Ancestry added four new collections on Monday, including one held at Library and Archives Canada.
Canada, Orders in Council Exit Visas Including War Brides, 1942-1946 contains requests for exit visas for women and children who planned to leave Canada during the Second World War, from 1939 to 1945. During that period, Canadians needed government authorization to leave the country by ship if they weren’t in the military.
It appears that most, if not all, of the women who asked to leave Canada were Canadian citizens. They left for the UK, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere in the world.
While holding only 1,242 records, this collection is intriguing. For example, one record states the reason a woman wanted to leave Canada was to “Travel to British Isles to Marry Norwegian Citizen.”
When fully digitized, the UK, Military Service Records, 1939-1959 collection will contain more than two million service records for British infantry service members discharged as over age between 1939 and 1959. As of now, there are almost 250,000 digitized records available to search.
Many of the records are military attestation forms that contain personal information for each soldier. The collection also includes records of those who had joined the British Army Reserves prior to the Second World War and then saw service in the conflict.
Digitization of this collection is ongoing, and additional records will be added as they are digitized.
The collection, Westminster, England, World War II Records, 1939-1945, contains civil defence records produced in the city of Westminster, London, England, during the Second World War from 1939 to 1945. The more than 150,000 records primarily relate to the work of the Westminster report centres — one at City Hall and the other at Victoria Library. The collection includes employment records, incident reports, rationing records, and personal papers.
Free access to these UK records and nearly seven billion wartime records will be available in the lead up to Remembrance Day, running from November 6 to 12.
The fourth collection Ancestry added is Ireland, Customs Officer Pension Index, 1806-1831. This collection contains an index of information about pensions paid to customs officers in Ireland between 1806 and 1831.
Customs officers were responsible for collecting duties on imported goods from ships arriving in Ireland and combating smuggling. The officers were public servants who were eligible for government pensions if they became disabled or when they retired. The collection doesn’t include images of the original documents, which is unfortunate. Still, if your relative is in this collection, the transcribed information can be a good find.
