Breaking Down the Barriers – Hands-On Genealogy Workshop

Heritage Mississauga and the Halton Peel Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society are pleased to present Breaking Down the Barriers, on Saturday November 3rd, 10 am-4 pm, the fourth in their series of Genealogy Days.

This session is a hands-on workshop for those who have hit brick walls in their research. An esteemed panel of three professional workshop facilitators with over 80 years combined experience in genealogy research will provide personal consultations to participants.

Fawne Stratford-Devai, Dorothy Kew, and Jane Watt will be the special speakers.

This is the exciting part of the announcement - For just $10 per ½ hour session participants will meet personally with a consultant who will help them break down barriers to finding their ancestor. Call to reserve your seat today, space is limited. Reservations must be prepaid

The workshop will be held at Historic Robinson Adamson House, located at 1921 Dundas St. W., Mississauga, ON L5K 1R2. You must call 905.828.8411 ext. "0" to reserve your seat. Space is limited.

For more information, please go to www.heritagemississauga.com for Heritage Mississauga, or the Halton-Peel Branch of the OGS at www.halinet.on.ca/sigs/ogshp

OGS "Families" – February 2012 Issue

Photo – A cover photo by Janet Iles of the Greenwood Cemetery in Owen Sound, which was once known as the “People's Cemetery”. Read more about its history in “On the Cover” on page 34 of this issue.

The Ontario Genealogical Society's journal, Families (of which I am the editor) was released in February of this year.

As usual, there were two themes to this issue – Ontario Cemeteries, and Ontario Heritage.

Cemeteries

The excerpt was from the book, A Better Place: Death and Burial in Nineteenth-Century Ontario, by Susan Smart in which Chapter 6: The Establishment of Cemeteries in Three Towns (the three towns were Peterborough, Kingston, and Niagara-on-the-Lake) was reprinted in full. Plus, a book review was written about the book on page 32.

To continue the cemetery theme, two more articles about Ontario - Rambles Around Some Halton-Peel Cemeteries by Dorothy Kew, in which she gives an excellent review (with photos) of cemeteries of Halton-Peel, and an article, Changing Gravestone Motifs in Quinte and Beyond by Peter Johnson, in which he describes the “changing motif” on gravestones through the centuries – and there are fourteen photos in the paper!

Ontario Heritage

Three papers were published in acknowledgement of Ontario Heritage Day in February, and they were - Family History of a Caribbean Canadian by Dr. Jerome Teelucksingh, in which he traces the life of Tom Ashby; Why and When Had Mary Ann and Joseph Whiteley Moved to Grey County by Catherine Whiteley, in which she traces the life of George Forbes; and Hunting for Hidden History: How Slavery Came to the Town of York by Hilary Dawson, in which she write an account of slavery in York Township.

One other paper, Letters Home: Upper Canada to England by Dr. Bill Mills, give a very gripping account of a homesick Christopher Stokes writing home to his family in Nottinghamshire, England.

Families is available only to members of the Ontario Genealogical Society. There are two membership packages available – a six month term for $35.00, or a full year for $60.00. Memberships are available at www.ogs.on.ca/membership.php

Full issues of Families, including an index, is also available for the years 1962 to 2006 through the “Members Only” portal at

www.ogs.on.ca/membersonly/mem_sign_in.php.