of industry journals and periodicals such as The Lancet and The Law Journal, along with local and national newspapers like The Hertfordshire Mercury, The Guardian, and The Times.
2. Musgrave’s Obituaries: Primarily covering the 1600s to the 1800s, these records were meticulously assembled by Sir William Musgrave. The extracts from various works, including The London Magazine and The Gentleman’s Magazine, were compiled and published by The Harleian Society.
3. Society of Friends Records (1880, 1882, 1885): Known as the Annual Monitor or Obituary of the Members of the Society of Friends, these Quaker records provide detailed memoirs and anecdotes about the deceased and their families.

These newly digitized obituaries contain details for researchers, including birth and death dates, occupations, and family connections. They also often reference original sources, with images.

To find the browseable book go to Advaced Search, then Births, Marriages and Deaths, then use the drop down menu for Obituaries.

Much of the content is available at free sources like the Internet Archive.

The baby on the cover of the July WDYTYA magazine, is a sure attention grabber. It highlights Chris Paton’s lead article, 10 Baptism Problems and How to Solve Them. He looks at problems often encountered from across the UK and Ireland. In the Resources sidebar he mentions Mark Herber’s 2004 book Ancestral Trails, which “has yet to be bettered as the most useful general reference book for English and Welsh research.” It can be borrowed for free for one hour  from the Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/inassociationwit0000unse

Also featured are articles based on Ruth Goodman’s podcast The Curious History of Your Home, and from Caroline Roope on Britain’s Beach Huts. That made me reminisce that as a kid I enjoyed many summer days in and outside a shared family beach hut. Unlike a Canadian cottage, it occupied a spot rented from the council and had to be removed in the Autumn.

Gemma Noon writes about records for exploring settlement on the Canadian Prairies. There’s much more.

Does your public library offer free online access to the new issue, available on Press Reader?

When we speak of the census we’re normally referring to the nominal censuses that list all individuals, one row for each, grouped by household. Early censuses recorded just the head of household.

There are other census components which LAC recently integrated into Census Search.

Schedule B to the 1851 Census
An agricultural census with 56 columns. The first few give the Name of occupier;  Concession or range; Lot or part of lot; Number of acres of land: held by each person or family; Number of acres of land: under cultivation, and so on. That;s followed by details on production of wheat, barley, rye, peas, oats, buckwheat … tobacco … maple sugar … cider … the list continues.

Not all have survived. Most of Carleton County, Canada West, is missing,

Schedules 2–9 to the 1871 Census

Schedule 2 to the 1901 Census
This covers buildings and lands, churches and schools. The 37 columns are grouped under the headings: Reference to Schedule 1; Houses; Institutions; Real estate owned; Real estate leased or otherwise held; Church or place of worship; Sunday school; Public school. Each row ends with columns: Date of visit; The reason, if not enumerated, on first visit; Date when enumerated.

Get a 25% discount on annual subscriptions Généalogie Québec.

Again this year, to mark St-Jean-Baptiste’s Day, Généalogie Québec offers a discount you can grab from today, 20 June until the 24th.

The offer is ONLY AVAILABLE at: https://www.genealogiequebec.com/en/subscription-offer-st-jean2024