Monday, December 1, 2008

Who are the Canadian Palatines?

The Palatines were Protestants who left the German Palatine Region in 1709 at the invitation of Queen Anne of England, and they settled in various English lands and eventually, Ireland.

In the 1830s, 185 families left Ireland and settled in Canada - mainly Ontario.

Over the years, their friends and family in Ireland started to follow them to Canada, and soon you had settlements in Ontario full of Irish Palatine names such as Barkman, Dolmage, Embury, Fizzell, Heck, Lawrence, Ruttle, Switzer, Sparling, and Teskey - to name a few.

To commemorate the 1709 migration, many Palatine descendants are planning events in North America and Ireland.

If you are interested in any of the events, please email Bob Fizzell at palatines@mac.com.

During this past year, the Ontario Genealogical Society (OGS) www.ogs.on.ca also worked to set up an Irish Palatine Special Interest Group (SIG-IP).

This is the first SIG for the organization, and Don Hinchley, the Society's president, said they were accepted "In a unanimous vote at our Septwmber meeting, the Board of Directors approved the application of the Irish Palatines to join the OGS as our first Special Interest Group."

The SIG-IP is open to any person who would like to explore the common heritage of the German language, the Protestant religion, and migration to Ireland. The SIG will offer a website to its members and special sessions annually at the OGS conference www.ogs.on.ca/conference/index.html.

If you are interested in this new group, please contact the SIG through SIG-IP@ogs.on.ca.

I am in the middle of writing an article on this for Everton's Genealogical Helper for publication during the Palatine's 300th Anniversary in 2009.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

PaperofRecord.com sold to Google

This fall, a Canadian company named PaperofRecord <www.paperofrecord.com> was sold to Google.

The original owner of the site, R.J. Huggins, started the business in 1999 (it as known then as Cold North Wind) and started with the Toronto Star. He scanned the whole paper from 1892 to present, so if you want to read this particular newspaper, be sure to register (it's free), and go to the page that the company digitized. PaperofRecord has also digitized other papers.

When I heard the news, I went on the site to search the papers in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and I found the papers and the name that I was looking for - but the name was a name used for a particular wool in advertisements - so it was for naught. But I searched each and every page - so make sure you do the same or else you may have missed the name.

On most pages, the name you are looking for is highlighted in yellow, so it is easy to find.

The collection is made up of over 50 Canadian newspapers and 21-million images.

This is Google's first adventure into Canadian genealogy.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Have you "Google Booked" lately?

Are you like me, "I will Google Book when I have time!"?

So, the other day when I wrote a blog about the Manitoba Genealogical Society <http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2008/11/manitoba-genealogical-society-website.html>, I took the time to explore Google Book, as it has been a while since I had done so.

I went to Google Book <www.google.ca/books> and in the Search Box I put the title of the book I wanted to read as "History of Kings County, Nova Scotia" and pressed the button, and there it was - completely scanned!

The first thing I noticed was the number (variety) of books that Google now has for genealogists and family historians to read at their leisure.

They say that they now have 7-million books in which they put the fullview - the full text of the book - every page, including Table of Contents and Indexes - online. And this list included the book that I looked at, much to my pleasant surprise.

They also have a limited preview of the books, which means that the line in which the name you want to research is highlighted, but you can get them at the library or at bookstores which are mentioned on the side of the page by Google.

Google Book started in 2004, but last fall they really put a push on to have as many books as possibly scanned and put on the Internet - and I am glad they did!

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Happy Thanksgiving!

So, please let me offer a "Happy Thanksgiving!" to our American Cousins! (I have first cousins in Maine, first cousins once removed in Texas, and first cousins three times removed in California).

Canada, in 2005, celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Society of Mayflower Descendants, and is still going strong <www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~canms/canada.html>.

There are four "colonies" in the country (in Toronto, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Alberta), with the Canadian society being the first formed outside of the United States.

They published a book for their 25th anniversary detailing their history, and it has many pictures which cover the events and meeting of their four colonies.

The site, which has had over 20,000 visitors since the website first started eight years ago, has an index on Mayflower Research Articles, Mayflower Families Corrections and Additions, and Upcoming Events & Society Meetings.

There is a List of Mayflower Passengers Who Left Descendants, Society Dues & Fees, and Application Procedure & Documentation Requirements.

They have also put online Reports of our Past Guest Speakers, Mayflower Research Articles (Index), and Mayflower DNA Projects.

For a change of pace, please read this interesting article entitled, "Were Cats and Dogs on the Mayflower?", at <http://www.petplace.com/cats/were-cats-and-dogs-on-the-mayflower/page1.aspx?utm_source=catcrazynews001et&utm_medium=email&utm_content=petplace_article&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter>.

And finally, for a bit of fun, knowing that watching football is paramount in any household this weekend (we watch it, too!), visit our Canadian Thanksgiving page at <http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2008/10/happy-thanksgiving.html> and check the graphic at the bottom.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Manitoba Genealogical Society Website

The Manitoba Genealogical Society has a new website and a new url <www.mbgenealogy.com>.

In fact, it has had a website since March of this year, but I didn't use it until this past week when I was looking around for a Webster relative from Kentville, Nova Scotia who married a Rev. Joseph Hogg and moved to Winnipeg in c1901.

The design is quite nice and the colours are true to Manitoba - a brown as a base and a yellow to tell us that the province is at the beginning of the prairies.

They have three branches—which are also online—and MGS Cemetery Transcripts. and they have an Online Library Catalogue which is very useful in finding secondary sources.

They have the location of 1,400 cemeteries online and they are inexpensive to order one - and I will be doing that in order to see the record of Rev. and Mrs. Hogg.

They, at present, do not have any records online, which is a shame, but there is always hope for the future. Until then, we will have to do research the old way -

But they have a page on the FaceBook.com website at <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Manitoba-Genealogical-Society-Inc/7054423205>!

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Canadian Census - 2006

There has been talk the last couple days in the media about the 2006 Canadian Census not counting nearly a million people that they should have counted.

It's true! If you check Wikipedia <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_2006_Census>, you will see that the population count in 2006 was 31,612,897 and that was lower than actual count in 2006 - 32,623,490 people.

That is over a million short - someone didn't fill out their census return!

This is made even more odd by the fact that this was the first year that the form were offered online and you could fill it there. It will be interesting to see what Census Canada does with this problem!

Meanwhile, Question 53 is still up in the air and hasn't been resolved, according to genealogists. Statistics Canada agrees to release the Census information after 92 years, but it will only be information by those people who have checked the box.

The statistics show that there was a "yes" reponse by 55.50% of the population - the highest being in PEI, with 64.50%.

If you have't read the blog of Nov 16th where I talk about Ancestry.ca and FamilySearch partnering on indexing and digitizing the census from 1851 to 1916, go to the blog <http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2008/11/joint-initiative-provides-online-access.html> and take a look - it's interesting.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Ukraine Remembers - The World Acknowledges!

This past weekend, Canada——along with many other countries——honoured the 75th Anniversary of Ukrainians that were killed by Stalin - the Holodomor of the 1930s.

It is estimated that 2 to 10-million Ukrainians were killed by a famine because Stalin forced collectivization of grain and other foodstuff that left people starved for food.

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress launched the first National Holodomor Awareness Week from November 16th to the 23rd.

On the 22nd, they honoured the memory of the victims with a moment of silence at 9:00 a.m., and on Sunday, they held memorial services across the country in local churches.

Earlier this year, Canadian Prime Minister Harper supported a private member's bill that acknowledged the famine as a genocide.

"This is the bare minimum which we, as Ukrainians, should do not only for the millions of victims, but more importantly, for our descendants who must always remember the Holodomor," stated the Ukrainian Canadian Congress in a statement on their website.

Their website is <www.ucc.ca/holodomor/index.htm>.