Anglo-Celtic Connections

Harold James Duncan, born 9 Jan 1898, had a difficult childhood in Ottawa. His mother (Mary Elizabeth nee McGregor) died when he was age four. His father (Albert James) married again. Siblings from both marriages died as infants, His father died of TB before Harold was age 10.

He first attested in April 1916, age 18, giving his occupation as window dresser. Serving with the Canadian Army Service Corps he proceeded to Valcartier but was hospitalized with TB from August that year. He was released in April the following year, then attested again in May spending time in sanitoriums in Quebec, Ontario and B.C.

He died at Mountain Sanitorium in Hamilton, Ontario on 27 June 1921 and was buried at Beechwood Cemetery in Lot 94. South-West. Sec. 29.

This month’s meeting will take place on Monday, June 28, beginning at 7:30 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Time). It will be entirely online and open to all—but you must register in advance.

Genealogy professional Thomas MacEntee will be joining us to talk about Hiding Out in the Open: Discovering LGBT Family History. Have you heard family stories about a relative who was “different” or someone who simply “disappeared”? Find out why you might want to consider the possibility that your relative was lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered. And learn how to modify your search strategies to improve your chances of locating and researching LGBT folk in your family tree so that you can preserve and share their stories.

We’ll round out the evening with a short presentation by Glenn Wright, titled Extra! Extra! Read All About It! Cousin Lyman and the Power of the Press.

Click here to find out more and register for “Hiding Out in the Open” on June 28.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Casualty Returns
On the BIFHSGO Facebook Group a query was posted about a shipwreck in 1947. A promising looking resource is the Casualty Returns refering to the total losses of ocean going merchant ships over 100 gross tonnes. The Returns were published quarterly and annually from 1890 to 2000, recording losses according to flag and cause of loss.

Scotland’s 1921 census release delayed
ScotlandsPeople have announced that the release of the 1921 census in Scotland, originally scheduled for summer 2021, has been pushed back to late 2022.

Scotland, Dumfries and Galloway Census & Population Lists 1792-1821
A small (less than 5,000 entry) addition to FMP last week.

Mispronunciation: why you should stop correcting people’s mistakes
Guilty

Ottawa Branch OGS
In the absence of Heather Oakley the AGM on Saturday  was chaired by Mike More. All votes passed unanimously. Branch Council membership remains the same, membership numbers are steady around 315 and thanks to the low expenses of a virtual meeting a substantial surplus was created from Gene-O-Rama 2021. Local genealogical organizations continue to benefit from Branch grants – typically $2,500.

Environmental action: why some young people want an alternative to protests

Thanks to this week’s contributors:  Anonymous, Bev Craig, Gail Benjafield, Judith H., Sue C., Unknown.

The Society of Genealogists is offering a seven-week course, Saturdays,  3 July – 14 August, each session from 10 am to 11:30 am EDT.

Most of us have people on our family tree that migrated to London. They married, had children, and moved from one suburb to another. London has always been a magnet, attracting people to live and work. The speed with which the population grew in the 18th and 19th centuries is staggering. In 1780, Greater London’s population was 750,000. By 1860, it had grown to 3 million. By 1900, it was over 6 million. Our ancestors are part of that growth. Trying to follow our London ancestors’ lives can be baffling. Someone may have been born in Middlesex, married in Surrey and buried in Holborn – all without ever moving. It’s all related to that population boom and the way that local governments struggled to keep up. They moved boundaries, set up administration areas, and spilled over into other counties like Middlesex, Essex, Surrey and Kent. So how do you effectively search for someone? To tackle that needle in the urban haystack – your London ancestor – we have planned this series of seven Saturday sessions. untangle the complicated administrative boundaries in London. learn new ways of exploring sources in archives. find out what records are available, online and offline.

Each class includes a Q&A. A full programme can be found on our website, where bookings can be made. Classes are recorded and available to anyone who books a place, for up to two weeks afterwards.

Cost £135.00/£108.00 SoG members, with tutors Else Churchill, Ian Waller, John Hanson and Jeff Gerhardt.

Until midnight UK time at the end of the month the (UK) Family History Federation is offering discount registration for its next REALLY USEFUL Family History Show, Friday-Saturday 12th-13th November 2021.

For £7.50 (about $12.50 Cdn) they promise

Three new collections for those searching Irish ancestry.

Ireland, Petty Sessions Court Registers
From Donegal County Archives, over 62,000 new court records are added making the whole collection over 23 million records. Dates from 1828 to 1923.
The number of records by county is: Carlow 168,361, Cavan 1,112,173, Claire 1,327,993, Cork 1,717,486, Donegal 1,094,093, Dublin 543,743, Galway 2,661,677, Kerry 1,178,557, Kildare 554,800, Kilkenny 802,529, Laois (Queen’s) 516,083, Leitrim 177,003, Limerick 1,542,475, Longford 314,747, Louth 619,257, Mayo 2,082,408, Meath 690,929, Monaghan 882,652, Offlay (King’s) 212,119, Roscommon 785,497, Sligo 459,103, Tipperary 1,427,441, Waterford 999,602, Westmeath 413,430, Wexford 542,456, Wicklow 466,517.
Transcripts are linked to the original document original with more detail.

Ireland, Court of Chancery Bill Books 1627-1884
Uncover family disputes and more in this vast collection of court records spanning over 250 years of Irish legal history.  Cases to Exchequer tended to be land owners, merchants, business owners, professionals and the larger farmers as it was expensive for anyone else to attend court in Dublin. However defendants in cases could come from a broader sector of society.  There are 1,217,591 entries.
I found two entries for an Irish name I search. The year was about the only useful information I was able to glean.

Ireland, Court of Exchequer Bill Books 1627-1884
Did your ancestor have their day in one of Ireland’s busiest courts? Delve into over a million new records to find out.
I found these less useful than the Chancery Bill Books — nothing for the name I search.  Hopefully your search is more productive.

The latest post on the London Historians’ Blog, a reprint from an August 2020 members’ newsletter is about some of the 2,500 pamphlets being reviewed in a volunteer project with the  Royal Institution.

The article lists the titles of some of the pamphlets. One that attracted my attention was Letters from the Dorking Emigrants, who went to Upper Canada, in the Spring of 1832. Google revealed that it could be viewed at the Canadiana.ca collection — with 52 full-text searchable pages.

Was your ancestor amongst those mentioned?

I wonder if these are in TONI — The Ontario Name Index from OGS?

I suspect these may be Petworth settlers, although Dorking is 50 Km from Petworth.

Kristen Mercier started this month as the new archivist for The Arnprior & McNab/Braeside Archives.

Kristen — who grew up in Pembroke and Chapeau, Que. on Allumette Island — will be returning home from the UK where she worked as an assistant archivist for St. George’s Chapel Archives and Chapel Library at Windsor Castle. She is a graduate of the University of Glasgow, Humanities Advanced Technology & Information Institute.

“Loves the Middle Ages – would never use a time machine to go there.”

Kristen will soon be re-opening the Archives to researchers and welcome back dedicated volunteers.

https://www.insideottawavalley.com/news-story/10422948-arnprior-mcnab-braeside-archives-wins-ontario-archives-association-award/

MyHeritage has opened up, for a limited time, 57 collections with 181 million passenger arrival, naturalization, border crossing, emigration, passport, and convict transportation records.

They include 12,398,842 records of United States, Border Crossings from Canada, 1895-1956. 

As many people travelling to and from Canada went through  New York the largest collection, Ellis Island and Other New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 with 113,439,585 records, and smaller collections for other US East Coast ports, are of Canadian interest.

Joining the promotion of Food Day Canada which is 31 July, here are the first couple of paragraphs from an Ancestry.ca press release.

CANADIANS EMBRACE HERITAGE THROUGH FOOD

New survey reveals 67% of Canadians feel family recipes bring them closer to their heritage and almost half are concerned family history will be lost if recipes aren’t passed down

TORONTO, ON. June 22, 2021 – Ahead of Food Day Canada, a new Leger Marketing^[i] survey, conducted on behalf of Ancestry^®, the global leader in family history, reveals that seven in ten Canadians state their most memorable family moments involve home-cooked meals and eating together. However, almost half (44%) of Canadians feel that part of their family history will be lost if family recipes are not passed down.

Food heritage is one of the first and most prominent traditions passed down from previous generations, with nearly three-quarters (72%) of Canadians saying that they first learned to cook at home with their parents or grandparents. In fact, according to the Ancestry survey, 67% still cook at least one recipe that has been passed down by another family member and 58% feel family recipes give insight into how their ancestors lived.

The press release continues with a story about Ancestry spokesperson Lesley Anderson, one of the best-known family historians in Canada, who credits her family First World War-era “Cookery Book” as the catalyst for her foray into the world of family history.

It includes this image from the book — quantities given by weight the British way. I’m imagining Lesley preparing these in her newly renovated kitchen.

My own hand-written cheese scone recipe, a family favourite I copied from my mother’s dictation, substitutes cheese for the sugar and currants, reduces the butter and leaves out the egg. It may be her Second World War rationing-era recipe had to skimp on the ingrediants.

The Lake Scugog Historical Society and OurDigitalWorld have digitized more than 20,000 pages of Port Perry area newspapers dating from 1857-1933. The newspaper site was officially launched just in time to celebrate Port Perry, Ontario’s 150th anniversary! Now online:
Ontario Observer (1857-1873)
Port Perry Standard (1867-1868)
North Ontario Observer (1873-1919)
Port Perry Star (1907-1933)

Likely of broader interest is the Digitized Ontario Scrapbook Hansard, a collection of 10,000-15,000 newspaper clippings that provide substantially verbatim transcripts of Parliamentary debates and committee proceedings.

If your looking for other dates consult the Debates (Hansard) of the Legislative Assemblies of the Province of Canada and of Ontario, a pdf from the Archives of Ontario.

The following titles for the UK (England) and Canada (Ontario) have received updates on FamilySearch in the past week.