Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.
How to navigate Order-in-Council records, part one: real life at LAC
TNA: 300,000 farm records going online
Introduction to County Research in England
Until 23 February, free access to this Family Tree Webinars presentation by Mia Bennett. A good refresher.
Thanks to this week’s contributors: Anonymous, Brenda Turner, gail benjafield, Sunday Thompson, Teresa, Unknown,
5.1% of immigrants admitted between 1982 and 2017 emigrated within five years of landing;
This percentage rises to 17.5% 20 years after admission;
Annual probabilities of emigrating peak three to seven years after admission.
Those are the highlights of a Statistics Canada report Emigration of Immigrants: Results from the Longitudinal Immigration Database released on 2 February 2024.
The chart fills in the gaps.
This leakage of immigrants must be accounted for in estimating immigrant contribution to subsequent demographics.
The good news, not mentioned in the report, is that retention of immigrants may be higher than historically. However, the quality of historic data is questionable.
In the early 1920s an immigration branch official opined about the proposed Empire Settlement Act (ESA):
“In the past we have brought into this country immigrants by the hundred thousand only to discover at the next census that they had all vanished.”
That’s recorded in the chapter ‘Leaven for the lump’: Canada and Empire settlement, 1918-1939, by John A. Schultz in Emigrants and Empire: British Settlement in the Dominions Between the Wars (Studies in Imperialism), Constantine, Stephen [Editor], Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 1990).
It’s an exaggeration, but emigration of immigrants has long been a concern. Schultz includes the following
… of the 8,500 (Harvesters) sent, 6,876 had returned to the United Kingdom (in September), ending hopes that a large number would settle into permanent employment in Canada.
A much earlier Stats Can (Dominion Bureau of Statistics) publication I mentioned recently, Canadian Immigration Policy and Backgrounds, includes data for the early 20th century. To summarize:
1901-1911: Immigration was 1,847,651. The net
growth in the immigrant population was 887,461, so 960,190 were lost, perhaps no more than 90,000 of those to death. That’s 47% lost to emigration.
1911-1921: The text mentions, “In 1921, only 50.3 percent of the survivors of the 1911-21 immigrants were still in Canada.” That means by the end of the decade, 49.7% of immigrants were not residents, which would include war dead.
1921-1931: “From calculations based on the Censuses of 1921 and 1931, on the percentage of immigrants still living who arrived in any decade and are still in Canada, we find only about 26.3 percent, or 1 in 4 remain for a period of over 30 years, 38.8 percent for 20-30 years, around 42 percent for 10-20 years, while a little over 50 percent. remain after from one to ten years.”
COMMENT
The gap between 10 and 50 percent after 10 years is enough to drive a large truck through. If an immigrant arrives, gets rooted, perhaps marries a person who is rooted, chances are they’d have no motivation to emigrate. By contrast, some came to Canada with no intention of staying long term. Others came for the brighter prospects it offerred compared to the previous situation. Having moved once, if they perceive propects to be brighter yet by leaving Canada, then they would be more ready to do so. We can’t be sure.
Find 478,468 marriage transcript records added to MyHeritage for between the years 1598 and 1900. Records typically include the names of the groom and the bride, their residence, the date and place of marriage, and the names of their fathers.
There are no linked images. As you don’t need a MyHeritage subscription the source, which is not credited, is likely FamilySearch.
Both Ancestry and Findmypast, as well as FamilySearch, have good coverage of Cheshire parish records for the period.
FMP must be holding their fire until Rootstech. Only about 13,000 new records this week, all for the Roman Catholic parish of St Mary’s Batley, Yorkshire.
A total of 8,814 baptisms, 3,012 marriages and 1,379 burial records. There are both images and transcriptions.
There are also over 200,000 new newspaper pages, including the following with pages from the 19th-century
Bo’ness Journal and Linlithgow Advertiser, 1884, 1888
Leicester Chronicle, 1864
Market Harborough Advertiser and Midland Mail, 1869-1891, 1893-1897, 1899, 1953
Melton Mowbray Times and Vale of Belvoir Gazette, 1894-1896, 1898-1905, 1932-1942, 1974-1981, 1985-1989, 1991
Ripon Gazette, 1897-1900, 1910, 1950, 1986
Who doesn’t like things easier?
On Saturday at 1 pm, online for OGS Ottawa Branch, Calgary-based Tara Shymanski will show how spreadsheets make analyzing census records easier.
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/monthly-presentation-ottawa-2/
Whether you’ve been waiting patiently or not, you now have access to another year of Irish civil registration records. For births, 1923 is added; for marriages, 1947 and deaths, 1973.
Find the whole collection at IrishGenealogy.ie
On 12 February, Ancestry.co.uk updated several significant collections of Church of England Hampshire records and added a new collection of Hampshire Nonconformist records.
UPDATED Church of England Collections
Hampshire, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1536-1812 (2,966,019 records): As with other counties, BMBs were recorded together until 1812. This expansive collection, with nearly 1 million additions since last May, is derived from Parish Registers and Bishops Transcripts. Search results are linked to original images which are also browsable.
Hampshire, England, Church of England Baptisms, 1813-1921 (2,965,545 records)
Hampshire, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921 (968,110 records) Remember, you will often find an image of the marriage record with the sane information as you get buying it from the GRO.
Hampshire, England, Church of England Burials, 1813-1921 (620,981 records)
NEW Nonconformist Collection
All these records derive from Hampshire Archives and Local Studies in Winchester.
New to MyHeritage are 4,678,564 records for Kent up to 1907. As voting rights were extended with the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884, the collection is predominantly for the latter period.
These are transcripts giving name, record type, year and residence. There are no images.
The record type is either voter registration, burgess rolls or jury lists. Residence can be the parish or sometimes just the county (Kent).
Although for the period before receiving the vote on a par with men, under some conditions, women could vote and are found in Burgess Rolls, including nearly 2,500 Marys in this collection.
Find 254 collections, containing 746 million historical records, in the MyHeritage internationally diverse marriage collections — completely free for four days.
Is there Love in your family? Read about MyHeritage’s findings here.
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. Find out about many more mainly US events at Conference Keeper at https://conferencekeeper.org
Tuesday 13 February
2 pm: Introduction to the MyHeritage Knowledge Base and the MyHeritage Wiki, by James Tanner for MyHeritage and Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/introduction-to-the-myheritage-knowledge-base-and-the-myheritage-wiki/
2:30 pm: Tracing the Path of African Americans from Enslavement to Freedom, byHillary Delaney for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/9938395
6:30 pm: Common Probelms, Possible Solutions, by Kirsty Gray for OGS Lambton County Branch.
https://lambton.ogs.on.ca/calendar/lambton-county-branch-ontario-ancestors-a-british-home-child/
7 pm: The McDougall Corridor, by Willow Key for OGS Essex Branch.
https://essex.ogs.on.ca/meetings/essex-branch-presentation/
Wednesday 14 February
1pm: Dragons: A History, by Ronald Hutton for Gresham College.
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/dragons
2 pm: AI and Genealogy: Trouble Ahead? by Thomas MacEntee for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/ai-and-genealogy-trouble-ahead/
7 pm: How to Overcome Brick Walls in German, by Michael D. Lacopo for ACGSI and Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/9223038
8 pm: Online Sources for Scottish Research, by Christine Woodcock for Lakeshore Genealogy Society.
Register at LGSregister@gmail.com
Thursday 15 February
1 pm: Archives of Ontario, by Emma Robinson for OGS Kawartha Branch.
https://kawartha.ogs.on.ca/Past-Events1/kawartha-branch-presents-archives-of-ontario/
6:30 pm: Indigenous Peoples – First Nations Genealogical Research, by Curt Witcher for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/9938399
Friday 16 February
2 pm: Introduction to County Research in England. by Mia Bennett for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/introduction-to-county-research-in-england/
Saturday 17 February
10 am: Scottish Genealogy, by Amy Gilpin for OGS Kingston Branch (also includes the AGM)
https://kingston.ogs.on.ca/
1 pm: What’s in a Name – A Cultural Perspective, by Paula Crooks for OGS Quinte Branch.
https://quinte.ogs.on.ca/2024/01/31/paula-crooks-research-techniques/
1 pm: Analyzing Census Records Using Spreadsheets, by Tara Shymanski for OGS Ottawa Branch.
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/monthly-presentation-ottawa-2/
The National Library of Scotland calls the newly available online Ordnance Survey Maps – Six-Inch Ireland, 1829-1969 “the most comprehensive topographic mapping covering all of Ireland and Northern Ireland from the 1820s to the 1960s.”
https://maps.nls.uk/os/6inch-ireland/
Many of the absent voters in this collection would have been in the military, the Merchant Marine, or the Red Cross. For Armaghthere are about 3,500 names, and for Londonderry about 4,500.
Here’s a typical transcript.
Name John Anderson
Residence Date 1918
Street Address Village of Laurelvale
Residence Place Armagh, Ireland
Registration Unit Mullahead
Polling District Tandragee – S.
Constituency Mid Armagh
Page number 359
In this case there’s a link to the original register with the additional information in a column headed “In the case of Naval or Military Voters description of Service, Ship, Regiment, Number, |Rank, Rating, &c. In the case of other Voters recorded address. For John Anderson that’s “71645 Pte., 36th Bat. M.G.C.”
