Sad to record the passing of Peter Martin who made notable volunteer contributions to the local Ottawa genealogical community. Peter was on the Board for Ottawa Branch OGS for ten years organizing the speaker program and for Gene-O-Rama. He was an active member of the Irish SIG and more recently contributed in arranging audio-visual facilities for meetings and conferences.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/ottawacitizen/obituary.aspx?n=peter-martin&pid=168246907
30 November 2013
Peter Martin RIP
FMP adds further English parish records
It's been over two months since findmypast.co.uk announced any additions to their offerings. Now they've added nearly fifty thousand parish record transcriptions.
From the Northumberland & Durham FHS, 28,163 marriage records, mostly to 1812. The parishes are: Alnham, Alwinton, Bamburgh, Belford, Berwick, Berwick upon Tweed, Bishopswearmouth, Bolam, Bothal, Carham. Corbridge, Corsenside, Ellingham, Froxfield, Gosforth, Holy Island, Kirkwhelpington, Lanchester, Lesbury, Longhiughton, Lucker, Newscastle upon Tyne, Rothbury, Stamfordham, Wooler
From the Northumberland & Durham FHS, 28,163 marriage records, mostly to 1812. The parishes are: Alnham, Alwinton, Bamburgh, Belford, Berwick, Berwick upon Tweed, Bishopswearmouth, Bolam, Bothal, Carham. Corbridge, Corsenside, Ellingham, Froxfield, Gosforth, Holy Island, Kirkwhelpington, Lanchester, Lesbury, Longhiughton, Lucker, Newscastle upon Tyne, Rothbury, Stamfordham, Wooler
Kenton, Plymstock, Sidbury, St Giles in the Heath, StThomas, Stockleigh Pomeroy, Uffculme, Werrington, West Worlington, Witheridge.
Also from the Devon FHS, 2,387 burials records for Ashbury, Bittadon, Boyton, Challacombe, Cheldon, Clayhanger, Coffinswell, East Buckland Hollacombe, Luffincott, Meshaw, Petton Chapelry of Bampton Parish, St Giles in the Heath, Stockleigh Pomeroy, Stoke Damerel, Torbryan, Wembworthy, Werrington, West Worlington
For Thames & Medway 2,080 baptismal records and 260 marriage records for Cliffe At Hoo; and 1,652 burials records for St Helen’s Church.
Remember Family History Centres
If you think of the local Family History Centre as the place to go to consult microfilms on loan from Salt Lake City, think again. They are still that, but now much more. Through their FamilySearch Portal you can get free access to:
- 19th Century British Newspapers - searchable by name, date, etc; British Newspapers 1800-1900
- Access Newspaper Archives - Collection of newspapers around the world but centering on the US
- Alexander Street Press, American Civil War- Soldiers, Battles, Letters, Photos, etc.
- Ancestry [Library Edition] (also at Toronto Public Library)
- FindMyPast.co.uk - the British version of FindMyPast (does not include any newspaper archives)
- Fold3 - US Historical military records and stories
- Godfrey Memorial Library - Mainly US records
- Heritage Quest Online- US Censuses, Genealogy & local history books, PERSI, Revolutionary War records, Freedman's Bank Records
- Historic Map Works Library Edition - Old digitized maps from around the world
That's a list from the weekly newsletter from the Toronto Family History Centre which is celebrating the acquisition of 10 new computers, five set to access the FamilySearch Portal.
If you decide to visit, to the Toronto FHC or elsewhere, its always wise to call ahead to verify they're open, especially as we get into the holiday season. Find information on the FHCs at https://familysearch.org/locations/centerlocator?c=
29 November 2013
20th Annual BIFHSGO Family History Conference
The conference will focus on three main topics:
• English family history
• Immigration from the British Isles, including Home Children
• Genetic genealogy
Proposals are also invited for other conference presentations likely to be of interest to BIFHSGO members and for pre-conference workshops or seminars.
Details on submission requirements at: www.bifhsgo.ca/cpage.php?pt=125
Please send proposals to conference@bifhsgo.ca before January 31, 2014.
28 November 2013
FTDNA Black Friday sale
Family Tree DNA is offering a discount of 10% off the regular $99 price if you place two or more Family Finder (autosomal) orders, BUT only until midnight Friday (presumably Houston time).
That's in addition to the free Restaurant.com gift card offered with every Family Finder purchase.
New records at the Nova Scotia Archives
Nine new record sets added to the Nova Scotia Archives in November include:
- annual accruals for births (1912), marriages (1937) and deaths (1962) from Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations. Nova Scotia Vital Statistics.
- church registers for St John's Lutheran Church, Mahone Bay, comprising baptisms (1876-1912, one register 1854-1957 (sic)); marriages (1877-1912; 1917-1955); burials (1885-1956).
See the complete list at www.novascotia.ca/nsarm/newholdings.asp
British Dialect Glossaries
On the search for the word "houdge" found in an inventory in Sussex I've been checking out dialect glossaries and dictionaries available on the Internet Archive. Here are some which regrettably didn't help with this search;
Vol 2 (D-G) - https://archive.org/details/englishdialectdi02wrig
Vol 3 (H-L) - https://archive.org/details/englishdialectdi03wrig
Vol 4 (M-Q) - https://archive.org/details/englishdialectdi04wrig
Vol 5 (R-S) - https://archive.org/details/englishdialectdi05wrig
Vol 6 (T-Z) - https://archive.org/details/englishdialectdi06wrig
https://archive.org/details/cu31924026538813
Also several more local publications:
Cleveland, Yorkshire - https://archive.org/details/aglossaryclevel01atkigoog
Cotswold, Gloucestershire - https://archive.org/details/aglossarycotswo01huntgoog
Isle of Wight - https://archive.org/details/adictionaryisle00longgoog
Mid-Yorkshire - https://archive.org/details/aglossarywordsp00robigoog
Sheffield dialect - https://archive.org/details/sheffielddialect00bywa
Shetland - https://archive.org/details/cu31924026538979
Warwickshire - https://archive.org/details/studyinthewarwic014223mbp
West of England - https://archive.org/details/dialectofwestofe00jenn
BIFHSGO DNA interest group meets November 30
The next quarterly meeting of BIFHSGO's DNA Special Interest Group is on Saturday, November 30, 9:30 am to 12:00 pm in Room 226, City of Ottawa Archives, 100 Tallwood Drive, Ottawa, Ontario
Members will share experiences, information and ideas about the use of DNA evidence in exploring family history.
27 November 2013
LAC and the Auditor General
Library and Archives Canada was not targeted by the Auditor General in the most recent report. One of the audits reported was "Access to Online Services" and had LAC been reviewed maybe they could have found out why one year later LAC's website still includes the notice "In order to provide you with better service, we are currently redesigning our website. If you have difficulty finding what you are looking for, feel free to contact us."
LAC can't dodge the bullet forever. The Fall 2014 report anticipates a chapter on "Preserving Canadian Documentary Heritage."
Two articles in Investigative Genetics
Investigative Genetics is "a peer-reviewed, open access, online journal, which publishes articles on the development and application of molecular genetics in a wide range of science disciplines with societal relevance. These include forensic issues and legal medicine, evolutionary, anthropological and historical studies, as well as epidemiology and biosafety."
That's outside my normal range of reading as a genealogist.
However, a recent article DNA fingerprinting in anthropological genetics: past, present, future provides a fairly comprehensible review of the field focusing on the contributions of Sir Alec Jeffreys since 1985.
The article Modeling the contrasting Neolithic male lineage expansions in Europe and Africa (pdf) also caught my attention as it refers to my R1b Y-DNA lineage which predominates in much of Europe.
By contrast expansion of E1b1a in sub-Saharan Africa began from a larger population size, took thousands of years and ended only recently.
Historical Society of Ottawa November Meeting
"An early archeological site near Kars" is the topic for the November 29 presentation by Ken Swayze.
The BfGv-3 Wellington Ridge site was discovered during a Stage 2 archaeological survey of a residential subdivision site near Kars, once a beach on a small island in the Champlain Sea. It dates from the Early Archaic, a little known time period only recently recognized in northeastern North America. The Ottawa Valley is an ideal region for discovery of archaeological Early Archaic sites because it was flooded for thousands of years and bedrock uplift has preserved the relic shorelines.
The meeting starts at 1:00 pm in the lounge of the Routhier Community Centre, 172 Guigues Street at Cumberland.
26 November 2013
Legacy Family Tree 8.0 Now Available
Legacy Family Tree is one of the genealogy programs I've used over the years. I don`t find any program ideal, but like most reviewers judge Legacy to be on a par with the top ranked.
Today the company announce that version 8.0, long anticipated, is now available with dozens of significant new features and enhancements. Here`s what they emphasise as new and updated:
Origins Report - See where you came from and the percentage of "blood" you have from your countries of origin with the new Origins Report.
Migration Report - See how far and wide a person's descendants spread out in the world with the new Migration Report.
Migration Mapping - Legacy animates the ancestor's movement through time. Watch how they migrated from place to place. View their migration in street, aerial, or 3D modes. Hover over the balloon to see what happened in each location.
Instant Duplicate Checking - As you are adding new individuals to your tree, Legacy instantly checks to see if perhaps they are already in your family file, helping you avoid inadvertently adding duplicates.
Potential Problem Alerts and Gaps - Typos and accidental misinterpretation of data are now a thing of the past. The warning symbol is displayed immediately next to info that contains a potential problem. Unusual gaps of time are detected that you may have not previously noticed (like too many years between the births of the children).
Shared Events - Save time and avoid errors by sharing an event amongst all the individuals who participated in the event. You can specify each person's role in the event.
Family Bow Tie Chart - Displays the ancestors of both the husband and wife, as well as their children.
Descendant Chart - Now available in left-to-right formatting.
Source Quality - Now record the quality (original vs derivative, primary vs secondary, etc., direct vs indirect) of each source as you attempt to prove your conclusions.
Source Labels - Now print Source Labels to attach to the top of your documents. You will never again lose the citation when making a photocopy for someone else.
Source Clipboard - The Source Clipboard has been expanded to load up to five different citations that can be assigned at the click of a button.
Pedigree Citations - Add source citations to your Pedigree Charts, and attach the complete bibliography.
FamilySearch Integration - Share, discuss, download and interact with FamilySearch's Family Tree (optional).
Wall Charts - Duplicate lines can now be suppressed, saving room for more photographs and captions.
Chronology View - Now view the parent's, grandparent's, children's, and grandchildren's vital events in your ancestor's timeline.
User Interface - Enjoy Legacy's modernised look-and-feel, new colour schemes, and new ribbon menu bar. Add two additional custom buttons on the new My Toolbar.
Tagging - View up to 9 tags at once. Advanced Tagging now shows the counts of each tag.
Automatic Sorting - Children, marriages, and events are now automatically chronologically sorted as they are added. New global sorting tools are also now available.
Statistics - Understand your family in new ways with dozens of new statistics: births by era, longest living individuals, average lifespan, longest marriages, families with the most children, most popular given names, most popular surnames, most popular locations and more.
Media Relinker - It is easier than ever to locate missing or unlinked pictures. Moving from one computer to another is simpler to do.
Media Gatherer - Got pictures all over your computer? The new Media Gatherer will help you copy or move your genealogy pictures to one common folder, making it easier to share your family file with another computer or family member.
Web Links - Found evidence of your ancestor online? Easily add a web link to their media gallery to organize a list of their online presence.
Colour Coding - You can now colour code from two starting points (one for you and one for your spouse, for example) and track the eight great-grandparents' lines.
Watch the What's New Video.
There`s a discount if you purchased Legacy previously, a discounted download only version and a free standard version.
http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/
Book Review: The Juggler's Children
Monday's edition of CBC radio's The Next Chapter, with Shelagh Rogers, included Antanas Sileika's review of The Juggler's Children by Carolyn Abraham. Listen from http://www.cbc.ca/thenextchapter/ starting just after minute 27.
25 November 2013
40% off all records on rootsireland.ie
The following is a limited time offer.
"Rootsireland.ie is delighted to announce that all records will have a discount of 40% until Wednesday, December 4th 2013 (midnight IrishTime/GMT). You can purchase any record for just 15 credits instead of the usual 25 credits.Thanks to Ann Burns for the tip
To obtain this offer just go to the following site and login using your existing IFHF login details. http://www.rootsireland.ie
We now have over 20 million records online and recently added further records from Counties Armagh and Monaghan.
Remember that you can purchase and spend your credit at any of the IFHF online centres.
Please check out our interactive map to see which counties have records on the site and Online Sources for details of start and end dates of parish records etc
If you have any questions please check our Help section and if this does not provide an answer, then do not hesitate to contact us or one or the county centres."
23andMe battles US FDA
On Nov 22, 2013 Ann Wojcicki, CEO of 23andMe, Inc. was sent a letter by the US Food and Drug Administration stating that "23andMe must immediately discontinue marketing the PGS (Personal Genome Service) until such time as it receives FDA marketing authorization."
The letter cites 14 face-to-face and teleconference meetings, hundreds of email exchanges, and dozens of written communications over more than a year attempting to bring 23andMe into compliance with FDAs interpretation of US regulation.
FDA's concern is 23andMe's health interpretation of the DNA results, the ancestry service would only be impacted if it was sideswiped. More likely the company will continue its battle - as of noon EST on Monday there is no change evident on the site.
However, to be on the safe side I've downloaded the raw data for those I've had tested by the company. From your 23andMe account home page click your profile, fourth from the left on the top menu bar. Select BROWSE RAW DATA, then select DOWNLOAD which is second from the right in the second menu bar from the top. You need to re-enter your password and answer you secret question before download starts. Then save the zipped file. You might also want to save the health overview file. Click on HEALTH OVERVIEW from your main page, print to pdf and save.
UK, Civil Engineer Lists, 1818-1930 updated
Ancestry's list of UK civil engineers now claims 194,446 entries. The information contained is engineer’s name, election year, location, and professional position held. As they came out several times a year you can follow changes through the professional career.
Although its a UK list there are a good many people working outside the UK included. I found nine entries for William Patrick Anderson, living in Ottawa, who turns up in multiple other Ancestry Canadian records from his birth in 1852 in Quebec to burial at Beechwood Cemetery in 1927.
This database is in addition to the UK Civil Engineer records and photographs mentioned here.
24 November 2013
Almonte Gazette Searchable Database Project Summary and Some “Tips and Hints” to Search Effectively
This is a follow up to a previous post about the Almonte Gazette, a document prepared by Matthew Moxley of the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum.
Project Summary
The Almonte Public Library and the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum partnered in 2012 and 2013 to digitize the Almonte Gazette newspaper collection and make it searchable and accessible to the general public. This was a project that was in the works years earlier when the Almonte Public Library had the newspapers from 1861-1989 professionally scanned.
Because of the size of newspapers, regular scanners cannot be used effectively to reproduce a digital image. Therefore, a large-format scanner must be used. Large-format scanners are quite expensive, difficult to use, and generally, not available to the general public. This being the case, people and organizations usually get private companies (print shops, graphic design shops, etc) with access to these large-format scanners to perform the scanning for them for a fee. This is what happened with the Almonte Public Libray and the Almonte Gazettes prior to this current project and the images were saved for future use.
The 2012/2013 partnerships sole purpose was to make these valuable images into searchable files so researchers can perform keyword searches and be directed to appropriate articles. This would immensely speed up Almonte Gazette research that was only available before by microfilm. Two components were needed to makes the scanned images into searchable documents: the proper software and an employee to perform the work.
Matthew Moxley was hired to perform the task of creating searchable documents for online use. After some research, a character recognition software program called ABBYY was purchased to convert digital images into searchable documents that can be used in a variety of ways. Mr. Moxley would oversee this by putting in the correct images to make complete issues, correcting any major spelling errors, rotating pages upright, and organizing the new searchable documents. Over 6,300 newspapers and over 31,000 pages were converted into searchable documents. This process took several months to complete.
Once the files were converted to searchable documents, the next step of posting them online needed to be resolved. This initially proved to be a challenge due to financial constraints. The grant only covered the costs of converting the newspapers into searchable documents. Any web integration would have to be done at the MVTM and Almonte Public Library’s own expense. The MVTM explored programs and services that would perform this, but the end result was too expensive because of the volume of the newspapers. Thankfully, the MVTM has a brilliant webmaster who has volunteered his time to create an MVTM website and then integrate the searchable newspapers onto the site. With no resources available, he had to create his own database in order search the newspapers and return results. This free database/search function now gives researchers the ability to search 150 years of town news and family histories. The searching could be a little simpler, however, we would need software made available that is relatively free of charge and supports over 30 gigabytes of data.
Over the course of the project, an estimated 50-75 issues were seen as “missing” from the collection. We have made note of these missing issues and will keep an eye out for them in the future.
How the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Works
It may be helpful to understand how the OCR software worked to make sense of the some of the results you are or are not getting. OCR is the mechanical or electronic conversion of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. The program analyzes the structure of document image. It divides the page into elements such as blocks of texts, tables, images, etc. The lines are divided into words and then - into characters. Once the characters have been singled out, the program compares them with a set of pattern images. It advances numerous hypotheses about what this character is. Basing on these hypotheses the program analyzes different variants of breaking of lines into words and words into characters. After processing huge number of such probabilistic hypotheses, the program finally takes the decision, presenting you the recognized text. The OCR software reads the page like a page in a novel (left to right) rather than a typical newspaper page (narrow columns with different stories from left to right). Therefore, when returning results on the search engine no snippet is provided because more often than not, the snippet would not make much sense if viewed.
Tips and Hints
Searches should be limited to about a 10 year span to avoid timeouts.
The features for searching the Almonte Gazettes are highly dependent on the browser used to access the internet. It is hard to provide help if the exact configuration is not given. If you are experiencing difficulty make note OS name and version (e.g. OS X 10.9 on a mac or Windows 8 on a PC) plus the browser name and version (Safari 7.0, Internet explorer 9.0, etc).
Most of the advanced PDF viewers require quite recent versions of browsers. Unfortunately, if you are trying to use old computers or browsers, especially windows XP and IE6 or IE7, it simply will not work and there is nothing that can be done.
It is encourage that people download and install a recent browser (they are free after all!) such as Chrome (https://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/chrome/browser/) so that their problems can be reproduced and advice provided. Chrome is available for both Mac and Windows as well as most tablets and mobile phones.
Researchers should also realize that the search mechanism is limited by the accuracy of the original OCR scan which missed some words that were obscured, hyphenated or in a font that wasn’t recognized (e.g. in advertisements). Some newspaper original quality was poor while others were superb. This is much more apparent in the early year additions.
When searching, first, select the year(s) of issue that you are interested in, this will limit the amount of articles the database will search through, therefore getting results more quickly. Second, specify the search keyword(s) and click 'Perform Search'. Once the results appear, click on a reference to download PDF files of specific pages or issues that are of interest. (Note that these PDF files are large and may take several minutes to download on your computer. Your browser will require a plug-in to view the downloaded files).
Keywords are in the context of a single page and are indexed by eliminating words of 3 characters or less and truncating words longer than 16 characters. Words in “None of these” (exclusions) are only active if there is at least one inclusion in “Any” or “All of these.”
Once you have opened the PDF file you will have to perform a secondary keyword search in order for the word(s) you just searched to be highlighted. To perform this, simply press ctrl+F (PC) or command+F (Mac) and a box in the upper right hand corner will appear. Simply type in the word you searched minutes before again and you will be able to see the results highlighted in the article in a greyish/blue colour. Note: Only one word will be highlighted at a time. If there are multiples, you can press enter and find the duplicate words throughout the page.
If you cannot read the words on the newspaper page because they are too small, simply move your cursor to the bottom of the page to make the PDF tool-bar appear. There will be several options such as print, save, page number, and zooming. To perform a zoom on the page to make the words larger simply press the + sign. It is recommended that you zoom to about 200% to read the page comfortably.
If you would like to save one particular article, you can save the PDF and then go to “edit” then select “take a snap shot” and paste that image into a word document or paint. There you can save or print the article.
If you would like to look up a particular issue of the Gazette, you will have to indicate the year and search a very common word such as “Almonte” You will then get the results along with dates of the issues. Simply click the desired date.
If you are having difficulty finding words in the actual PDF make sure your brower and plugins are up to date as stated earlier.
If you have any issues or problems using this new resource please do not hesitate to contact Matthew Moxley at the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum at collections@mvtm.ca.
OGS Toronto Branch November meeting
On Monday 25 November at 7:30pm OGS Toronto Branch members will share their stories with fast-paced five-minute talks on "great moments" in their genealogy research. Meet in the Burgundy Room, North York Memorial Community Hall, 5110 Yonge Street, Toronto.
23 November 2013
Bloodlines writers contest
CBC's Canada Writes latest writers contest is called Bloodlines. They want family stories told in 400 to 500 words and an image of something related to the story to go with it. Details can be found at: http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadawrites/rules-and-regulations-bloodlines-challenge.html
Thanks to Barbara Tose for the tip.
Ancestry updates London, England, Electoral Registers, 1832-1965
This database first appeared on Ancestry last year with 139 million entries, listing everybody in a particular area who had the right to vote. With the new update there are now more than 159 million entries.
The database is compiled using an optical character recognition technique. That always means errors. I found my paternal grandfather every year from 1929, when the family moved to London, to 1939, except one. My maternal grandfather appeared from 1924 to 1960, with gaps. Expect problems with incorrect addresses, especially street names. Its essential to check the image to find out what the record really reads and who else of voting age is in the household.
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