2,200 individual records not in the Official Casualty RollsFor Canadians who served don't overlook the free databases at Library and Archives Canada South African War, 1899-1902 - Service Files, Medals and Land Applications
3,100 casualty events not in the Official Casualty Rolls
18,800 casualty records updated/corrected (34% of the total casualties)
19,800 names linked to a war memorial
2,464,817 records is nothing to sneeze at, especially for two ancient Scottish counties with barely 200,000 population combined.
With DNA extraction techniques getting more sophisticated by the day questions like Is it possible to test strands from grandma's hair brush? are increasingly being asked.
The answer, which used it be only if there's a root on the strand, is increasingly more nuanced, and always with the rider - at a a price!
With greater capability comes greater probability of contamination.
This article from Nature includes this description of an experiment
"We asked pairs of people to shake hands for two minutes and then each individual handled a separate knife. In 85% of cases, the DNA of the other person was transferred to the knife and profiled. In one-fifth of the samples, the DNA analysis identified this other person as the main or only contributor of DNA to the 'weapon'
Caveat Emptor
The updated free FamilySearch Ontario births database to 1912 has 2,094,890 records linked to 413,055 images. Search by first and last name, place, and year.
Note that Ancestry has an extra year, 1913.
This Ancestry database is an index and images to the annually published Calendar of Confirmations and Inventories filed in Scotland for the years 1876–1936. The entries in each volume are then alphabetised by surname. Information varies across different entries, but each typically includes:
testament date
full name of the deceased
death date and place
name of an executor (often a relative, but sometimes a creditor)
where and when the testament was recorded
You didn't have to die in Scotland to be recorded in this database. Using the keyword search you'll get 209 hits for Toronto, 161 for Montreal, 150 for Vancouver, 75 for Winnipeg, 40 for Calgary, and only 20 for Ottawa.
While usually only the more affluent will typically appear you will find entries with small estates.
One of the Ottawa entries is for Douglas Brymner, Dominion Archivist, who left an estate in Scotland of £75.
The calendar is only a summary. Information on ordering copies of testaments and inventories can be found on the ScotlandsPeople website.
When civil registration was in force Nova Scotia births were supposed to be registered within one year. Lacking that a special type of birth certificate was available showing not only the facts of birth for the child but also the types of evidence presented to back up the facts of birth.
FamilySearch claims there are 143,618 records for this Nova Scotia Delayed Births, 1837-1904 database. I only found 73,944 with the breakdown by decade:
1831-40: 14 records
1841-50: 128 records
1851-60: 779 records
1861-70: 2,016 records
1871-80: 6,233 records
1881-90: 18,650 records
1891-1900: 29,721 records
1901 -1910: 15,467 records
The originals are archived at the Archives of Nova Scotia in Halifax.
Following last weeks Irish Roots column on Viking surnames John Grenham turns his attention to those related to Norman immigration.
In October the Historical Society of Ottawa meeting welcomes Ottawa River Keeper Meredith Brown on the topic Ottawa Shaped by Its River.
The Ottawa River has quenched our thirst, shaped our history and continues to provide energy, connect and sustain our communities. Unfortunately, the fishery can no longer sustain us, and the chemicals we pour down our drains are turning up in our drinking water. We are forgetting how water shapes us, and how we shape it in return. Learn how pollution in the Ottawa River has influenced national water laws and why our national treasure has yet to be designated a Canadian Heritage River.
As the Ottawa Riverkeeper, Meredith Brown is a strong, independent voice for the Ottawa River, and an advocate for improved water protection in Canada. Since 2004, she has significantly raised the profile of the Ottawa River, and brought important issues such as sewage dumping and radioactive waste to the attention of the public and decisionmakers. The Riverkeeper is regularly called on to comment on issues that affect the river, and to provide insightful solutions and recommendations to improve the health and future of the Ottawa River. Meredith holds biology and environmental engineering degrees from Queen's University and the University of Guelph. She also earned a Master's in Resource and Environmental Management from Simon Fraser University, with an emphasis on water management and public policy. Meredith's leadership and collaborative approach has brought excellent results, and has connected key players throughout the watershed. Meredith organized the first ever Ottawa River Summit that brought Mayors, First Nation Chiefs, and key agency players together to address the future of the Ottawa River. Meredith sits on many advisory committees around the watershed and was recently named a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.The date is 30 October at 1pm. As usual, the location is the Routhier Community Centre, 172 Gigues Ave, Ottawa. Further information on the Society and its activities is at http://hsottawa.ncf.ca. Everyone welcome.
I shouldn't have been surprised to learn the the Richard the Third Society in the UK would have gladly promoted my recent BIFHSGO presentation "You be the Judge: Did DNA Prove the Skeleton Under the Leicester Car Park was Richard III? " to their members in the Ottawa area. It was a missed opportunity and caused me to reflect on whether our family history and genealogy societies give enough priority to promotion.
How important is promotion? It's an essential element of the 4Ps in the marketing mix (Price, Place, Promotion, Product). The recent third quarter report for Ancestry.com showed marketing and advertising accounting for 38% of operating expenses. Five percent is suggested as a starting point for promotion of a services business.
For non-profits volunteer promotion effort substitutes in part for budget. There's no lack of free or low cost ways. Here are ten.
1. Trade for promotion at meetings with like-minded organizations. Last Saturday OGS Ottawa Branch promoted the next BIFHSGO meeting at their Memorial Lecture. BIFHSGO returns the compliment at their meetings.
2. Trade promotion in publications of like-minded organizations. Ottawa Branch and BIFHSGO cross-promote their annual conferences in the event literature.
3. Extend cross promotion to non-genealogical but like minded societies. Friends organizations exist for libraries, archives and museums. Historical societies are natural partners. There are also umbrella organizations. In Ottawa BIFHSGO and Ottawa Branch OGS are members of the Council of Heritage Organizations of Ottawa (CHOO/COPO) but their events are not listed in the CHOO Heritage Happenings section.
4. Libraries, archives, museums and community centres often have locations where notices can be posted.
5. Go online. Facebook, Twitter and Google+ . . . is there any end to the number of social networking sites?
6. Use an online events listing. In Ottawa there's the free Ottaw Start website at http://ottawastart.com/. Google your community and events to find such services.
7. Add your event to the Global Genealogy listing of Upcoming Events, Conferences & Workshops at http://globalgenealogy.com/admin/events.htm
8. Archive CD Books Canada include a listing of genealogy events in their periodic newsletter. Find contact information at http://archivecdbooks.ca/pages/contact-us
9. OGS has a location for listing society and branch events on their calendar at https://www.ogs.on.ca/calendar_of_events.php. There are many more OGS branch events than listed - it's an underused resource.
10. Bloggers are always looking for material. Send announcements for Canada's Anglo-Celtic Connections to me at johndreid at gmail dot com. Gail Dever at dever199 at hotmail dot com may be contacted for Genealogy à la carte. and Elizabeth Lapointe at genealogycanada at aol dot com for the Genealogy Canada blog.
The specific resources listed have an Ottawa orientation. Check for similar resources in your area, and let me know of any other types of resources with which you've had success.
"There are now many choices for how to put your family information online for others to find, well beyond what was available in the early years of the web. This talk will cover the various options available for family historians to choose from: the use of major genealogy sites like familysearch.org or Ancestry; wiki sites, such as WikiTree; blogs; or building your own web site. The simpler and free options will be emphasized. There will also be discussion of what will happen to your family information online when you die and the planning you should do for this eventuality."Also presenting will be Cathy McNamara giving a Mini-presentation: Sort, Scan, Share, Solve and Scrapbook Your Old Photos
Ancestry in Mexico? Perhaps a relative choose marriage in a resort setting, or died while on vacation, or maybe escaping the law. Ancestry's collection of Spanish language Mexican databases have increased to 152 with the addition of 115 last Thursday, October 22.
Jalisco, Mexico, Civil Registration Deaths, 1856-1987
Oaxaca, Mexico, Civil Registration Deaths, 1861-1987
Jalisco, Mexico, Civil Registration Births, 1857-1947
Jalisco, Mexico, Civil Registration Marriages, 1861-1961
Puebla, Mexico, Catholic Church Records, 1545-1970
Jalisco, Mexico, Catholic Church Records, 1590-1995
San Luis Potosi, Mexico, Civil Registration Deaths, 1860-1987
Michoacán, Mexico, Catholic Church Records, 1649-1909
Alan Campbell, President of the the Ontario Genealogical Society, is accumulating a collection of good advice in a series of blog posts on the OGS website. Especially valuable for the newbie they are a good reminder for all.
Those Pesky Source Citations!
Location, Location, Location- So Important in Genealogical Research
Genealogical Researching On-site – A Rainy Day Activity
The Value in Visiting Your Ancestors Hometown
Researching Your Family History at the Archives of Ontario
The Personals- More Than You Wanted to Know
So You Think You Have a Brickwall (in three parts)
Who is She Actually? How Names Can Change in a Person’s Lifetime
Family Stories – Truth or Fiction?
"The Wayback Machine, a service used by millions to access 19 years of the Web’s history, is about get an update. When completed in 2017, the next generation Wayback Machine will have more and better webpages that are easier to find. The Internet Archive, with generous support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF), is re-building the Wayback Machine which currently offers access to 439+ billion Web captures including Web pages, video and images."Read the details of the planned improvements at https://blog.archive.org/2015/10/21/grant-to-develop-the-next-generation-wayback-machine/. The one that caught my attention is:
"Finding websites based on keywords. While indexing all of the pages in the Wayback Machine is beyond what we can do, we will index homepages of websites so that patrons won’t have to enter specific URLs to dive into the Wayback Machine."
"Gravestones are an important source of genealogical information but they also have their own history. Initially craft products that reflected locally available materials, traditional skills, and local, regional, or cultural stylistic and symbolic traditions, gravestones increasingly became modern, standardized and mass produced industrial products through the course of the 19th century. Canada became part of a North American consumer marketplace in which materials, designs, and eventually monuments themselves originated outside the locality, produced at a few centralized quarry sites and wholesaled to local monument makers who added the inscriptions and became more retailers than craftsmen. This presentation looks at the work of some of Ottawa's early gravestone makers in the context of this transition from craft to industry."The presentation is at the City of Ottawa Archives, 100 Tallwood Drive, Nepean,
Something different in the Carleton University Shannon Lecture series!
Maxime Durand from Ubisoft in Montreal will discuss his work on the video game Assassin’s Creed.
"The past is a puzzle for which we lack most of the pieces and don’t have the cover art. Yet, the teams working on Assassin’s Creed (a historical fiction action-adventure open world stealth video game series) have mastered a unique method to interpret it through breathtaking digital environments. From assumed inaccuracies to unnoticeable historical details, the procedure is complex but rewarding with tens of millions of fans. This lecture will discuss the methods applied at Ubisoft and how we address the issues of recreating the past in a world leading digital gaming environment.1:30 PM, Friday, October 23, 2015, Multi-Media Lab, Discovery Centre, MacOdrum Library
As of 15 October, 203,393 of 640,000 files are available in the database. the latest box digitized is #2873, name: Eliot.
6,924 files have been digitized since the September update. At that rate it will take an additional 63 months to finish the project which will be complete in early 2021.
John Grenham's latest Irish Roots column explains why there are Viking inspired surnames in Ireland even though surnames post-date the Viking expansion.
With the election of a Liberal government we have the possibility of them living up to their promise of change. I wouldn't put it more strongly than that!
A comment posted to my election day post lamented that federal candidates were unaware of federal archives funding issues. It asks "where would I best locate the LAC lack of funding information to share with them?"
The Main Estimates tabled in Parliament last February show total budgetary funding for Library and Archives Canada falling from $95,864,788 in 2014/15 to $93,011,489 in 2015/16. That's a 3% reduction. See my blog post.
In my view a plea that LAC is underfunded is unlikely to get much response. More likely to be favourably received is funding for a new initiative, which I suspect would have digital somewhere in the title. See the advocacy pages of the Association of Canadian Archivists for ideas on the future.
Thanks to the work of Ancestry World Archives Project contributors the Ancestry.ca database Ontario, Canada, The Ottawa Journal (Birth, Marriage and Death Notices), 1885-1980 Birth, Marriage & Death has been updated to a count of 956,792 records. The indexing is not only for the principal person but includes others mentioned in the notice.
Sunday - October 18th, 2015
10:30 A.M. - 5:00 P.M.
"The Thirty-fifth Ottawa Antiquarian Book Fair has become an exciting event for book lovers from across Canada. A display and sale, recognized as one of the finest book fairs in the country, features rare, unusual and collectible books on the arts and architecture early printed books modern first editions voyages, travel and exploration science and medicine illustrated children’s books military history historical documents and ephemera (and much more) The fair will include over 40,000 items, dating from the 15th century to the present day, displayed by 40 dealers from across Canada and the United States."
ADMISSION: $5.00
TUDOR HALL 3750 North Bowesville Rd. (near Hunt Club & Riverside Drive)
This is not about family history, it's about the history Canadians will collectively be making on Monday.
1258 “the north wind prevailed for several months, and when April, May, and great part of June were over, scarcely a small rare flower or shooting germ appeared, whence the hope of harvest was uncertain”This is a hint of a volcanic event, just as the 1816 Year Without a Summer resulted from the 1815 eruption of the Tambora volcano.
The Embassy of Ireland, together with the Irish Society and in partnership with Concordia’s School of Canadian Irish Studies, is hosting Dr. Jim MacPherson, University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI), on “New Ireland: Migration, History and Changing Identities.”
Dr. MacPherson is a social and cultural historian and his research focuses in particular on Irish and Scottish migration, diaspora and the British Empire. He arrived at UHI's Centre for History in November 2011, following academic posts at University College Dublin, the University of Bristol, Leeds Trinity and All Saints College and the University of Sunderland.
The presentation is at the Residence of the Ambassador, 291 Park Road, Rockcliffe Park, Ottawa on
Friday 16 October at 7pm.
