The first meeting of the 2008-2009 season, 13 September 2008, features a presentation "Mount Hermon Cemetery, Quebec, Tombstone Inscriptions", by member Gordon Morley.
Located in Sillery, Quebec, the cemetery contains the graves of many prominent British settlers. The talk describes the cemetery and its history, the recording project and some interesting inscriptions. The material is drawn from the recent publication of the Societe de genealogie de Quebec.
The meeting is, as usual, in the Auditorium of Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa and gets underway at 10am.
12 September 2008
BIFHSGO September Monthly Meeting
Regimental Archive of the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers (Militia)
You can search nearly 7,000 entries for men who served with the Regiment, and antecedent regiment names, covering the period 1786-1817, 1872-1887 and 1914-1916.
A second database at the site, just 968 records, covers related records held elsewhere.
11 September 2008
So you want to write the family history
Browsing in the stacks at LAC I see so many uninspired family histories containing masses of good information -- but mostly deadly dull -- only a genealogist could love them.
If you aspire to something more, something the family will want to keep and read, and are within striking distance of Toronto, consider attending the Ontario Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists (OCAPG) one day seminar "Writing A Narrative Family History" with guest presenter John Colletta. It's just over two weeks away. Registration is going well but there's still space for a few more folks.
John Colletta, a knowledgeable genealogist and experienced speaker based in Washington, DC., both entertains and educates.
The event takes place at the North York Central Library in Toronto. See http://www.rootsweb.com/~onapg for detailed information about this Saturday 27 September event and follow the instructions to register.
Thanks to Brenda Dougall Merriman for bringing this to my attention.
10 September 2008
Sherry Irvine in person and online
A press release arrived from Pharos Teaching and Tutoring and the International Society for British Genealogy and Family History announcing new cooperative online courses.
Pharos instructor Sherry Irvine, who will be leading some of these courses, is the keynote speaker on the evening of Friday 19 September 2008 at Library and Archives Canada for the opening of the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa conference.
Come to Friday evening's event free, starting at 7:30, and listen to Sherry presenting "Genealogy with Wings: Reflections of a family historian in an age of techno-enthusiasm.
More on Second World War Killed in Action Database at LAC
Where there's a will there's a way. I learnt today of a way around the problem of searching in the WW2 Killed in Action database for items that are not indexed. Academic researchers or school teachers doing a local history project looking, for example, for all soldiers in the database where Ottawa is mentioned, can contact LAC and ask them to perform a search and send the results. This is done using the genealogy enquiry form at www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/genealogy/022-300.001-e.html. At present the turnaround time for genealogy queries is running around two weeks.
This is clearly a work-around. You don't get results as quickly as if you could search yourself, but you should get results.
When I asked why they wouldn't open the database for our own online searching I was told it would make it too easy for unscrupulous data miners to steal the database. No comment! There's also a concern that as the free form field's have not been quality controlled spelling and other inconsistencies may give misleading results.
Lest we forget, Mr Harper?
A pre-election ad showed Stephen Harper talking about veterans and how much we owe them. Harper and his government have tied themselves strongly to the military, and backed military involvement in Afghanistan with substantial expenditures.
The political ad starts by showing the famous slogan "Lest we forget."
However, given actions of the Harper government toward Canadian history, one could be excused for questioning Harper's sincerity.
People who want to learn about their relatives, or those from their community, who served in past wars find some of the best information preserved in the pages of newspapers, especially local newspapers. Cutting $11.7 million from the Canadian Memory Project, and other funds that support newspaper digitization as the Harper government has done, is at odds with making real that other well known phrase "we will remember them."
The political ad starts by showing the famous slogan "Lest we forget."
However, given actions of the Harper government toward Canadian history, one could be excused for questioning Harper's sincerity.
People who want to learn about their relatives, or those from their community, who served in past wars find some of the best information preserved in the pages of newspapers, especially local newspapers. Cutting $11.7 million from the Canadian Memory Project, and other funds that support newspaper digitization as the Harper government has done, is at odds with making real that other well known phrase "we will remember them."
Elizabeth May Relatives
In a previous posting I asked which Canadian political leader could claim as relatives Maurice "Rocket" Richard, Louisa May Alcott, J M Barrie, Tom Landry, Queen Elizabeth II, George W Bush, John Wayne, Frank Lloyd Wright, Helen Keller, Lucille Ball, John Cage.
Following the refusal to allow her into the leader's debates she may feel more like Rodney "I don't get no respect" Dangerfield, but according a family tree found at the Ancestry.com web site Elizabeth May, Green Party leader, may have it over the others when it comes to high profile relatives.
Through her maternal grandfather, Thomas Hazelhurst Middleton, Elizabeth is said to be 9th cousin to President George W Bush, and 10th cousin twice removed to Queen Elizabeth II.
There's a bit more doubt about her being 8th cousin 3 times removed from Maurice "Rocket" Richard, but the possibility can't hurt her chances in Quebec.
Sorry to say the relationship to John Wayne suggested by Ancestry doesn't stand inspection - there goes the Western vote!
Some of the other relationships look a bit suspect too. Ancestry does warn that the data is unchecked, only based on that submitted by clients so the relationships may not be reliable. Don't hire the band to play "Hail to the Chief" or saying "Your Majesty" yet.
That can work both ways. There could be a relationship to Sarah Palin.
09 September 2008
Trillium Foundation Genealogy Grant
I missed the announcement of a new round of Trillium Grants in early August, but an article in the Cornwall Standard-Freeholder drew attention to a $47,500 grant to La Regionale St. Laurent Historical and Genealogical Centre. It will be used to create an electronic database of the books and documents currently being housed at their Anthony Street location.
Amongst other grants awarded in the most recent round is:
The Dominion Institute
$150,000 over two years for the Veteran Appreciation Project that trains educators and youth to document oral histories of World War II veterans. Stories will be preserved in an interactive on-line archive and will commemorate remembrance in Ontario.
Of local interest:
Diefenbunker, Canada's Cold War Museum
$75,000 over one year to help renovate this important historical site and bring it to acceptable City of Ottawa fire standards.
The press release quotes Minister Aileen Carroll: “The McGuinty government recognizes the numerous benefits that arts, culture and recreational programs bring to our communities.”
Whose relatives II?
Which current Canadian public political figure has, according to Ancestry.com, the following relatives?
Robert L Borden, Jonathan Swift, Millard Fillmore, James A Garfield, R B Bennett, B F Skinner, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Spencer Tracy, Walt Disney, Gerald R. Ford, "Wild Bill" Hickok, Walt Whitman, Norman Rockwell, Joseph D. Ball (American serial killer), W. G. Grace, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and George Orwell.
Post your guess as a comment.
08 September 2008
Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph archive coming on Google
Google has made it official.
"For more than 200 years, matters of local and national significance have been conveyed in newsprint -- from revolutions and politics to fashion to local weather or high school football scores. Around the globe, we estimate that there are billions of news pages containing every story ever written. And it's our goal to help readers find all of them, from the smallest local weekly paper up to the largest national daily.
Today, we're launching an initiative to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives."
The initiative is a partnership with Proquest and Heritage, so, as with Google Books, you will be able to search for free but in most cases getting anything more than a link, or perhaps a snippet, will cost.
The article mentions an initiative with The Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph to bring the newspaper’s archives – the oldest in North America – to the world over the coming months.
A quick check didn't reveal any of the Paper of Record content. Perhaps they're holding it so they have something "old" to add.
Whose relatives - I?
Which current Canadian political party leader has, according to Ancestry.com, the following relatives?
Maurice "Rocket" Richard, Louisa May Alcott, J M Barrie, Tom Landry,
Queen Elizabeth II, George W Bush, John Wayne, Frank Lloyd Wright, Helen Keller, Lucille Ball, John Cage.
Post your guess as a comment.
Scottish Studies 40th Anniversary
Those within striking distance of the University of Guelph have access to what looks like an interesting program for their Centre for Scottish Studies 40th Anniversary Colloquium on Saturday 28 September. Genealogists will be particularly interested in hearing Scotland`s Registrar General, Duncan Macniven. More info at: http://www.scottishstudies.
07 September 2008
Shock your candidate
With a Canadian federal election now underway it's that once in four year opportunity to let your MP, and MP wannabes, know about the issues important to you. Why not ask about an issue relevant to your interest in genealogy?
When they, or their representative come knocking don't hesitate to raise an issue because it's not making national headlines -- MPs have to represent us on all issues, not just those the parties or the media choose to highlight.
Why not ask about digitization, copyright and the census?
Are you happy that the present government has reduced funding by $11.7 million for the Canadian Memory Fund plus additional funding cuts for other programs that digitize Canadian content? Under this policy Canada is falling behind the pace of our major trading partners, the United States, European Union, Australia, New Zealand and China, who have aggressive digitization programs. In this day and age if you don't exist digitally you don't exist. The rising generation of students expect to find information online and have little patience for old fashioned technology, and why not when other countries show it can be done?
Bill C-61, amendments to the Copyright Act, disappeared when the election was called but the Conservatives have indicated they intend to reintroduce the bill. Will your candidate commit to full public consultations before the introduction of any new copyright bill? In this way the fight can go on to protect current provisions for fair dealing, and to introduce measures to allow the use of orphan publications without an eternal search for the copyright holder.
The long fight for release of historic census data was won. The 1911 and 1916 census schedules are now freely available. But the release was only gained when an unpalatable compromise was accepted. Despite there never having been a complaint about privacy and the census, release of basic census data (name, age, occupation, place of birth and the same information for family members) in the next century is now subject to a veto by the person submitting the data. The veto means that, unlike in the UK and US, historians will not have access to a statistically sound Canadian population sample and genealogists will miss out on an invaluable record. Will your candidate agree to a full review the issue after the 2011 census?
Ancestors in the Attic - 3rd series
Of Saturday night's two History Television Canada Ancestors in the Attic episodes, one was new, one a repeat from the previous series.
The new "Lost Brothers" episode saw Robbie McCauley, a young great grandson of Ada Girling, a Barnardos home child, seeking a sibling's descendants. Being TV the searcher goes to London and gets to look at the original of the 1891 and 1901 British census records, not just the monochrome images which is the fate of ordinary researchers. It's interesting to see that the originals survive with their colour markings -- a pity we don't have colour images online.
On reviewing the Barnardo file for his great grandmother McCauley determines that she was prohibited from any further contact with her brothers by a "patron." The program presents this as a capricious act. I would have liked to know more about the patron and the circumstances at the time before being so damning.
The eventual success in tracing a descendant was attributed to Toronto researcher Peter Goddard, who made the same key breakthrough in the repeat episode broadcast. Unfortunately Mr. Goddard, a Londoner by birth, died recently.
06 September 2008
Late Item: Ancestors in the Attic
Season 3 of Ancestors in the Attic begins tonight (Saturday) with back to back episodes on the History Television (www.history.ca) starting at 8 pm. Show personnel were only informed today about the new scheduling.
Thanks to Brenda Dougall Merriman and Fawne Stratford-Devai for passing this on.
Comment on Second World War Service Files: Canadian Armed Forces War Dead
Local Ottawa history professor, Bruce Elliott, sent me a comment on this new offering from LAC worth passing along.
"Why is this index searchable only by name? Users other than genealogists would like to access this material other ways. There are many community war commemoration projects under way, and it would be useful to be able to search this index by place as well as by name. Given that the place of residence is in the screen that appears in response to a search, a keyword rather than a name search would be more serviceable."
The proposal appears to meet all the criteria; simple, cheap, quick and popular. So why not LAC?
Fleet Marriages
One of the recent podcasts in the series from TNA was on The Fleet Registers or irregular marriage registers of 17th and 18th century London. Presented by Audrey Collins it is one of the best I've listened to recently, suffering only from not having the visuals that were used at Kew.
Toward the end of the presentation she makes reference to the forthcoming release of a database.
It's now available.
The September newsletter from S&N Genealogy announces the availability of the database for these legal but clandestine or irregular marriages performed without benefit of the usual constraints of the Established Church.
The registers, held by TNA, have been digitized and indexed. Fleet marriages which occurred between 1667 and 1777 are estimated to account for up-to a third of the marriages that happened in the country during their peak.
According to the announcement there are about 800,000 people named in the marriage records and about 2400 people mentioned in baptismal records. This makes it a substantial set of records that cover the period . A proportion of these will be duplicates due to the nature of the way these are recorded in different documents.
The records can be freely searched online by visiting the official National Archives Non-Conformist site at www.BMDregisters.co.uk
Payment is required to look at the full details or image of the original documents.
The records are also included as part of TheGenealogist.co.uk Premium Subscription which allows credit free access to the records.
05 September 2008
Save with your digital camera
I like this story from Science Daily about a researcher who photographed 2,500 17th century documents from a Swedish archive, producing some 25,000 images in total, which would have been the equivalent of $15,000 worth of photocopying. He did it entirely with the archives cooperation.
It illustrates how technology is gradually eroding the natural conservatism of libraries and archives which are recognizing that for research purposes it makes sense to let clients use their own flash-free digital camera on out of copyright material, and even limited extracts of in-copyright material .
If the institution where you research is still resisting this trend, don't give the front-line person a hard time. They just enforce the rules handed down from on high. Instead write to the head of the institution. If enough people did that ... Frank Sinatra describes the consequences in a song from my youth here.
04 September 2008
Digitized Canadian books on Ancestry
This week Ancestry is adding digitized Canadian books to their collection - see the list so far below.
They're mostly quite obscure and localized, but maybe you'll be lucky and find something relevant to your genealogy. For more of this type of material don't forget to check out ourroots.ca, the Internet Archive, Google Books and material from Archive CD Books Canada available to subscribers to worldvitalrecords.com.
03 September 2008
500 years of London history to launch online – 77 million names
The following is a press release from Ancestry.ca
London, UK – 4 September, 2008 – The most comprehensive collection of historical London records, covering 500 years of the city’s history, is to be made available online for the first time. Following a lengthy tendering process, Ancestry[i] has secured the exclusive online rights to digitize and host key records from London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) and Guildhall Library Manuscripts.
LMA’s historical record collection, which is owned and managed by the City of London, is considered to be of international importance, particularly given London’s prominence at the centre of the British Empire for almost 300 years from the mid-1700s.
As the City of London’s official partner, Ancestry, which has a global network of nine family history websites, will be responsible for providing access to The LMA Collection. Original record images and more than 77 million names searchable using key information such as name, date and place, will be available on Ancestry.ca, Canada’s No.1 family and social history website.
Dating from the early 16th Century through to 2006, the collection details the lives of both princes and paupers. Included are parish records, school records, electoral registers, wills, lists of workhouse labourers from the Poor Law ledgers and a comprehensive list of those granted ‘Freedom of the City’ .
Ancestry.ca spokesperson Karen Peterson comments: “This collection is particularly exciting for the family history research industry because it breaks what we call the ‘1837 barrier’, which is the year official record keeping began.”
“Again, advances in technology will enable so many people, who previously were not able to physically find and search through these rare records, the ability to do so with ease.”
The collection will take several years to index and image. Until now, those wishing to view records have had to visit LMA or the Guildhall Library, both based in Central London.
Online access to LMA records has long been anticipated by family history enthusiasts around the world: it will allow millions of people with ancestors who lived in or passed through London at some point in time to trace their roots, whether it be to the City’s slums or its more affluent boroughs.
The first records will launch on Ancestry.ca in early 2009, with the following prioritised for launch in the coming year:
· Parish records – records from more than 10,000 Greater London parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials dating from the 1530s to the 20th Century
· Poor Law documents - relating to the administration of poor relief, including workhouse registers from 1834 onwards
· London school admissions – records from 843 individual London schools dating from the early Victorian times through to 1911, providing admission and personal details for millions of London students
Dr Deborah Jenkins, Assistant Director of the City of London’s Department of Libraries, Archives and Guildhall Art Library, comments: “It has always been the City of London’s goal to make these important collections available to the wider public through digitisation and so we are delighted to announce Ancestry as our official partner in bringing 500 years of London’s history online.”
The records will be available to Ancestry’s World Deluxe Members. Many Canadian genealogical societies and local libraries will also have access to the records through their organisational membership.
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