Genealogy Canada

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Oldest lighthouse in the Americans to get renovations

The federal government has recently announced the a Nova Scotia lighthouse – the Sambro Island lighthouse – is more than $1.5 million in federal funding over the next two years for renovations.

The lighthouse has been in operation for more than 250 years, and the work will include restoring the lighthouse's original lantern, painting the building and installing heating and ventilation.

The lighthouse was built in 1758 and is considered the oldest one in operation in the Americas.

For more information, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambro_Island_Light

For more information, go to the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/sambrolighthouse

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

If you missed this week’s edition, it is at http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2015/05/canadian-week-in-review-04-may-2015.html

It’s the ONLY news blog of its kind in Canada!

It has been a regular post every Monday morning since April 23, 2012

Children of Topley

Photo of Missie Perley, Ottawa, July 1893 – photographer William Topley

(Library and Archives Canada : Mikan 3489570)

In honour of Mother’s Day, the Children of Topley, photos taken by William Topley from Ottawa who took many photos of children in his studio, have been places on Flickr by the Library and Archives Canada.

Comprised of over 150,000 glass plate negatives as well as studio proofs and counter books, the Topley Collection dates from 1868 to 1923.

To check out the collection, go to Flickr, the Children of Topley is at https://www.flickr.com/photos/lac-bac/sets/72157651170942042/?rb=1

To read the full biography, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Topley

Another indexing opportunity

A new project that has been started by the Kawartha Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society is the indexing of the family histories in the society’s library.

They hope to create a name index for each history and will put the index in TONI (The Ontario Name Index - the three million and growing name index created by OGS).

If you would like to help, this is another project you can do in your own home. You will be sent a digitized copy of the family history, you read it, and you enter each name you find into a spreadsheet.

It sounds like a neat thing to do over the summer!

If you want to help, please contact them at kawarthaprojects@ogs.on.ca

The website for the TONI page is http://www.ogs.on.ca/projects.php#toni

Saturday, May 9, 2015

Thank you, Dick Eastman!

I read some disappointing news this morning – Dick Eastman won’t be posting to his blog on the weekends anymore! It will no longer appear Saturday and Sunday in your mail box those two days, so that he can take some well-deserved time off.

He has been publishing since 1996, when, like so many of us, his posts started out as a newsletter. He converted it to a blog in 2004 at http://blog.eogn.com/

To show you how popular the blog and Dick has been to the genealogy community, I think everyone one of us (seasoned genealogists, that is) have met and enjoyed the company of Dick.

So I am sure that all of us wish him a well-deserved rest, and may the EOGN continue forever!

You can subscribe to the newsletter at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/f.fbz?Sub=48932

Friday, May 8, 2015

Two more Facebook pages ...

Dave Hunter, the man behind The Island Register of Prince Edward Island at http://www.islandregister.com/, now has two Facebook pages – the first once concerns photos and the second one concerns The Telephone Museum which he runs himself.

The Prince Edward Island Family Photos page in its first few weeks has 193 members, and a large number of family photos posted by its users. It took quite a jump in memberships in the last couple of weeks. There has been a large amount of information found to bolster the information the submitters had, and we are all very pleased with its progress!

The Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/PEIFamilyPhotos/

The Telephone Museum Facebook page has also done amazingly well in it first few weeks - it had 110 members, and now has a number of discussions about various telephone subjects, and with members from the USA, Canada, Ireland, and Great Britain.

The Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/PEITelelephoneMuseum/

Calling all travellers!!!

Between June and August this year, if you are leaving and saying goodbye to someone special at Toronto Pearson International Airport or if you are waiting for someone to arrive back home – the people at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) needs your story! Your story could appear in their program called Hello Goodbye Canada.

Please fill out their very brief questionnaire and one of their story producers will get back to you ASAP!

To fill out the questionnaire, go to
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1kIYr_AhiouNfGO8IIZMfXdnH7llnqpMRsRygyLaFs3w/viewform?c=0&w=1

Early Nipissing District, Ontario Births, Marriages, Deaths Records

While at the Nipissing District Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society yesterday, I came across a site that may hold records that you have been looking for and have not been able to find. It is the are early birth, marriage and death records.

The say on the website that ‘While the old records at the Nipissing District Land Registry Office were being inventoried by members of Apolrod, three old registers were discovered which contain important information relating to early settlers. The Land Registrar gave permission for these books to be copied and the information is provided here for research purposes.

The first book contains an index of births, marriages and deaths in the Nipissing District; the second contains the original entries for 56 births; and the third contains the original entries for 27 marriages. The book containing the original entries for the 26 deaths has not been located as of November 1997.

Most of the events in these records took place in the Mattawa area and contain many first nations people. Many of the marriages were of shanty men. Catholic priests, J.M. Nedelec, J.M. Poitras, and J.M. Gueguen and Protestant ministers, John McEwan, Robert Hamilton, C.V. Forster Bliss, Silas Huntington, and D.L. MacKechnie officiated the marriages’.

The period covered by these records are

Births: February 1871 to March 1881http://www.nipissing.ogs.on.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Early-Nipissing-Births.pdf

Marriages: January 1871 to July 1883 http://www.nipissing.ogs.on.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Early-Nipissing-Marriages.pdf

Deaths: February 1871 to December 1881 http://www.nipissing.ogs.on.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Early-Nipissing-Deaths.pdf

The website is at http://www.nipissing.ogs.on.ca/