The FreeBMD Database was updated on Sunday, 23 July 2023, to contain 288,680,995 unique index records, increased from 288,509,399 at the previous update.
Years with additions of more than 10,000 records are: for births 1992-3, for marriges 1991-3, for deaths 1967 and 1993.
Here’s a promo on a project just getting underway.
As of 19 July the following were updated.
UK, Household Cavalry Records of Service, 1799-1920
Now 17,653 records
UK, Officer Service Records, 1764-1932
Now 132,421 records
UK, Royal Air Force Muster Roll, 1918
Now 194,814 records
UK, Military Deserters, 1812-1927
Now 302,802 records.
Also, new on Ancestry as of 20 July, Aberdeen, Scotland, Roll of Honour, 1914-1918, 1939-1945 for 8,186 individuals, name, residence street address, death date, military rank, military regiment, and more depending on time period. It includes over 300 men who served with Canadian forces. Check with www.cwgc.org for possible additional information as well as in LAC service files for the Canadians.
Jonny Perl, genealogist, DNA enthusiast and the creator of the award-winning website dnapainter.com, will be coming to OGS Conference 2024 as a marquee speaker. He will lead a limited-enrolment workshop, present an enhanced weekend session, and participate in a special panel discussion. Conference attendees will also have the opportunity to meet and chat with Jonny on an informal basis.
Paul Milner, Blaine Bettinger, and Ron Arons have already been announced by OGS. As hinted at previously, Chris Paton recently confirmed in his Scottish GENES Newsletter that he will also be part of what is be sure to be an exciting and engaging family history experience!
Registration for Conference 2024 will open in the fall of 2023.
As a service to those who want to decolonize Canada, here’s a list of streets and other places in Ottawa named for English counties. For a few, a place within a missing county is given.
Bedford Crescent
Berkshire Way
Buckingham Private
Cambridge Street
Cheshire Road
Cornwall Street
Cumberland Street
Derby Place
Devonshire Place
Dorset Drive
Essex Street
Gloucester Street
Hampshire Place
Hereford Place
Huntingtonshire
Kent Street
Lancaster Road
Leicester (Wigston Private)
Lincoln Heights
London Terrace
Middlesex (Hackney Private)
Norfolk Avenue
Northampton Drive
Northumberland
Nottingham Court
Oxford Street
Rutland (Oakham Ridge)
Shropshire (Newport Crescent)
Somerset Street
Stafford Road
Suffolk Street
Surrey Avenue
Sussex Drive
Warwick Place
Westmoreland Avenue
Wiltshire Circle
York Street
After those are finished there’s plenty of scope in Ontario county names before moving on to the Irish, Scottish, Welsh and French from France.
The list could also be used to celebrate heritage, or a challenge for how many you could visit in a day!
This post was prompted by The World in Hong Kong.
Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.
Walt Disney’s Little Known History in Canada
Lotions and Potions in the Papers
How the shape of your skeleton could affect your health
‘It was as if my father were actually texting me’: grief in the age of AI
National Library of Scotland Virtual Reading Room
Thanks to this week’s contributors: Anonymous, Brenda Turner, Nick Mcdonald, Sunday Thompson, Teresa, Unknown.
Newfoundland and Labrador death certificates for the period are now available from Ancestry, as well as directly from The Rooms, N&L Provincial Archives. https://www.therooms.ca/collections-research
The 59,895 records have partial transcripts and links to images of the original.
For events prior to Newfoundland Confederation check Canada, Newfoundland Vital Records, 1840-1949 from FamilySearch, also on Ancestry along with several other Newfoundland databases.
Based on records at the Portsmouth History Centre. FamilySearch provides these collections online as transcriptions with images accessible at FamilySearch Centres and affiliate libraries.
We have Cliff Webb and collaborators to thank for two of the three collections in this week’s FMP update.
Greater London Burial Index
236,204 new records are added this week. That makes a total of 2,137,775 records, from 1394 to 1905. Additions are from these parishes:
Battersea
Bermondsey
Camberwell
Edmonton
Enfield
Lambeth
Streatham
Southwark
Tooting
City of London
and … records from Bermondsey Workhouse
Shoreditch Settlement Examinations 1758-1802
These 10,782 transcriptions relate to the Poor Law, which administered and provided relief to destitute members of a local parish.
The information given varies, as there are records for both the individual examined and their close family members. You can expect to learn details like a name, place of origin, date of examination, occupation, residence, and relationship to the subject of examination.
Survival of such records is spotty, these Shoreditch records are now preserved at London Metropolitan Archives, references P91/LEN/1200 to 1216.
Scotland, Glasgow City Volunteers, Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902
This set records the burgess tickets granted to Glasgow’s volunteer soldiers travelling to South Africa. Burgess tickets granted them full rights to trade within the burgh, and bestowing the highest form of civic honour upon them. The 1,019 transcriptions include a name, an occupation, an address, company and regiment information, and the date appointed burgess of the City of Glasgow.
ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk now has searchable registers of lightkeepers employed by the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses (Northern Lighthouse Board) between 1837 and 1921.
The lightkeeper registers have two parts. The first has individual pages for each lightkeeper. The second consists of individual pages for each lighthouse, which lists all lightkeepers who served there. After signing in, choose the relevant selection to search by either individual lightkeeper, or by individual lighthouse.
I found 20 Macdonalds and 10 Mcdonalds. The search is case-insensitive.
One project report progress among the Library and Archives Canada’s Co-Lab Challenges; 14 report no progress.
Mary Ann Shadd Cary is 26% complete, was 15% complete last month.
Expo67 remains 2 % complete.
Summiting Mount Logan in 1925: Fred Lambart’s personal account of the treacherous climb and descent of the highest peak in Canada remains 13% complete.
Women in the War remains 1% complete.
Arthur Lismer’s Children’s Art Classes remains 0% complete.
John Freemont Smith remains 93% complete.
Canadian National Land Settlement Association remains 98% complete.
Molly Lamb Bobak remains 94% complete.
Diary of François-Hyacinthe Séguin remains 99% complete.
George Mully: moments in Indigenous communities remains 0% complete.
Correspondence regarding First Nations veterans returning after the First World War remains 99% complete.
Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 remains 96% complete.
Legendary Train Robber and Prison Escapee Bill Miner remains 99% complete.
Japanese-Canadians: Second World War remains 3% complete.
The Call to Duty: Canada’s Nursing Sisters remains 93% complete.
Projects that remain 100% complete are no longer reported here.
Other unidentified Co-Lab activities not part of the Challenges have seen progress. There are currently 3,710 items in Collection Search identified as Co-Lab only contributions, an increase from 3,689 last month.
That’s how Library and Archives Canada characterizes the return of its renewed and improved Government of Canada Web Archive (GCWA).
“The GCWA is a discovery and access portal for LAC’s collections of preserved web content from the Government of Canada as well as private websites. It launches with the following curated collections:
How well does it’s url web search capture website history of interest for genealogy?
ogs.on.ca had 30 captures, one in 2006, the remainer since 2017. A link to the Internet Archive (IA) web collection shows there it was saved 2,014 times between June 15, 1998 and July 8, 2023.
bcgs.ca had 2 captures, 2019-07-09 to 2021-11-19, the IA captured it 359 times between January 29, 2003 and July 1, 2023.
cangenealogy.com was not captured by the GCWA, although found 281 times between October 8, 2006 and July 7, 2023 in the IA.
This small sample also shows that the IA captured the sites in greater depth so you were able to follow links from the main page.
What about government websites?
gg.ca has 382 captures, 2006-01-31 – 2023-07-01. The IA had 3,510 captures between January 24, 1998 and July 8, 2023.
weather.gc.ca had 112 captures, 2007-11-16 – 2023-07-01; the IA 2,588 captures between February 22, 2007 and July 1, 2023.
What about COVID-19?
ottawapublichealth.ca had 128 captures, 2020-04-07 – 2022-11-04. The IA 1,264 captures between June 14, 2013 and July 3, 2023, the vast majority in between 2020 and 2022.
My conclusion is that while it’s useful to have an LAC backup, GCWA is not as comprehensive as the Internet Archive. Compliments to LAC for including a link to the IA from GCWA web search result pages.
