The Archive CD Books Project

I have just received "The Archive CD Books Project" newsletter that Malcolm Moody, and his wife, Chris, send out each month. I look forward to seeing where they have been, what books they have scanned lately, and what events they will attend in the future. Their website is www.archivecdbooks.ca.

They have oodles of CDs for sales. They are not only very nice people, but are quite knowledgeable about Canadian and United Kingdom genealogy.

The project began in the United Kingdom in 2000, and Malcolm started the Canadian branch in 2003. They have been open for business since March 2004.

The newsletter is FREE (with lots of news), and you can subscribe at books@archivecdbooks.ca. They also have a Facebook page, where you can view pictures of the Kitchener Public Library’s First (Annual) Genealogy Fair - www.facebook.com/pages/Archive-CD-Books-Canada/99339348650.

Disclaimer: This is a business site, and while I have never received payment nor special consideration for this blog, I should mention that I have known Malcolm and Chris for a number of years, having attended the same conferences together, and as a customer.


Tomorrow's Post - The York Branch "Ancestors" newsletter

Bourgeois Family/Histoire de Bourgeois

The website http://histoire-de-bourgeois.ca has developed a genealogical history, Histoire de Bourgeois - the genealogy and stories of Bourgeois' of Acadian descent. They are also have it on  Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=120627851304544

Marc Bourgeois has been working on the Bourgeois Family for the past ten years, and he started researching when his mother asked him if he could look into their roots.

Marc says that “Although it took me a while to discover my Acadian roots once I discovered them, I began a multi-year project (now eight years and still going) to document as many of the Bourgeois descendants of my Acadian Ancestor as possible and to make that research available to other family historians via the web”.

He goes onto says that “The result is the “the-bourgeois-story.ca” site (bilingual) which documents over 13,000 Bourgeois’ from across north America, descendants of Jacques Jacob Bourgeois and Jeanne Trahan, married in 1643 in Port-Royal, Acadia. The site now has over 330 registered users (growing daily), and gets over a thousand hits a week”.

This is a bilingual site (F/E), and as Marc can tell, it is “the largest and most well documents (over 160,000 citations) Bourgeois family related site available on the Internet”.

So if you are related in any way to the Bourgeois Family, use the contact page at http://histoire-de-bourgeois.ca/suggest.php.

Tomorrow's Blog - The Archive CD Books Project

Borders and Bridges:1812 to 2012 Conference

News Flash!

The program of the 2012 OGS Conference "Borders and Bridges:1812 to 2012" to be held in Kingston, Ontario the 1st to the 3rd of June has just been posted at http://www.ogs.on.ca/conference2012/program.

Details of the registration will be posted December 1^st.

Historical Online Newspapers in Canada

I was having an email conversation the other day with a friend out in BC, and she was saying what a nice newspaper collection that the University of British Columbia has accumulated.

It got me thinking about newspapers and their importance in finding out local history of a place. So I put together this list.

Here is my attempt at summarizing the sites of digitized newspapers on the Internet -

British Columbia Historical Newspapers Project - www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/2011/11/07/historical-b-c-newspapers-digitized-by-ubc library FREE! The site contains more than 45,000 pages of 24 historical BC newspapers. The newspapers date from 1865 to 1924.

Nova Scotia Historical Newspapers Online - http://librariesns.ca/content/newspaper-digitization FREE! The Halifax at Nova Scotia Archives & Records Management, and in Sydney at the Beaton Institute, Cape Breton University has put on the Internet over 19,000 pages of digitized newspaper content from sixteen newspapers dating from 1769 to 1991.

OurOntario.ca Community Newspapers - http://ink.ourontario.ca FREE! Thirty newspapers are digitized, with a special emphasis on historical newspapers from Kingston, Ontario.

Peel’s Praries Provinces (Newspapers) - http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/newspapers FREE! Over 80 western historical newspapers have been digitized.

The Early Alberta Newspaper Collection - www.ourfutureourpast.ca/newspapr FREE! Our Future, Our Past: The Alberta Heritage Digitization Project is a project from the University of Calgary. The collection contains editions from 1880 to 1950.

Manitoba Newspapers - http://manitobia.ca/content/en/newspaperslist FREE!  Contains over 30 newspapers. You can search by years and months, with some newspapers going up to the present-day.

Connecting Canada: Canada’s Multicultural Newspapers Beta Website - www.connectingcanadians.org/?q=en/content/home FREE! The collection contains Croatian, Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Polish, Serbian, Ukrainian, Serbo-Croatian, Latvian, and Lithuanian newspapers.

French-Canadian Newspapers: An Essential Historical Source (1808-1919) - www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/canadian-newspapers-french/index-e.html  FREE! These are 230 newspaper titles from French-Canadian communities across Canada.

Digital collection: Newspapers - www.banq.qc.ca/collections/collection_numerique/index.html?language_id=1&categorie=6 -
FREE! These newspaper are at Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, and are published in French only.

There may have been some collections that I have missed. If you come across some other collections that have been put on the Internet and are FREE!, please let me know at genealogycanada@aol.com.

Tomorrow's Post - Histoire de Bourgeois - the genealogy and stories of Bourgeois' of Acadian descent

New/Improved Canadian Websites and Blogs Week 13

Here are some of the websites and blogs that I have come across the week ending November 27, 2011 -

Welcome to Bill Gladstone - www.billgladstone.ca NEW! Bill Gladstone is a Toronto-based journalist, author, publisher, public speaker, and noted genealogist.

Oakville Memories - www.oakville-memories.info Although Bob Hughes hasn’t posted for a year, the posts that are online, and the names in those posts, may help someone with their ancestry.

Looking4Ancestors - www.looking4ancestors.com  Started by Kathryn Lake started in 2008, she blogs on a consistent basis about genealogy in general.

Murmurd's Franco-American and Québec Genealogy - www.murmurd.blogspot.com An "AMERICAN in QUÉBEC"!, the blogger has been actively researching her French-Canadian roots in Canada.

The Kelowna & District Genealogical Society - www.kdgs.ca Their blog has been online since 2008, and they regularly update their upcoming events, as well as changes in their resources.

Welcome to the Library and Archives Canada Blog! - http://thediscoverblog.com NEW! A four-month trial blog has been initiated by the LAC for the staff to post articles of interest to all researchers.

Recipes and Recollections: Treats and Tales from Our Mother's Kitchen - http://staffordwilson.com
NEW! Arlene Stafford-Wilson is an author who grew up in Lanark County, and has produced a book about her mother and the recipes she used in the home where Arlene grew up.

The Jehan and Perrine Terriot Family Website - www.terriau.org A bilingual site (F/E) that is the website of the Terriot Acadian Family Society.

Welcome to the Leaves of my Tree - www.robinsancestry.com Robin Wallace has created this most entertaining website where she list over 2500 names of ancestors.

SaskResearch - www.saskresearch.com $ This website will help you to find your Saskatchewan ancestors.

Tomorrow Post: Historical Newspapers in Canada.

Tweedsmuir Histories – Elgin County

Over the past number of years, Elgin County Archives has been digitizing the Tweedsmuir Histories of Elgin County.

When they first started at the Archives, there were 27 Tweedsmuir History volumes containing about 5000 pages. As they continued, the number of volumes increased to 50, covering over 7000 pages.

The people of the individual Women’s Institutes became the “unofficial archivists” of Ontario counties and districts. They constructed “scrapbooks”, and they present information about oral histories and photographs.

Looking at these books, there are “Family Trees”, “Pioneer Histories”, the history of schools, churches, businesses, and individual family histories. I don’t think that there are any such histories in the rest of Canada that can come up to this level of history written by ordinary people. It is, as their website says, “an outstanding resource on the history of rural Ontario”.

The counties covered are - Aldborough, Dunwich, Southwold, Yarmouth, Malahide, South Dorchester, Bayham, East Elgin, and West Elgin.

You can read them at www.elgin.ca/ElginCounty/CulturalServices/Archives/tweedsmuir/index.html.

There is also a Photo Gallery at www.elgin.ca/ElginCounty/CulturalServices/Archives/tweedsmuir/aldborough2.html

It was announced early in November that the Elgin County Archives received a donation of $6,000 from the Elgin County Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society. This donation will help complete the project, which is expected to be completed between January and May of 2012.

Tomorrow's Post - New/Improved Canadian Websites and Blogs Week 13

“Past Tents” – November Newsletter

“Past Tents”, the newsletter of the Thunder Bay Branch of the OGS, recently issued their November 2011 edition.

The Branch has a very interesting and eye-catching first page of their newsletter. Four times a year they highlight an “Ancestor of the Month”, and this month they are featuring Marion Belle Elliot.

Marion was born in 1898 in Morewood (near Ottawa), the daughter of Marion Henderson and Francis Elliot. She taught school in Thunder Bay, and although she wasn’t spoken of as a genealogist, she spent her summer going around Canada visiting relatives, and leaving the lists and pictures of their relatives.

The column, "Research Article", mentions going to a community called Tum Tum in Washington State where Paul McAlister found the tombstone of Robert Elsworth McAlistor. An interesting read!

In another article entitled “Why Mobert is Called Mobert”, we find out that the name is the contraction of C. S. Montizambert, a fellow who led men in 1885 Out West to help quell the Riel Rebellion.

You can go to their website at http://www.ogs.on.ca/thunderbay/index.html

If you are interested in joining Ontario Genealogical Society, go to http://www.ogs.on.ca/membership.php

Ottawa Speaker at NGS Conference 2012

While going around the Internet checking on blogs and conferences, I came across the NGS Conference 2012 speaker's list, and discovered one name which stood out - Ottawa's Alison Hare.

Alison is a member of both the Ottawa Branch of the OGS and BIFHSGO in Ottawa, and has given talks at both groups at their conferences on a number of subjects. This time, she will be part of a panel discussion being held on May 10th at 8:00 a.m., entitled "BCG Certification Seminar".

Other panelists include Laura Murphy DeGrazia, CG, and Thomas W. Jones, PhD, CG, CGL, FASG, FUGA, FNGS.

The NGS Conference will be held next year at the Duke Energy Convention Center in Cincinnati, Ohio from 9-12 May. This year, the theme is "The Ohio River: Gateway to the Western Frontier".

If you are planning to go to the NGS Conference and take in the panel discussion, and you meet Alison, please say “Hello” to her from us at the GenealogyCanada blog! I am sure that she will represent Canada very well. She is a very popular speaker in Ontario, and I have had the pleasure of listening to her speak numerous times.

The Conference website is at www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/conference_info.

"Thanksgiving" for my American Cousins

I have American cousins on both sides of my family, even though I was born and grew up in Nova Scotia.

On my paternal side (BARCLAY), I have three great-great aunts, one great-great uncle, and one aunt who went to the “Boston States”, either to find work, or they got married and then moved to the "Boston States” with their husbands.

My great-great aunts were the issue of John and Roseanne (WATT) BARCLAY of Jordan Falls, Nova Scotia –

Josephine Peterson BARCLAY (b. 1880 – d. 1935) She emigrated in c1911 to Massachusetts to work as a teacher, but quickly became married to George Wallace GELLATLY (who had emigrated from Scotland) in 1916.

He was a Baptist minister who travelled around Rhode Island, to New Hampshire, and on to Vermont, were they eventually settled in Newfane.

They had two sons – John, who died at a very young age due to a car accident, and George, who died in California.

Alma Leah BARCLAY (b.1890 - d.1935) She emigrated to Boston, and worked as a bookkeeper. She married William Eben CURRY from Nova Scotia, and he worked on the railroad. They did not have children.

Louise Beatrice BARCLAY (b. 1880 – d. 1967) Great-Aunt Louise emigrated to Boston c1910 to Massachusetts, where she went to cooking school, and worked as a servant in various homes.

She married Martin NYE, and she had two children – Alma and John.

Harold Glenburn BARCLAY (b. 1892-d.1984) He emigrated to Boston in 1910, fought for the US in the First World War, and later, worked as a motor mechanic.

My aunt was the daughter of Cecil and Laurie (TURNER) BARCLAY of Jordan Falls, Nova Scotia -

Mary Augusta BARCLAY (b.1915 - d. 1970) The last relative on my paternal side to emigrate to the “Boston States” was Aunt Mary. She emigrated c1940s, married Samuel WALL, and had two daughters – Florence and Beth. We used to visit them quite often when they lived in Upper Kennebunkport, Maine.

If you would like to read more about Canadians who migrated to the United States, a good place to start is -

The Boston States Migration Links Page http://bostonstates.rootsweb.ancestry.com/BostonStatesindex.htm. It is THE site for Migration to the Boston States.

I would like to wish our American friends a "Happy Thanksgiving!"

If you want to see whimsical and interesting material on Thanksgiving, including "Were Cats and Dogs on the Mayflower?", check out this post (along with links to animated dancing and football-playing turkeys on my blog and website) - http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2010/10/happy-thanksgiving.html.

Be sure to click on all the links - there are a few to go through!

Enjoy!

Elizabeth

The Ontario Name Index (TONI)

As part of the 50th Anniversary Celebrations of the OGS, The Ontario Name Index (TONI) has been growing steadily ever since, having posted close to 250,000 single names in the index.

They hope to eventually have tens of millions of entries in the database.

TONI includes -

• converting and importing the existing electronic indices at both the Branch and Society level, i.e. Ontario Cemetery Ancestor Index or the Ottawa Branch Name Index;
• 
  
• digitizing and importing existing hard copy indices;
• 
  
• indexing existing electronic and hard-copy documents and importing them, including family histories, Tweedsmuir histories, items in the e-library, etc. Branch publications such as cemeteries, census, newspapers, and other transcriptions that they have done; and

• indices to digitized documents produced for other organizations as part of the scanning project could be included, with permission of the owner.

Presently, they are putting in names in cemetery transcriptions of Northumberland and Carleton Counties of Ontario. They have already put in cemeteries of Wellington, Peterborough, and Hastings Counties.

TONI is available to everyone. You do not need to be an OGS member to use the index.

Go to www.ogs.on.ca/integrated/toni_database1.php.

If any of the members of the OGS would like to help enter material into TONI, contact your Branch TONI Co-ordinator or the Provincial TONI Co-ordinator, Mike More, at Director08@ogs.on.ca.

Canadian Genealogy Survey

Just received a note from Del Muise, Professor of History, Emeritus at Carleton University in Ottawa who has written to say that the Canadian Survey will be closing November 30th.

To date, they have received over 2,000 responses to the survey, so if you haven't answered the survey yet, please do so by going to www.cusurveycentre.ca

He says that “they will analysing the results of the survey as soon as we get the final results available for some work. We anticipate that that will be by the middle of December; but in the meantime we are preparing a few posts about our preliminary look at the qualitative or open ended questions that seem to us to be quite suggestive”.

They also have a blog at www.genealogyincanada.blogspot.com

New/Improved Canadian Websites and Blogs Week 12

Here are some of the websites and blogs that I have come across the week ending November 20, 2011.

Amy Brewitt Genealogy Research Services - www.amybrewittgenealogy.com. This is a pay site if you wish for Amy Brewitt to research your ancestry, especially records in Ontario.

Kindred Footprints: Following in their footprints and walking where my Ancestors walked - http://kindredfootprints.blogspot.com/p/about.html. Started in 2009, the Manley/Munnelly family from County Mayo, Ireland to Thorold, Ontario, Canada and the Vine family from Norfolk, England to Alden, Erie Co., New York.

The Huntley Pages - www.huntleygenealogy.ca. As the website says, it is "A genealogy of the Huntley family that emigrated to Canada from Wiltshire in the mid 1800s. Also covers the families the Huntleys married into. (Ontario)".

Jen's Genealogy Pages…searching for my family's history - www.jenasmart.com. Jen recently celebrated her blogiversary on November 16, 2010 on Geneabloggers. She is searching for her family history.

About Genealogy Services: New Books in the Genealogy and Family History Room - www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/genealogy/022-204-e.html. This webpage from Library and Archives Canada (LAC) lists, every month, the latest books that have been received by them.

The Evangelical Christian Church in Canada - www.cecconline.com/node/1. The Evangelical Christian Church in Canada (Christian Disciples) traces its roots in part to 1810 near Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, and a Presbyterian minister - Barton Warren Stone (1772-1844).

Jim's Girl Family History Blog: A genealogy blog to bring together cousins near and far in my family tree. - http://jimsgirlfamilyhistoryblog.blogspot.com. A blog by Katherine of Ottawa, she gives a good description of BIFHSGO's Friday Conference in September as well as the Genealogy Theme, "Good Things Happen in Genealogy". She also discusses her battle with breast cancer in her latest post.

Joan's Genealogy Jottings - http://joansgenjottings.blogspot.com. The website says that it is blog about her "journey through the DAVIES, BELLAMY, CROCKETT, and BUTCHART family histories".

Judiology ... a genealogical journal of discovery! - http://judiology.blogspot.com. A recently-started blog in April 2011, she has blogs about Home Children, and since her mother was a War Bride, she has a blog about them, also. Good reading!

Le chercheur nomade - The Nomadic Researcher - http://chercheurnomade.blogspot.com (In French only). A blog started by Gilles Cayouette in 2007, the blog traces the ancestors whose surnames are Caillouet (Caillouet, Caillouette, Cayouette...).

Tomorrow Post: November 2011 issue of Families

BRANTches Newsletter - November 2011

The talk at the September meeting of the Brant County Branch of the OGS was given by Gerry Miller on the Jewish families who used to live there from the 1900s up until the late 1920s, when most of them moved on to Toronto or to the United States.

Some of the surnames mentioned were HENKLE, WHITE, BERKERMAN, NYMAN, TULCHIONSKY, YAMPLSKY, KANTER, FINKELSTEIN, and SILVERSTEIN.

In an article by Jean Farquaharson called, "The War of 1812-1814: People in Brant Area – The Nelles Family", she tells us about Hendrik, and his nephew, Andrew. Hendrik supported the Americans during the American Revolution, but Andrew supported the British in the War of 1812.

Jean also writes a review of Mary Coushnie-Mansour's book, A Twentieth Century "Portia": Biography of Thelma Bernice Kerr-Thomson.

Visit the Brant County Branch online at http://brantcountybranchogs.ca

If you are interested in joining Ontario Genealogical Society,go to http://www.ogs.on.ca/membership.php.

Tomorrow's Post: - SCAN (Simcoe County Ancestor News)

Our Waterloo Kin - November 2011

The November issue of Our Waterloo Kin is out, and there are various genealogical articles in their edition such as rescuing and restoring a cemetery, biographies published in a newspaper 100 years ago, and an obituary of an old settler who died in 1871.

An semi-unknown cemetery located on the west side of Waterloo, next to the Regional Shopping Centre along Ira Needles Boulevard, is cleaned up by members of the Waterloo Branch of the OGS.

See what they did to identify the cemetery, and why they've decided to make a return visit to the cemetery.

The eleven people who lived in the Waterloo area – Joseph ABRA, Peter BERG, Samuel CASSEL, A.P. DAMMEIER, Albert GIBBONS, Adam HEIPEL, Fred HOLWELL, Henry N. HUEHN, Joseph Good HURST, Solomon KOCH, and Adam MATTUSCH – have short biographies listed on pages 53 and 54 of this issue.

Obituaries of a Father and of his Daughter” highlights the passing of Ledogarius Beisang, and that of his daughter, Mary Anna (nee Beisang) Stremmer, who died in 1905 at Eagle Creek.

The iron cross and stone monuments have been restored at the St. Agatha Roman Catholic Church, and there is an article on “Reading the Documents: Ins and Outs of Paleography”.

You can visit their website at www.waterlooogs.ca.

If you are interested in joining the Ontario Genealogical Society, and the Waterloo Branch of the OGS, please go to the OGS website at www.ogs.on.ca/membership.php.

Tomorrow's Post: Brant County's Newsletter

Huron County Branch Newsletter

The November 2011 issue of the Huron County Branch newsletter is out, and is full of genealogical news.

Ian Hulley, in the September meeting, talked about himself being a gravedigger at the Blyth Cemetery, and he has been the supervisor at St. Paul's Anglican Church Churchyard in Clinton, Ontario.

The old cemetery was disused after the bodies were re-interred in the new cemetery, although there is a question as to if all the bodies were moved.

The rest of the story follows on what Ian has found.

At the October meeting, John Hazlitt, Ted Turner, and Doug Culbert gave a talk on "The Power of the Maitland" where they discussed the research they did on 78 dam sites in Huron, Perth, and Wellington Counties.

There is a book in the making, and it will be called, The Power of the Maitland: Powering Pioneer Settlement in an Ontario River Watershed.

The story, "The History of St. Augustine Parish", that was given at the Closing Mass on September 24th, 2006 has been reprinted in the newsletter, as well as the names of people who were involved in the "12th of July Parade", at Stratford, ON is 1938.

"A Splinter of Wood" is about a young English couple – Robert Carter and Charlotte Watson - who were both born in East Yorkshire, married, and came to Canada in 1854 or 1855. His dream was to own land, which he did in Clinton. A splinter of wood taken from their log house is shown in the newsletter.

"From the Newspapers" is devoted to names taken from The Clinton News-Record and from The Huron Expositor through the years.

You can go to their website at www.hurontel.on.ca/~ogshuron

If you are interested in joining the Ontario Genealogical Society, visit www.ogs.on.ca/membership.php.

Tomorrow's Post: Our Waterloo Kin Newsletter

Southern Georgian Bay Official War of 1812 Bicentennial Event

David J. Brunelle, the Co-ordinator, Historical Displays/Exhibits from the Celebrate Barrie Festival 2012, has sent the following press release -

He says that "On May 31st, June 1st, 2nd and possibly the 3rd, 2012, Barrie, Ontario will host the Southern Georgian Bay Official War of 1812 Bicentennial Event, and honour the Nine Mile Portage Heritage Transport Route.

The Nine Mile Portage, an ancient native trail, once formed a land bridge between Kempenfelt Bay and the Nottawasaga River, enabling a continuous trade and transportation route from Lake Ontario through to Georgian Bay for many centuries.

During the War of 1812, the British military improved the route for the transport of supplies and personnel, as the lower lakes were occupied by the Americans following the Battle of Put-in-Bay. This land route became strategically important in keeping the captured American fort of Mackinaw supplied, and in British hands.

Following the War, the route remained active, and what was known as "the portage landing" grew into the community we know today as Barrie, Ontario.

The City of Barrie will be celebrating its founding with a huge War of 1812 Bicentennial Event including a very large War of 1812 land and naval component. This potential four-day event will include two education days on Thursday and Friday, and continue with two public days on Saturday and Sunday."

If you are interested on attending the event for all or some of the days as a paid participant, or would like more information, please submit an email to David J. Brunelle at davidbrunelle@rogers.com