Ancestry adds Nova Scotia, Canada, Petitions in Favour of Female Suffrage, 1918

A new Canadian database from Ancestry. It's just 3,865 records — the only Canadian addition to Ancestry in 2019.

The Nova Scotia Archives digitized the petition for its centennial   https://novascotia.ca/archives/suffrage/. Ancestry search results link to an image of the original at the Nova Scotia Archives website.

On April 26, 1918 legislation was passed granting women in Nova Scotia the right to vote.

Active History

ActiveHistory.ca is a website that connects the work of historians with the wider public and the importance of the past to current events.

The latest post, as I write, is a History Slam podcast with Sean Graham speaking with Dan Black about his new book on the Chinese Labour Corps which I profiled in a recent blog post.

There's much more. Active History is active. Already this month, starting with The War-Time Elections Act and Women Voters in 1917 on 1 November, there are 12 posts including one on 8 November concluding a 77 post series on Canada's First World War.

Worth a look.

OGS Quinte Branch November Meeting

Forthcoming Book Release: The Cornish Overseas: A History of Cornwall's 'Great Emigration

The following is the publisher's blurb.

In this fully revised and updated edition of The Cornish Overseas, Philip Payton draws upon almost two decades of additional research undertaken by historians the world over since the first paperback version of this book was published in 2005. Now published by the University of Exeter Press, this edition of Philip Payton's classic history of Cornwall's `great emigration' takes account of numerous new sources to present a comprehensive, definitive picture of the Cornish diaspora.

The Cornish Overseas begins by identifying some of the classic themes of Cornish emigration history, including Cornwall's `emigration culture' and `emigration trade', and goes on to sketch early Cornish settlement in North America and Australia. The book then examines in detail the upsurge in Cornish emigration after 1815, showing how Cornwall became swiftly one of the great emigration regions of Europe. Discoveries of silver, copper and gold drew Cornish miners to Latin America, while Cornish agriculturalists were attracted to the United States and Canada. The discoveries of copper in South Australia and in Michigan during the 1840s offered new destinations for the emigrant Cornish, as did the Californian gold rush in 1849 and the Victorian gold rush in Australia in 1851. The crash of copper-mining in Cornwall in 1866 sped further waves of emigrants to countries as disparate as New Zealand and South Africa. In each of these places, the Cornish remained distinctive as `Cousin Jacks' and `Cousin Jennys', establishing their own communities and making important contributions to the social, political and economic development of the new worlds.
By 1914, however, Cornwall was no longer the international centre of mining expertise, the mantle having passed to America, Australia and South Africa, and Cornish emigration had dwindled as a result. Nonetheless, the Cornish at home and abroad remained aware of their global transnational identity, an identity that has been revitalized in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Paperback: 480 pages
Publisher: The Exeter Press (10 Dec. 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1905816111
ISBN-13: 978-1905816118
Product Dimensions: 15 x 22.8 cm

OGS Kingston Branch November Meeting

“Researching Military Records for Those Who Served from the Kingston Area” is the topic for the Saturday, 16 November main presentation. Peter Gower, past president of the Kingston Historical Society, is the speaker. There's an informative YouTube video he recorded Peter Gower's "Walking Tour of Kingston Sites Associated with the Great War"

Kingston Branch meets start at 9:30 am with a brief educational session in the Sir John A. Macdonald Room at the Seniors Centre East, 56 Francis Street, Kingston where parking is plentiful and free.

FamilySearch Celebrates 125th Anniversary

"What began as a humble state family history society over a century ago, today has blossomed into a global organization that continues to help millions of people make inspiring family connections. FamilySearch, formerly the Genealogical Society of Utah, is celebrating the commencement of its 125th Anniversary today. The international nonprofit is grateful to have played a part in the meteoric rise of consumer interest in family history and helping to enrich the lives of millions of people in ways that were not anticipated in the beginning."

Read the full post from FamilySearch here.

Shannon Lecture: Historical Biography and the Larger Context: The global outlook of Joseph Conrad

The Shannon lecturer this Friday, 15 November 2019 is Dr. Maya Jasanoff

"Prof. Jasanoff will draw on her recent work on Joseph Conrad to discuss the challenges and opportunities of using life stories in writing global history. Literary scholars have long recognized the particular relevance of Conrad’s life story to his writing. Before he became a novelist, Conrad spent twenty years as a professional sailor, travelling to Asia, Africa, and the Americas. These journeys inspired the settings and characters of many of his later works of fiction. Jasanoff will argue that, while historical research can flesh out a picture of Conrad’s life and the sources of his fiction, his life story can, in turn, enrich an understanding of his times as an age of globalization."

For background read How Joseph Conrad foresaw the dark heart of Brexit Britain.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Jasanoff is Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard University, and winner of the 2018 Cundill Prize for The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World. A former Guggenheim Fellow, her research and teaching range from the history of the British Empire to global history and the craft of historical narrative. Her essays and reviews appear frequently in publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, and The New York Review of Books.

The presentation is in Room 2017 in Dunton Tower starting at 1:00pm followed by a reception at 2:30pm.

First World War: war brides

CBC published the story A century ago, a British war bride sailed to Canada. Now her granddaughter shares her story on Remembrance Day quoting BIFHSGO members, Lesley Anderson and Glenn, Wright.

Book Review: A Century of Man-Made Disasters

Perhaps you recall where you were when you heard that the Space Shuttle Challenger had exploded shortly after takeoff. I do. I was in a budget meeting with the forerunner of the Canadian Space Agency. The assignment I was on was cancelled as it was realized space-related activities would be halted — it was well over two years until the next shuttle was launched.
Covered in this book, half photographs, half text, are 15 major man-made 20th-century calamities:

1. The ‘Unsinkable’ Titanic (1912)
2. Five-Train Catastrophe (1915)
3. Brought Down by Pride (1930)
4. End of a Nazi Dream (1937)
5. Nightmare in a Tunnel (1944)
6. Child Victims of Aberfan (1966)
7. Price of the Space Race (1960s)
8. Soccer’s Nightmares (1970S-1980S)
9. Town’s Cloud of Death (1976)
10. Jumbo Jets Collide (1977)
11. Shattered Dream of Space (1986)
12. The Nuclear Nightmare (1986)
13. Calamity in the Channel (1987)
14. Alaska’s Toxic Tragedy (1989)
15. Ferry Families’ Icy End (1994)

Like the Challenger and Titanic, some of these tragedies are household names ... Chernobyl (which Gorbachev cites as the trigger for the fall of the Soviet Union), Exxon Valdez, Hindenberg. Others, like Aberfan and the 1915 Quintinshill rail disaster are more memorable for the main UK readership of Pen and Sword publications. Certainly, there are other disasters, such as Bhopal, that caused greater loss of life than some of those included.
Author Nigel Blundell states these disasters were the result of either folly or greed – or both. Having described the circumstance he well documents the guilty, the grief and those who rose to the challenge of helping — sometimes at the cost of their own life or health.

Series: Images of the Past
Paperback: 160 pages, also available on Kindle.
Publisher: Pen and Sword History (January 19, 2020)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1526748681
ISBN-13: 978-1526748683
Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 0.6 x 7.5 inches

This review is based on a copy provided by Pen and Sword.

Interview with Lucille Campey

While in England for RootsTech London I accepted an invitation from Lucille and Geoff Campey to visit at their home in Wiltshire.
Ottawa-born Lucille is the author of many books on Scottish, English and Irish immigration to Canada. She has often spoken in Ottawa. Geoff, as well as being her spouse is her business manager, draws maps and compiles supplemental material for the books.
We spoke of how she became fascinated by the topic, inspired by a visit to Belfast on Prince Edward Ireland, and Lucille explained why she believes some aspects of the subject have become misrepresented.
Lucille's next book, on Irish immigration to Western Canada with an overview of her two previous books on Irish immigration, is due for publication in September 2020 when we hope to welcome Geoff and Lucille back to Ottawa.

Historical Society of Ottawa Evening Lecture by Phil Jenkins

On Thursday 14 November, at 7 pm Phil Jenkins will present Discovering The History Around Us

Since 1978, after emigrating from Liverpool and returning to Ottawa where he grew up in the 1950s, Phil Jenkins has worked as a newspaper columnist, travel writer, author and a performing songwriter across Canada. He was a freelance columnist (over eight hundred columns) for the Ottawa Citizen from 1991 to 2017. He writes for magazines (National Geographic Traveller; Equinox; Wedding Bells: Canadian Geographic: Ottawa Magazine: Toronto Life) and about the Canadian landscape in books via the national non-fiction bestsellers Fields of Vision, An Acre of Time, River Song: Sailing the History of the St. Lawrence, and, Beneath My Feet: The Memoirs of George Mercer Dawson. There are also two commissioned books, on the Ottawa Public Library and the Civic Heart Institute. Phil teaches and lectures in writing, the Canadian landscape and Ottawa history, including a 10-year stint as a lecturer at Carleton University. As a solo musician, songwriter and member of the Wakefield band Riverbend, he produced the albums Car Tunes and Making Waves, and a solo album Noteworthy. He lives in a straw bale house in the Gatineau Hills of Quebec, on the Gatineau River.

Irish War of Independence pensions

If you had a relative who served in the Defence Forces in Ireland from 1922 onwards or received a medal or pension for service during the Easter Rising or War of Independence, there may be a reference to them within the genealogy section of the Military Archives website at  www.militaryarchives.ie/genealogycollections.

According to an update an additional 1,540 records were recently added including those of 313 women who fought for independence in Cumann na mBan, the women’s paramilitary organization, nine veterans of the 1916 Easter Rising, and 45 members of the Irish Republican Army and Cumann na mBan in Manchester. This release brings the number of individuals whose files are now available online up to 9,555 entries for individuals (representing over 28,700 files).

The files are available at militaryarchives.ie/en/ collections/online-collections/military-service-pensions-collection-1916-1923/

Remembrance Day: Canadian Forestry Corps

Established on 14 November 1916 The Canadian Forestry Corps (CFC) provided lumber for the Allied war effort by cutting and preparing timber in the United Kingdom and on the continent of Europe in both the First World War and the Second World War. Forestry units also cleared terrain for the construction of installations such as airfields and runway, prepared railway ties, as well as lumber for the creation of barracks, road surfaces, ammunition crates, trench construction, etc. These units were sometimes called on in the First World War to perform as infantry. Read more about the CFC here.
435 CFC men are listed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission as First World War casualties. 174 have their final resting place in the UK, 138 in France, and 110 in Canada.
Their average age at death was 32.
The first to die was 52-year-old Sergeant Richard Goodin, buried at Spencesville Union Cemetery in Eastern Ontario. He was the first of three who died before the CFC was officially established.
Private Albert E. Freeman, age 36, was the last to die. He is interred at North Battleford Cemetery.
The oldest was 67-year old Corporal George G. Hunter who died of pneumonia on 9 September 1919 and is interred at Mountain View Cemetery in Vancouver.
The youngest recorded by the CWGC was Private James G. Isbester (sometimes Gordon James), age 17, who died in hospital in Brockville, Ontario on 18 February 1918 and is buried at Dinorwic Cemetery, Ontario.

Juno Beach Memorial Bridge

On the morning of Friday 8 November 2019, there was a renaming ceremony of Ottawa's Airport Parkway Pedestrian Bridge to the Juno Beach Memorial Bridge. It was cold (-3C) with an appropriately blustery wind reminiscent of conditions on the Normandy coast on D-Day, 6 June 1944.

In attendance and making remarks were, from the left, Tom Irvine, Dominion President of the Royal Canadian Legion, Meriel Beament Bradford of the Juno Beach Centre, local Councillor Riley Brockington who was Emcee and the Mayor of Ottawa Jim Watson.
Also present were Heather Dawson, mother, and family of young Kenny Dagenais who died at the location while trying to cross the Parkway on 22 October 2007. His tragic death led to the building of the bridge crossing which opened in November 2014.
The plaque unveiled will be installed at a later date.

FreeBMD September and October updates

Here, very much delayed, is information about two updates to the FreeBMD Database.

On 23 September 2019 there was an update to contain 271,711,912 unique records (271,399,052 at previous update). With the latest 23 October update there are now 272,099,029 unique records.

Years with major additions, greater than 10,000 records cumulatively, are: for births 1984-88; for marriages 1969, 1980, 1984-87; for deaths 1984-86 and 1988.

www.freebmd.org.uk/

Sunday Sundries

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Remembrance Day
In Canada, according to Veterans Affairs Canada, 11 November is "in remembrance for the men and women who have served, and continue to serve our country during times of war, conflict and peace." That's in contrast to the original role as a day "to remember the members of the armed forces who died in the line of duty." This troubles me. We honour veterans, but I regret the loss of dedication of the one day, 11 November, to those who died in service.

Half off OGS Membership
Six people have taken advantage of my offer to match existing OGS members with those wanting to newly join. I still have a few members who would like to partner with new members. See this previous blog post.

FREE Access to All Databases on AmericanAncestors.org from Tuesday, November 12 through Tuesday, November 19
Information from Dick Eastman's blog.

The Wikipedia Of Graves: Israeli App CemoMemo Brings Cemeteries Into The Digital World
A collaborative documentation platform for gravestones, beyond BillionGraves and Find A Grave.

"Justice as Witness: New Perspective on Jewish Polish Relations during the German Occupation"
The Ottawa Historical Association's next presentation of its 2019-20 Speaker Series is by Marie-Dominique Asselin at the Ottawa Art Gallery (50 Mackenzie King Bridge) on Tuesday, 12 November. The presentation will begin at 7:15 p.m. Marie-Dominique Asselin is completing her PhD in history at the University of Ottawa and is a postdoctoral fellow at the Polish Center for Holocaust Research.

Five ways commuting on the London Underground has and hasn’t changed in the last century
Will Ottawa's LRT be keeping these types of statistics over the years? Notice they don't include information about breakdowns and delays.

How Pete Buttigieg is reviving the pragmatic, progressive ideals of the Social Gospel movement

Stairway To Heaven' Flashmob


Smells like Digital Preservation (parody)

Ancestry adds Brompton Cemetery Registers

Burial records from Brompton Cemetery in London, one of Britain's oldest and most distinguished garden cemeteries, are the most recent addition to Ancestry.
The registers, which run from 1840 - 2012, contain 204,827 records. A search produces transcribed name, birth year, burial date and a link to view an image of the original record with additional information.
This is not the first time Brompton records have been made available online. In January 2018 Findmypast added 645,301 Brompton cemetery records, "both transcripts and images of documents digitized from the original register held by the UK National Archives at Kew in series WORK 97."
These records also continue to be available through Deceasedonline.com/ which has over 8 million London cemetery records in its collection.

Findmypast adds military records

Britain, The Great War, I Was There
The Great War: I Was There is a magazine that was first published in 1938 mainly consisting of first-hand accounts and previously unpublished images. Its 51 editions ran from 29 September 1938 to 19 September 1939, 1,186 pages available to view as pdfs.
You can search by name and optional keywords. Hits are initially shown by the page number with no preview; you need to view the pdf — search terms are not highlighted.

Burma Star Association Membership Forms
Search over 53,000 membership forms of the Burma Star Association, to become a full member of the Association, an ex-Serviceman, ex-Servicewoman or Nurse must have been awarded the Burma Campaign Star for service in Burma during World War 2 for the necessary qualifying period or the Pacific Star with Burma Clasp.

The Association is Tri-Service and for members of The Merchant Navy who hold the Burma Star with permanent representatives from the Royal Navy, Army, Royal Air Force and Royal British Legion on the National Council.

Each records includes both a transcript and an image of the original form. Transcripts show application year, ship/unit, status and residence while images will provide rank, service number, address and signature.

Dekho, Burma Star Association
Over 4,000 records of members of the Burma Star Association. Dekho! Is the journal of the Burma Star Association. Published three times a year it informs members of the Association who are unable to get out and meet their comrades about events that are going on in the Burma Star Association. These editions run from 1951 to 2018.

New Co-Lab challenge launched on National Aboriginal Veterans Day

The following is from Library and Archives Canada

In this week of remembrance, Library and Archives Canada is highlighting the sacrifices made by Indigenous soldiers by launching a Co-Lab challenge on correspondence regarding First Nations veterans returning after the First World War https://co-lab.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Challenges.

By transcribing, translating, tagging or describing the records in this challenge, you give families a chance to access information about their relatives for the first time. How? When you transcribe the name of a soldier, it appears in the Collection search results and therefore makes it available.
The Co-Lab challenge records feature many fascinating and heart-wrenching passages such as: “I beg to report the return of John Walter Anderson of Gordons Reserve, from overseas. […] Received a gunshot wound on left leg at the battle of Amiens.”

Library and Archives Canada hopes to preserve the legacy of Canada’s veterans and their efforts for future generations, by remembering those who served. Read some of their stories on our blog https://thediscoverblog.com/category/military-heritage/. We will be releasing new blog posts over the next few days.

Want to do more? Find any digitized object in our collection and open it for crowdsourcing in Co-Lab so anyone can work on them. Locate any digital object in Collection Search http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/collectionsearch/Pages/collectionsearch.aspx by clicking on “Advanced Search” and selecting “yes” under “available online.” Click to open the digital object in the viewer, then follow the steps under the image.

Ancestry free access to Canadian military records

From 08 Nov 2019 to 11 Nov 2019 at 11:59 p.m. ET Ancestry is providing free access to all its Canadian military records. Registration required.