Canada

Lessons From a Mixed-Up Parish

22 Jan By Dwight

St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, Chatham, Northumberland County, New Brunswick, may be the most ethnically and religiously mixed-up parish I have ever researched for an Irish family. Known as “Chatham Parish,” its records (1838-1899) are indexed and digitized as part of the “Acadia, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1670-1946,” on Ancestry.com. The lessons I learned from a page-by-page search for my targeted Irish family both amazed and confused me.

Chatham drew varied ethnic groups, with the Irish and French Canadians being among the largest. It was tough to rely on the index as the originals were complex. There were smaller pieces of paper inserted in the binding to reflect dispensations to marry, notices signed by non-Catholic spouses concerning their children’s religious upbringing, and of people requesting proof of their baptism so they could be married elsewhere.

Then there were the records of people converting to Catholicism; the assumption being in preparation for marriage. In most cases, they were absolved from heresy and conditionally rebaptized. The exception seemed to be the Lutherans from Scandinavian countries. They were absolved from heresy and received on a profession of faith.

So what did I learn? Religion was not necessarily clear-cut in these areas of diverse immigration. Sometimes who was the Catholic party was not always clear-cut. The fluid nature of church membership was not confined to the Catholic parish. It also occurred in the Protestant denominations.

For example, my targeted husband and wife were listed as Catholic on their marriage. They were married by a Baptist minister, with the witnesses being Presbyterian. Depending on the censuses, the wife was listed as Catholic or Presbyterian. I finally proved she and her husband were at least from Catholic families, and they had one child christened by the Chatham Parish priest. The rest was up for grabs. Her second marriage was to an Anglican in the Anglican Parish. For the wife, the censuses revealed her father was born in England and her mother in Ireland. Perhaps another mixed-marriage!

My most important lesson was to be very careful with church records and always look at original registers rather than relying on an index. If I had only relied on the index, then I would have missed the entire context of what the Chatham Parish was all about.

If you would like professional help with your family history call us at: 385-214-0925.

The Lot System of Prince Edward Island – Part 2

31 Oct By Dwight Leave a Comment

In Part 2 of this blog, I will continue a discussion of how to use the Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.) Lot system as a means to help identify where your ancestor was from in Ireland.

Research Strategies Using the Lot Number

Using the assumption your ancestors settled in P.E.I. because they had family and friends already there from Ireland, you can narrow this further by grouping potential associates by Lot number. In this case, you would pick a source, such as a census or a published compilation to see who was actually living in that Lot. Then between all the sources, you would see if a pattern emerges with the “neighborhood” being from the same area of Ireland.

Reconstructing a Neighborhood of Immigrants From Ireland

One of my favorite sources for doing this is combining my census work or church register with Peter Gallant’s work From Ireland to Prince Edward Island (Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island: Prince Edward Island Genealogical Society, 1990). In this work, Gallant uses tombstone inscriptions and obituaries from newspapers to reconstruct the Irish community. Many of these records tell the Lot the person was residing, and they often reveal what county or townland the person was born in Ireland. This is an easy way to reconstruct migration patterns out of Ireland. For example, it is know there was an Irish migration from the area of Donagh Parish, County Monaghan to around Lot 35 and Lot 36. This can be substantiated through Gallant’s compilation.

If you think locally in your research, by reconstructing a “neighborhood” where your ancestor lived, then you may be able to solve some difficult research problems. It may be the “neighborhood” all came from the same general area of Ireland. In the case of P.E.I., the Lot number is the key.

If you would like professional help with your Canadian ancestry, call us at: 385-214-0925.

The Lot System of Prince Edward Island – Part 1

23 Oct By Dwight Leave a Comment

We all know Irish immigrant research can be difficult. Before throwing up our hands, we need to step back and think strategically. One way to do this is to group an immigrant community geographically. An excellent example of how to do this can be found on Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.), Canada. However, this serves as only an example, as this strategy can be utilized with any number of political jurisdictions.

The Lot System of P.E.I.

On P.E.I. you would group the immigrant community by the Lot they were living on. The island is divided into three counties; Prince, Queens and Kings; each having a “royalty” or shire town. Within those three counties are 66 Lots roughly around 20,000 English Acres (80 square kilometers). A map of this can be found on the Island Register website under “The Lots of P.E.I.” These date back to an English survey completed in 1766. Within the Lots are various communities. For example, the community of Abney is in Lot 64. This can also be found on the IslandRegister website under “PEI Place Names vs Lot Numbers.” Basically a Lot would be a township in other Canadian provinces. The Lot number can be found in deeds, censuses and scores of other documents. If you only see a county and parish name, then here are the lots within each:

Prince County

North Parish: 1, 2, 3
Egmont Parish: 4, 5, 6, 7
Halifax Parish: 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Richmond Parish: 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
St. David’s Parish: Prince Royalty, 18, 19, 25, 26, 27, 28

Queens County

Grenville Parish: 20, 21, 22, 23, 67
Hillsboro Parish: 29, 30, 31, 65
Charlotte Parish: Queens Royalty, 24, 32, 33, 34
Bedford Parish: 35, 36, 37, 48, 49
St. John’s Parish: 50, 57, 58, 60, 62

Kings Parish

St. Patrick’s Parish: 38, 39, 40, 41, 42
East Parish: 43, 44, 45, 46, 47
St. George’s Parish: Kings Royalty, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 66
St. Andrew’s Parish: 59, 61, 63, 64

In Part 2 of this blog, I will be discussing strategies you can use to help identify where your ancestor may have come from in Ireland. If you would like professional help with your Canadian ancestry, call us at: 385-214-0925.

British Columbia Death Registrations (1872-1986)

22 Sep By Dwight Leave a Comment

A valuable collection for researching Irish immigrants is the “British Columbia Death Registrations, 1872-1986.” This collection, on FamilySearch, begins in 1872 when registration began. All you have to do is put in the word “Ireland” for the birth place, and leave the name blank, to get an idea as to how many Irish were in the province.

Information on the Death Form

The death forms vary in information provided. Much depends on the time period, and what was required for a particular death. They were submitted by district registrars, and then registered by the registrar or director of Vital Statistics. The death records can include a supporting “Medical Certificate of Death,” which concerns physician or coroner information. However, this medical information was not regularly included until 1896, and not for every death until 1912. Concerning a still birth, be aware, these may have been registered as a birth a death or both.

Typically, a certificate may include all or part of the following information

Name, age and gender
Date and place of death
Date and place of birth
Cause of death
Marital status
Parent’s names
Name of spouse
Name of physician
Registration district name or number
Date and number of registration
Religious affiliation

How Complete are the Records?

As with civil registration anywhere, the early years can prove frustrating for the family historian. The death registers are no different in British Columbia. You often will not find a registered death because people lived great distances from the registry offices and had very little if any communication with cities and towns.

The FamilySearch Database

When using the FamilySearch database, remember there are some interesting ways to manipulate the data. You always have to be aware of spelling variations, so test several spellings such as Byrne, Bierne, Burns and then put an “O” in front. This will help you not miss anything. Another strategy would be to use the “Parent” search or the “Spouse” search. This allows you to sometimes find missing people or entries which have been incorrectly indexed.

This is an excellent database from which you can browse the 1,113,866 images or utilize the index to the 898,889 indexed records (as of 9 May 2014).

If you would like professional help with your Canadian ancestry, call us at: 385-214-0925.

St. Lawrence Steamboat Company Passenger Lists, 1819-1838

25 Nov By Dwight Leave a Comment

For Irish immigration within Canada in the early nineteenth century, a major resource has recently been indexed online. The St. Lawrence Steamboat Company regularly transported goods and passengers on the St. Lawrence River between Montreal and Quebec. The lists for the passengers from 1819-1838 survive. This means that with a little care and a lot of wisdom, a new source has just been opened up for research.

Information Found in the Records

These manuscript records will provide lists of passengers on a particular steamboat on a particular day. They are simple in their presentation so you have to do a lot of “reading between the lines.” Remember, this source affects not only Canadian migration but also many of these people would have eventually migrated to the United States.

Information includes the date of the trip, where the steamboat embarked and landed, fare paid and sometimes general remarks. The names themselves are sometimes abbreviated as in Mr. Kelly, Mrs. Kelly, or Miss. Kelly. If you find an entry of interest you have to take into consideration everyone on the steamboat. This may help you determine the identity of Mr. Kelly. Also, since interrelated families may have travelled together, you may find a group from the same place in Ireland your ancestor was from

When families were travelling together, you will see only the number of children being listed. As children under 12 travelled for half fare, the number of children should reflect this. There are no ages attached to the names. The collection is indexed with scanned images in “Canada, St. Lawrence Steamboat Company Passenger Lists, 1819-1838” on Ancestry.com.

This is Not Necessarily a Straightforward Source

Remember, this is not a straightforward resource. You have to think past what the index and the record itself is conveying to determine if the Mr. Kelly on that steamboat was actually yours.

If you would like to know more about your Canadian immigrants Click Here.

Working Two Indexes at Once

20 Aug By Dwight Leave a Comment

I was tracing an Irish family who settled in Quebec having children in the 1830s and 1840s. I automatically utilized “Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection) 1621-1967” provided by Ancestry.com Using the Parent Search, only one Roman Catholic christening was found.

I pulled the microfilm here at the Family History Library for that parish and found a clear, hand-written index, organized by year. There I found three additional children. What was wrong with the indexing in the “Drouin Collection?”

Turns out the handwriting in the parish registers was so bad, no modern index could be accurate. I worked the two indexes from two directions. The first was I ignored the index on Ancestry. That worked well until I got to my last baptism dated 1843. I couldn’t find it on the microfilm. The manuscript index showed a page number, but there were no page numbers.

I went back to the “Drouin Collection” index on Ancestry.com and plugged in the name and year. The index caught it and I was able to look at the entry online. How did I miss it? I got the baptismal entry number from the online scan and then went back to the microfilm. It took some hunting but I found it. My conclusion was the registers were so bad I couldn’t catch the name in the margins off to the left side of the page.

The first lesson learned was to never assume any index is correct. The second was the online index helped me identify a parish. The third lesson was I still had to correlate information from the manuscript index on microfilm with the Ancestry index for the “Drouin Collection.”

I was satisfied that I had all the children. My advice is to always go that extra step to assure accuracy.

Provincial Archives of Alberta

13 Dec By Dwight Leave a Comment

The Provincial Archives of Albert (PAA): http://culture.alberta.ca/paa/ is a major repository for records. Their holdings include both private collections and governmental records.

Among the private collections are personal letters and correspondence, diaries and journals, business records, registers and minutes of churches and community groups. Part of these collections include what the PAA terms MUSH Records (Municipalities, Universities, School Boards and Health Care bodies.

Perhaps the best part of the PAA website for the family historian is the section “Research Resources” which provides an inventory of various record types. There are inventories for Newspapers, Faith Organizations (churches), Genealogy (civil registration, censuses, homestead, directories, histories, passengers list, divorce, and probate records), Directories (city, telephone, rural atlas and directories), Maps and Cartographic, and Homesteads.

The civil registration collection consists of births, marriages and deaths from about 1870 through the 1980s. There are indexes prior to 1905 and afterwards they are filed by locality. The homesteads (ca. 1880-1970) are also a major part of the genealogical collection. In 2011, the PAA along with the University of Alberta Libraries and the Internet Archive collaborated to digitize the microfilm of the homesteads. These are now available from 1870-1930: http://archive.org/details/albertahomestead The PAA also has links to the homestead index at the Alberta Genealogical Society website: http://abgensoc.ca/homestead/

Concerning church registers. The PAA holds the registers for the Alberta and Northwest Conference Archives of the United Church of Canada (ca.1830s-present), the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (ca. 1880-2000), Anglican Diocese of Edmonton and Athabasca (ca. 1870-ca.2000. Note: The records for the Diocese of Calgary are at the University of Calgary), Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ca. 1895-ca. 2000)

The PAA has both Archivists and volunteers who can help with patrons and answer enquiries. You may also contact the PAA online with enquiries.

Archives of Manitoba

16 Nov By Dwight Leave a Comment

An excellent place to begin your search for Manitoba ancestors is the Archives of Manitoba: www.gov.mb.ca/chc/archives Manitoba was an important part of Canadian history, not only in the early fur trade, but also in the westward migration of the population.

The archive holds many primary records such as homestead files, public school attendance records, wills and estate files, Hudson’s Bay Company servants’ contracts, Hudson’s Bay Company engagement registers, Hudson’s Bay Company personnel files, Red River Settlement census records and private records of early Manitoba families. Although the holdings of the Archives of Manitoba are vast, they do not hold vital records or land titles. The archive website has some research guides to help you understand and access vast collections such as the probates and the Hudson’s Bay Company Archive.

The Hudson’s Bay Company Archive has its own division within the Archives of Manitoba, and is considered one of Canada’s national treasures. It was founded in 1670 and is the oldest charted trading company in the world.

The Archives of Manitoba holds the probates for the province, and these are being indexed on the website. Current online Judicial Districts include; Winnipeg (187—1984), Brandon (1884-1984), Dauphin (1918-1984) and Morden (1902-1965).

Archive staff will conduct limited research for those who aren’t able to visit in person. They also have an extensive microfilm collection which can be obtained through inter-library loan. Online catalogs, such as their “Keystone Archives Descriptive Database” can help you identify sources. Their microfilm collections through 1904 are also available at the Library and Archives Canada: www.collectionscanada.gc.ca in Ottawa and at The National Archives, Kew, England: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk Also, do not neglect any Mantitoba collections at the Family History Library: www.familysearch.org

Kidnapped to Quebec

12 Nov By Dwight Leave a Comment

Often in tracing Colonial New England Scots-Irish families, you find the unexpected. What you find is these Presbyterians living in Quebec as Roman Catholics, married to Indians, and having both an Indian and French name. What the heck?

It turns out that with a little historical research into the “French and Indian Wars,” it all makes sense. Many Scots-Irish families were kidnapped by Indians and traded in what is now Quebec. The obvious implication is that who you thought were French Catholics or even mixed-bloods from the First Nations were originally Scots-Irish Presbyterians from New England and Ulster with a totally different name!

They are documented in two works: Emma Lewis Coleman’s New England Captives Carried to Canada Between 1677 and 1760 During the French and Indian Wars (1925); and C. Alice Baker’s True Stories of New England Captives Carried to Canada During the Old French and Indian Wars (1897). These can be found online, and don’t forget to look for online indexes.

Now for the historical background. These series of wars can be divided up and named. In the United States the war was named after the ruling English Monarch at the time. In Canada, either the larger European conflict or the term “Intercontential War” is used.

1688-1697: King William’s War (1^st Intercolonial War (Quebec))

1702-1713: Queen Ann’s War (2^nd Intercolonial War)

1744-1748: King George’s War and War of Jenkins’ Ear (3^rd Intercolonial War)

1754-1763: The French and Indian War (4^th Intercolonial War and 6^th Indian War)

These wars were tied to the larger European conflicts as they played out in North America. These wars pitted England/UK, its colonies and Indian allies against France, its colonies and Indian allies. The causes of the wars were the desire of both nations to control the interior of North America, and the region around the Hudson Bay. The winner would dominant the fur trade. The French were effective in mobilizing the Indians, who raided the English colonies, and brought captives back to Quebec. New Hampshire, and its Scots-Irish population, were particularily ravaged during the last two wars.

In tomorrow’s blog, I want to continue the other side of this native theme by exploring people who willingly were trying to claim Native American heritage, whether they were or not.

The Rooms Provincial Archives

13 Oct By Dwight Leave a Comment

The Rooms Provincial Archives houses the records of Newfoundland and Labrador: www.therooms.ca/archives This is an important province for Irish immigration, dating back into the 1600s. The province represents the oldest and most enduring connection between Ireland and Canada. Migration was particularly heavy from counties, Cork, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford and Wexford. The Rooms is an excellent place to begin your search into the history of Irish immigration.

The Rooms houses the vital statistics for the province as well as parish registers. The Rooms houses church, court, land, newspapers, probate, vital and voter records. To access collections such as church records, the archive website has finding aids such as a “Community Index” which is an alphabetical listing of communities and what churches were in the area. Then the archive references for the parish registers are provided. Church registers are important as they form the core of the vital records prior to government civil registration beginning in 1891.

A particularly interesting database is “Parish Register Finding Aid” which is by denomination, and then alphabetical by locality. These include: Church of England/Anglican, Congregational, Methodist/United Church, Moravian, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic and Salvation Army.

The Rooms collects non-governmental records, such as those generated by businesses. One of the strengths of their collection are mercantile records related to the Newfoundland fishery industry. There are also journals, diaries and correspondence from individuals houses at the archive as well as the records for various groups and associations.

The archive staff will conduct research by correspondence. However, they do require detailed information, especially with searching parish registers. For those who do not live near the archive in St. John’s, be aware, many of their core collections have been microfilmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah, and are available through the Family History Library: www.familysearch.org When using the FHL Catalog, make sure you look under the name of the town as well as the general province.

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