Genealogy Insider - Canadian roots

Genealogy News Corral: July 20-24

Diane — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:25:54 GMT

This week sure flew by, didn’t it? Here’s our news news roundup:

New records this week on the free FamilySearch Record Search Pilot include an index to Cheshire, England, Non-conformist records (1671 to 1900), and index to the 1895 Minnesota state census, and images for the 1905 New York state census (the index is still in progress).

New indexing projects are underway for Italy, New Zealand, Perú and the United States; volunteers who can help with foreign language projects are needed. Go to the FamilySearch Indexing site for more information.

Library and Archives Canada’s online Canadian Genealogy Center—one of our 101 Best Web Sites for 2009—released an index of 206,731 Canadians naturalized from 1915 to 1932. You can use the information in the database to request the original naturalization records.

The International Association of Jewish Genealogists conference is coming right up Aug. 2-7 in Philadelphia. Besides genealogy classes and an exhibit hall, you can use a Resource Room stocked with research materials and computers. Extracurriculars include walking tours, bus tours and cemetery research trips. Visit the conference Web site for registration information.

A Twitter retweet from @mdiane_rogers led us to a free database from professional genealogy firm Price & Associates of indentured immigrants who arrived between 1607 and 1820. You can search by first and last name, date and place of of birth, and other parameters. Sources of the information are listed on the site.

Ancestry.com has upgraded its “hinting engine” for FamilyTreeMaker. Now a faster, higher-capacity engine will automatically search Ancestry.com and display a leaf next to a name in FamilyTreeMaker's pedigree and detail views if there's a potential match. The new engine also searches Ancestry Member Trees instead of One World Tree data.

Search Canadian Passenger Lists Free Through July 3

Diane — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:43:55 GMT

To celebrate Canada Day, subscription genealogy data service Ancestry.ca—the Canadian sister site to Ancestry.com—is making its collection of passenger lists from Canadian ports free through July 3.

The lists cover 1865 to 1935 and include names of more than 5.6 million individuals. An estimated 37 percent of Canada’s population has ancestors in the lists. US residents also may have relatives who arrived in Canada, then later traveled south to settle in the States.

See the full announcement here.

Access the Canadian passenger list collection here.

Canada Day, formerly Dominion Day, is July 1. It celebrates the anniversary of the British North America Act of 1867, which united Canada as a country of four provinces.

Search Four Canadian Census Indexes Free Online

Diane — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:30:53 GMT

FamilySearch has added indexes to the 1851, 1861, and 1871 Canada Census to its record search site (click North America on the map, then scroll down to the list of Canadian records).

The 1881 census already was online, and plans are in place to add the 1891 census.

All are the products of a three-way partnership: Ancestry.ca provided indexes to the 1851 and 1891 censuses, and FamilySearch created indexes for the 1861, 1871, and 1881 censuses. (Both sites offer these indexes.) The originals are housed at Library and Archives Canada.

Information in these census might include your ancestor's name, age, birthplace, religion, occupation, residence and ethnicity. Some information on the records is in French.

Note that FamilySearch has posted only the indexes, not the record images. It will eventually release record images to “qualified FamilySearch members.” (I believe this means volunteer indexers who’ve indexed a certain number of records.)

If you find ancestors in the free FamilySearch index for the 1851 census, you can use the location information to find those folks in the unindexed 1851 census images at the Canadian Genealogy Centre Web site. (The Canadian Genealogy Centre also has 1901, 1906 and 1911 census images, but you must know about where your ancestor lived to use them.)

The Family History Library also has the records on microfilm (run a Keyword search of the online catalog on Canada census). You can rent the film through your local Family History Center.

The digitized records also are available on the subscription sites Ancestry.ca and Ancestry.com (which also have the 1901, 1906, 1911 and 1916 censuses).

Genealogy News Corral May 18-22

Diane — Fri, 22 May 2009 20:38:34 GMT

Here are some quick genealogy news updates for the week. We hope you have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, and get an opportunity to reflect on your ancestors’ sacrifice for their country.

Historical records subscription site Footnote is giving away several lifetime memberships. To be eligible, you have to create or find an I Remember page on Facebook (using Footnote’s recently released app) and get five people to click the I Remember button for that person. See more details here.

British subscription and pay-per-view site Familyrelatives.com added more than 200,000 Canadian civil service records from 1872 to 1918. The records reveal the civil servant's name, position, department, length of service, salary and date of appointment. The earliest ones also provide civil servants' national origins and religion.

FamilySearch has added a total of 3.5 million-plus new records to 13 collections on the free FamilySearch Record Search pilot. The additions come from Brazil, the Czech Republic and Italy; and the US states of Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina and South Carolina.

The State Library of North Carolina and the North Carolina State Archives have posted a free collection of North Carolina family records including nearly 220 family Bible records and the six-volume Marriage and Death Notices from Raleigh Register and North Carolina State Gazette: 1799-1893.

NBC’ continues to string along genealogists eager to see its “Who Do You Think You Are?” The on-again, off-again series didn't make it onto the network's fall lineup, but still may show up as a mid-season replacement, according to California-based Genealogy Gems blogger Lisa Louise Cooke.

Genealogy News Corral, May 4-8

Diane — Fri, 08 May 2009 18:02:07 GMT

Here are the news bits that came across our desks this week

Subscription genealogy site Ancestry.com launched a collection of German phone directories dating from 1915 to 1981. The books, which are, of course, in German, list names and addresses of more than 35 million people who lived in Germany’s major cities, as well as many businesses.

British subscription and pay-per-view site FindMyPast.com added merchant seaman crew indexes with 270,000 names of seafarers between 1860 and 1913. British ships created these lists every six months, including everyone from captains to able seamen, from engine room staff to stewardesses.

The 1916 census of Canada is now available free at Family History Centers through their on-site Ancestry.com service. (Meaning this census isn’t on the FamilySearch pilot site—you must go to a Family History Center to search it.)

The National Archives granted its first Excellence in Genealogy Awards to Myron McGhee of Decatur, GA, who took first place, and Stephanie D. Smith of Richtor Park, IL, who took second. Read about their entries on the archives’ Web site.

The heritage travel Web site Go With a Purpose launched a new section called Go Connect, where users can upload photos with their reviews of historic destinations. Learn more on the site’s blog.

A late addition: The New England Historic Genealogical Society is adding digitized back issues of the journal The American Genealogist, to its subscription databases at NewEnglandAncestors.org. Vols. 1 through 8 (published as Families of Ancient New Haven) and Volumes 9–13 (dated from 1933 through 1937), are available now in separate databases. Additional volumes will be added. NEHGS memberships start at $75.

Ancestry.ca Adds Border Crossings into Canada

Diane — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:59:15 GMT

Those who used the May 2009 Family Tree Magazine article on immigrants to Canada will be pleased to learn that Ancestry.ca, sister site to Ancestry.com, has added border-crossing records from the United States to Canada between 1908 and 1935. (Thanks to Dick Eastman for the tip.)

The database may hold the key for "missing" immigrant ancestors. Between 1901 and 1914, more than 750,000 people entered Canada over the US border. Many were European immigrants who originally settled in the American West.

Americans also routinely crossed the border to visit friends and family.

But this database isn’t available with the $155.40 US-focused Ancestry.com subscription, reports Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings. You need an Ancestry.ca or a World Deluxe subscription to access it.

Note Canadian citizens returning home weren’t recorded, nor were those who had a Canadian parent. And Lisa A. Alzo, who wrote our May 2009 article, says those who crossed where ports either didn’t exist or were closed wouldn’t be listed.

Chinese Canadians Profiled on Genealogy Wiki

Diane — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:27:10 GMT

Canada’s Vancouver Public Library (which started the Chinese-Canadian Genealogy Web site) and Library and Archives Canada have created a genealogy wiki centered around the country’s Chinese Immigration List.

The list bears the names of Canadian-born Chinese who registered with the government as required by the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923. Designed to curtail Chinese immigration to Canada, the act joined a procession of laws levying head taxes on Chinese immigrants. The regulations were finally lifted in 1947.

The wiki contains transcribed information on 461 people recorded on the list, covering the years from Won Alexander Cumyow’s birth in 1861 to Lee Kang Gee’s birth in 1900 (both were born in British Columbia, where most of Canada's Chinese residents lived).

Researchers with more details on any of the 461 individuals can help build their profiles—see the Participate page to get started.

You can search 98,361 names from Canada's General Registers of Chinese Immigration at the online Canadian Genealogy Center.

See the May 2009 Family Tree Magazine (now mailing to subscribers; on sale March 10) for more help researching immigrants to Canada from all over the world.

Canadian Censuses To Be Digitized and Indexed

Diane — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:42:46 GMT

The subscription site Ancestry.ca (a Canadian records-focused sister site to Ancestry.com) and FamilySearch are partnering to digitize and index Ancestry.ca’s Canadian census records.

They’ll be available to Ancestry.ca subscribers in 2009, and the indexes will be free to the public on the FamilySearch Web site. The images will be free at FamilySearch Family History Centers.

Canadian national censuses were taken every 10 years starting in 1871; earlier censuses cover various areas of Canada. Under the agreement, FamilySearch will provide Ancestry.ca with images and indexes for 1861, 1871, 1881 and 1916 censuses. Ancestry.ca will provide FamilySearch with indexes for the 1891 and 1901 censuses.

This partnership should ease Canadian roots research a bit. Only the 1901, 1906 and 1911 censuses, as well as part of an 1851 census, are indexed by name. To find your ancestor in other censuses, you need to know his or her district and subdistrict—which could change between censuses.

The Web site Automated Genealogy is coordinating a volunteer indexing project for the 1901, 1906 and 1911 censuses; search the growing database free. If you find an ancestor’s name and district information, look for him listed in the free census images on the Library and Archives Canada Web site.

Library and Archives Canada recently announced a digitization partnership with Ancestry.ca. No specifics were available about which records are up for indexing.

Remembering Canadian Veterans, Re-Watching The War

Diane — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:18:09 GMT

We’re coming up on Veterans Day (in the United States) and Remembrance Day (in Canada), and our contributing editor Rick Crume told me about a neat remembrance of the 68,000 Canadians killed in World War I.

Nights through Nov. 11, those names will be projected onto the National War Memorial in Ottawa and buildings elsewhere Canada, and onto the side of Canada House in London's Trafalgar Square.

At the 1918 Vigil site, you can search for names of Canadians killed in the Great War to learn the person’s service number, rank, regiment, death date and the when the name will be displayed.

Also marking Veterans Day, many PBS stations are re-airing Ken Burns’ WWII documentary The War. It had me riveted to the sofa last year when it first aired.

Click here to search for broadcasts on your PBS station. You can get more veterans’ stories on the Veterans History Project's special Web site Experiencing War. (I got a chance to talk with Ken Burns recently, and I’ll share some of the conversation in a later post.)

For more on military records, see the Genealogy Insider military records category and the FamilyTreeMagazine.com online toolkit.

101 Best Web Sites: Canadian Census and Jewish Resources

Diane — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:12:21 GMT

Here's a look at two of our 101 Best Web Sites picks for 2008:

Automated Genealogy: Those with Canadian roots will appreciate this free, volunteer site with transcriptions and indexes of Canadian censuses.

Transcribed and in various stages of proofreading are the 1901, 1906 (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba) and 1911 enumerations. The 1851-1852 census is underway, with an ambitious effort to link to other online records about each individual.

Avotaynu: Use this site’s Consolidated Jewish Surname Index to run a Soundex search of information about 699,084 surnames, mostly Jewish, in 42 databases totaling more than 7.3 million records. You also can subscribe to Avotaynu’s free e-mail newsletter on Jewish genealogy.

See the rest of the 101 best at FamilyTreeMagazine.com.

Search Lower Canada Land Petitions Free Online

Diane — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 12:34:59 GMT

A new Library and Archives Canada land petition database can help you find ancestors who lived in Lower Canada (where present-day Quebec is) between 1764 and 1841.

When New France became a British colony in 1763, the land-distribution system changed. New lands were now granted as part of townships instead of as seigneuries (the term for land the Crown granted to landlords, who in turn leased it to settlers).

With the change, many settlers submitted land petitions to the governor. The Lower Canada Land Petitions database indexes their petitions for grants or leases of land, as well as other administrative records. The site contains more than 95,000 references to individuals.

Search it by surname and given name. Try spelling variations and surname-only searches, since there’s no Soundex searching.

Some records are linked to digitized images, but in most cases, matches show a year, volume and page number of the original record, and a microfilm number. Use the information to request microfilm copies from the Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec (Quebec national archives).

You can access the Canadian national archives' Lower Canada Land Petitions and other databases from the Canadian Genealogy Centre Web site.