Month: October 2021

Choose from free online events in the next five days. All times are ET except as noted. Those in red are Canadian, bolded if local to Ottawa or recommended

Assume registration in advance is required; check so you’re not disappointed.

Tuesday 19 Oct. 2 pm: Virtual Genealogy Drop-In, from Ottawa Branch of OGS and The Ottawa Public Library.
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/.

Tuesday 19 Oct. 7 pm: A Fresh Light on Old Newspapers, by Dave Obee for Sudbury District Branch OGS.
https://www.sudburyogs.com/

Tuesday 19 Oct. 8 pm: My 20 Year Mystery – Finding family origins with Y-DNA, by Shellee Morehead for BCG and Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/my-20-year-mystery-finding-family-origins-with-y-dna/

Wednesday 20 Oct. 2 pm: Comparing the Genealogy Giants 2021: Ancestry, FamilySearch, Findmypast, and MyHeritage, by Sunny Morton for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/comparing-the-genealogy-giants-2021-ancestry-familysearch-findmypast-and-myheritage/

Thursday 21 Oct. 1 pm: Surviving the Famine: Tracing the Irish Famine Generation in Ontario, by representatives from the Canada Ireland Foundation for Kawartha Branch OGS. 
https://kawartha.ogs.on.ca/

Thursday 21 Oct, 3 pm: Using Family Tree Maker Software, by Mark Olsen for Simcoe County Branch OGS.
https://simcoe.ogs.on.ca/

Thursday 21 Oct. 6:30 pm: Family Food: Using Family Recipes for Family History, by Allison DePrey Singleton for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/5589361

Saturday 23 Oct. all day: Scottish Indexers Conference, various speakers.
https://www.scottishindexes.com/

Saturday 23 Oct. 1 pm: Silent No More: Researching Our Great War Dead, by Glenn Wright for Ottawa Branch OGS.
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/

Here’s a report on progress with Library and Archives Canada’s Co-Lab Challenges since last month. One project  reported progress.

Arthur Lismer’s Children’s Art Classes, remains 0% complete.

John Freemont Smith is 94% complete (92% complete last month.)

Canadian National Land Settlement Association remains 98% complete.

Molly Lamb Bobak remains 88% complete.

Diary of François-Hyacinthe Séguin remains 98% complete.

George Mully: moments in Indigenous communities remains 0% complete.

Correspondence regarding First Nations veterans returning after the First World War remains 99% complete.

Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 remains 96% complete.

Legendary Train Robber and Prison Escapee Bill Miner remains 99% complete.

Japanese-Canadians: Second World War, remains 3% complete.

The Call to Duty: Canada’s Nursing Sisters remains 92% complete.

Projects that remain 100% complete are no longer reported here.

Other Co-Lab activities not part of the Challenges may have happened; seemingly we’ll never know.

The new issue of the free Irish Lives Remembered online magazine is out.

Feature article contents 

Fiona Fitzsimons – HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco makes a Major Donation to Trinity College Dublin to Honour Family Links with the College and with Ireland
Michael McShane and Catherine Kerr – The Re-Indexed 1821 Census for Cavan is Now Available at Cavantownlands.com
Maurice Gleeson – Testing Siblings Helps the WATO (“ What Are The Odds” ) Tool Hone in on Unknown Relationships
Robert Flanagan Stieglitz – Great-Great-Grandfather Thomas Flanagan, A New Yorker Carved in Stone: The Search for His Parents in Cloonfree, County Roscommon
Paul MacCotter and Eamonn O’Hanlon – The O’Hanlons of Orior (County Armagh)
Eamonn P. Kelly – The Goddess and the Horse-Eared King: Brigid and Labhraigh Loingseach – Ancestral Deities of the Leinstermen
Brigit McCone – The Spiritualized Internationalism of Annie Besant
Nathan Mannion – John Purroy Mitchel, the “ Boy Mayor of New York”

One of the regular columnists, Photodetective Jayne Shrimpton, analyses a reader’s photograph who asked “ My Great-Grandfather and his Siblings in Canada – Please Tell Me Anything!” [

With 11,968 burials Tyne Cot Cemetery in Belgium has more war graves than any other. That’s according to this CWGC blog post. 451 are Canadian. The names of an additional 34,998 are inscribed in the Tyne Cot Memorial — none Canadian

Tyne Cot isn’t the largest memorial site. The Menin Gate at Ypres commemorates 54,596 who died; 6,926 are Canadians.

The Vimy Memorial commemorates 11,240 war dead, 11,152 Canadians.

 

Much to my surprise, I found the first episode of the new BBC series of Who Do You Think You Are? on YouTube.

He also discusses it on a BBC comedy show.

The episode was fun, not a lot of genealogical research though. Nobody pointed out that having Edward 1 as your 23-times great-grandfather means he is one (or more) of 16.7 million ancestors in that generation. It goes back to around 1300 when the population of Britain was around 3.5 million (with substantial uncertainty.) Lots of pedigree collapse. Likely anyone with a deep history in England could make a credible claim to be Widdicombe’s cousin.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

via Persephone from Post-it Notes from Hades who is blogging this month,.

Lost and Fonds: Declassification of Government Documents in Canada
Recording of a video conference building by an article in the Literary Review of Canada that explored the state of the declassification of government documents in Canada by former NATO archivist Paul Marsden. 2 hours.

Canada is aiming for carbon neutrality and that will mean big changes to how we produce and consume energy

Sub-Sub-Sub Island on Victoria Island
The largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island.

A good job for robots, found – dealing with our embarrassing problems

Timpeall na Tíre
An initiative that invites you to delve into the story of Ireland, as told through the NLI’s rich and varied collections of digitised material.

Anonymous, Brenda Turner, Dianne, Dorothy Kew, Elizabeth Kipp, Gail, Maureen, Nancy Frey, Unknown

Records for Rippleside Cemetery are now available to view on www.deceasedonline.com alongside Chadwell Heath and Eastbrookend Cemeteries.

The records comprise digital scans of the original burial registers up to 2006, computerised records from 2006 to 2019, and grave details for each of the graves and their occupants.

Some of the very early scans for Rippleside were badly corrupted and therefore some records from the 1890s and early 1900s are computerised data only.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission lists 214 burials at Rippleside, 74 for the First World War. One Canadian, Pilot Officer Owen C B Crump from Windsor, Ontario, who died on 17 December 1941 at age 20 is in the cemetery.

Karen Dubinsky, who teaches in the departments of Global Development Studies and History at Queen’s University, has penned an opinion article in the Toronto Star.

Why she asks, when schools and libraries are figuring out how to open safely and have been open for well over a month, are some of Canada’s major archives so slow to reopen? She cites the situations at Libraries and Archives Canada, the City of Toronto Archives and the Ontario Archives.

Read the full editorial at The End of History? Why we must reopen the archives.

While I agree on the need for more funding that’s not the only issue.

National School Admission Registers is an exclusive database on FMP. This update, for Halifax, Yorkshire for 1859-1922, adds a few thousand records to those available to search from 41 counties in England and Wales.

The schools and years covered are under the titles (sometimes more than one school):

Haugh Shaw, 1892-1922
Akroyd Place Board School, 1896-1919
Heath Grammar School, 1874-1875
Halifax School Board, 1859-1884
Halifax Technical College, 1902-1910

The National School Admission Registers & Log-Books 1870-1914 collection is one I found useful in researching for my November BIFHSGO mini-presentation. With 9.3 million records it deserves to be better known.

25 talks for £10. At $1.70 Cdn per talk, that’s quite a bargain, if the topics are relevant to you.

Some presentations of interest to me are:

London Burials and how to find them! and;
The City livery companies.

Great war widows and emigration and; Chatham Dockyard: The Rise and Fall of a Military Industrial Complex.

Why the Welsh Left Wales and; Land of Song.

If I only attended those it would be $2.82 per talk, quite a bargain!

Christine Woodcock and Wayne Shepheard add a Canadian element. Scotland, Jamaica, Nigeria and British India all get a mention.

And I wouldn’t want to miss Janet Few speaking on “Genealogy: the next generation.” It starts in a session at 1 pm ET on Friday 12 November, the only one that’s live. The others, recorded, will premiere on Saturday 13 November and remain available until 6:59 pm on 28 November. That’s just as well as Saturday 13 November is also the date for the BIFHSGO November meeting.

Find out more and buy tickets at www.fhf-reallyuseful.com/

 

New on Ancestry, this collection containing 3,124 records is an index for residents of County Antrim or County Derry~
Londonderry in Northern Ireland who emigrated between 1833 and 1839. The records in this collection were compiled from notebooks kept during the Ordnance Survey of Ireland and are organized by county, church parish, and last name.

The call for DHCP proposals began on 13 October  2021 for projects starting 1 April 2022. The deadline to submit applications is 12 January 2022, at 11:59 pm, Pacific Standard Time (PST). Not-for-profit genealogical organizations are eligible.

There’s a lot of really helpful information to help in writing a successful proposal. The guidelines have changed since last year.

Having served on the DHCP external advisory committee my experience is that only strong proposals will get funded. There’s no point in writing a proposal at the last minute — it shows and wastes everyone’s time.

https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/services/documentary-heritage-communities-program/Pages/dhcp.aspx