New Ottawa City Archives Update: 5 Feb 2011

On Saturday I was finally able to sneak into the parking lot on the grounds of the new Archives. The lot is in good shape but there is still considerable work in progress inside and outside. Here is the view of the archives wing from the south.

While the windows seem mainly in place much cladding on the exterior is yet to be installed. The large expanse of windows promises that excellent natural light will flood the interior.

Only when I got close was I able to see an attractive detail. The windows are engraved with what appears to an extract from an old diary or similar document.
It's a distinctive touch that if it reflects the depth of thought that has gone into the rest of the building suggests the City will have an archives of which it can truly be proud.

Cumbria BMD updates

New data are being added to the local civil registration indexes at CumbriaBMD every few days, more than 41,000 since the start of the year. There are now 258,980 births, 96,398 marriages and 170,621 deaths with the Barrow-in-Furness Registration District complete and the Millom Registration District in progress.

DIY publishing experience

Brenda Dougall Merriman, of camel racing fame and a sometime genealogist, has 16 entries in the LAC catalog so knows a bit about writing and publishing. She has now ventured into self publishing a family history and has a blog post worth reading if you're considering that route using print-on-demand with online publishing.  Brenda's experience was with  UniBook although she mentions the other companies in the business Lulu, Blurb, and NoWaste.

Brenda writes she was "very pleased with the appearance, the paper quality, the binding, and the photo reproduction" but still didn't find it a total success which she attributes to her failure to read the instructions enough times.

If you've experience with one of these online systems please share your experience here, or as a comment on Brenda's blog post.

England and Wales census for 1891

FamilySearch now has the capability of searching 31,782,845 entries in the England and Wales census for 1891. The information provided is an index entry giving name, age, gender, birthplace and relationship to head of household. A link to findmypast.co.uk is a convenient way to purchase the original image.

An alternate free source for the 1891 census is FreeCEN which has 100% coverage for Bedfordshire, Cornwall, Devon, Sussex and Warwickshire and partial coverage for some other English and Welsh counties. While not a full transcript it does provide the additional information on marital status and occupation and an ability to view information for everyone in the household

The Difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England Explained

I didn't know about Akrotiri and Dhekelia. Do you? Watch this video and become enlightened.

Bristol Parish Registers, 1538-1900 on FamilySearch

Added on 3 February were 581,468 christening, marriage and burial entries in and around Bristol. These are transcripts, likely not complete, with no access to view the original record.

The continuing availability of records on FamilySearch is to be celebrated. I do wonder if the search facility could be upgraded to give you a capability to be more selective in the results you see. For instance, I'd like to be able to view results for marriages only, not baptisms, marriages and burials all together.

Special offer from Family Chronicle

The following is a notice received from Moorshead Magazines, publisher of Family Chronicle Magazine.

If you place an order for any of our books featured in the online bookstore by February 8, 2011, we'll give you 3 of our special booklets FREE; 101 Best Genealogy Research Tips, Saving Family Memories and History Magazine's Book of Trivia. A combined value of $20.85.

See what resources are available.

To see what we have, visit www.familychronicle.com and click the link for the Family Chronicle Book Store.

Examples of available books:

• More Dating Old Photographs (reprint - available April 1, 2011)
• Canadians at War 1914 - 1919, by Glenn Wright
• Life During the Civil War
• Tracing Civil War Ancestors - check out the Civil War combo price!
• The Last Muster, by Maureen Taylor
• Tracing Your Irish Roots
• Tracing Your Civil War Ancestors, by David Norris
• The Journey Takers, by Leslie Albrecht Huber
• Destination Canada, by Dave Obee
• Crime and Punishment in Upper Canada, by Janice Nickerson

and others...

Free booklet offer available until 11:59pm Tuesday, February 8, 2011.

Forest of Dean genealogy resources

Forest of Dean Family History is a comprehensive website new to me. Read its About Us page and you'll see it's not new, more like the veteran actor or writer who continues to polish their skills and then gets "discovered."

Look to this free site, the brainchild of Australian David Watkins, for census indexes, documents and articles, eBooks, emigration lists, historical articles, inquests, maps, memorial inscriptions, parish records, photos, and a wills index to list only the obvious.

Any family historian with an ancestor in the area will rejoice in the resources at the site, and those like me who don't will wish they did.

The site came to my attention by mentioned in the February issue of the  BIFHSGO monthly newsletter (pdf). Thanks to Kathy Wallace and her team who put that together.

Rootstech for the rest of us

The following is an announcement from the Rootstech conference

RootsTech Conference Will Broadcast Select Sessions Free Online

SALT LAKE CITY—RootsTech, a new family history and technology conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah, February 10-12, 2011, announced today that six of its popular sessions will be broadcasted live and complimentary over the Internet. The live broadcasts will give those unable to attend worldwide a sample of this year’s conference content. Interested viewers can watch the live presentations at RootsTech.org. The first-year conference has attracted over 2,000 registered attendees.

The free online sessions include some of the keynote speakers and a sampling of technology and family history presentations.  Following are the six broadcasts, speakers, and times of the presentations. All times are in Mountain Standard Time (MST):

Thursday, February 10, 2011

·         8:30-9:00 a.m., A world of Information, Shane Robison, chief technology officer, Hewlett Packard
·         9-9:30 a.m., Turning Roots, Branches, Trees into Nodes, Links, Graphs, Jay L. Verkler, chief executive officer, FamilySearch International
·         3-4:00 p.m., Digitally Preserving Your Family Heritage, Barry Ewell, founder of MyGenShare.com

Friday, February 11, 2011

·         8:30-9:30 a.m., The Changing Face of Genealogy, by Curt Witcher, manager of the Historical Genealogy Department, Allen County Public Library
·         9:45-10:45 a.m., Cloud Computing: What is it and how it has been used to create the next familysearch.org, by Brian Pugh, senior engineer, FamilySearch International               

Saturday, February 12, 2011

·         8:30-9:30 a.m. Personal Archiving and Primary Documents, Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archives
·         1:45-2:45 p.m., Virtual Presentations Round Table and Collaborative Panel Discussion, Thomas MacEntee, professional genealogist and technology specialist
·         3:00-4:00 p.m., The Power of PDF: Tools for Every Genealogist ,  D. Josh Taylor, Director of Education and Programs at New England Historical Genealogical Society.  

About RootsTech

RootsTech is a new conference designed to bring technologists together with genealogists to learn from each other and find solutions to the challenges faced in family history research today. The conference’s activities and offerings are focused on content that will help genealogists and family historians discover exciting new research tools while enabling technology creators to learn the latest development techniques from industry leaders and pioneers.

WDYTYA US: second season starts 4 February

Recording artist and actress Vanessa Williams is the subject of the first episode in the second series of the US version of Who Do You Think You Are?

The program airs on NBC in the US, and Citytv in Canada at 8pm.

Boyd's Marriage Index and other SOG records on findmypast.co.uk

Findmypast.co.uk is moving into high gear in adding records from the Society of Genealogists.  Of the more than nine million records added on 3 February over half are from Boyd's Marriage Index.

Did you know that Boyd's covers an estimated 15% of pre-civil registration marriages; includes data from 4,300 parishes; is almost complete for Cambridgeshire and especially good for Yorkshire and East Anglia; and includes over a million names from London and Middlesex.

I find it a bit aggravating that there is no way just to search Boyd's. You have to search the full range of "parish" marriage records, only when you access the record, which costs if you're not a subscriber, do you learn whether its from Boyd's.

The other datasets in this update are:

Records	Date range	Number of records
Apprentices of Great Britain	1710–1774	350,000
Boyd's Inhabitants of London & Boyd's Family Units	1200–1946	583,159
Boyd's London Burials	1538–1872	242,844
Boyd's Marriage Index	1538–1840	5,405,161
Boyd's 1st Misc Series	1538–1775	1,470,640
Faculty Office Marriage Licence Allegations	1701–1850	321,472
Vicar-General Marriage Licence Allegations	1694–1850	356,834
Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills Index	1750–1800	207,959
St Andrew Holborn Marriage Index	1754–1812	37,450
St Leonard's Shoreditch burials	1805–1858	38,246
St Leonard's Shoreditch workhouse deaths	1820–1828	702
Teachers' Registration Council Registers	1914–1948	101,506
Trinity House Calendars	1787–1854	6,508

New New Zealand genealogy resources

In case the title made you look twice, it's not an example of the written equivalent of "The King's Speech."

Ancestry have posted seven separate New Zealand databases, some of which will include people with Anglo-Celtic connections.

Undoubtedly the gem is New Zealand, Electoral Rolls, 1853-1981. I found people I had previously researched; look for folks who disappeared fro the UK. Voters lists are a census substitute for jurisdictions like New Zealand where those were not retained. Over 20 million names are indexed, not bad for a country which today boasts a population of 4.3 million. Half the years are indexed, those indicated with an asterisk below.

1853-64*, 1865-66, 1866-67, 1867-68, 1868-69, 1869-70, 1870-71*, 1871-72, 1873-74, 1874-75, 1875-76*, 1876-77, 1877-78, 1878-79, 1879-80, 1880-81*, 1882-84, 1885-86*, 1887, 1890*, 1893, 1894, 1896*, 1897, 1899, 1900*, 1902, 1903, 1905-06*, 1908, 1911*, 1914*, 1919*, 1922, 1925, 1928*, 1931, 1935*, 1938*, 1941, 1943*, 1946*, 1949*, 1954*, 1957*, 1960, 1963*, 1966, 1969*, 1972*, 1975, 1978*, 1981*

Please Miss, can we have Canadian voters lists soon. Please.

There is also a useful collection of directories.

The full list of new New Zealand databases is:

Genealogy Database Title	Posted
New Zealand, Jury Lists, 1842-1862	2/2/2011
New Zealand, Maori Land Claims, 1858-1980	2/2/2011
New Zealand, Electoral Rolls, 1853-1981	2/2/2011
Canterbury, New Zealand, Provincial Rolls, 1868-1874	2/2/2011
New Zealand, Maori Voter and Electoral Rolls, 1908 & 1919	2/2/2011
New Zealand, Naturalisations, 1843-1981	2/2/2011
New Zealand, City & Area Directories, 1866-1955 - Free Index	2/2/2011

Aberdeen burial records

A great new Scottish addition announced by deceasedonline.com.

"Approximately 192,000 burial records from The City of Aberdeen in
Scotland are being placed online, comprising Burial and Lair register
scans and associated computerised indexes. These records cover burials
dating back to 1767, across the following 9 cemeteries and burial
grounds.

- Grove Cemetery
- John Knox Churchyard
- Nellfield Cemetery
- Nigg Cemetery
- Old Machar Churchyard
- St Clement's Kirkyard
- St Nicholas Kirkyard
- Spital Churchyard and St Peter's Cemetery
- Trinity Cemetery

Nellfield Cemetery, Old Machar Churchyard, St Clement's Churchyard,
Grove Cemetery, St Peter's Churchyard and St Peters Cemetery are
currently available online. The remaining cemeteries and data will be
uploaded in the coming months.

Please note, when searching these Scottish burial records that wives
are usually registered under their maiden names.

Scope of published data
St Peter's Cemetery, Aberdeen - Added 15 January 2011
68,216 burials, dated January 1849 to 23 April 1951, are available as
Burial register scans in various formats with between 10 and 30
entries per scanned page. Further records for the South and West
divisions are being added in February.
St Peter's Churchyard (Spital Churchyard), Aberdeen - Added 14 January 2011
36,963 burials, dated January 1830 to 29 December 1894, are available
as Burial and Dues register scans in various formats with between 10
and 30 entries per scanned page. Further records from 1798 to 1830
held primarily in Dues books are to be added.
Nellfield Cemetery, Aberdeen - Added 27 May 2010
7,813 burials, dated 22 December 1856 to 18 August 1892, are available
as Burial register scans in various formats with up to 23 entries per
scanned page.
Old Machar Churchyard, Aberdeen - Added 1 June 2010
9,181 burials, dated 5 October 1863 to 30 March 1907, are available as
Burial register scans with up to 38 entries per scanned page.
St Clement's Churchyard, Aberdeen - Added 4 June 2010
6,731 burials, dated 1 January 1855 to 1 February 1928, are available
as Burial register scans with up to 34 entries per scanned page.
Grove Cemetery, Aberdeen - Added 28 May 2010
149 burials, dated 9 March 1905 to 21 November 1983, are available as
Lair register scans."

Snowstorm Centennial

We saw a snowstorm here in Ottawa, as if marking the centennial of a major snowstorm. These clippings are from the Ottawa Citizen and Toronto Globe of 3 February 1911. There was a lot less coverage of weather events a century ago than today.

OGS 2011 Conference

The Ontario Genealogical Society annual conference is scheduled on 13-15 May 2011 in Hamilton with a roster that includes many familiar favourite speakes.

The conference homepage is at http://www.ogs.on.ca/conference2011.  Early bird registration ends on 31 March.

Release of 1911 census of Scotland

Mark the 5th of April on your calendar.

Via Chris Paton's Scottish GENES blog, "The Registrar General for Scotland today announced the date on which millions of personal records collected during the 1911 census will be published. On April 5, 2011, the General Register Office for Scotland will release details collected from more than 4.7 million Scots – marking a century since the data was first gathered."

The information will be on the Scotland's People website.

Read Chris' posting here.

Warwickshire parish register transcripts at FamilySearch

Yet more English records are gushing forth from FamilySearch. Transcripts of 658,553 parish records from Warwickshire became available on the FamilySearch site on 28 January.

Although the time period covered is nominally 1538-1900 I found marriages from 1910. Unfortunately there is no list of the parishes included in the transcription. Neither could I find a direct link to the dataset.

Don't forget the three volumes of  W. P. W. Phillimore's Warwickshire parish register marriage transcripts available free through the Internet Archive, volume 1, 2 and 3

Toward a UK supra-library catalogue

Plans are announced for a web-based UK national public library catalog(ue) containing bibliographic data from 80 percent of the UK's public libraries. Web users will be able to search nine million bibliographic records and 50 million books held by 149 local authorities.

I was a bit puzzled by this as I thought the combined catalog(ue) was something toward which WorldCat was aiming. I turned to librarian-genealogist Marian Press who explained that WorldCat is costly. It's run by a for-profit company and charge the contributing libraries substantially for every item they enter. Also the UK system is aiming to be a means of nationwide inter-library loan, something not offered by WorldCat.

Family historians looking for rare and locality specific books will welcome this initiative. I've found myself searching out local UK libraries and trawling through their online catalog(ue)s, and having to come to grips with different protocols, looking for a book. This new initiative should simplify matters, just as in Ottawa, the more primitive and much smaller scale the Sm@rtLibrary has helped those looking in various cooperating libraries in the region. 

Read the full press release at http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/it-at-work/2011/01/26/uk-eyes-national-library-e-catalogue-40091558/

Genealogy on lulu.com

On the latest Lisa Louise Cooke Genealogy Gems podcast I learned that she has a new book on Google for genealogists, and that it's part of the growing self-publishing trend.  It promises:

"Google Search: Put an end to fruitless searches forever Google Alerts: Your personal genealogy research assistant Gmail: Never loose another email iGoogle: Create a genealogy research dashboard Google Books: The world’s history at your fingertips Google News Timeline: Get the scoop on your ancestors Google Translate: Open the world of foreign language documents and websites YouTube Videos: Your family history in action Google Earth: Rock your ancestor’s world!"

As Lisa points out, the self-publishing print on demand format will allow her to update the book as Google updates features. You will have the assurance you have an up to date text whenever you buy it, although to get the updates you'll need to buy a new version.

Self publishing services offer print on demand with no expensive inventory to maintain. In this case you can purchase an online version as well as hard copy.

Lisa is far from being the first genealogy author to go the self-publishing route through Lulu.com. Thomas MacEntee offers a FREE simple and easy to use "Getting Started with Google Docs."  Elizabeth Powell Crowe has "Genealogy Online", advertised as "the definitive online genealogy guide--updated with the latest Web 2.0 technologies." You'll also find compilations of Lisa's podcasts, and 133 items from Dick Eastman at $2 each. There are more. Find them by searching from lulu.com.

Derbyshire records at Findmypast

This is an announcement from findmypast.co.uk:

You can now search 2,145,957 new baptism, marriage and burial records for Derbyshire on findmypast.co.uk

This substantial release of new records will really benefit those with Derbyshire ancestors.
See the table below for more information about these records:

Type of records	Number of records	Date range	Registration districts	Record source
Baptisms	922,119	1837–2008	Amber Valley (Ripley) Ashbourne Bakewell Chesterfield Erewash (Ilkeston) High Peak South Derbyshire (Derby)	Derbyshire Registrars Birth Index
Marriages	751,251	1837–2010	Amber Valley (Ripley) Ashbourne Bakewell Chesterfield Erewash (Ilkeston) High Peak Mansfield (Notts) South Derbyshire (Derby)	Derbyshire Registrars Marriage Index
Burials	472,587	1837–2009	Amber Valley (Ripley) Ashbourne Bakewell Chesterfield Erewash (Ilkeston) High Peak South Derbyshire (Derby)	Derbyshire Registrars Death Index

Comment:

These appear to be transcriptions of the local civil registration indexes. They are particularly useful for marriages as, unlike the GRO indexes, they contain  exact information on marriage partners and the church (or other place) at which the ceremony occurred. On the other hand, only the year, not the quarter and year, are given so it's good to find the marriage in both.

A couple of warnings are appropriate. The data are shown under Parish Records which is incorrect if these are from local civil registration registers, Baptisms should be births, Burials should be deaths. It won't matter in most cases unless the events occurred near the turn of the year. There may also be events recorded in these Derbyshire records that occurred in adjacent areas of other counties, for example events in Ellastone, Staffordshire, registered in Ashbourne.