Did some of your Canadian ancestors settle in Maine? To acquire an idea of where they may have settled or how many settled in a particular area, James Myall has produced an interactive map that shows Canadian migration patterns from 1850 to 1940.
The interactive map shows the number of Canadian-born residents of Maine towns, cities and plantations at the time of each census, from 1850 to 1940.
Mr. Myall’s goal was to show where Maine’s Franco-Americans live, using census records to find the numbers of Canadian-born Mainers.
In his column, Parlez-Vous American?, in the Bangor Daily News, Mr. Myall explained why it was “all-but impossible” for him to separate English and French-speaking Canadians to create his interactive map. “While the Census Bureau instructed enumerators to start making this distinction from 1900 onwards, those taking the census appear to have done so with varying degrees of zeal. Many individuals are still simply recorded as ‘Canadians.'”
Mr. Myall is the coordinator of the Franco-American Collection at the University of Southern Maine. In 2015, he co-authored The Franco-Americans of Lewiston-Auburn, a general history of that population from 1850 to the present.
Take a look at the interactive map and article here.
I love this! I tried it out as my New Brunswick Loyalist descendants came back in to Calais, Maine from 1840 onwards. Great tool for seeing historical changes. Thank you for finding and sharing this.