Showing posts with label Ancestors. Show all posts

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Family History Library - FREE Classes for March 2015!

FamilySearch.org is at it again – they are offering FREE classes this month, and I am going to take the first class (since I have relatives in the New England States) on March 7: New England States Research Series. The classes include “Town and Vital Records” at 9:30 a.m., “Probate, Land, and Tax Records” at 10:45 a.m., and “Pilgrims Progress and Migration Patterns” at 1:00 p.m.

The other classes include those given in Spanish for Hispanic Records and they are -

March 7: Arbol Familiar Para Principiantes Webinar is a class for Spanish-speaking guests and starts at 1:00 p.m.

March 14: Hispanic Research Methodology: A Case Study Webinar. This class starts at 1:00 p.m.

March 21: Hispanic Research Series Webinar. This series is for Spanish-speaking patrons. The classes include “Conozca los sitios asociados de FamilySearch: Inscripcion y findmypast,” “Conozca los sitios asociados de FamilySearch: Ancestry y MyHeritage,” and “Como utilizar Mejor el Wiki FamilySearch.” These classes start at 1:00, 2:00, and 3:00 p.m

Webinars can be accessed by going to FamilySearch.org, and then click Wiki,then Family History Library, then 2.2 Live Online Classes for details.

These classes and workshops are designed to help individuals and families find their ancestors and teach others family history techniques.

Meanwhile, more information has added to the name index of Canadian headstone inscriptions courtesy of CanadianHeadstones which is a family history database of records and images from Canada's cemeteries. Volunteers capture images of headstones in a cemetery and upload them to the site.

To search the site, go to https://familysearch.org/search/collection/2290953

It’s the ONLY news blog of its kind in Canada!

It has been a regular post every Monday morning since

April 23, 2012

Archive CD Books Canada has a new website

Great news for Canadian genealogy!

The Archive CD Books Canada website has returned to a new website, and it looks fabulous!

It is easy to see exactly what they have to offer, and you get a first-hand look at the products that they have onsite.

So congratulations Malcolm and Chris Moody on their new website, and stop by to see if there is anything that you would like in Canadian books!

Remember to support out Canadian booksellers. They, and societies, are the backbone of out genealogy community.

And subscribe to their newsletter. It has regular news on their new products. As Malcolm says 'Remember this Newsletter is published for you so if you think we're missing something important drop me a line to Malcolm@ArchiveCDBooks.ca'.

The website is at www.ArchiveCDBooks.ca

It’s the ONLY news blog of its kind in Canada!

It has been a regular post every Monday morning since

April 23, 2012.

Saturday, February 28, 2015

Crowd sourcing transcription - is it useful?

Everyone knows that people have been busy at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) digitizing the service files of the men and women who enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) during the First World War.

Now, it is disclosed that 1,000 files (which is a small sample) of the medical records section of the service files - the form of temperature charts, dental records and medical case sheets has been transcribed and given to the public.

Read about it at http://blog.muninn-project.org/node/79

The press release says that “The transcribed data generated has value for researchers in handwriting recognition, and archival and medical institutions’. What about genealogists – we use these papers in our research too!

So how useful is this form of transcription? Is crowd sourcing transcription a good way to do it? How accurate will it be? They say it will be verified by computer.

Kingston Penitentiary inmate mug shots

The Kingston Penitentiary was located in Kingston, Ontario, and the penitentiary produced a series of Kingston Penitentiary Inmate History Description Ledgers from 1913 to 1916 in which there is detailed informant on each of the prisoners.

The ledger includes frontal and profile mug shots, the inmate’s name, alias, age, place of birth, height, weight, complexion, eye colour, hair colour, distinctive physical marks, occupation, sentence, date of sentence, place of sentence, crime committed, and remarks of authorities.

The ledger books are held by the Library and Archives Canada.

The ledger books are now on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/lac-bac/sets/72157649959725467/#

Information on The Kingston Penitentiary is at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Penitentiary

It’s the ONLY news blog of its kind in Canada!

It has been a regular post every Monday morning since

April 23, 2012.

Friday, February 27, 2015

Day-long seminar at the BCGS

On Saturday, May 9, 2015, Jill Morelli, an sole proprietor of Cascade Research Services, will present talks at a day-long meeting of the 2015 British Columbia Genealogical Society (BSGS) Genealogy & Family History Seminar.

She will be giving talks on The “Push” and the “Pull”: Emigration Decision-Making in the 19th Century and From Scandinavia to the United States in the mid 1800’s: two case studies – one Norwegian and one Swedish – but interesting for anyone with European roots.

Another talk will be I Found My Family on the Internet! Now what do I do? – explore four major Internet locations and learn what to look for to determine whether it is worth using, and analyzing the records.

Doors open at 10:00 am / Seminar 10:30 am to 4:30 pm, and it will take place at South Arm United Church, 11051 No. 3 Road (corner of No. 3 Road & Steveston Highway) Richmond, BC.

Refreshments and lunch will be included with your tickets.

Early Bird Prices until April 15, 2015 – Tickets $44.00 for BCGS & Affiliate [Society] Members; $55.00 for non-members.

After April 15th, the prices increase to $55.00 for BCGS & Affiliate (Society) Members;
$65.00 for non-members.

To register, please contact Susan Snalam at 604-273-8209, email domers4@shaw.ca OR Eunice Robinson at 604-596-2811, email eunice@dccnet.com, and then send your cheque, made out to the BCGS, at PO Box 88054, Lansdowne Mall, Richmond, BC V6X 3T6 or pay at BCGS meetings.

The BCGS Boutique will be there too! You can vist the Boutique is at http://www.bcgs.ca/?page_id=23

The website of the BCGS is at http://www.bcgs.ca/

It’s the ONLY news blog of its kind in Canada!

It has been a regular post every Monday morning since April 23, 2012.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Do you have Yukon ancestors?

If you have Yukon ancestors, and wonder if there are records to research. There are, and they are at the Yukon Archives in Whitehorse.

They hold manuscript collections that include diaries, correspondence, draft articles or books of persons engaged in exploration, transportation, the arts, politics, and etc.

Plus there are photographs, slides, postcards, stereocards and negatives, as well as movies and sound recordings onsite.

To go to the archives, go to http://www.tc.gov.yk.ca/archives.html

It’s the ONLY news blog of its kind in Canada!

It has been a regular post every Monday morning since April 23, 2012.

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

OGS eWeekly Update is FREE!

The Ontario Genealogical Society (OGS) has many in-house publications, for instance, their journal Families, their regular newsletter NewsLEAF, and e-Announce which is available to their members. But they also have OGS eWeekly Update which is also available to the general public, and it is made available every Saturday.

It includes news on OGS matters, updates on genealogy initiatives and events, and heritage information from across the province.

The OGS eWeekly Update is available to anyone with an email address and you do not need to be an OGS member to subscribe.

You can subscribe to receive the OGS eWeekly Update by filling in the subscription form at http://multibriefs.com/optin.php?ogs (Hint, for the Company field, type “OGS.”), or if you can contribute content to the OGS eWeekly Update please contact ed@ogs.on.ca.

It’s the ONLY news blog of its kind in Canada!

It has been a regular post every Monday morning since April 23, 2012.

So how is your genealogy?

For genealogists, these are words to live by - Don't let the internet be your first stop when researching your family history. And the words are written by someone who should know - the former executive director of the Ontario Genealogical Society Dr. Fraser Dunford. These thoughts are in a column for the Peterborough This Week online newspaper published 23 February 2015.

He goes on to say that If you use only the internet, you will have a rather pathetic family history. And a confused one, I might add.

The first objective in genealogy is to properly identify the people involved, and this means that you have to have the correct people. And this means you must do more genealogy than that offered by online databases.

H ends his column with these words of wisdom - Remember that oral information has to be verified. It will tell you what to look for but does not excuse you from looking.

So how is your genealogy? Have you done all that you can to make sure that you have put the correct person in your genealogy? Did you check those family stories against the historical record in the library and archives?

The full article is here http://www.mykawartha.com/opinion-story/5443963-don-t-let-the-internet-be-your-first-stop-when-researching-your-family-

It’s the ONLY news blog of its kind in Canada!

It has been a regular post every Monday morning since April 23, 2012.

Need help in finding your Canadian Ancestors?

Michael D. from Florida says that“

'Ms. Elizabeth Lapointe is an experienced professional with a broad-based detailed knowledge of the available genealogical documentary resources, together with an understanding of the colonial and modern history, economy, and sociology of the French and English aspects of Canada. For a client, she is both a teacher and a guide into the field of genealogy'.

If you do, go to Elizabeth Lapointe Research Services and see how I can help you find that elusive Canadian ancestor.

Great service. Reasonably priced. Website: www.elrs.biz

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Glossary of Newfoundland terms

Ever wonder what bye-boats are? What a fishing room is? Or a Planter?

You may have come across these terms when you were doing Newfoundland and Labrador genealogy, and were unfamiliar with them, but these are words that have been used in Newfoundland speech over the years.

Now there is a glossary of terms on the Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage site at http://www.heritage.nf.ca/glossary.html which can help you.

Of course, you should also visit Newfoundland’s Grand Banks at http://ngb.chebucto.org/, and Family History of Society of Newfoundland and Labrador at http://www.fhsnl.ca/

By the way, a bye-boat is an inshore fishing boats owned and operated by fishers annually migrating as passengers from England, a Fishing room is the waterfront area from which a fishery was conducted (and each family had their own 'room' as soon as they arrived from the British Isles or Europe in the spring), and a Planter was a settler in Newfoundland, rather than a migratory fisherman, who supported himself through the inshore boat fishery.

It’s the ONLY news blog of its kind in Canada!

It has been a regular post every Monday morning since April 23, 2012.

Ancestry.ca update: Canada Quaker Yearly Meeting Minutes, 1836-1988

This message has come in from Ancestry -

'Today, Ancestry has launched a fascinating new collection of Canadian Quaker records, the Canada Quaker Yearly Meeting Minutes, 1836-1988, VI collection, a database containing records form Quaker meetings in Canada.

The Quakers, a longstanding religious society of friends that believed in a strong, personal experience with God, would hold yearly meetings with the top members of the society. This database is made up of more than 184,000 records from several Quaker meetings that took place in Canada. The records come from the Canadian Yearly Meeting Archives in Newmarket, Ontario.

The collection contains a large assortment of records including membership registers, marriage records, meeting minutes, removal certificates, death records and disciplinary records. Details within the records include name, date of birth, date of death, names of parents and spouses, event dates, witnesses and more. A large majority of these records come from Ontario, however there are records from other provinces and even a few from areas in the United States as some of these areas fell under Canada’s jurisdiction at the time.

I spent sometime today going through the records, and I agree, they do appear to be very inclusive and detailed. Even if you don’t know if your ancestor was a Quaker, you should check the records to see if he/she is there – because he/she might be, or he/she may have had ties to the Quaker community'.

The website is at http://search.ancestry.ca/search/db.aspx?dbid=60521&geo_a=r&geo_s=us&geo_t=ca&o_iid=41015&o_lid=41015&o_sch=Web+Property

It’s the ONLY news blog of its kind in Canada!

It has been a regular post every Monday morning since April 23, 2012.

Saturday, February 21, 2015

UPDATE: OGS Conference – Interview No 3

Patti Mordasewicz, Conference Chair of the OGS Conference in Barrie, Ontario interviews Kirsty Gray, known to many people around the world as one of the founder of The Surname Society, and as a founder member and Chair (now Secretary) of the Society for One-Place Studies.

She will be holding a workshop at the conference (plus two lectures), and will be the keynote speaker.

Her workshop will be on surname studies, and the keynote address on Friday evening will be entitled If I Could Turn Back Time.

To view the YouTube interview, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGnIGx8xkVk

And to review the other interviews on this blog, you can go to the following websites -

Interview No 1 with Thomas MacEntee and Dr. Janet Few at http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2015/02/update-ogs-conference-interviews.html

Interview No 2 with Dr. Maurice Gleeson at http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2015/02/another-ogs-interview.html

The OGS website is at http://www.ogs.on.ca/

The Conference Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/OntarioGenealogicalSocietyConference?ref=hl

Check the Canadian Week in Review every Monday morning for the latest in Genealogy, Heritage, and History news in Canada.

If you missed this week’s edition, it is at http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2015/02/canadfian-news-in-review-16-february.html

It’s the ONLY news blog of its kind in Canada!

It has been a regular post every Monday morning since

.. April 23, 2012.

Friday, February 20, 2015

Want to see Canadian industrial artwork?

Today I came across some beautiful Canadian artwork that was put out there in form of posters from the Empire Marketing Board (EMB) that existed in the county from 1926 to 1933.

It was set up by the government to promote intra-Empire trade and to persuade consumers to 'Buy Empire'. It was later replaced by the Imperial Preference which was a proposed system of tariffs ot free-trade agreements between the countries of the British Empire.

There were more than 800 poster designs produced and displayed in train stations, schools, shops and factories. The EMB visited schools, managed a library, produced around 100 films, as well as organized lectures, radio broadcasts and exhibitions.

Now some of the poster has been put online at the LAC Flickr page at https://www.flickr.com/photos/lac-bac/sets/72157649863392650/#

Milo, Alberta Library Archives

The Milo Library Archives in Alberta has been working to put online their inventory of all historical documents.

There are plenty of descriptions of what has been done in the village over the years, including background information on groups like the Milo and District Agricultural Society, the Milo Ice Committee and the village newspaper called the Canopener.

News is that the efforts to continue digitizing and cataloguing the Milo and area history are ongoing. There are hopes to next tackle Milo area community organizations from Queenstown to Majorville, as well as schools and Lake McGregor.

You can visit www.albertaonrecord.ca/milo-library-archives to look through all the material that has been uploaded so far.

Congratulations to Milo for taking this iniatitive, and good luck in seeing this project through to the end.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Another OGS society joins Facebook

The Lambton County Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society (OGS) has joined Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/918188561527694/

There is a survey for you to take at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=vsBJxXy2ulbJTTdms0frNfOuvrJ1CvjHYqEjNI9LRPI%3d to help the Society plan its website to get the needs of the people who have ancestors in Lambton County.

The website for the Society is at http://www.lambton.ogs.on.ca/

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

LAC Update: Digitization of First World War Service Files

As of today, 125,954 of 640,000 files are available online at the Soldiers of the First World War website at Library and Archives Canada. So they are s-l-o-w-l-y making progress.

You can go to http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/first-world-war/first-world-war-1914-1918-cef/Pages/canadian-expeditionary-force.aspx to see if your ancestor is there.

Another OGS interview

Shirley Sturdevant, former president of the Ontario Genealogical Soiciety (OGS) has interviewed Dr. Maurice Gleeson from England who is a psychiatrist, a pharmaceutical physician, and genetic genealogy convert to genealogy. He will be the main speaker at the OGS conference which will be held at Barrie at the end on May 2015.

He runs several DNA projects at FamilyTreeDNA, has several blogs, and has a YouTube channel devoted to videos on genetic genealogy with the aim of making the subject understandable too all.

He will give a workshop on DNA on Friday, and his after-dinner talk on Saturday evening will be entitled Genealogy 2020 – All Aboard!

The interview is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBRVUZ5Skg4&feature=youtu.be

The OGS website is at http://www.ogs.on.ca/

The conference Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/OntarioGenealogicalSocietyConference?ref=hl

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

PEI kicks off Samuel Holland 250 lecture series Thursday

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the completion of Samuel Holland’s map of Prince Edward Island by holding a series of lectures and educational activities.

The highlight of the Samuel Holland 250 Commemorations will be the restoration and display of Samuel Holland's original 1765 map of Prince Edward Island which will be part of an exhibit at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery later this year.

The first lecture will take place on Thursday 19 February 2015 at 7 p.m. in Room 21C of the Charlottetown Centre, Prince of Wales Campus of Holland College. The presenters will be island authors and historians Boyde Beck and Georges Arsenault, along with Aubrey Bell, a local gallery owner who specializes in antique maps.

If there is a snowstorm, the tentative date for this lecture will be Thursday 26 February 2015 at 7 p.m.

If you go to the site at http://samuelholland250pei.ca/, you will be able to take the Samuel Holland quiz, get the answer to What’s my Lot?, and read the Recounting the Holland Survey.

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Family History Library - FREE Classes for March 2015!

Archive CD Books Canada has a new website

Saturday, February 28, 2015

Crowd sourcing transcription - is it useful?

Kingston Penitentiary inmate mug shots

Friday, February 27, 2015

Day-long seminar at the BCGS

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Do you have Yukon ancestors?

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

OGS eWeekly Update is FREE!

So how is your genealogy?

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Glossary of Newfoundland terms

Ancestry.ca update: Canada Quaker Yearly Meeting Minutes, 1836-1988

Saturday, February 21, 2015

UPDATE: OGS Conference – Interview No 3

Friday, February 20, 2015

Want to see Canadian industrial artwork?

Milo, Alberta Library Archives

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Another OGS society joins Facebook

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

LAC Update: Digitization of First World War Service Files

Another OGS interview

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

PEI kicks off Samuel Holland 250 lecture series Thursday

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the completion of Samuel Holland’s map of Prince Edward Island by holding a series of lectures and educational activities.

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