Month: January 2022

Does this program appeal to you?

10:00 am Introduction
10:15 am ‘Exploring the Collections of Edinburgh City Archives’ by Ashleigh Thompson
11:00 am ‘Managing Archives’ by George MacKenzie
12:15 pm ‘Crofters, Cottars and the Napier Commission’’ by Lorna Steele-McGinn
1:15 pm ‘Using North Lanarkshire Burgh Records for Family History’ by Wiebke McGhee
2:15 pm Genealogy Q & A hosted by Graham and Emma Maxwell
3:15 pm ‘Finding Uncle Geordie’ by Audrey Collins
4:20 pm ‘Visualising Your Family History’ by Emma Maxwell

It’s the second session schedule Eaetern Time Zone of the Scottish Indexes Conference XV. Each presentation will be followed by a live Q&A. While the event is free donations at www.scottishindexes.com are welcome.

To access this event register here on Zoom.

Last July I noted the OPL had acquired copies of The Psychology of Family History : Exploring Our Genealogy, by  Susan Moore, Doreen Rosenthal and  Rebecca Robinson.

In September Moore and Robinson published an article What Motivates Family Historians? A Pilot Scale to Measure Psychosocial Drivers of Research into Personal Ancestry in the open-access journal Genealogy. The findings are based on an online survey of 775 adult Australian women and men who self-described as amateur family historians,  aged between 21 and 93 years, with a median age of 63 years. 85% were women.

Participants were asked to assess 20 factors that might motivate their family history interest and to provide demographic and personality data.

Analysis suggested three dominant motivations: self-understanding,  altruism, and cognitive challenge.

“Individuals whose motives toward self-understanding were stronger were also more likely to be adopted, have half-siblings, and/or have had a DNA test. These associations independently suggest a lack of knowledge about biological and ancestral roots.”

“Higher scores on the altruism motive were characteristic of those who had more descendants and who were more generative, that is, oriented toward assisting and leaving a legacy for the next generation. The higher levels of conscientiousness and openness to experience of these individuals also point to a sense of personal maturity that might reasonably characterize those with the psychosocial resources to contribute toward the welfare of others, particularly with activities that strengthen family ties.”

“Those more strongly motivated by the cognitive challenges of family history research tended to be more highly educated and to spend more time on their genealogical activities,,, It indicates an interest in intellectual endeavours, puzzles and mysteries, and the at-times addictive quality of these interests.”

Additional motivations identified but not quantified were “spiritual/life meaning motives, comfort motives, making social connections, and travel enhancement. ”

If these Australian pilot study results are applicable elsewhere, and one needs to be cautious as the participants were largely Australia-born and did not reflect more recent immigrants’ concerns, they are food for thought for Canadian, and other, family history societies who want to better understand and serve their members.

The motivation questions used are below,  If enough people, more than 20, complete the survey I’ll post a summary.

 

If you want, post a comment on why you responded other.  Pertinent comments are always welcome.

The FreeBMD Database was updated on Wednesday 12 January 2022 to contain 283,535,186 unique entries, increased from 283,149,543 at the previous update.

Years with changes of more than 10,000 records since the last update are: for births 1987, 1990-92; for marriages 1987, 1989-91; for deaths 1988-92.

If you’re new to family history, or would like a refresher from the General Register Office with an emphasis on their services, check out the 24-page pdf  Discover Your Family History.

The Periodical Source Index, produced by the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Centre and billed as the largest subject index to genealogy and local history periodical articles in the world, is being brought home. Here is a summary based on an information session I attended on Tuesday afternoon.

In recent years PERSI has been available through Findmypast.  That’s ending. Now it’s available FREE at https://genealogycenter.info/persi/.

It’s not a full-text article search. Neither does it search authors’ names. What it does do is surface articles classified by subject — a surname, location or other subjects. Information returned is the article title, periodical, year published and publisher. There is no link to the actual article, something Findmypast did do for a limited number of articles for which they had access.

If you find an article of interest you may find it at a convenient source, online, or you can order a copy, for a fee, from the ACPL Genealogy Centre.

ACPL folks are still working on the site which is expected to officially launch at the end of the month. Suggestions for improvements already include wildcard and Boolean search capabilities.

PERSI started in 1986. It contains retrospective material and continues to be updated, the work of two full-time cataloguers. Over the years the way subjects are chosen has changed so be flexible in the search terms you use.

Look out for webinars and other communications on PERSI over the next few months.

 

 

On this date in 1918 a firedamp explosion at the Minnie Pit Mine at Halmer End, near Newcastle-under-Lyme, killed 155 miners and one rescuer, 44 were under age 16. It was England’s worst wartime mining disaster.

The 14 October 1913 explosion at the Universal Colliery in Senghenydd, near Caerphilly, Glamorgan, Wales, that killed 439 miners and a rescuer is the worst mining accident in the United Kingdom.

The Coalmining History Resource Centre, “the UK’s largest and most comprehensive website concerning the history of coal mining”, includes a searchable database of over 164,000 recorded accidents and deaths.

Over 1,500 were killed, in what is believed to be the worst mining disaster in history, on April 26, 1942, at the Benxihu (Honkeiko) coal mine in Liaoning Province, China.

 

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

Tuesday 11 Jan. 2 pm: DNA Labels, by Ran Shir for MyHeritage and Legacy Family Tree Webinars. https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/dna-labels/

Tuesday 11 Jan. 2:30 pm: Welcome to the New, FREE, Periodical Source Index (PERSI) – an informal first look, by Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center staff. https://acpl.libnet.info/event/6009522  

Wednesday 12 Jan. 11 am: 1921 census Q/A, with Jen Baldwin, Myko Clelland and Paul Nixon for Findmypast. www.facebook.com/findmypast.

Thursday 13 Jan, 11 am: Conservation Tean Discoveries, with Ellie Overthrow-Jones and guests. www.facebook.com/findmypast.

Saturday 15 Jan. 10 am: Exploring Ontario Records at familysearch.org, by Stephen Young for Kingston Branch OGS. https://kingston.ogs.on.ca/

Saturday 15 Jan. 1 pm: A 19th Century Ontario Enigma (case study), by Janice Nickerson for Quinte Branch OGS. https://quinte.ogs.on.ca/2022/01/08/january-15-a-19th-century-ontario-enigma/

 

 

Just out of copyright and now online, 2,332 Ordnance Survey maps at 1:10,000 scale from 1971 for the areas coloured orange. The maps are black and white with contour lines at 5 metre intervals in brown.

The Ancestry Card Catalog entry for this addition is: UK, Royal Air Force Operations Record Books, 1911-1963, Military, 758,658 records. The original data source is AIR 27 Air Ministry and successors: Operations Record Books, Squadrons Record books 1911-1993 at the National Archives, Kew.

Although you can search by name the roster is far from complete. If you know the squadron and date you may find a complete crew list and description of the flight as I did for the accident that killed my uncle. Knowing that I was able to scroll back and find some earlier flights on which he served.

Contrary to Ancestry’s title, the collection is not just for the RAF. Australian, Canadian, Indian, Malayan, New Zealand, Rhodesian, South African, even Yugoslav OPBs are included.

Squadrons 400 to 443, and 162, 664 to 666 are Canadian, 450 to 467 are Australian, 485 to 490 New Zealand. There were crews of mixed nationalities.

As with battalion diaries, ORBs commonly mention officers by name, only counts of other ranks.

Findmypast and TheGenealogist have similar collections.

 

 

 

If you plan a visit to a public library, or any other GLAM facility, do check on its situation before you leave.  Here’s the current situation at Ottawa, Toronto and Brampton.

Ottawa Public Library is reducing opening hours as of Monday 10 January “to avoid the need for sudden closures to respond to fluctuating staffing levels. Weekday hours of operation for most branches and Infoservice will be:

Monday: 10 am – 6 pm
Tuesday: 1 pm – 8 pm
Wednesday: 10 am – 6 pm
Thursday: 1 pm – 8 pm

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday hours remain the same.

Some services are suspended: seating, study carrels and lounge areas; Chromebook-lending; In-branch use of newspaper and magazines; Creation spaces.

The Toronto Public Library is temporarily closing 44 branches due to COVID-19 related staffing shortages. Fifty-two of TPL’s largest and most-used library branches remain open.

Seven of eight branches at Brampton Library continue with the usual hours although in-branch services are reduced.

 

 

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

River Runner Global allows you to virtually drop a raindrop anywhere in the world to visualize its journey to the sea with an animated map journey.

Queen’s University Archives Transcription Project
Kingston Branch OGS is working in collaboration with Queen’s University Archives (QUA) to transcribe a digitized collection of licenses to marry without publication of bans, marriage certificates and affidavits of marriage, 1804-1881.

National Treasures: Saving the Nation’s Art in World War II, by Caroline Shenton.
A book review by Adrian Tinniswood in The London Historians’ Blog.

The English Census of 1921
An article published in December 1922 by US author Edith Abbott included a population comparison of the impact of the Civil War in the US to the First World War in England (and Wales.) As the census was taken on 19 June 1921 you may find someone enumerated while on holiday and not at their normal residence. That should be evident from the work address given.

10 amazing finds and faces in the 1921 Census
A blog post on census oddities from Findmypast.

Scientists Settled a Century-Old Family Drama Using DNA From Postcards

Ordnance Survey Ireland National Townland and Historic Map Viewer.

Proud to be peculiar: The little-known story of the Archives Museum, by Geneviève Morin, Senior Archivist for Documentary Art, Objects and Photography, Government Archives Division at LAC illuminates how much we owe to the vision of Sir Arthur Doughty.

Thanks to this week’s contributors. Ann Burns, Anonymous, Beverly A. Craig, gail benjafield, Glenn Wright, Jan Hatcher Roberts, Teresa, Unknown.

Now we’re past the 12 days of Christmas and looking ahead with optimism to an active 2022, a reminder about the opportunity to speak at The Ontario Ancestors  (OGS) Virtual Conference to be held June 24- 26, 2022.

The conference theme, The Past, The Present, and The Future, provides plenty of scope for creativity.

Could you be a speaker for one or more 40 minute live presentations?

The deadline for the submission of lecture proposals is Sunday, 30 January 2022 at 11:59 PM EST.

Find out more and how to apply at https://conference2022.ogs.on.ca/

The new year brings the annual BMD update to the ScotlandsPeople website.

145,602 birth entries for 1921.
54,630 marriage entries for 1946.
62,746 death entries for 1971.

Read ScotlandsPeoples’ posts on some of the exceptional births, marriages and deaths.