Month: June 2023

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

11 Thrifty Recipes from Depression-Era Canada

How the ancient Greeks kept ruthless narcissists from capturing their democracy – and what modern politics could learn from them

The state of journalism in PostMedia newspapers, now owned by US hedge fund, Chatham Asset Management, is generally deplorable.

I’m obviously not submitting this for publication. However, I am going to post this cartoon everywhere to those who follow my work. Please feel free to do the same.

Have a good day.

Terry Mosher pic.twitter.com/SkqbNyMq9u

— Terry Mosher (@TerryMosher1) June 21, 2023

Reports are there was a very moving episode of WDYTYA on BBC TV. Sadly not licenced for broadcast in Canada. Here’s the YouTube Preview.

Thanks to this week’s contributors: Anonymous, Barbara Tose, Brenda Turner, gail benjafield, Glenn Wright, Nick Mcdonald, Steve Whitwill, Sunday Thompson, Teresa, Unknown.

 

Updated from when first available on Ancestry in September last year—then there were 91,069 records, now 120,773.

The Women’s Land Army was established to help the UK boost its wartime food production.

This collection includes the following details, transcribed and linked to images of the original, often with additional information:

Name
Any known aliases, including maiden names
Address
Employment county
Employment place
Birthdate
Age at enrollment
Date of enrollment
Occupation
Date of employment
Date of release
WLA membership number

Are there more to come? One source claims the WLA employed over 200,000 women between June 1939 and November 1950.

 

Following on the post on Google Trends for the terms genealogy, ancestry, family tree and family history, here’s the same set from Google Ngram. It goes back to 1800. I choose the English (2019) database for comparison encompassing books published in both the UK and USA.
“Family Tree” gains in popularity throughout the period although lagging the others.
“Ancestry and “Family History” show a similar evolution.
“Genealogy” declines until 1950, it closely parallels “Family History” after 1900.
A friend suggested the increase from 1870 to 1900 was due to affluent families looking to establish a pedigree, leading to a spate of fraudulent genealogies?
The period from 1900 to 1970 was one of status quo or decline in popularity. Many attribute the subsequent increase to the effect of “Roots: The Saga of an American Family”published in 1976 and the 1977 TV mini-series.

Ancestry lists that its collection Ontario, Canada Births, 1832-1916 was updated on 6/21/2023, “an index to over 2 million births that were registered in Ontario, Canada between 1832 and 1916.”
What’s the update? It now has births for 2017 1917, despite 1916 in the title of the collection.
The card catalogue now shows a count of 7,372,731. As pointed out by Ken McKinlay in a comment posted to my blog of 11 March 2022, it’s probably counting all persons mentioned, not just the person born, Complete indexing is always appreciated.

 

Ireland, Genealogical Office Manuscripts, Marriages
This set contains 9,010 marriage licenses for Ireland’s affluent upper classes from the Dublin diocese as well as marriage notices that appeared in Exshaw’s Magazine and Hibernian Magazine. They run from 1732 to 1800. This set is transcription-only; view an image of the original record by selecting the ‘Original source’ subheading within each transcription.

Ireland, Genealogical Office Manuscripts, Wills
Transcriptions of 10,501 records that were compiled by Sir William Betham and Denis O’Callaghan Fisher in the 18th and 19th centuries. These records cover almost 300 years of history, from 1596 to 1866. Unlike the majority of Irish Wills lost to fire in 1922 , these transcriptions survive for the benefit of the lucky few.

Ireland Census 1911
This is an update comprising 5,483 records missed during the original transcription process. FMP have improved the searchability and made it easier to browse the 4.3 million records within this census. View the originals on which the transcriptions are based at the National Archives of Ireland’s site, via the link attached to each transcription.

Irish Newspapers

Find 122,848 new pages added this week. New titles are:

Dublin Leader, 1901-1963
Kerry News, 1894-1920
Limerick Echo, 1899-1902, 1904-1916, 1918-1922, 1930.

Updated titles are:

Belfast Commercial Chronicle, 1823-1824
Dublin Shipping and Mercantile Gazette, 1872
Limerick Chronicle, 1826-1829
Roscommon Herald, 1871
Wicklow News-Letter and County Advertiser, 1886

The decision by Meta (Facebook) to not pay a reasonable fee for the news coverage it takes from Canadian media was covered rather differently by the major news networks. CTV and Global make it clear who made the decision not to serve Canadians.

CTV News
Social media giant Meta will begin blocking news access on Facebook and Instagram, in response to the federal government’s online news act.

Global News
Meta to end access to news on Facebook, Instagram in Canada.

CBC News
Canadians will no longer have access to news content on Facebook and Instagram, Meta says.

 

Picture the Past aims to conserve and make publicly accessible the photographic heritage of the East Midlands. It houses 58,535 images.

 

Google Trends web search data for Canada shows, since 2004, the popularity of various genealogy terms, starting with Ancestry and recognizing that it’s not necessarily referring to ancestry.com or ancestry.ca.

The first jump up starts in December 2009, the second and most prominent in November 2013, then December 2016 and another major jump starting in November 2017. There’s a sawtooth decline with peaks at the end of the year. It’s no surprise that May to October is the (relatively) quietiest time of the year.

Do you know what happened in November 2013, specifically early in the month? What happened in November 2017?

MyHeritage, FamilySearch and Findmypast have nothing like the search volume for Ancestry in Canada.

For most of the period from 2004 FamilySearch leads the pack with a bump in hits in 2015. What caused that big bump?

MyHeritage vies with FamilySearch from 2018 and with three major spikes. Findmypast trails, but the picture is different in the UK where it’s unique collections mean it leads the other two, since 2009.

Google Trends web search data shows, since 2004, in Canada, the popularity of the various terms genealogy, ancestry, family tree and family history.

The blue line for “genealogy” shows, while it was initially much more popular than the others, there has been a major continuing decline starting early in the period.
The yellow line for “family tree” shows a decline to 2008, retaining second rank and with a popularity spike in Fall 2022.
The green line (sorry to the colour blind) shows the term “family history”, initially third ranked, falling well below the others in recent years.
The most popular these days is “ancestry” which was lowest ranked initially, experienced jumps in 2010, 2013 and 2017 to rank first. Since then there’s been a slight decline.

Data for other countries show similar trends. In the UK “family history” is a more popular term than “genealogy.”

How popular is genealogy? The second most popular hobby? Google trends web search has golf (47), fishing (11), knitting (3), skiing (2), genealogy (<1).

Come back tomorrow for more detailed look at Ancestry and coming soon, a longer-term perspective.

Here are the British and Irish FamilySearch collections updated in the past month, with the total records now available.

Collection Title	Records
England, Middlesex Parish Registers, 1539-1988	6,054,736
England, Cumberland Parish Registers, 1538-1990	523,926
England, Rutland Parish Registers, 1538-1991	326,083
England and Wales, National Index of Wills and Administrations, 1858-1957	8,572,772
England, Surrey Parish Registers, 1536-1992	2,566,198
Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers, 1740-1900	2,957,563

Choose from selected free online events in the next five days. All times are ET except as noted.  Assume registration in advance is required; check so you’re not disappointed. Looking for more options? Additional mainly US events are listed at https://conferencekeeper.org/virtual.

Tuesday 20 June

2:30 pm: All Shakespeares are not from England: Researching an African American Family from Tallahassee, Florida, by Juanita Gaston for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/8553415

8 pm: Finding Your One Among Millions: Methods and Tips for Urban Research, a New York City Case Study, by Amy Larner Giroux for Legacy Family Tree Webinars. https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/finding-your-one-among-millions-methods-and-tips-for-urban-research-a-new-york-city-case-study/

Wednesday 21 June

2 pm: Greece’s Top 5 Types of Genealogy Records, by Gregory Kontos for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/greeces-top-5-types-of-genealogy-records/

Thursday 22 June

6:30 pm: Finding and Using Pennsylvania Land Records to Solve Difficult Problems, by Megan Clark Young for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/8553421

Friday 23 June

Saturday 24 June

 

One project report progress among the Library and Archives Canada’s Co-Lab Challenges; 14 report no progress.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary is 15% complete, 8% complete last month.

Expo67 remains 2 % complete.

Summiting Mount Logan in 1925: Fred Lambart’s personal account of the treacherous climb and descent of the highest peak in Canada remains 13% complete.

Women in the War remains 1% complete.

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

John Freemont Smith remains 93% complete.

Canadian National Land Settlement Association remains 98% complete.

Molly Lamb Bobak remains 94% complete.

Diary of François-Hyacinthe Séguin remains 99% 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 93% complete.

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

You can suggest a new challenge, perhaps one you think would be of broad interest, by sending an email to co-lab@bac-lac.gc.ca/. Make sure to include a reference number, Item ID number or e-copy number for the record.

Other unidentified Co-Lab activities not part of the Challenges have seen progress. There are currently 3,689  items in Collection Search identified as Co-Lab only contributions, an increase from 3,683 last month.