Children today have no idea about the excitement their parents and grandparents felt when the Christmas catalogues arrived at the house. I remember my sister and I going through the toy section to prepare our wish list for Santa Claus.
In the blog post, Exploring the Objects of Your Ancestors’ Lives with Catalogs, Gena Philibert-Ortega writes about how we can use department store catalogues for our family history research.
She writes, “Catalogs provide a unique glimpse into our ancestor’s lives. They not only help us understand what was available to them but they may help us answer questions such as the approximate year a photograph was taken according to when the clothing and jewelry were available, the history behind an heirloom, or help us identify an object. I’ve used catalogs to search for the name of a specific vintage kitchen tool, identify when a serving dish was available, and explore fraternal order jewelry as well as to answer questions about beauty products our ancestors used.”
Canadian mail-order catalogues
An excellent source of Canadian mail-order catalogues is Library and Archives Canada’s website.
The online collection provides catalogues from a number of different stores, both English and French, from the 1880s to the 1970s. Included are catalogues from Christie Grant, Dupuis Frères, Eaton’s, Goodwin’s, John Eaton, Nerlich, P.T. Legaré and Simpson’s. You can search by keyword in one catalogue or all catalogues.
Happy shopping!
