FREE! findmypast website

Word has come to us that findmypast will be free this weekend from midday on Friday, September 18th (BST) to midday Monday, September 21st (BST)*.

They have a collection of over 4 billion records and 11 million newspaper pages online, and they will be absolutely free!

You will be able to explore your family’s international history at www.findmypast.com

Happy Researching!!

* British Standard Time

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

If you missed last week’s edition, it is at http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2015/09/i-have-come-across-following-canadian.html
 
It’s the ONLY news blog of its kind in Canada!

Archive CD Books Canada Inc. joins FindMyPast to bring Canadian Content online

Malcolm Moody has written to tell us that he has reached an agreement between his company - Archives CD Books Canada Inc. and the FindMyPast people in England, which will “make the content of a large number of digitized, genealogical, and historical,  document “on line” for consultation through the excellent data delivery services of FindMyPast.

The newly available Archive CD Books Canada collection consists of over 200 documents yielding almost 70,000 pages of select information.  “We carefully chose the documents we digitize on the basis of their usefulness to Family Historians, Genealogists, and Historians” says Malcolm Moody, the president of Archive CD Books Canada.  “We believe people will appreciate the care we take to provide accurate, clear, readable, images of every printed page and to hand edit the (invisible) OCRed text to provide researchers with the best chance of finding every occurrence of their searched for words.” Continued Moody, “We also make sure that all illustrations and maps in our source documents are visible in the digitized edition and are included in the correct location, no mater what size they are.”

Malcolm says that you can still go to his site at Archives CD Books Canada Inc. if you want to buy the complete book, but you can go to FindMyPast if you just want a page or portion of a book that has been digitized .

The collection can be accessed on FindMyPast website (subscription site) at

http://search.findmypast.com/search/canada-documents, or you can go to the Archive CD Books Canada Inc. web site at http://www.ArchiveCDBooks.ca

FindMyPast Ignores Canada

The British site FindMyPast.com is starting to begin an International Records web site.

They will include international records from England, Ireland, Scotland, Australia and Wales. Where is Canada! Canada is among the missing.

When will this county be included? There are lots of records here that could go on their site.

For those who want to search the new records, there is an introductory offer for the World Subscription of $4.95/month (U.S. funds) instead of the normal $20.83/month.

Go to findmypast.com

Canadian Emigration: Parliamentary Papers of 1826

The following press releases was received from FindMyPast, and it says, in part -

“This parliamentary paper publishes the correspondence and extensive supporting documents of the British government with the Governor-General of Canada concerning the settlement of poor Irish in the Newcastle District in 1826, or 'Mr. Robinson’s Emigrants' as they became known. This was the result of a Commons request to be furnished information on the settlement as it had been publicly funded.

The official title of this parliamentary travel and migration record is:

Return of the Assessed Value of the Townships in the Newcastle District in Western Canada, which were settled by Pauper Emigrants from Ireland, between the years 1825 and 1828 at the public expense: Of the number of various Emigration Societies formed in Canada in 1840, by Canadian Proprietors desirous of Settling Emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland upon their Estates. (1848)”.

Initially the Governor-General just sent updated valuations of the relevant townships (Ashpodel, Douro, Dummer, Emily, Ennismore, Ops, Otonabee and Smith) which had since be designated as part of the District of Colbourne. But following further demands for information, he sent a detailed breakdown of every plot settled by Irish paupers in 1826 by Peter Robinson.

The details listed include:

- Name of the 1826 settler
- Number in the settler’s family
- Lot number
- Concession
- Acreage
- Number of acres cleared by 1847
- Number of horses and horned cattle on the plot
- Name of present occupants on lot
- Relationship of occupants to settler
- Other critical pieces of information

In total, around 260 plots are covered, giving details of over 700 people. While this is a short publication, it is an essential migration resource for those who became known as the Robinson Irish settlers, and indeed, for anyone in Southern Ontario with an Irish family history.

The information is at http://www.findmypast.ie/