Announcing a new Certificate Design Competition

 This press release was just received from the OGS - 

"Create a design for a new Heritage Society certificate for The Ontario Genealogical Society.

As an addition to our current heritage clubs and societies, OGS is developing the First World War Society for genealogists who can prove they have one or more ancestors who served with the allied forces in the First World War.

We need a striking certificate for members of the First World War Society to proudly display, particularly as we commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the start of the First World War next year.

Prize: $500

Design Criteria

Each 8.5" x 11" portrait format certificate design must have,

• The OGS logo present somewhere on the certificate (.jpg of the logo may be obtained by contacting OGS provincial office provoffice@ogs.on.ca)
• Space for the name(s) of applicant(s)
• Space for the name of qualifying ancestor
• Space for the date of issue and signature of the OGS president
• Room for the OGS seal measuring 5.5 cm in diameter

Please visit the OGS site to view examples of our other certificates. We are looking for a design that will fit into our collection. Multiple entries are welcome.

While you may submit your entry in a format of your choice, please be aware that the OGS office is a PC environment.

Deadline: December 31, 2013

The winner will be contacted in March 2014 and the certificate will be launched at The Ontario Genealogical Society's Annual Conference May 1st - 4th  2014

Please submit entries and any questions you may have to provoffice@ogs.on.ca

The website is http://www.ogs.on.ca/home/heritage_societies.php

Nova Scotia Obituaries

If you haven’t been to the Nova Scotia Roots Facebook page and the Nova Scotia Obituaries website yet by Ron Zink, you should check it out.

The Facebook page has comments by various visitors, and vary up-to-date information on Nova Scotians that you will find helpful. 

As the Facebook says "It is an open group, and shares charts, scans, and discusses various family histories". 

There are over 67,000 Nova Scotia Obituaries listed on the websitw  http://nsobits.ca/nsobits/default.asp

The Facebook page is at http://www.facebook.com/groups/510478038981398

How accurate are French Canadian immigration records?

In August, Nathan W. Murphy, wrote a blog on the FamilySearch website, where he wondered out loud about how accurate French Canadian record are – especially French Canadian immigration records.

As he reviewed his French Canadian ancestry at FamilySearch, he realized that “some of my ancestors are literally in the database 100s of times”!

To get around this problem, he used Ficher Origine, which he explains in his blog posting. You put in the name you are researching, and there you will see the latest up-to-date information on your immigrant ancestor. It should help you sort out your ancestors, one from the other.

So give it a try.

Read this very interesting blog at https://familysearch.org/blog/en/judging-familytree-accuracy-french-canadian-immigrants/#comments

Library and Archives Canada and Canadiana.org announces partnership

Last week, I reported on the new digitization partnership between the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and Canadian.org (see blog posting of Aug 23^rd  “Some land records are being digitized”), and now it has been made official.

The LAC has agreed to a “large-scale digitization partnership involving about 60 million images from numerous collections”.   

A couple of things caught my eye –

This will be a ”10-year agreement with this longstanding partner (which) covers the digitization, indexing and description of millions of personal, administrative and government documents, as well as land grants, war diaries and photographs. There will be no change for those Canadians who wish to access these collections at LAC.

The go on to further say that “Canadiana.org also will also transcribe millions of handwritten pages, and create related descriptions. Enhanced search tools facilitating access to these records will be available to Canadians free of charge at LAC, as well as at hundreds of subscribing libraries in regions across Canada. For a small monthly fee, Canadians will also be able to use the enhanced tools online to conduct advanced searches without leaving home”

Notice that the press release says nothing about newspapers. And what will be the fee? And when will this take place?

It also sounds as if you want to see these records free of charge, you will have to visit them at the LAC in Ottawa.

To read the full report, go to http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/news/Pages/2013/lac-canadiana-partner-digitization.aspx 

Is your ancestor on this list?

As you probably know, Canada will celebrate its 150^th birthday in 2017.

And the OGS has a new Heritage Society Certificate on the Father of Confederation.

The certificate is open to anyone who can prove descent from one of these 36 officially-named Fathers of Confederation -

Sir Adams George Archibald

George Brown

Sir Alexander Campbell

Sir Frederick Carter

Sir George-Etienne Cartier

Sir Edward Barron Chandler

Sir Jean-Charles Chapais

Sir James Cockburn

George Coles

Robert B. Dickey

Charles Fisher

Sir Alexander Tilloch Galt

Col John Hamilton Gray

Sir John Hamilton Gray

Sir Thomas Heath Haviland

William Alexander Henry

Sir William Pearce Howland

John Mercer Johnson

Sir Hector-Louis Langevin

Andrew Archibald Macdonald

Sir John A. Macdonald

Jonathan McCully

William Alexander McDougall

Thomas D’Arcy McGee

Peter Mitchell

Sir Oliver Mowat

Edward Palmer

William Henry Pope

John William Ritchie

Sir Ambrose Shea

William H. Steeves

Sir Etienne-Paschal Tache

Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley

Sir Charles Tupper

Edward Whelan

Robert Duncan Wilmot


Go to http://www.ogs.on.ca/home/heritage_societies/Fathers%20of%20Confederation%20Society%20Application.pdf for more information on this society and an application form.

Wesleyan Methodist Baptismal Records

Starting in 1843, Wesleyan Methodist ministers kept a book of entries for births and baptisms. Each year, they submitted their book to the Conference Office.

Entries were then copied into the General Register, arranged by township, town, village and circuit. The records of the Wesleyan Methodist Church are from 1826 to 1910.

The United Church of Canada Archives who hold copyright on these records, but they have allowed the OGS to transcribe and sell these records through its thirty Branches located throughout Ontario.

To obtain copies of these baptismal record indexes, contact the Branch in the area in which you are doing your family research.

You can go to the list of Branches within the OGS at http://www.ogs.on.ca/branches.php


Postscript: Remember that these are copies of the original baptismal record. It is best if you can get the original record so that you can be sure that there are not any mistakes in transcribing the copies. 

90th Annual Buxton Homecoming

What started as a one-day celebration back in 1924, has turned into a four-day heritage event which will take place this weekend (Aug 31^st to Sept 2^nd) at the Buxton National Historic Site and Museum, Buxton, Ontario. Organizers expect nearly 3,000 people will attend the events.

The event starts on the Friday with a U.S./Canadian history and genealogy conference at the museum. There will be three speakers and a panel of students from York University.

Saturday will feature a baseball tournament with the baseball teams in the form of a family tree, and Sunday there will be an afternoon church service and an historical re-enactments at the museum park grounds. There will also be a bronze marker that will be unveiled in the Buxton cemetery to commemorate Eliza Parker.

Parker was a historical figure with the Fugitive Slave Act in the US before coming to Canada and settling in North Buxton in the mid-1800s.

Then there will be the North Buxton Parade on Monday, and a midway fairgrounds.

If you want to find out more about the event, you can go to http://www.buxtonmuseum.com