BIFHSGO conference handouts

For BIFHSGO members: 16 conference handouts are now posted to the members only section of the society website. They are:

• 30 June 1922: Did Everything Blowup? by Eileen M. Ó Dúill
• Are They Really my Ancestors? Using Autosomal DNA to Tests to Confirm (or Deny) Relationships and Ancestors by Linda L. Reid
• Around the Brick Wall:  Tracing Back an Irish Family Through Collateral Lines by Linda L. Reid
• Come to Ireland to Find Your Ancestors by Eileen M. Ó Dúill
• Genealogical Cold Cases: A Step-by-Step Process by Lisa Louise Cooke
• Genealogy on the Go with the iPad Tablet by Lisa Louise Cooke
• Irish Civil Records and the Sad Story of Irish Census Losses, Part 1 by Eileen Ó Dúill
• Irish Civil Records, Part 2 by Eileen Ó Dúill
• Irish Genealogy, Where do I Start? by Eileen Ó Dúill
• Progress Report on Irish Genealogy: Are Things Getting Better? by Eileen M. Ó Dúill
• Tap into Your Inner Private Eye: 8 Strategies for Finding Living Relatives by Lisa Louise Cooke
• The Ulster Detective by Sher Leetooze
• Using Family Tree Maker Software to Record and Share Your Family History Workshop by Rick Roberts
• Using Google Earth for Genealogy Workshop by Lisa Louise Cooke
• What You Must Know To Save Your Research from Destruction and Ensure Its Future Survival by Lisa Louise Cooke

It couldn't be done

In tacking your genealogical brick walls you may get inspiration from one of these poems.

The first was quoted by Rev Bruce North at the British Home Child event last Saturday.

IT COULDN'T BE DONE
by Edgar Albert Guest

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done
      But he with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one
      Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
      On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
      That couldn’t be done, and he did it!

Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that;
      At least no one ever has done it;”
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat
      And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
      Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
      That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
      There are thousands to prophesy failure,
There are thousands to point out to you one by one,
      The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
      Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing
      That “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it.

(from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173579 )


The one I'm more familiar with this:

SOMEBODY SAID THAT IT COULDN'T BE DONE 
Anonymous 
Somebody said that it couldn't be done--
But he, with a grin, replied,
He'd never be one to say it couldn't be done--
Leastways, not 'til he'd tried.
So he buckled right in, with a trace of a grin,
By golly, he went right to it!
He tackled The Thing That Couldn't Be Done!
And he couldn't do it.

(from a collection at http://littlecalamity.tripod.com/Poetry/Parodies.html )

England, Lancashire, Cheshire, Yorkshire, Parish Registers, 1603-1910

FamilySearch now includes just under one million index records inked to 424,016 images for Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire parish registers, 1603-1910 sourced from Manchester Archives and Local Studies. These are for the Church of England. There was considerable Nonconformist adherence in the area, but you may still find nonconformists using the established church, especially for marriages.
Researchers with ancestry in this area will know that there is an industrialized area mainly in Lancashire which spills into the two adjacent counties. In this case the Cheshire records are for Staleybridge andAshton-under-Lyne. Yorkshire records are for Dobcross, Holy Trinity; Lydgate, St Anne; Saddleworth, St Chad; and Saddleworth, St Thomas.

Cemetery Perambulations

Returning from the British Home Child Day event at Upper Canada Village on Saturday I was asked to stop at Springhill Cemetery, in Osgoode Township just north of Vernon on highway 31. It was a delightful afternoon and the down-slope toward the west of much of the ground we trod enhanced the lighting.
Anne Sterling, BIFHSGO secretary, wanted to look for grave markers for the Acres family; she knew a branch of her tree bearing that name had lived in the area. Under such conditions wandering around the well tended grounds was a delight, with just a few flying insects to mar the enjoyment.
Googling on my iphone returned 49 entries at www.canadianheadstones.com from the more than 5,000 entries for that cemetery.
Even though this isn't a large cemetery by urban standards we only explored part. Another cemetery website, at www.gravemarkers.ca has also photographed the cemetery and includes a map showing seven sections. We were fortunate we only explored section 2 as it contains two-thirds of the Acres monuments.

A marker memorializing A Russell Dow, a causality of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, caught my attention. According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Alexander Russell Dow is commemorated on the Vimy Memorial. He had moved west to pursue farming near Swift Current, Saskatchewan, enlisting with the 128th Battalion in 1916 and was serving with the 28th when killed. With the forthcoming WW1 event at Nepean Centrepointe on Saturday 26th October I'm especially alert for WW1 memorials.

I wondered about cemeteries in England that might be photographed. My impression is that there are few major websites with English gravestone photographs. http://www.gravestonephotos.com/ has over half a million names with best coverage in Suffolk and Yorkshire.  Am I missing an important resource?
To end this perambulation, note deceasedonline.com will be changing the way documents are priced and how you pay for them although prices will not change. That is scheduled to occur on Wednesday 9th October. The company is also promising "tens of thousands of 'lost' burial records in over 200 closed cemeteries and sites across the UK. These records, digitized by us at The National Archives, will be available on the website within the next two weeks."

Ontario British Home Children Day

The third annual British Home Children Day was celebrated in ideal weather at Upper Canada Village in Morrisburg on Saturday.

The commemoration started at the old Aultsville station with the two national flags piped in and the singing of God Save the Queen.

Beside the two flags and a tree planted on the first British Home Child Day there were brief welcoming speeches by dignitaries, including Jim Brownell, the MPP who championed the bill to proclaim the day through the Ontario Legislature.

A highlight of a session of home child stories was the presentation by Rev Bruce North of a Barnardo Bible.

John Sayers was kept busy throughout the day advising home child descendant on how best to find out the story of their ancestor.









Author Sandra Joyce read from her book "The Street Arab"; Brad Barns from "The Reluctant Canadian" and Beryl Young from "Charlie".

The day ended with a dinner at the Royal Canadian Legion, Morrisburg.

The Devon Wills Project 1312-1891

The Exeter Probate Registry was destroyed in by bombing during the Blitz in 1942. A project to trace and reconstruct as much of the information that was lost as possible has been ongoing.
An index of more than 132,000 records of probate documents from Devon, and, to a lesser extent Cornwall, is fully searchable FREE online at http://www.origins.net/NationalWills/Search/devon/searchdevonwills.aspx?

British Home Children Day

September 28th 2013 is British Home Children Day in Ontario, celebrating the contributions and achievements of the more than 100,000 children who came to Canada from 1869 under the auspices of programs operated by various agencies. The most prominent was Barnardos although more children came under programs operated by other organizations.

The program at Upper Canada Village in Morrisburg starts at 10am

Nova Scotia Census, Assessment and Poll Tax Records, 1767-1827

The following will be of interest to those with early Nova Scotia ancestry.

 

The newest online resource produced by the Nova Scotia Archives presents six different census, assessment and poll tax lists compiled across a sixty-year period in colonial Nova Scotia, yielding a total of 22,283 named individuals.

Come and take a look -- http://gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/census/.

via a post by Lauren Oostveen of Nova Scotia Communities, Culture, and Heritage

 

Chinook, October 2013 issue

The October issue of the Alberta Family Histories Society quarterly journal Chinook, vol. 34, no. 1, is now available to members. "Technological Advances in Genealogical Research" with an emphasis on mobile  technology is the theme. The feature articles, many by internationally recognized genealogists, are:

The Future of Genealogical Software – James Tanner
Tablet Tips for Mobile Genealogy – Lisa Louise Cooke
The Seduced Genealogist – Randall J. Seaver
15 iPad Tips for Genealogy – Caroline M. Pointer
Ethics in the Information Age: Intellectual Property Issues – Michael Hait
What’s Out There  – Linda Murray
Keep Your Digital Records Safe: Strategies for Backing Up Your Data – Dawn Turner
Computer Tricks – Jim Benedict
An Acadian Family: Finding the Meransons in the English Archives – Paul Delaney

Canada, St. Lawrence Steamboat Company Passenger Lists, 1819-1838

Ancestry has added 187,465 records for those with early Canada interests. Canada, St. Lawrence Steamboat Company Passenger Lists, 1819-1838 includes passenger and freight lists from trips between Montreal and Québec City on the St Lawrence River.
The graph shows year by year the number of entries, each of which may include a whole family or group.
In addition to Montreal and Quebec the ports of Berthier, Sorel, Three Rivers are mentioned.
Sourced from the Rare Books and Special Collections at the McGill University Library.
The Ships List has a free transcription of these records and more detailed contextual information.

Rockstar Genealogists: more on Britain and Ireland

A comment came in on asking about the top Irish Rockstar Genealogist. The international list posted here mentioned that Chris Paton was the top vote-getter, population weighted, from the UK and Ireland combined. Breaking it down further:

 

Chris Paton is the top Scotland-resident Rockstar Genealogist. If I recall correctly he was born in Ireland;

Audrey Collins is the top England-resident Rockstar Genealogist. She was born in Scotland;

John Grenham is the top Ireland-resident Rockstar Genealogist.

Cork Past and Present

Yet another example of the value of local libraries for the genealogist, especially if they move into the online digital age, is in the online collection Cork Past and Present.

 

It came to my attention via a tweet pointing to an item on Claire Santry's blog on the addition of a few Cork city directories to the collection. There are now 25 spanning 1753 to 1945.

 

Don't stop at the directories. Cork Past and Present has a genealogy section including:

 

Gillman's Index to the Marriage Licence Bonds of the Diocese of Cork and Ross, an index of marriage licence bonds made in Cork and Ross between the years 1623 and 1750.

Green's Index to Marriage Licence Bonds: Cloyne for marriage licence bonds made in the diocese of Cloyne between the years 1630 and 1800.

Phillimore's Irish Wills - Volume II: Cork & Ross, Cloyne with references to an estimated 6,400 wills from as early as 1548 to 1800.

There's more worth the attention of the Cork interest genealogist.

6,944,464 becomes 6,945,754 at BNA

For months the page count at the British Newspaper Archive has been stuck. We've been told they're "busy working on upgrading our newspaper ingest and post-processing system."

Last week they announced that "new pages will begin to appear on the site later this week." It didn't quite happen, but now an additional 1,290 pages have appeared, for the Southern Reporter for 1926.

It's a modest restart. They announce they will be "gradually increasing to almost double the previous process limits of about 10,000 pages/day."

Also, from BNA partner in the brightsolid stable, findmypast.com, there is now an Irish newspaper collection. The papers and number of pages are: Belfast Morning News (244,591); Belfast News-Letter(450,369); Cork Examiner(421,346); Dublin Evening Mail(226,519); Freeman's Journal(553,667); Sligo Champion(16,652)

England and Wales Census Consultation

Changing technology makes it important that government keep the means it uses to achieve its goals under review. This is as true for the census as for any other aspect of government operations.

 

In the UK the Office of National Statistics has started a consultation on the census for England and Wales. A consultation document (pdf) points out that while many European countries have for many years kept a file on each citizen which includes much of the information that would be collected in a census this is not the case in the UK. Neither is it the case in Canada (as far as we know).

 

The census has always been primarily to provide information for the operation of government. Genealogy and social science has benefitted, but as an afterthought. Some believe the primary goals can now be achieved by means other than a census, just as the Harper government in Canada replaced the long-form census in 2011 with a survey.

 

Without doubt the result of the consultation for England and Wales will be examined by Canadian authorities in looking at the way forward. So it's important their consultation includes input from the genealogical community. We must not be marginalized. I look to the Society of Genealogists, amongst others, to represent the community interest. It's one reason I choose to support SOG through a membership.

 

Peter Calver in his most recent Lost Cousins newsletter notes another document, a draft Statement of Users’ Requirements: Genealogists and Social Researchers, which ends with the sentence:

 

None of the alternative sources of information mentioned above match the primary merit of the Census as a “universal snapshot” of almost everyone present in the country at a particular time.

Worth watching.

University of Manitoba Digital Collection

The newly available University of Manitoba Digital Collection contains "rare and unique digital material about the University and the province of Manitoba. It currently has 75,000 digitized items including correspondence, photos, books, newspapers, and film freely accessible for browsing, searching, and downloading low- or high-resolution copies."

The collection includes "hundreds of UofM photographs; a complete set of the UofM yearbook, the Brown and Gold; the 1969 UMSU-produced film And No Birds Sing; several collections of photographs pertaining to Manitoba's medical history; and a small collection of 1880s portraits of Winnipeg Indigenous peoples. A few of our more popular digital collections have also migrated over to UM Digital Collections, including the Hamilton Family séance photos and the Winnipeg Tribune. New content will be continually added to the site"

For family historians digitized copies of the Winnipeg Tribune for the years of the Second World War will likely be the highlight.

Access the UM Digital Collections at http://digitalcollections.lib.umanitoba.ca/.

 

Wales, Court and Miscellaneous Records, 1542-1911 at FamilySearch

Sourced from the National Library of Wales, FamilySearch.org are making available over 200,000 images from the record sets below. They are mostly from well before civil registration and the census, and a challenge to read. The most accessible are the marriage bonds for St Asaph and St David.

Consistory Court papers
Carmarthenshire 1664-1830

Court records-Crown Books
Carmarthenshire 1614-1666
Flintshire 1564--1637

Court records-gaol files
Breconshire 1660-1727
Cardiganshire 1702 -1730
Denbighshire 1545-1808
Flintshire 1542-1730
Glamorganshire 1660-1724
Merionethshire 1661-1727
Montgomeryshire 1730 only
Pembrokeshire 1727-1730
Radnorshire 1728-1730

Marriage bonds
St Asaph, 1611-1911 (211 volumes)
St David, 1601-1903 (88 volumes)
Appear to be in English and some earlier volumes also in Latin

Memoranda of the Great Sessions
Carmarthenshire 1707-1756

BIFHSGO Conference final afternoon

In the Research Room at last weekend's BIFHSGO conference attendees made good use of free trial access to ancestry.ca, britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk, findmypast.com, irishtimes.com/ancestor, rootsireland.ie, thegenealogist.co.uk.
When those proved inadequate to break down genealogical brick walls an unconventional box shaped brick wall was available for people to post their problems. These will be posted on the BIFHSGO web site in due course for others to peruse, and Research Room host Ken McKinlay will be reviewing some of them on his Family Tree Knots blog.

Even late on the final afternoon of the conference the Archive CD Books and Global Genealogy stands were attracting customers.

BIFHSGO President Glenn Wright and conference Program Chair Jane Down were in frequent consultation over issues throughout the conference.

Doug Hoddinott was always at hand to resolve audiovisual issues, here with Lisa Louise Cooke of the Genealogy Gems podcast. This was just prior to her final lecture in which she mentioned she has a Google alert set up for her name. I wonder if it works?

The Irish Land Commission’s Dark Secrets

John Grenham's latest Irish Roots column describes the circumstances surrounding a collection of "wills, correspondence, estate records, family trees, lease-books, tenants’ lists, maps, deeds, correspondence and much more ... approximately 11 million separate items."

In the Republic these are not publicly accessible, for Northern Ireland they are openly available at PRONI.

Interesting that when Ireland is trying to attract genealogical tourism bureaucracy should be allowed to reign supreme.

BIFHSGO Conference: One Name Studies Panel

Elizabeth Kipp has posted her reflections on the session at the recent conference in which we participated as two members of a panel "Success Through One Name Studies" on her English Research from Canada blog.
I think she gives me too much credit for having a one name study, what I described in the session was really just a few tentative steps. I
 was pleased to learn that Elizabeth found the work she did in preparing for the session helpful in focusing her work.

Genealogy Roadshow starts tonight

A quick reminder that the new PBS series Genealogy Roadshow starts tonight, Monday evening. In Ottawa it is advertised to air at 9pm.