Anglo-Celtic Connections

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.

As of 25 July, Fold3.com has these major UK military additions.

Here are the latest updates from Ancestry.

Scotland, Ireland and Wales, Militia Attestation Papers, 1800-1915
Sourced from WO 96: Militia Attestation Papers, The National Archives, Kew,  A search returns name, enlistment date, enlistment place, age, regiment and service number. An image of the original is linked at Fold3.com Now with 185,298 records.

UK, Military Records of Baptisms, Confirmations, Marriages and Burials, 1813-1957
Includes links to original register images. Sourced from WO 156: War Office: UK and overseas garrisons: Registers of Baptisms, Confirmations, Deaths/Burials, and Marriage. The National Archives, Kew. Now with 40,319 records.
This is not the only source. See Births, marriages and deaths in the armed forces.

UK, Royal Air Force Airmen Records, 1918-1940
Find name, gender, age, birth date,  birth place, service date: service number, spouse, next of kin, relation to airman. Images are at Fold3. Now with 626,862 records.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

A Journey through UK’s Workhouse History, a podcast, with Peter Higginbotham

“It Was as Much for Me As for Anybody Else”: The Creation of Self-Validating Records
The focus in this article is those who experienced “cleansing” from trauma, be it chronic or temporary, but applicable to everyone.

Digital Preservation at the Library of Birmingham: Digital Preservation and Access
Selected items online including Birmingham Rate Books – Digitised PDFs of Birmingham Rate Books 1901 to 1918, and Map Collections – Digitised maps of Birmingham and West Midlands.

Researchers have discovered exceptionally potent antibodies that can neutralize virtually all known variants of the COVID-19 virus—including Omicron, a new study shows.
Really good news, if the promise holds and “side effects” are not an issue.

Thanks to this week’s contributors: Anonymous, Brenda Turner, gail benjafield, Kim Barnsdale, Nick Mcdonald, Steve Whitwill, Sunday Thompson, Teresa, Unknown.

Both Ancestry and TheGenealogist have added to their British collections of Jewish interest.

For Ancestry it’s additions to UK, British Jewry Roll of Honour, 1914-1918, now with 57,202 entries of those who served in the British and colonial forces during World War I. Compiled in 1922, it uses military and public sources it lists many, not all who served by regiment, with particular atterntion to those how died or received military honours.
A free source is https://www.jewsfww.uk/roll-of-honour.php /.

TheGenealogist has made available a “batch of The Jewish Chronicles from the First World War and The Jewish Echo (Scotland and Ireland’s only Jewish paper from the time) covering years during the build up to World War 2.”
These records augment the collection of The Jewish Year Books from 1896 to 1939 and, you guessed it, the Jewry Roll of Honour (1914-1918) available from TheGenealogist.

 

Ireland, Scotland and Canada have additions at FMP this week.

Ireland
Find additions for the parish of St Mary’s in Magheraculmoney, Fermanagh, a Church of Ireland denomination, from 1767 to 1918,

They are transcriptions of 7,731 baptisms, 2,864 marriages, 1,086 burials, and also 3,948 congregational transcriptions between 1763 and 1887.

There’s a list of 108 townlands in the parish of Magheraculmoney here.

Scotland
For Inverness, 2,554 records are added to the Scotland, Poor Law & Poor Lists collection this week. The records, from 1846 to 1920, include considerable detail.

Canada
FMP now incorporates the 1.8 million transcription records of the Canadian Headstones record set. Over 1 million are for Ontario, and half a million for Quebec. A link takes you to the OGS Canadian Headstones site where you can see a photo of the headstone.

I was delighted to learn by email that Kim Barnsdale is back as Webinar Coordinator for OGS/Ontario Ancestors. She’s seeking our help on the topics you want to hear in the 2024 OGS webinar series.

Members and non-members can answer a survey which closes on Tuesday, 1 August, at 9 am. That’s soon so please do it now!  Here’s the link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YQVSSNH

This Ancestry database is an index of approximately 3.3 million marriages.  The card catalogue indicates 9,749,829 entries so must have more names indexed than the marriage partners, but fewer than the parents and witnesses.

A search found no 1939 marriages, there are many for 1938 which is the latest date mentioned as available from Ancestry by the Archives of Ontario. The AO holds later marriage registrations and the indexes (where they exist) to 1941, but availability is questionable!

From James Powell’s Today in Ottawa’s History website the story of Charles Lindbergh’s second trip to Ottawa accompanied by his equally intrepid wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. https://todayinottawashistory.wordpress.com/2023/07/22/anne-lindbergh-and-north-to-the-orient/