This week’s crème de la crème — April 3, 2021

Posted on April 3, 2021 by Gail Dever

Some of the bijoux I discovered this week.

Crème de la crème of genealogy blogs

Blogs
The Irish in New France by Sharon Callaghan on Ancestry Blog.

Quebec Ancestors: The Montreal Fire Club at the McGill University Archives by Candice McDonald on Finding Your Canadian Story.

Quebec birth, marriage and death records by François Desjardins on Généalogie et historie du Québec.

New database documents fighters of independence of Ukraine from 1917-1924 by Vera Miller on Find Lost Russian & Ukrainian Family.

How to Research a WW1 Soldier by Paul Chiddicks on The Chiddicks Family Tree.

Landed Estates Court Rentals by Donna Moughty on Irish FamilyRoots.

National Library of Scotland updates maps site and adds new content by Chris Paton on Scottish GENES.

Dutch Genealogy News for March 2021 by Yvette Hoitink on Dutch Genealogy.

Timetoast & What Was There by John D. Reid on Canada’s Anglo-Celtic Connections.

Four Tricks You Need to Know to Read on Google Books by Dan Russell on SearchReSearch.

Use Nicknames in Your Newspaper Searches to Find 50% More Ancestor Articles and What Is That Weird Word As Cause of Death? by Kenneth R. Marks on The Ancestor Hunt.

How to Write and Self Publish Your Family History Book with Author J.M. Phillips by Lisa Cooke on Genealogy Gems.

Only 1 More Year to the Release of the 1950 U.S. Census by Dick Eastman on Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter.

Jack and Anna Corley’s box of sadness, 1930-1 by Gillian Leitch on Gilliandr’s Blog.

Loss : Week # 12 – 52 Ancestors by C. Apps Wright on Finding My Ancestors Blog.

What is Once, Twice, Three Times Removed, and Why Should I Care? by Robin Wirthlin on Family Locket.

Ancestry’s “Your DNA Sample Has Been Destroyed” Email by Roberta Estes on DNAeXplained.

New: View the Genetic Groups of Your DNA Matches by Esther on MyHeritage Blog.

Podcast
Workhouses: Part 1 and Workhouses: Part 2 hosted by Andy Holmes.

Articles
To save Black Loyalist burial grounds from neglect, New Brunswickers dig into their segregated past by Matt Brown, Globe and Mail, Toronto, Ontario.

‘Like finding the Mona Lisa’: Historian learns freed slave buried in Hamilton Cemetery is U.S. Civil War vet by Desmond Brown, CBC, Hamilton, Ontario.

This Rare, 180-Year-Old Diary Records a Couple’s Passage by Ship from London to Vancouver by Leslie Tucker, Montecristo Magazine, Vancouver, British Columbia.

For more gems like these throughout the week, join the Genealogy à la carte Facebook group. When you submit your request to join, you will be asked to answer two quick questions about your family history research.

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Registration for Ontario Ancestors’ virtual conference now open

Posted on April 2, 2021 by Gail Dever

Ontario Ancestors yesterday opened registration for its virtual conference, taking place from June 4 to 6. The theme is My Roots, Your Roots, Our Ontario Roots.

The opening keynote on Friday, June 4 will be live streamed to the public on Ontario Ancestors’ YouTube channel. It will be delivered by author and professional genealogist Janice Nickerson who plans to issue a call to action to find ways to diversify the society’s membership and address different communities in its programs and projects.

Ms. Nickerson said, “Ontario has been transformed many times through the arrival of new groups of people from all over the world, and will continue to change. So let’s consider how we can best embrace this challenge to fulfill our mission.”

Saturday and Sunday are filled with sessions in two streams, hosted by conference co-chairs Vito Giovannetti and Kathryn Lake Hogan.

Leading up to the three-day event are three FastTrax presentations, starting May 31, and they are included in the $79 conference fee.

The Saturday and Sunday sessions and the FastTrax presentations will be recorded and available for registrants to watch for 30 days afterward.

Ancestry Day
In addition to the conference is the first virtual Ancestry Day on Friday, June 4. Ancestry staff and genealogy experts will deliver in-depth presentations on new tips and tricks and research strategies using digitized records of birth, marriage, death, census, immigration, military service, and newspapers. The fee for Ancestry Day is $25.

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30% off Ancestry.ca six-month subscriptions

Posted on April 2, 2021 by Gail Dever

Until Wednesday, April 7, Ancestry.ca is offering 30 percent off a six-month subscription to its Canadian and international subscriptions.

Canada discovery plus subscription
Access to the complete collection of Canadian records on Ancestry
Access to international census and civil birth, marriage, and death records
Access to all public family trees on Ancestry
— $59.50 instead of $84.99

World deluxe subscription
Unlimited access to over 27 billion global records on Ancestry
Access to premium global records, including UK parish registers dating back over 500 years
Access to all public family trees on Ancestry
— $90.99 instead of $129.99

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Webinar tonight — Zotero: Your personal research assistant

Posted on April 1, 2021 by Gail Dever

Ontario Ancestors hosts its free monthly webinar, Zotero: Your Personal Research Assistant, presented by Lynn Palermo, this evening at 7:00 p.m. Eastern time, Thursday, April 1.

Do you dream of having a personal research assistant? Well look no further than the free easy-to-use tool Zotero to help you collect, organize, cite and share your genealogy research. In this presentation, you’ll explore how to use the FREE reference manager Zotero to take control of your genealogy research. 

What attendees can expect to learn:

      • The numerous benefits of the reference manager Zotero
      • How to set up an account with ease
      • Learn to organize your research any way you want
      • Create citations and bibliographies for any text editor
      • Explore the numerous types of sources you can save in Zotero
      • Learn how to sync your data across devices, keeping your notes, files and bibliographic records up date.
      • How to make simple work of capturing source information while in libraries and archives

Registration is required. A recording will likely be available afterward for Ontario Ancestors members.

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Ten times more 19th-century Ontario tax assessment records on FamilySearch

Posted on April 1, 2021 by Gail Dever

This month, the number of records on FamilySearch of Canada, Ontario Tax Assessment Rolls, 1834-1899 has increased from almost 40,000 to 499,842, and there are still many more to come.

These records can be searched by name and may include the age, occupation, and possibly the religious affiliation of the head of household along with information about his lands, home, family members (by age categories) crops, and animals.

As of yesterday, volunteers had indexed 92 percent of the records in Part A of the Ontario tax assessment rolls, and 61 percent of those indexed records had been reviewed. If the math is correct, this means we may see at least a quarter of a million more records to search by the time the first part of this indexing project has been completed.

Record collections on FamilySearch that were expanded quite a bit during the past week are:

Guatemala, Catholic Church Records, 1581-1977 1,176,406 records

Peru, Catholic Church Records, 1603-1992 1,304,046 records

United States Georgia, Tax Digests, 1787-1900 390,253 records

Venezuela, Catholic Church Records, 1577-1995 774,359 records

The full list of new and expanded collections is available in the FamilySearch news release.

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New PRONI videos on YouTube — Irish online resources and promiscuous Presbyterians

Posted on March 31, 2021 by Gail Dever

Two of the latest videos on the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland’s (PRONI) YouTube channel are Getting Started Workshop — Using Online Resources on how to use PRONI’s website and other free online resources and Sexuality & Social Control in the Presbyterian Archive circa 1717-1830 about promiscuous Presbyterians.

During the informative 48-minute video on online resources, the presenter talks about the eCatalogue, church guide, wills database, and Valuation Revision Books on PRONI’s website, census records on the National Archives of Ireland’s website, birth, marriage and death records on IrishGenealogy.ie, and Griffith’s Valuation on Ask About Ireland.

The winner, however, for most titillating title goes to PRONI’s one-hour video, Sexuality & Social Control in the Presbyterian Archive circa 1717-1830, about misbehaving ministers and promiscuous Presbyterians. It is presented by Dr. Leanne Calvert, who is a lecturer in History at the University of Hertfordshire.

Over the course of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries, over a quarter of a million people migrated from Ireland to North America. The overwhelming majority of these migrants were Presbyterians from the province of Ulster. Motivated by a desire for greater economic opportunity, political and religious freedom, individuals, whole families and entire congregations travelled across the Atlantic. Once they arrived in the New World, these Presbyterian migrants reconstructed the communities that they left behind in Ireland. Crucial to this process was the establishment of the Presbyterian system of church courts, which underpinned the religious and cultural life of the community. In Ireland, sexual offences dominated the business of these courts.

Drawing on the minutes of the Presbyterian church courts, Dr. Calvert’s research examines the extent to which Presbyterian values and codes of behaviour were transmitted across the Atlantic and replicated in these settler communities.

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BC Genealogical Society 50th anniversary seminar series

Posted on March 31, 2021 by Gail Dever

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the British Columbia Genealogical Society will host three virtual seminars in April, May and June that will be delivered by three popular speakers, Dave Obee, Janice Nickerson, and Lucille Campey. Each seminar has two presentations.

Saturday, April 3 – Dave Obee – 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (Pacific time)
1. Looking Forward, Looking Back: Half a century of genealogy, and the best is yet to come
2. Beyond the Online Basics: A Genealogical Guide to Digital Collections

Saturday, May 1 – Janice Nickerson – 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
1. Your Ancestors in the Upper Canadian Justice System
2. Early Ontario Research

Saturday, June 5 – Lucille Campey – 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
1. Canada’s Irish Pioneers: Their Story
2. Numbers not Names: How British Government Publications Can Assist Family Historians in Locating their Ancestors

The seminars, to be held via Zoom, are free for BCGS and affiliate members, but are $25 per seminar for non-members. Non-members planning to attend all three seminars would be wise to consider joining the society for $65.

To learn more about the seminars and register, scroll down the BCGS home page.

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Dictionary of Irish Biography available through open access

Posted on March 30, 2021 by Gail Dever
Thomas D’Arcy McGee, 1863, Montreal, Quebec.
Photo: William Notman.

On St. Patrick’s Day earlier this month, the most comprehensive and authoritative biographical dictionary published for Ireland, the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of Irish Biography (DIB), moved to an open access model.

The entire body of nearly 11,000 biographies, spanning more than 1,500 years of Irish history, is now free to all through a new website at www.dib.ie.

You may not find any of your ancestors in the DIB, but you can find the biography for one of Canada’s Fathers of Confederation, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, who was assassinated in 1868 outside his Ottawa home. It was widely held that his murder was a Fenian plot, although it was never proven. No surprise, the biography for revolutionary leader Michael Collins is also included.

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New Quebec family histories — January 2021

Posted on March 30, 2021 by Gail Dever

The Grande Bibliothèque in Montreal catalogued in January six Quebec families histories for its genealogy collection.

The Grande Bibliothèque is the flagship library facility of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ). All books published in Quebec, including family histories, must be deposited at the Grande Bibliothèque. They form part of the national collection.

Although most of the family histories at the Grande Bibliothèque are written in French, if you find one about your ancestors, you will probably figure out a way to use it in your research.

If interested in learning more about the books listed below, contact BAnQ by completing the online form. (Click on English in the top right corner of form to see the English-language form.) The people at BAnQ will respond in English or French, depending on the language of inquiry, within a couple of days.

Family histories
The family names in the following new books have been highlighted in bold.

To help, I have provided a brief description in English after each title below.

Nicolas Bachand dit Vertefeuille by Gilles Bachand. Lanoraie, Quebec : les Éditions Première chance, 2020. 544 pages.

About Nicolas Bachand dit Vertefeuille who was born in Paris, France in about 1667 and died in Boucherville, Quebec in 1709. He married Anne Lamoureux, 1678-1757, from Boucherville.

Généalogie de la famille Bélanger du 16e au 21e siècle by Camil Bélanger. Berthier-sur-Mer, Quebec : la Plume d’oie 2020. 405 pages.

Genealogy of the Bélanger family from the 16th to 21st century. Nicolas Bélanger, 1632-1682, was originally from Normandy. He married Marie Guyon, daughter of Jean Guyon and Mathurine Robin, in Quebec City. They had 12 children.

Henri et Jeanne Bourdages : ancêtres et descendants : biographie familiale : du premier Bourdages à s’installer en Amérique à aujourd’hui by Jean-Yves Bourdages. Saint-Hubert, Quebec : Jean-Yves Bourdages, 2020. 271 pages.

Henri and Jeanne Bourdages: ancestors and descendants: family biography: from the first Bourdages to settle in America to today. Raymond Bourdages, 1728-1787.

Notre ascendance jusqu’à Jacques Cartier by Bernard Gagné. Cornwall, Ontario : Bernard Gagné, November 2020. 132 pages.

Our ancestral line back to Jacques Cartier. Jacques Cartier, 1491-1557. Guyon family is mentioned. 

Ancêtres Thibaudeau by Bernard Guindon. Ste-Marthe-sur-le-Lac, Quebec : Bernard Guindon, 2020. 229 pages. 

Thibaudeau Ancestors. Pierre Thibodeau, about 1631-1704.

Vézina(t), notre histoire, 500 ans d’énigme by André Vézina. Saint-Urbain de Charlevoix, Quebec : André Vézina, 2020?. 582 pages. 

Vézina(t), our history, 500 years of intrigue. Jacques Vezinat, about 1610-1687.

Hudson’s Bay Company
In the History of Quebec and Canada section at the Grande Bibliothèque is the following recently catalogued book.

The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson’s Bay Empire by Stephen R. Bown. Toronto : Doubleday Canada, 2020. 486 pages.

The story of the Hudson’s Bay Company, dramatic and adventurous and complex, is the story of modern Canada’s creation. 

The Company started out small in 1670, trading practical manufactured goods for furs with the Indigenous inhabitants of inland subarctic Canada. Controlled by a handful of English aristocrats, it expanded into a powerful political force that ruled the lives of many thousands of people–from the lowlands south and west of Hudson Bay, to the tundra, the great plains, the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific northwest. It transformed the culture and economy of many Indigenous groups and ended up as the most important political and economic force in northern and western North America.

When the Company was faced with competition from French traders in the 1780s, the result was a bloody corporate battle, the coming of Governor George Simpson–one of the greatest villains in Canadian history–and the Company assuming political control and ruthless dominance. By the time its monopoly was rescinded after two hundred years, the Hudson’s Bay Company had reworked the entire northern North American world.

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YouTube — How to trace your Canadian ancestor’s immigrant history

Posted on March 29, 2021 by Gail Dever

If you have Canadian ancestors and access to Ancestry’s Canadian collection, you should consider watching How to Trace Your Canadian Ancestor’s Immigrant History on Ancestry’s YouTube channel.

The presentation is delivered by Cara MacDonald, who is the librarian and genealogical research manager of Reference Services at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax. She provides plenty of research strategies and tips in the one-hour video.

This is an Ancestry Extra session that was first presented on Facebook last year, and then it was made available a few days ago on YouTube.

Norwegian seafarers
On another note, Ms. MacDonald tweeted yesterday about The Centre for History of Seafarers at War website. She wrote, “This is a fantastic resource I discovered when searching for a WWII Norwegian sailor on Friday.” In the online collection 66,360 seafarers have been registered so far.

You can follow Ms. MacDonald at @ancestor_sleuth.

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