Findmypast to release four Irish collections in September

Posted on August 29, 2016 by Gail Dever

Findmypast plans to release four Irish record collections next month that should help many family historians further their research.FindMyPast logoAccording to Brian Donovan, global head of Irish Collections at Findmypast.com, the British-based online genealogy company will release the Valuation Office Field and House Books on September 15. These records, which contain about two million names, will allow us to go back a generation earlier than Griffith’s Valuation.

Another large collection that will interest many family historians will be the Merchant Marine Records that contain almost one million names. What is especially interesting about these records is that they provide the individual’s age, place of birth, next of kin, and their entire career. Half of the merchant marines were from Ireland and the other half were from Britain, continental Europe, and America.

Two other Irish collections planned for release are Irish Wills 1858-1922 and Catholic Qualifications and Convert Rolls. (During the 18th century, the only way for Catholics to own land, have a profession, run for office, or go to school was to go to court to convert to the established Episcopalian church.)

Free webinar available until August 30
These upcoming releases were revealed during the Legacy Family Tree webinar, Using Findmypast to Unlock Your Irish Ancestry, presented by Mr. Donovan.

This webinar, available to watch for free until Tuesday, August 30, is a good primer on the types of Irish records that exist and which collections, such as certain census and church records, were destroyed.

Free Irish records
For anyone who is not a subscriber, Findmypast offers some Irish collections for free, such as the 1901 and 1911 censuses and Irish Catholic parish registers. They are able to do so because of their partnership with The National Archives of Ireland.

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Free access to select Ancestry and Findmypast records this weekend

Posted on August 28, 2016 by Gail Dever

There is still time to take advantage of the freebies Ancestry and Findmypast are each offering until Monday.

Ancestry
Ancestry.co.uk is offering free access to UK and Irish records until Monday, August 29 at 11:59 p.m. BST (6:59 p.m. Eastern time).

To view these records you need to register for free with Ancestry.co.uk with your name and email address. They will then send you a username and password to access the records. After the free access period ends, you will only be able to view the records in the featured collections using an Ancestry.co.uk paid membership. To see a full list of the records in the featured collections, click here.

Findmypast
Findmypast.com.aus is giving free access to its entire collection of Australian records – including the newly released Victorian coastal passenger lists, 1852 – 1924 — until Monday, August 29, 11:59 p.m. AEST (9:59 a.m. Eastern time).

Start your search on Findmypast.com.aus here.

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New Canadian way to search Find A Grave

Posted on August 28, 2016 by Gail Dever

There is a fairly new Find A Grave search page that makes it easy to narrow down the results when looking for Canadian gravesites and cemeteries.

Canadian flagDesigned by Ken Lange, the Canadian search page allows you to narrow down your search by name and province, or cemetery and province, and this certainly simplifies the research.

On the original Find A Grave search page, you can only narrow down to a country, with the exception of the United States where you can narrow down by state and county.

Last month, Lisa Louise Cooke wrote about Mr. Lange’s customized search page on her website, Genealogy Gems, and despite being a regular follower of her newsletters and website, I missed this gem.

The Find A Grave search page for Canada is here. I also added it to Cemeteries section in my Genealogy Research Toolbox for future use.

Thanks to Pat Ryan for sharing this tip on her blog, PastRelations Genealogy Family History.

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This week’s crème de la crème — August 27, 2016

Posted on August 27, 2016 by Gail Dever

Some of the bijoux I discovered this week.

Crème de la crème of genealogy blogsBlogs
A visit to Montreal by Margaret Dougherty on My Family History.

The Cry of the Banshee in North Burgess Township by Arlene Stafford Wilson on Arlene Stafford Wilson.

Ancestors in France by Dianne Nolin on Genealogy: Beyond the BMD.

FTM: the story continues by John D. Reid on Canada’s Anglo-Celtic Connections.

5 Ways to Jumpstart Your Genealogy When it has Stalled by Lorine McGinnis Schulze on Olive Tree Genealogy.

What You Might Be Missing in City Directories by Amy Johnson Crow on Amy Johnson Crow.

Giving Those Online Translators a Workout by Jacqi Stevens on A Family Tapestry.

Guide to Scanning Old Family Photos by Danny Barber on Family Tree Tips.

Promote Your Blog: A Genealogist’s Potluck Guide by Janice Brown on Cow Hampshire.

Articles
Weddings leave a long paper trail including marriage registrations, church documents and newspaper articles by Janice Nickerson, InsideToronto.

School archives outgrowing space by Chris Hussey, Brantford (Ontario) Expositor.

Alberta woman’s historic diary celebrates early homestead life by Jennifer Ivanov, Global News.

The Highlander immigrants who helped build America by Alison Campsie, The Scotsman, Edinburgh, Scotland.

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UBC digitizes historical map collection

Posted on August 26, 2016 by Gail Dever

The University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver has digitized a collection of historical maps and illustrations that span almost 350 years, and they are available online.

historical maps Canada University of British Columbia

Spilsbury, John, 1739-1769. 1761. “A New Map of North America from the Latest Discoveries, 1761.” M. Andrew McCormick Maps and Prints. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0023048. Image courtesy of the University of British Columbia Library, Vancouver.

The Andrew McCormick Maps and Prints Collection contains 175 maps and illustrations that document the history of early European maritime exploration, cartographic evolution, and settlement in North America. The documents were donated to UBC’s Rare Books and Special Collections by Dr. Andrew Quinn McCormick, a former faculty member in the Department of Ophthalmology.

Documenting more than three centuries of exploration, the maps offer an intriguing look at what explorers got right, as well as what they got wrong, in their quest to “discover” the New World.

The majority of the maps are of North America, primarily Canada, and global views.

Searching the collection
For me, the easiest way to search for items in this collection is to enter a keyword or keywords in the search box at the top of the page about the collection. I tested Canada and New France, and both searches produced interesting results.

Next, to narrow down the results of Canada (85 images) to pre-Confederation maps (40 images), I applied the Date Range filter in the left margin so that it ended in 1866.

After I clicked on a thumbnail image of a map or illustration, I zoom in to see details.

Copyright
If you plan to use any of the documents in this collection, note that the digitized images are provided for research and reference use only. Permission to publish, copy, or otherwise use these images must be obtained from UBC’s Rare Books & Special Collections.

Other map resources:
Historical maps of Manitoba
Three centuries of historical maps of Nova Scotia available online
Priceless map collection digitized

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Maine border town’s digitized newspapers may help Canadian genealogists

Posted on August 25, 2016 by Gail Dever

In response to the blog post, Historical Maine newspapers to be digitized, about the Maine State Library’s federal grant to digitize over 100,000 pages of historical newspapers, Peggy O’Kane from the library said the project includes collecting links to Maine newspapers that have already been digitized.

Ms. O’Kane wrote in particular about a collection of digitized newspapers that may help family historians researching their Canadian ancestors. “Canadian genealogists may be interested in the papers from Fort Fairfield, a town on the New Brunswick-Maine border.”

Nine Fort Fairfield newspapers, from 1863 to 1991, have been digitized and are available on the Digital Archives of the Fort Fairfield Public Library.

Fort Fairfield Maine digitized newspapers

Fort Fairfield is a small town in Eastern Maine across the border from New Brunswick.

The Fort Fairfield newspaper collection is easy to search by names and keywords, by year, by publication, and by year and publication. If there is any possibility one of your ancestors lived in the Fairfield area, or across the border in New Brunswick towns, such as Aroostook, Four Falls, Perth-Andover, or further, I recommend you do a quick search.

French-language newspaper
Further to the blog post about the digitization project, one member in the Genealogy à la carte Facebook group suggested we write to the state librarian to ask that Le Messager, the state’s oldest and longest-running French-language newspaper, be included in the digitization project to reflect the French Canadian history of Maine.

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Travelling from Brockville to Montreal 175 years ago

Posted on August 24, 2016 by Gail Dever

As family historians, we often try to immerse ourselves in our ancestors’ lives, trying to imagine how they lived, worked, and travelled. I certainly do.

A newspaper article about a trip taken by a 13-year-old in 1841 from Brockville, Ontario to Montreal, Quebec sheds some light on what it was like to travel in those days. Although it was a voyage of wonder, it took 39 hours. Today, the same distance on the highway is about a two-hour car ride.

The young man travelled by steamer on the St. Lawrence River. This is how he remembered his arrival in Montreal:

There are nobler rivers in the world but the St. Lawrence from Kingston surpasses them all for beauty and grandeur. The wonders of the city, the view from the mountain, the great Quebec steamers, the vessels “Atlantic,” “Tam O Shanter” and “Souter Johnnie,” were a continual feast to my eyes. After a two week stay in the city we returned to Perth with a feeling that I had seen more of the world than fell to the ordinary mortal.

 You can read the entire article about the trip in this blog post, A trip to Montreal in 1841.

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18th-century public market in Old Montreal this weekend

Posted on August 24, 2016 by Gail Dever

This Saturday and Sunday you’ll be able to take a trip back in time to be in the company of farmers, craftspeople, and entertainers as they lived in 1750, at the time of Montreal’s very first public marketplace.

The Pointe-à-Callière museum’s 18th-century public market in Old Montreal will be a festive marketplace, offering a variety of activities in an atmosphere unique to New France.

Along with storytellers, musicians, and artisans, the public market will play host to many activities involving about 100 re-enactors dressed in period costume. Children will have plenty of opportunity to dress up, discover French games from the era, and play soldier.

Learn more here.

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Free ScotlandsPeople credits

Posted on August 23, 2016 by Gail Dever

Note: It appears this offer for free credits may have been discontinued today, August 24. Still, there is no harm in trying.

Until August 27, you can use a voucher to take advantage of ScotlandsPeople’s offer to receive 20 free credits.

To order your free credits, go to the Shopping Basket on ScotlandsPeople. Click on purchase more Scotlands People credits. Then, enter summer16 in the Voucher Code box, and click on Proceed to payment.

Don’t worry about the Number of Credits box. With the voucher, you are only ordering 20 free credits. These credits will be available for 8,761 hours.

Note that the ScotlandsPeople website will be unavailable from Wednesday, September 7, at 23:59 (BST). This is due to essential work, which is expected to be completed and service resumed by Monday, September 23. Check Facebook or Twitter for updates.

Thanks to Dianne Seale Nolin who shared this tip on her Genealogy: Beyond the BMD Facebook group.

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Female descendants of Bounty mutineers wanted for DNA testing

Posted on August 23, 2016 by Gail Dever

A collection of hair taken from 18th-century pigtails and stored for more than a century in an old tobacco tin has arrived in London for analysis that could prove it belonged to some of the sailors responsible for the mutiny on the HMS Bounty. To confirm the pigtails did indeed come from the mutineers, the scientists are looking for living women who are descended, through the maternal line, from the mutineers’ mothers or grandmothers.

Mutiny on the Bounty

The hair is believed to be from seven of the nine mutineers, and three of their female Polynesian companions, who cast Captain Bligh and the 18 crew members who remained loyal to him adrift on the south Pacific in a small boat in April 1789. The mutineers sailed to Tahiti and then on to establish a new home on Pitcairn Island, where their descendants live to this day.

Scientists at King’s College London hope to extract mitochondrial DNA. They have agreed to collaborate with the Pitcairn Islands Study Center in California in a two-part study of the hair: 1. The hair itself; 2. A maternal genealogical study will be attempted, seeking living women who are in a maternal line from the mothers and or grandmothers of the mutineers.

Mutineers’ mothers
As part of the research, the Pitcairn Islands Study Center is searching for the name of the mother of each of the Pitcairn-settling mutineers for the maternal genealogical study:

  • Edward Young, who was born on St. Kitts in the West Indies, and was a nephew of Sir George Young.
  • James Mills, who was born in Aberdeen, United Kingdom.
  • Isaac Martin, who was born either in Philadelphia, US, or in Philadelphia, a small English community near Durham, England.
  • William McCoy, whose birthplace is unknown, but it is known that he worked in a brewery in Glasgow, Scotland. His family name is spelled “Mickoy” in the muster book of the Bounty.
  • Matthew Quintal was a Cornishman from Padstow.
  • John Adams, from Hackney, in London, an orphan brought up in a poorhouse, who used a fictitious name “Alexander Smith” in mustering onto Bounty, but after the visit of the Topaz to Pitcairn in 1808 used his birth name, John Adams.
  • John Williams, although he put down Stepney in east London as his home, he grew up in Guernsey and spoke French.
  • William Brown was born in Leicester in the east midlands of England.
  • Fletcher Christian was born on September 25, 1764, at Moorland Close near Cockermouth in Cumberland on the northwest coast of England. His mother was Ann Christian, wife of Charles Christian.

The Pitcairn Island Study Center can be contacted through its website.

More about this story is in The Guardian and on the Pitcairn Island Study Centre Facebook page.

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