New Canadian Blog

We congratulate Betty on staring a new blog that is going to contain Canadian content, and it is called The Pye Plate at http://thepyeplate.blogspot.com.

Since she is a Mayflower Descendent, she will discuss ancestors who travelled from England to New England, and from there to the Canadian provinces of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and to New Brunswick.  

She promises that the blog will be mostly about her family, but she will post for anyone who is seeking assistance in researching their family.

Welcome aboard Betty!

Africville Summer Reunion

This weekend will mark the 29^th summer reunion to be held in the former land in north-end Halifax, Nova Scotia known as Africville – a place where American slaves, and other Black people settled in the 1830s.  

They will also dedicate the newly rebuilt Africville Church and Museum this weekend, and it will be the highlight of the reunion of the many American and Candian families which are expected to be there.

CBC Halifax has a story on the church at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2012/07/24/ns-africville-church-museum.html.

And you can read about The Africville Genealogical Society at http://www.africville.ca/society

GANS at the Halifax Pride Community Fair

Pamela Wile, NSG Editor, write to say that the Genealogical Association of Nova Scotia (GANS), will be at the Halifax Pride Community Fair on the Halifax Commons this
Saturday, July 28.

GANS will have a booth at the Halifax Pride Community Fair from 3:00 to 6:00 pm.

She says to look for their new GANS banner at the fair, and she encourages you to come by, and say “Hello”. They will have their publications for sale and some handouts too.

The Fair will set up on the Halifax Commons - here is a link to the Fair website where you can see a map of the Pride Grounds and download a program
http://www.halifaxpride.com/index.php/pride-week/community-fair.

The GAS site is at http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/recreation/GANS.

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

Podcasts at the LAC

Sylvie Tremblay, the Manager, Content Delivery and Coproduction Services at the LAC has just announced the following -

“Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is pleased to announce the release of our latest podcast episode: The Shamrock and the Fleur-de-Lys.

In this episode, we consult a panel of experts about the massive immigration of Irish settlers to Quebec in the 1800s. We examine the journey they made in order to establish their new lives on foreign soil, as well as the cultural bond that formed between the Irish and the Québécois.

Subscribe to episodes using RSS or iTunes, or just tune in at: Podcasts – Discover Library and Archives Canada: Your History, Your Documentary Heritage”.

I have listened to the podcasts, and have read the transcript, and have found them to be very good.

People are interviewed including Sylvie from the LAC, Jo-Anick Proulx from Parks Canada, and Simon Jolivet, a history professor from the University of Ottawa each with their own knowledge in the area. And you get a good, rounded view of the Irish as they came to Canada – and many of them were sick and died at the Grosse-Île Quarantine Station just beyond Quebec.

It deserves a listen.

Go to http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/news/podcasts/Pages/shamrock-and-fleur-de-lys.aspx 

Nova Scotia Historical Newspapers Digitization Initiative

The Public Archives of Nova Scotia has just released The Acadian Recorder and the The Liverpool Transcript newspapers on the internet.

The Acadian Recorder (1813 to 1853) was a Halifax weekly, and it printed local, national, and international stories.

The Liverpool Transcript was published in the town of Liverpool on the province’s south shore (1854-1867), and I am interested in this paper because it printed shipping news – who owned what ships – and I am looking for my ancestors who owned ships in Shelburne around the same time that the newspaper was printed.

If you wish to read these newspapers (they are not indexed), go to http://gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/newspapers

Do You Read/Speak Italian?

FamilySearch.org is looking for people who can read/speak Italian, so that they can transcribe and put the rest of the Italian records online. Here is the press release that they put out the other day .

“FamilySearch launched a historic partnership with the National Archives of Italy in December 2011 to digitally preserve and index its civil registration records (birth, marriage, and death) for all states from 1802 to 1940. Since the project launch more than 24 million images have been published, and 4 million names have been made searchable on FamilySearch.org.

But there are 115 million historic Italian documents with over 500 million names remaining to index and publish. Tens of thousands of volunteers are needed. To meet this opportunity, FamilySearch is requesting help from indexers and arbitrators who speak or read Italian or a closely related language, such as Spanish, or who are willing to learn a handful of simple Italian words and phrases to help facilitate the initiative.

Descendants of Italians and Italy historic and genealogy societies are especially invited to participate to help accelerate the publication of this valuable record set”.

Interested individuals, societies, or groups should visit www.familysearch.org/italian-ancestors to learn more.

To search the completed Italian records online and to learn more about reading Italian records, visit familysearch.org/italy.