The following is a news release from Newspapers.com and Ancestry.

One Billion Newspaper Pages: Infinite Family History Discoveries Newspapers.com™ reaches 1 billion pages of historical papers on its site

There are 542 papers and 50,125,521 pages for Canada, 805 papers and 50,696,355 pages for the UK, and 20 papers and 233,007 pages for Ireland.

 

MesAieux.com, a family history service that specializes in French Canadian genealogy, is now part of the MyHeritage family.

“Founded in 2004, MesAieux.com has grown to over one million users. The website offers an online family tree builder with automated features to add ancestors, and is also home to approximately 15 million historical records from Canada, primarily from Quebec, and several exclusive collections.”

“All historical record content from MesAieux.com will soon be published on MyHeritage, and its users will benefit from the capabilities of MyHeritage’s innovative tree-to-tree and tree-to-record matching technologies.”

They’ve done it again. FamilySearch stealthily added records to the experimental search using handwriting recognition and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to convert an image of text into a machine-readable text format.

I searched for Smith and got 12,579,267 hits. Here’s the breakdown by place.

Asia & Middle East (2)
Australia & New Zealand (389,197)
Canada (1,080,751)
Continental Europe (56)
Mexico (91)
Other (822)
Pacific Islands (7)
South America (2)
United Kingdom and Ireland (316,133)
United States of America (10,787,306)

I don’t recall there being UK and Ireland hits previously. Subdividing those Smith hits:

England (271,646)
Scotland (36,316)
United Kingdom (3,690)
Wales (4,594)

Sorry Ireland! There are a few Irish records, but no Smiths.

There are Smith hits in 44 English counties and districts. Record types included are:

Legal Records (271,752)
Religious Records (24,920)
Genealogies (1,313)
Miscellaneous Records (3,333)
Military Records (3,143)
Periodicals (957)
School Records (1,856)
Vital Records (7,136)
Business Records (2,224)
Government Records (8,385)
Reference Materials (2,909)
Voting Records (2,715)
Migration Records (311)
Medical Records (3)

Filtering by year, most are in the 19th century.

Give it a try. Let us know if you break down any brick walls!

If you’re thinking of doing research at the Suffolk Archives, think again.

The new archives building in Ipswich is closing for three months starting in October.

Two archives branches have been closed for economic efficiency since the end of August. The journey by train from the previous branch location in Lowestoft to Ipswich takes no less than 80 minutes,

Find out more at https://www.suffolkarchives.co.uk/branch-closure-news/.

 

Dictionary of Selected Welsh Biographies, 1011-1969 has been added to Ancestry as a Web database.

The original, at the National Library of Wales (https://biography.wales/), has “over 5,000 concise biographies of individuals who made a significant contribution to national life, whether in Wales or more widely.”

Searching with Free Text at the NLW site for Canada surfaces 74 people, 63 males and 10 females. Canadian yields 15.

David Thompson (1770-1857) is the only one I immediately recognized.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

The Ten Most Famous Quotes of All Time
The following are from The 365 Most Famous Quotes of All Time published by The Medium Newsletter.

1. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” — Jesus Christ
2. “Veni, vidi, vici. I came, I saw, I conquered.” — Julius Caesar
3. “I know that I know nothing.” — Socrates
4. “Cogito ergo sum. I think; therefore I am.” — René Descartes
5. “To be, or not to be: that is the question.” — William Shakespeare
6. “Carpe diem — Seize the day.” — Horace
7. “With great power comes great responsibility.” — Stan Lee
8. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” — Wayne Gretzky
9. “Fortes Fortuna adiuvat — Fortune favors the bold.” — Virgil
10. “Knowledge is power.” — Sir Francis Bacon

Not included are:

There are two types of people in the world. Those who can extrapolate from incomplete information.

There are three types of people in the world: those who can count and those who can’t.

Gresham College
The new session starts on Wednesday, 11 September.

S -LL -OOO-WWWW
Has anyone else been having problems with the OGS website? Most of the genealogical society sites respond in 1 – 2 seconds, too fast to time on my stopwatch. The OGS site took at least 15 seconds, and in one trial more than 30 seconds.

LAC refuses to implement order from Information Commissioner

 

As I write this, the Saturday forecast for Ottawa shows a 100% chance of rain until 6 pm, making gardening plans a bit of a washout. So, what else can you do?

One excellent option is to check out the free Legacy Family Tree Webinars, which kicked off the Webtember series on Friday. You can find links to the available presentations here.

I enjoyed Gena Philibert-Ortega’s 10 Things You Don’t Know About Cemeteries on Friday. While it’s focused on the U.S., much of the information is helpful no matter where you research.

For those with Birmingham ancestry like me, I recommend Mike Sharpe’s Researching Your Birmingham Ancestors. It’s a clear and easy-to-follow guide packed with useful insights.

The Webtember series is free for everyone until the end of the month. However, while the webinars are free, you’ll need a subscription to access the handouts.

You are invited to sit back in comfort at home with a beverage of your choice and enjoy my talk ‘Twas a Dark and Stormy Night: Connecting Weather and Personal Histories.

Join us at the OGS Ottawa Branch virtual meeting, starting at 1 pm on Saturday, 14 September.

Register in advance for this Zoom presentation at

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0ode2srDsrGtAXhfOaQv62C34WuLClhA6k

All Ottawa Branch monthly presentations are free and open to the public.

From Active History: Sean Graham speaks with Marth Hanna, author of Anxious Days and Tearful Nights: Canadian War Wives During the First World War.

“We discuss Martha’s entry into the world of First World War letters, the challenge of tracking down letters from over 100 years ago, and how women on the front lines managed their relationships with significant others fighting the war. We also chat about censorship of letters, the challenge of what to share and what to hide from your spouse during the war, and what happened to relationships following the war.”

https://activehistory.ca/blog/2024/09/04/letters-of-the-first-world-war-whats-old-is-news/

It’s here, as promised.

The  redesigned site “make(s) accessing Scotland’s records easier than ever with quick, simple searching of our birth, marriage, death and census records.”

You’ll still find the same records documenting the lives of millions of Scots over centuries, as well as recently added record sets, including

Church records
Taxation records
Employment records
Prison records
Wills & testaments
Maps & Plans, and much more

There’s also a “streamlined certificate-ordering process that gives you speedy access to vital documents” and “a new, dedicated help and support section that will help if you encounter problems.”

To search Scotland’s People’s records, you need to be logged into your account or register. Fortunately, the account details saved on my computer continued to work. The site recognized a document I’d purchased years ago and displayed it without requiring me to purchase it again.