Anglo-Celtic Connections

For a very limited time, for $49 Canadian, the MyHeritage DNA test is available. Take a look at the details of this very special offer here.

They were there is a collection of people and stories building on a core of Battle of Britain legends and flying aces and similar Army, Navy, Civilian and Resistance legends, 154 people in total.
Scroll down on the page to see an index of places and actions. Clicking on Canada reveals 23 matches. Read about Canada-born Ian Roy MacLennan, Alexander Beaufort Fraser Fraser-Harris, David George Evans, Robert M ‘Bob’ Elder, and others whose connection to Canada was temporary.

The 2023 Toronto History Lecture will be held online via Zoom on Tuesday, August 8, at 7:30 pm EDT. It is free, but you must register. (It will be recorded, so if your schedule or time zone doesn’t accommodate 7:30, you can time-shift.)

During the early 1900s, Toronto experienced rapid changes due to industrialization, migration, and the implementation of major infrastructure projects. One of the most significant undertakings of this time was the construction of the Water Supply Tunnel in Toronto’s harbour, which was also the site of a notable archaeological discovery. Huron Elliott, a miner from the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, arrived in Toronto in 1907 to work on this project. Tragically, he and three other workers lost their lives just days later. Eric Sehr will delve into the unique story of Huron Elliott, a rare account of an Indigenous person actively shaping Toronto’s growth and development in the early 20th century. Additionally, he will examine the significance of the Water Supply Tunnel project to commemorate the workers who died building the essential infrastructure that Toronto relies on today.

Eric Sehr is an urban planner and an ardent admirer of Toronto. His interests include maps, old newspapers, and the tales that they hold. For over ten years, he has devoted his time to researching and writing about the history of Toronto, which he shares on his blog, “Toronto Shaped.” Through this blog, Eric delves into the people, places, and plans that have left an indelible mark on the city’s past and present. You can find his work at torontoshaped.wordpress.com.

Click here to register for The 2023 Toronto History Lecture. It is free!

The 2023 Toronto History Lecture will be dedicated to the memory of long time Toronto Branch member Ron Junkin, in recognition of his many volunteer contributions to the Branch over 45 years.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Daily Mirror, England, January 23, 1923

Here’s a tabulation of the FamilySearch titles that have seen updates in the past month. All, except for the London Electoral Registers, are name indexed and most have linked images of the original.

Collection Title	Records	Last Updated
Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers, 1740-1900	3,695,883	2 August 2023
England, London Electoral Registers, 1847-1913	Browse Images	27 July 2023
England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975	45,763,557	27 July 2023
England Deaths and Burials, 1538-1991	14,518,428	27 July 2023
England Marriages, 1538–1973	11,805,479	27 July 2023
England, Middlesex Parish Registers, 1539-1988	2,010,432	27 July 2023
England, Surrey Marriages Bonds and Licenses, 1536-1992	5,422	27 July 2023
England, Surrey Parish Registers, 1536-1992	1,834,524	27 July 2023
England, Hampshire Parish Registers, 1538-1980	1,853,815	14 July 2023
England, Hampshire, Portsmouth, Baptisms, 1538-1940	537,320	14 July 2023
England, Hampshire, Portsmouth, Burials, 1538-1926	313,412	14 July 2023
England, Hampshire, Portsmouth, Cemetery Records, 1881-1918	129,284	14 July 2023
England, Hampshire, Portsmouth, Hospital Records, 1878-1918	71,376	14 July 2023
England, Hampshire, Portsmouth, Marriages, 1537-1930	393,770	14 July 2023
England, Hampshire, Portsmouth, Police Staff Records, 1908-1924	313	14 July 2023
England, Hampshire, Portsmouth, Military Tribunals, 1916-1919	14,141	14 July 2023
England, Hampshire, Portsmouth, Workhouse Registers, 1879-1919	60,953	14 July 2023
England, Cumberland Parish Registers, 1538-1990	524,813	7 July 2023

The FMP record collection grew by 14,479 records this week as they come out of embargo.

For Devon, baptisms are augmented with 2,111 new records, transcripts and the original record images from 1923. The marriage and banns collection has 2,609 new records, and there are 380 new burial records. Parishes with additions include Lydford, Cornwood, and Eggbuckland.

For Leicestershire, there are now 5,240 baptisms added from the year 1923, both transcriptions and images. Also 1,546 marriages along with 2,424 banns from 1938, and 169 burials from 1998.

Also announced this week is the availability of over 400,000 new pages from The Scotsman for 1951 to 2002. That means 48,799 issues, 786,514 pages of The Scotsman for 1817-2002 are now available through the British Newspaper Archive and Findmypast.

Copied below, buried in the LAC blog, is a useful update for those of us who’ve been curious about progress since the new LAC website was introduced a year ago. It explains changes that have been made in response to user feedback.
Notable is that about one-third of the visits, through the “Help with your research” page, were for genealogy and family history. Another 25% were for military history, likely also related to searching an individual.

Toward the end of the blog reveals the comments they are working on now:
– What is or isn’t available at LAC, especially in terms of modern records
– How to access obituaries on the LAC website
– How to find some of our smaller databases (like Second World War Service Files – War Dead, 1939 to 1947)

If you have comments on changes to the site that would help with your interest, be it about the user experience or content, be it family history, military or any other, LAC would welcome your feedback at servicesweb-webservices@bac-lac.gc.ca.

Improving your online experience: Analytics, feedback, improvements, user experience and changes to come on our new website

We now know that in 1931 Lester Pearson lived in a rented home and didn’t own a radio.

When Ancestry posted its partial transcriptions of the 1931 Census of Canada on Friday, 9 June, the fields available were Name, Gender, Marital Status, Age, Estimated Birth Year, Residence date, Home in 1931, Relation to Head, Enumeration District and Sub-District.

Only two months after the LAC release, additional fields have been transcribed. They are: Can Speak English, Can Speak French, Can Read and Write, Class of Worker, Home Ownership, Materials of Construction, Owned Radio.

Given the limited vocabulary for a response, mostly Yes/No, I’d expect the automated transcription result to be quite accurate. However, Ancestry informs they still need to pass complete internal quality control.

So far, there has yet to be an update to the search form to accommodate these added fields.

Thanks to Allison Lau and Rob Burt from Ancestry for clarifying information.

This new database on Ancestry, based on interviews with liberated prisoners, is from original data at WO 344 and has 83,560 entries. The transcribed information is shown in this example.

Name: Victor Charles Sparrow
Rank: Supper
Birth Date: 14 Jan 1917
Enlistment Date: 8 Sep 1939
Capture Date: 19 Aug 1942
Capture Place: Dieppe
Imprisonment Force: Germany
Service Number: B25215
Unit: 2nd Field Company Royal Canadian Engineers
War: WWII

Sparrow is one of approximately 9,000 Canadians who were captured and held as prisoners of war during the Second World War. Nearly 1,700 were held in Asia.

The collection includes 798 POWs who, like Sparrow, were captured in the raid on Dieppe on 19 August 1942, all serving with Canadian forces.

The linked image is a three-page questionnaire, filled out by the liberated POW by handwriting, with much of the same information as found on an attestation paper (as withheld by LAC) as well as their POW experience.

The collection includes 1,335 who were captured in Hong Kong including POWs from the Royal Rifles of Canada and Winnipeg Grenadiers.

 

On the hunt for background on the Ottawa Sharpshooters, who served in the 1885 NorthWest Field Force, I didn’t anticipate finding relevant information in Text Archive in the Internet Archive. Text Archive has over 38 million items, many full books and all full-text searchable. That includes over 839,000 items in Canadian Libraries.

The unexpected hit I got was in a poem in the book Selections from Scottish Canadian poets : being a collection of the best poetry written by Scotsmen and their descendants in the Dominion of Canada, published in 1900. What are the chances you’d read through that for mention of the Ottawa Sharpshooters?

Margaret Beatrice Burgess, penned IN MEMORIAM: Battle of Cut Knife Creek, 2nd May, 1885. Private John Rogers, Ottawa Sharpshooters, born in the island of Barbadoes, West Indies, 6th May, 1858; killed in battle 2nd of May, 1885 ; aged 27 years less 4 days.

Of its time, read the poem with a good helping of poetic licence.

Each poet of the 37, including eight women, listed below, is introduced by a short biography. There are also 30 portraits.

Anderson, Rev. R S. G.
Boyd, Robert.
Brack, Mrs. Jessie Wanless.
Bruce, Rev. G., D.D.
Burgess, Mrs. Margaret Beatrice.
Clark, Dr. Daniel.
Graham, Miss H. Isabel.
Harper, Dr. John Murdock.
Imrie, John.
Laidlaw, Thomas.
Lockhart, Rev. A. J.
McCaig, Donald.
McLachlan, Alexander .
MacColl, Evan.
MacCormack, Malcolm.
Macfarlane, John.
Mackay, Mrs. Isabelle Ecclestone .
MacKeracher, W. M.
Macnab, Rev. Andrew.
Maitland, Mrs. Mary A.
Marshall, Mrs. J. R.
Mortimer, John.
Muir, Alexander.
Murdock, William.
Murray, William.
Nelson, Edwin G.
Newhall, Mrs. Georgina Fraser.
Pirie, George.
Reid, Robert.
Ross, Allan.
Simpson, John.
Smith, Rev. William Wye.
Steele, John.
Telford, William.
Tytler, Agnes.
Wanless, Andrew.
Wingfield, Alexander H.

Like John Rogers, Margaret Beatrice Burgess is buried at Ottawa’s Beechwood Cemetery.

We continue in the summer slump for webinars — quantity, not quality. Choose from selected free online events in the next five days. All times are ET except as noted. Assume registration in advance is required; check so you’re not disappointed. Looking for more options? Additional mainly US events are listed at https://conferencekeeper.org/virtual.

Tuesday 1 August

2:30 pm: Sharing the Stories of Your Ancestors, by EvaAnne Johnson for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/8801104

10 pm: Six Top Sites for Queensland Research, by Helen V. Smith for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/six-top-sites-for-queensland-research/

Wednesday 2 August

2 pm: How and When Did Our European Ancestors Get to Europe? by David Dowell for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/how-and-when-did-our-european-ancestors-get-to-europe/

7:30 pm: How did they get here? – based on the Diary of George Laird, byDeb & Bill McAuslan for OGS Huron County Branch.
https://huron.ogs.on.ca/events/huron-branch-how-did-they-get-here-based-on-the-dairy-of-george-laird-deb-bill-mcauslan/

Thursday 3 August

6:30 pm: Mitochondrial DNA: An Overview & Testing Strategies, by Kathleen Carter for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/8802083

7 pm: Old MacDonald Had a Farm, byTina Beaird for the Ontario Genealogical Society.
https://ogs.on.ca/august-webinar-old-macdonald-had-a-farm-tina-beaird/

Friday 4 August

2 pm: Loyalists, Freedmen and Frauds in the Southern Claims Commission, by Sharon Batiste Gillins for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/loyalists-freedmen-and-frauds-in-the-southern-claims-commission/

Saturday 5 August

The total number of pages online is 68,822,392, an increase from 68,383,253 last month.

This month 72 papers had pages added (66 in the previous month). There were no new titles. Dates range from 1771 to 1988.

Papers with more than 10,000 pages added are:

Title	Years
The Scotsman	1953-1974, 1976-1977
London Daily Chronicle	1872-1873, 1878-1885, 1887, 1922, 1924-1925, 1927-1928, 1930
Newmarket Journal	1921-1942, 1945-1949, 1956-1959, 1961-1965, 1967-1975, 1979-1981
Stratford-upon-Avon Herald	1873, 1885, 1890, 1899-1910, 1912-1916, 1935, 1939, 1945, 1951-1962, 1964-1968, 1970, 1981-1983, 1987-1988
Bristol Evening Post	1989
Huddersfield Daily Examiner	1882, 1939, 1959, 1964, 1968, 1973
Huddersfield and Holmfirth Examiner	1861-1863, 1865-1868, 1870, 1872, 1939-1949, 1951, 1958, 1961, 1978-1980, 1982
Sheerness Times Guardian	1877, 1949-1974
Wiltshire County Mirror	1852-1874, 1876-1877, 1889, 1893
Haverhill Echo	1947-1970
Galway Observer	1882-1884, 1889-1911, 1928-1963
Suffolk and Essex Free Press	1959-1964, 1980

I’m happy to see East Anglia titles appearing in the list. The Yarmouth Gazette and North Norfolk Constitutionalist
added 3,728 pages for 1875, 1892-1895, 1898-1901.