Anglo-Celtic Connections

Here’s a niche interest opportunity for anyone with a connection to coal mining in Derbyshire or Warwickshire. It’s about the kind of obscure social history resource increasingly coming online that you can mine for family history gold.

This release adds 32 million names and 14 million addresses to England & Wales, Electoral Registers 1910-1932. The collection total is now 137,849,651 names which make it FMP’s largest British and second largest worldwide after United States Marriages. It’s a great way to fill in between the 1911 census and 1939 register, pending the arrival of the 1921 census next year.

Most of the records are for England. Despite the title, there are none for Wales, and, surprise, there are nearly 700,000 records for West Lothian (Linlithgowshire), Scotland.

Also for Scotland, FMP has added thousands of memorial inscriptions bringing the collection total to 1,174,769.

 

If you plan on attending Saturday’s BIFHSGO conference and are game for a marathon there’s a whole other free event opportunity with only a small overlap. It’s the UK Register of Qualified Genealogists Conference programme 2021: Genealogy and Social History: Know your Ancestors

The keynote talks are:

At 5:45 am ET: Finding your ancestors at home: researching the history of houses, by Melanie Backe-Hansen, a historian specializing in house histories who was involved in the recent BBC programmes ‘A house through time’

At 8;25 am ET: Researching your criminal ancestors, by Helen Johnston, Professor of Criminology at the University of Hull and Professor Heather Shore, Professor of History, Manchester Metropolitan University

At 11:40 am ET: “Lying Bastards”: the impact of illegitimacy on the records that our ancestors leave behind, by David Annal, a professional researcher with over 40 years’ experience. He is a former Principal Family History Specialist with the National Archives.

There are also several shorter presentations:

What genealogists and social historians can learn from each other by Caroline Gurney
Business histories: putting our ancestors into their commercial communities by Elizabeth Walne
Who was Kastian Richardson? From family story to theatrical social history by Diana Nicoll
Dusting and Digging: The work of women, 1796-1829 by Valerie Brenton
Life of the Early Victorian Deaf and Dumb (A Yorkshire Study) by Anne Sherman
Hidden history: Tales of everyday life in Newspaper Advertisements by Audrey Collins
Jilted! Or the insights offered in breach of contract of marriage cases by Kate Keter.

Find out more and register (free) at https://www.qualifiedgenealogists.org/2021-conference

Front and centre on its website is the statement that “Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is a key resource for all Canadians who wish to gain a better understanding of who they are, individually and collectively. LAC acquires, processes, preserves and provides access to our documentary heritage and serves as the continuing memory of the Government of Canada and its institutions.”

So how would you react if you heard that LAC was considering stopping all public circulation of archival materials for 2-3 years? Incredulous? 

I’m hearing that, with the exception of emergencies and ATIP formal requests, this closure is under consideration.

Over many years, through moves, ice storms and floods (remember water flowing into the lower levels at 395 Wellington) LAC maintained service with the briefest of interruption. Now there are already extraordinary delays in fulfilling ATIP orders, well beyond legislated deadlines.  Delays are even longer for regular requests.

If true, and you won’t yet find any hint of the development from official LAC sources, who would such cuts impact? Historians of all types, researchers and writers — professionals, academics, and students as well as individuals looking to explore their ancestry. People who make their living based on LAC resources would be cut off from their livelihood for lack of authoritative sources for books, magazines, journal articles, and media of all types as well as access to historical materials that need to be consulted for developments. Cuts would be contrary to LAC’s declared intention in its Indigenous Heritage Action Plan to improve access to Indigenous-specific records.

It’s hard to believe that such action is even being contemplated, but my sources are credible enough to warrant raising concern.  If this is being considered LAC, as a key resource for all Canadians, must consult so that the full impact of such unprecedented action to deny providing access to our documentary heritage is understood by all, LAC and its clients, allowing time for appropriate response.

Stay tuned.

Update

Despite a recent comment, I can confirm through another source that the restriction is, or maybe was at this stage, being considered. I make no apology for alerting the community to this news as in government, once a decision is made it’s very difficult to reverse. Even contemplating such an action, which is bound to leak, with consequences on those for whose livelihood depends on the use of LAC resources, causes stress. Let’s hope the notion is buried as deeply as nuclear waste in the Canadian shield.

A shout-out and congratulations to Chris Paton who has just had his latest book released by Pen and Sword. He mentions it’s the 20th he’s published in a decade.

Here’s the back cover blurb!

The history of Ireland is one that was long dominated by the question of land ownership, with complex and often distressing tales over the centuries of dispossession and colonisation, religious tensions, absentee landlordism, subsistence farming, and considerably more to sadden the heart. Yet with the destruction of much of Ireland’s historic record during the Irish Civil War, and with the discriminatory Penal Laws in place in earlier times, it is often within land records that we can find evidence of our ancestors’ existence, in some cases the only evidence, where the relevant vital records for an area may never have been kept or may not have survived.

In Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, genealogist and best-selling author Chris Paton explores how the surviving records can help with our ancestral research, but also tell the stories of the communities from within which our ancestors emerged. He explores the often controversial history of ownership of land across the island, the rights granted to those who held estates and the plights of the dispossessed, and identifies the various surviving records which can help to tease out the stories of many of Ireland’s forgotten generations.

Along the way, Chris Paton identifies the various ways to access the records, whether in Ireland’s many archives, local and national, and increasingly through a variety of online platforms.

Find out more from a post on The Scottish GENES blog.

A reminder that Chris is presenting at noon on Saturday during the BIFHSGO Conference.

 

The Niagara Falls Library (NY)  has announced the completion of the digitization of the Niagara Gazette from May 1854 to February 1916.

For researchers, this project allows for greater access to Niagara Falls historical information from that time period. Access to digitized files is free and available online to all users, regardless of location.

Although the paper was published on the US side there’s a lot of Canadian news, even a column titled News From Canada.

The quality of the original is often not good so expect OCR errors.

The completed digital collection is available on NYS Historic Newspapers (https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/).

For some while, I’ve been suggesting making back issues of Anglo-Celtic Roots, BIFHSGO’s quarterly chronicle, full text searchable as a corpus. You can do that on individual issues posted on the BIFHSGO website as pdfs, but not across the whole collection. If you remember something mentioned in an article, but can’t recall the issue it’s a hard slog finding what you recall.

When I mentioned this in reviewing the new BIFHSGO website I received a pointed email from a Director about the need for volunteers.

I thought I might have a workaround to make the search possible. Paper to HTML Converter is “an experimental prototype that aims to render scientific papers in HTML so they can be more easily read by screen readers or on mobile devices. Because of our reliance on statistical machine learning techniques, some errors are inevitable. ”

To try it I downloaded an issue to my computer desktop and submitted it. A minute or so later I got the message “The page isn’t working.” Trying a second earlier issue broke the system.

It isn’t surprising, the system was designed for individual scientific papers, not whole issues. This does show it’s an area of active research.

Suggestions for other (affordable) approaches that would enhance the functionality of the back issues of ACR would be welcome via a comment.

14:00 – 15:30     Exhibitor Connect          

An opportunity for participants to visit breakout rooms hosted by conference exhibitors to learn more about their products and services.

16:00 – 17:30      Rentals as a Source for Irish Family History
with Dr. Jim Ryan

Rentals are the records kept by landlords or their agents; they may include information on tenants’ names, rental income and payments, property, and dates, though they are hugely variable in their format. They exist from the 1600s to the 1900s and are important in Ireland, where land ownership was legally and economically restricted and tenancy was the norm for the vast majority. This talk will review the history, formats and availability of surviving rentals and what they offer as family history sources. Jim will outline the historical reasons for most land-occupiers being tenants; the 300-year evolution of the estate system and of landlord-tenant relations, along with their effects on the nature and survival of rental records; the nature and range of rentals, their formats and content; and where they are to be found. The talk is fully illustrated with examples of records and their content, along with the consequent difficulties presented for scanning and on- line availability.

18:00 – 19:30      The Secret Lives of Women: Research Female Ancestors Using the Sources They Left Behind
with Gena Philibert-Ortega

Why is finding a female ancestor so difficult? One reason is the way we research their lives. Successful research must combine familiar genealogical sources and sources that women left behind. In this lecture we look at the women-specific sources including signature quilts, community cookbooks, and diaries.

20:00 – 21:30      Jumping the Pond to Northern Ireland
with Mags Gaulden

Genealogy and genetic genealogy can team up to help a family discover its way to Ireland; not an easy feat when the family believes itself to be Scottish, having lost the knowledge of its origins. Follow along as Mags, using this case study, reveals how discoveries turned a North American family’s beliefs into an exceptionally large leap onto a small Northern Irish peninsula in the Irish Sea. Ireland is a place where records have burned and insights are hard to come by. But recent discoveries, using DNA and DNA group projects, have focused the research and placed the family’s origins across the pond and squarely on a specific point in Northern Ireland. Mags will explain how answers to genealogy questions in the face of the lack of available documentation can identify specific locations. Jumping the pond is possible.

www.bifhsgo2021.ca

The following is a 21 September release from FamilySearch.

It is a milestone 83 years in the making. Today FamilySearch International announced the completion of a massive project to digitize its collection of millions of rolls of microfilm containing billions of family history records from around the world. The archive containing information on more than 11.5 billion individuals is now freely available to the public on FamilySearch.org.

… more

 

Kim Barnsdale, OGS’s amazing Webinar Coordinator, drew this presentation opportunity, or rather opportunities, to my attention.

Ontario Ancestors is currently accepting proposals for our monthly 2022 Webinar Series. Our live webinars take place the first Thursday of the month at 7pm ET using the Zoom platform.

In addition, Ontario Ancestors is also looking for guest speakers who are interested in presenting for our new online quarterly mini-conference learning opportunities in 2022.

All submissions will be considered for both unless otherwise indicated on the submission.

Find further information and the form for sending proposals at https://ogs.on.ca/webinar-submissions/

The deadline for submissions is Thursday 30 September 2021 at 11:59 pm.

This is BIFHSGO Conference week. See the schedule at www.bifhsgo2021.ca.

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

Tuesday 21 Sept, 7 pm: Discovering Sudbury District, for Sudbury Branch OGS. https://www.sudburyogs.com/

Wednesday, 22 Sept, 7 pm: The Alexander Bridge: its construction. its significance, its future, by David Jeanes and John Zvonar for Heritage Ottawa.
https://heritageottawa.org/events/alexandra-bridge-its-construction-its-significance-its-future

Wednesday, 22 Sept, 8 pm: Cluster Research: Using Groups of People to Find Your People, by Robyn Smith for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/cluster-research-using-groups-of-people-to-find-your-people/

Thursday 23 Sept, 6:30 pm: Fireside Chat: The Importance of Social History in Genealogy, by Allison Singleton and Elizabeth Hodges for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center. https://acpl.libnet.info/event/5546606

Friday 24 Sept, 8 am: Continuation of Webtember from Legacy Family Tree Webinars. https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/webtember-all-genealogy-all-september-long/

Looking Ahead

Monday 27 September, 3 pm: The Canadian Corps in the Hundred Days, by Tim Cook and Bill Stewart for the Western Front Association https://www.facebook.com/westernfrontassociation/

This post is delayed.

The In From The Cold Project exists to research and identify all servicemen and women missing from the official Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) list of casualties from the First and Second World Wars.

As of 4 September, 6,569 cases had. been submitted and accepted for commemoration by CWGC. They include 18 Canadian Merchant Navy, 9 Canadian Infantry, and one each for the Canadian Engineers,  Canadian Mounted Rifles, Canadian Pioneers, and Royal Canadian Naval Air Service.

The most recent cases accepted by the CWGC are at http://www.infromthecold.org/news.asp

A further 1,205 cases had been submitted and awaiting determination.