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Ancestry Daily News
2/21/2006 - Archive
Ancestry Daily News 21 February 2006
Ancestry Daily News
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As the Records Show
First Look at Ancestry.ca
by Sherry Irvine, CG, FSA Scot
MyFamily.com, Inc. recently launched a separate site for Canada; now, in addition to Ancestry.com, there are two companion sites, Ancestry.co.uk, which has been around for some time, and Ancestry.ca. Those with Canadian roots are bound to appreciate the option to join independently through an Ancestry.ca membership, or as part of the World Deluxe Membership, and that there is a commitment to add more Canadian data.
1911 and the Census
In 1911, the total population of Canada was a little more than 7 million; the majority had been born in Canada and of those born out of the country most came from the British Isles. Canada was also predominantly rural with significantly less than half the population living in towns or cities. It is not until the 1930s that the rural population of Canada begins to decline steadily.
The geography of Canada was different. There were nine provinces but Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec were geographically much smaller without their northern areas, which were added in 1912. The census includes the Northwest Territories and the Yukon Territory; Newfoundland did not join Canada until 1949. You can follow the territorial evolution of the country through a series of twenty-two maps at Natural Resources Canada.
The census was enumerated according to provinces and territories and these were divided into census districts and sub-districts. The enumeration divisions bore a resemblance to electoral divisions in the rural and urban parts of the country (e.g., counties, districts or wards). Data was collected at the beginning of June but in some northern areas enumeration began sooner. The census recorded one's usual place of abode, the head of the household (listed first) and each other person's relationship to the head. Other questions asked of particular interest to genealogists were: marital status, month and year of birth, country of birth (including province if within Canada), year of immigration, origin, nationality, religion, and occupation or trade.
The Ancestry search is flexible; you can start with as little as a surname only, even a first name only if your ancestor had an unusual one. The more details you specify the more targeted the search. Be sure to read the search tips for both the ranked search and the exact search and experiment. This is particularly important because some parts of the census returns are faded or have poor handwriting.
Ontario Vital Records
Ontario vital records officially began in 1869. Canada was just two years old and consisted of four provinces--Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. The population of Ontario was about 1.5 million and its size was smaller (refer to the map link above).
The vital records of birth, marriage, and death begin as handwritten entries in large registers, six to a page; for births and deaths the page layout changes in 1898 to columns and rows. Sometimes you find completely different forms; for one of my grandmother's sisters it is an affidavit of her older brother that he knows her age because he was in the house the day she was born and remembers it. Judging by the date, he made the declaration so his sister could receive her old age pension.
The key details in a birth record are the full name of the child, date of birth, place, full names of both parents, and father's occupation. The death record includes name, date and place of death, cause of death, informant, religion and occupation of the deceased, and place of birth if known. The birthplace information is usually vague, a country or a province, but a few are more detailed, for example, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The birth and death indexes take you to the image of the record but the marriage index does not; it provides microfilm numbers, for the Archives of Ontario and the Family History Library. All three indexes within Ancestry.ca have different date ranges; check these in advance of your search.
Some Other Resources
Ancestry.ca contains much more and I recommend you visit the site, choose the Search tab at the top and explore the lists. To find them, once the main page of the Search section appears you must select a province from the interactive map; alternatively you can choose a record from those listed in the right margin. In my view, using the map to reach the lists of data is better, presenting the site content in useful groupings. Take time to browse the resources, many of which are images of old books, fully indexed. I have found several publications that contain local and family history information relevant to my own research. Among the British Columbia resources are a 1920 directory of the City of Victoria and a book about the origins of place names along the coast of the Pacific Ocean (British Columbia coast names, 1592-1906: to which are added a few names in adjacent United States territory: their origin and history, with map and illustrations. Walbran, John T., Ottawa, 1909).
In Conclusion: Trans-Border, Trans-Ocean
The creation of Ancestry.ca does two things; first, with new data, it adds to the size and significance of Canadian material at the site and, secondly, the addition of more vital records and census data facilitates searching for trans-border or trans-Atlantic connections all in one place.
Not long ago Ancestry added images of the civil registration indexes for England and Wales, 1837 to 1983. These are available for searching without charge; so, if you find someone in the 1911 census and the entry indicates a birth place somewhere in England, you may be able to move along another step.
Sherry Irvine, CGRS, FSA Scot, is an author, teacher, and lecturer specializing in English, Scottish, and Irish family history. She is the author of Your English Ancestry (2d ed., 1998) and Researching Scottish Ancestry (2003), and she is a contributor to several publications. Since 1996, she has been a study tour leader, course coordinator, and instructor for the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research at Samford University. She teaches online at MyFamily.com. Recently she served a two-year term as president of the Association of Professional Genealogists. Sherry's Upcoming Speaking Engagements:
Copyright 2006, MyFamily.com.
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Request a Search for Your Ancestors at the Family History Library
Ancestor Seekers: researchers at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City will search this vast collection for your ancestors from the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.
If you commission the work (there's no obligation to do that!) prices start from $52 U.S.
For a FREE initial e-mail consultation visit www.ancestorseekers.com/research/adn.
Researchers urgently required to conduct U.S., German and other research at the FHL in Salt Lake City.
Visit: www.ancestorseekers.com/researcherswanted.htm. |
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Ancestry Quick Tip Jamboree
It's time for this week's Ancestry Quick Tip Jamboree! Thanks to everyone who has sent in a Quick Tip. Please keep them coming so that we can keep this tradition going. You can send your tips to: ADNeditor@ancestry.com.
Quick Tips may be reprinted, with credit to the submitter, in other Ancestry publications, so if you do not want your tip included in a publication other than the Ancestry Daily News and Ancestry Weekly Digest, please state so clearly in your message.
Have a great day!
Juliana
Privy Digging Tip
I'd like to comment on SallyAnn Glynn's note on House History. She is excited about discovering her home's history, and wrote ". . . our privy digger has already located a possible site and plans to dig it later this year. What kind of luck have others had with subterranean house history?"
Some "privy diggers," are essentially bottle hunters, who will go into her backyard and dig up an archaeological site. The artifacts such as broken dishes, bottles, animal bones, plant remains, and so on, provide information that does not survive in the written records of the time period. These include mundane things like what sorts of foods past residents of her home ate. What kinds of dishes they used. What kinds of health problems they had. If excavated by a trained archaeologist, privies have the potential to provide a large amount of data on the everyday lives of the everyday people that genealogists are interested in.
Unfortunately, some privy diggers don't care about these sorts of things. They are only after the unbroken bottles. Everything else is discarded. No documentation is recorded, no maps drawn, or photographs taken. Nothing is preserved for future study. No report will be prepared describing what was found and how this relates to the people who once lived in Glynn's house.
How would genealogists feel if people tore out pages from the record book whenever they found an entry they were interested in? Similarly, an unqualified privy digger could destroy an important part of the heritage of Ms. Glynn's home, one that has the potential to provide information that doesn't exist anywhere else. A better alternative is to contact a local archaeological society for advice or merely leave the privy alone for some future archaeologist to study. A resource on Indiana archaeology can be found at: www.in.gov/dnr/historic/archeomonth.html.
Homer Thiel
Tucson, Arizona
Land Claim Stories
In Juliana's article, Movie Magic, the recommendation for Far and Away talks about how an ancestor was removed from his land claim with a shotgun. This happened in other places as well. My grandmother who was born in Minnesota in 1886 and grew up in Richland County, North Dakota wrote in her memoirs about her Father sitting up many nights with a young neighbour (a widow and her son) as some other neighbours were trying to get his claim by running him off with a shotgun. She never put the name in her life story, but talked about it often. This was in the 1890s. Sadly his mother died and we never knew what happened to him. She also talked about roving bands of men who would prey on the settlers for money, etc.
In 1904 they moved to Saskatchewan and what a difference. The area they moved to was patrolled by the NWMP (Northwest Mounted Police) which became the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Alison in sunny Manitoba
Brings PDA to the Library
Many times you are not permitted to bring a laptop to the library, but I can take my PDA. I have a Palm LifeDrive PDA and an infrared keyboard for it. When the PDA is attached to the keyboard it becomes a miniature computer. It has a 4GB hard drive and I have an expansion card for 1GB, so I am able to do almost anything with it that I would with my laptop. When I get home I download to my computer and then I am able to go again. I use the PDA program, MyRoots, which syncs beautifully with my RootsMagic program. This is really having my cake and eating it, too.
Catherine R. Davidson
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Clipping of the Day
New York Daily Times (New York, New York), 21 February 1856, page 2:
Kansas Emigration from Alabama--Col. Buford's Scheme. &c.
Correspondence of the New-York Daily Times.
Montgomery, Ala., Thursday, Feb. 14.
The severities of a Winter of unprecedented length are still upon us. For more than two months there has been hardly a single day of that bright weather peculiar to the South. Stock in places has suffered much, since no provision is made against such a season as this. A planter from northern Mississippi tells me, that of a drove of two hundred he will lose sixty or seventy head. And this is not a solitary instance.
The navigable waters of the State are getting low again, notwithstanding so much rain has fallen in the last few months. The state of the roads has kept back much cotton from the markets, yet with a few weeks of good weather the most of it will be sent forward. A considerable portion of the crop is still ungathered, in some of the richer regions of the State. Spring work will necessarily be late.
Corn is abundant at fifty to sixty cents, whilst other provisions are higher than at the North. Potatoes and fruits, especially, are held at enormously high prices. What would people think in New-England, if compelled to pay from five to seven dollars per barrel for Irish potatoes and apples?
Col. Buford is stumping the State in behalf of his Kansas scheme, but with little success. Having embarked a large fortune in the enterprise, failure now will ruin him. He appeals to Southern pride, which responds languidly to his urgent call. Five, ten, rarely twenty dollars is the sum one sees generally on his subscription papers. He is forming Emigrant Societies wherever he can, which collect funds to send the poor out. The terms which Col. Buford offers are these: He pays the expenses of an immigrant and aids him in securing a preemption claim of [100?] acres; in six months from the time of landing in Kansas his money is to be refunded or he is to receive as an equivalent one-half of the land which his proteges hold by right of preemption. He says that he shall be able to take out three or four hundred in April on these terms. I need not tell you what sort of men go on such and expedition from a Southern State. The Free State men should be well armed with whisky, and there will be little need for Sharpe's rifles.
There really is no enthusiasm on this subject in the State, despite all the stumping and newspaper writing. I will keep you "posted" on this subject.
ADN Editor's Note: For more on the Buford Expedition, see:
Members with access to the Historical Newspapers Collection can view this clipping here.
Click here to subscribe to the Historical Newspapers Collection at Ancestry.com. |
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Fast Fact
Ancestry.com Search Tutorial
Ancestry.com has created a special search tutorial to help users get more from their searches. To view the tutorial, go to the Advanced Search page and click the Search Tutorial link in the upper right-hand corner of the page, just above the Browse Records box.
Click here to search the tutorial. |
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Thought for Today
Mahatma Gandhi
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
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