Month: June 2023

Did you know that 951 Canadian Army fatalities in WW2 have no known grave? They are commemorated on CWGC memorials listed below.

NASSAU MEMORIAL, Bahamas (2)
HALIFAX MEMORIAL, Nova Scotia, Canada (138)
THE QUEBEC MEMORIAL, POINTE CLAIRE FIELD OF HONOUR, Quebec, Canada (92)
SAI WAN MEMORIAL, China, including Hong Kong (228)
BAYEUX MEMORIAL, Calvados, France (268)
CASSINO MEMORIAL, Italy (193)
RANGOON MEMORIAL, Myanmar (1)
GROESBEEK MEMORIAL, Gelderland, Netherlands (96)
MEDJEZ-EL-BAB MEMORIAL, Tunisia (1)
BROOKWOOD 1939-1945 MEMORIAL, Surrey, United Kingdom (200, victims of the Dieppe Raid)

I was surprised to see 92 memorialized at  the Quebec Memorial in Pointe Claire, far away from any field of battle.

The CWGC Ottawa office explained that “Historically, there was no legislation to protect veteran graves in Quebec and the process was not in place for VAC/CWGC to be notified when a burial concession expired. In the cases where the family did not renew the grave, it was lost or resold.”

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission built the Quebec Memorial at the Montreal Pointe Claire National Field of Honour to commemorate Commonwealth war burials in the Province of Quebec whose graves can no longer be marked or maintained. The Memorial consists of two large blocks of granite, as well as a walkway from Currie Circle

The additional information field for the individual commemorated at the Quebec Memorial indicates where interment occurred.

Lost CWGC burials could still be recognized at the cemetery with a plaque similar to this in England. All is not lost, the cemetery’s CWGC page does list those in lost graves.

A special thanks to CWGC staff members Paul in England and Catherine in Ottawa for prompt and informative responses to my queries.

At its 2023 Annual General Meeting the Ontario Genealogical Society announced an Award of Merit to the Ottawa Public Library.

In addition to the specific items mentioned are access Who Do You Think You Are Magazine, Family Tree (UK) Magazine, and most recently Internet Genealogy Magazine, all free to access for cardholders.

I add my thanks to OPL for the service provided to the Ottawa genealogical community, and look forward to further initiatives. Contact me for suggestions!

Here are the most recent monthly updates added at newspapers.com. All are updates, no new titles, for England and Wales. No changes for Ireland, Northern Ireland or Scotland.

Now with 41,730,203 entries, with duplicates, updated to October 2022. At the previous update in July 2022, there were 41,457,491 entries.
Each index entry is linked to an image of the original as published. The most recent entries, since 2020, are from the Abbotsford News, Ashford Journal, Calgary Herald, Courtenay Comox Valley Record, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette, National Post (Toronto), Ottawa Citizen, Quesnel Cariboo Observer, Regina Leader-Post, Salmon Arm Observer, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Vancouver Sun, Vernon Morning Star, Windsor Star, and 100 Mile House Free Press.

Northern Ireland, Valuation Revision Books, 1864-1933, with 3,193,180 records, is the largest database in the Ancestry collection specifically for Northern Ireland. Records in the collection may contain the following information:

Names of property owners
Names of occupants
Description of property
Changes in acreage
Changes in property valuation
Name of street
Name of city, county, parish, and townland
Name of affiliated poor law union
Date of notation

Web: Northern Ireland, Freeholders Records, has 129,894 entries with links to images of the original at PRONI. Freeholders were men who either owned their land outright or who held it in a lease for the duration of their life, or the lives of other people named in the lease. They are for the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Here’s a last opportunity for an in-person genealogy event in Ottawa until activities resume after the summer break.

On Saturday, 17 June, local speaker Joanna Crandell will present “Indigenous Enfranchisement Records 1880- 1970 in Canadian Orders in Council (Ottawa).” It’s in person at 1 pm at the Ottawa City Archives building, 100 Tallwood, Nepean, Ottawa and also online.

Further information at https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/indigenous-enfranchisement-records-1880-1970-in-canadian-orders-in-council-ottawa/

If you have ancestry in Luton or elsewhere in Bedfordshire, FMP’s focus this week on parish BMB records for that home county gives you new records to explore.

The Bedfordshire set has 706,477 baptism records, created between 1466 and 2011. The marriage collection comprises 411,778 records from 1568 to 1989. And there are 103,433 burial records between 1329 and 1999.

For Luton there are 46,528 baptisms, 36,890 marriages and 16,604 burials.

These are transcript records obtained from FamilySearch.

This week marks passing the 68 million page mark in the British Newspaper Archive collection, accessible with a FMP subscription.

Three Canadian soldiers of the First World War, Private Harry Atherton, Corporal Percy Howarth, and Sergeant Richard Musgrave, were laid to rest with military honours at CWGC Loos British Cemetery, Loos-en-Gohelle, France on the 8 June 2023.

All three were born in the UK and migrated to Canada before the war. Identification of the remains is the responsibility of the Canadian Armed Forces Casualty Identification Program. Remains of Howarth and Musgrave were discovered in 2011, those of Atherton in 2017, longer than the duration of the war from discovery to burial!

The Spring issue of Irish Lives Remembered is free online, with, in addition to regular columns, feature articles:

Helen Moss & Fiona Fitzsimons – Bruce Springsteen: Born in the USA, Roots in Ireland
Brigit McCone – Gaels Who Sail: The Irish in the Caribbean, Pacific and Antarctic
Brian Mitchell – The Shipwreck of the Faithful Steward: The Importance of Family Information
Eamonn P. Kelly – Here Be Dragons: Áine’s Fiery Form
Donna Rutherford – Unlocking Secrets with DNA: My Unexpected Result
Conor Curran – Outstanding Families of Dublin Soccer
Elizabeth Cowan – Bride of MacBride: Catalina Bulfin
The Four Courts Press Photo Feature – Launch of “The Irish Defence Forces 1922-2022” By Eoin Kinsella
The Four Courts Press Book Excerpt – Leitrim:The Irish Revolution 1912-23 (published 2020) by Patrick McGarty
The Genealogical Publishing Company Book Excerpt – A New Genealogical Atlas of Ireland. Second Edition (published 2002) by Brian Mitchell.

Also now available, the Summer issue of Irish Genealogy Matters with news from www.rootsireland.ie .

A reminder that the best way to stay up to date on genealogy developments in Ireland is Claire Santry’s Irish Genealogy News at https://www.irishgenealogynews.com/

This is Volume 18, No 2, the first all-digital edition. That’s right, there’s no longer a print edition.

The content is much the same as previously You’ll find fewer ads and more colour and still with familiar writers like Sue Lisk, Robbie Goor, Diane L Richard, Joe Grandinetti and Dave Obee’s back page, 

The first article that drew my attention was “English Publicans”, by Michelle Dennis. As I have an ancestor who ran a pub in late 18th and early 19th century Barrow, in Suffolk, I was interested to see if there were any resources
I’d missed.  It turned out many of the article’s resources were London-specific and too late for my ancestors. Probate was a source mentioned that I’d mined. I’d not looked at Quarter or Petty Session records so appreciated the mention that a licence to sell spirits had to be obtained annually to ensure they kept an “orderly house.”

Sue Lisk’s articles “Within A Legal Framework:
The Law and Our Ancestors” and “Like Shooting Fish In a Barrel: Formulating Research Questions” have good advice for both US and Canadian research. Joe Grandinetti extends the geographic scope to Italy and Ireland in “Marginal Success…. Fringe Benefits in Genealogical Research”.

Dave Obee’s back page, finds him hopping on the Genealogy and AI bandwagon with a caution about being skeptical owing to “hallucinations.” He does admit that some of the ideas AI produced weren’t bad, I agree. The trick is to know enough to distinguish those from the crap.

For cardholders at a public library, like the Ottawa Public Library, with a subscription to Flipster eMagazines, you should now be able to access the magazine without charge.

Here, according to the MyHeritage and Ancestry published catalogues, are the increases (bold) in the number of items contained.

FamilySearch also advertizes more than 1.2 billion in its Family Tree without giving an exact number.