Sunday, September 29, 2013

MacDonald family history

Here is some news from Ron Zinck, who posts to the NSRoots mailing list quite often -

“I spent part of my Friday the Archives of Ontario working my way through
the collection of Rev. Ewen MacDonald. He worked for decades on Scottish
history and the McDonald family history. I have a number of scans that may
be of interest to researchers and I suspect I will have allot more after
every visit. This batch includes letters and a few charts that discusses
Antigonish, Cape Breton, and different septs in Scotland.

I hope that some of the MacDonald researchers will be able to help decipher, interpret and place these scans in context."

I uploaded them onto Google drive at this link
https://drive.google.com/?tab=mo&authuser=0#folders/

Saturday, September 28, 2013

The Niagara Peninsula OGS Branch announces new publication

The Niagara Peninsula OGS Branch is starting to take orders of their new book - More Than A Mere Matter Of Marching on October the 1st.

This will be a limited-edition book to commemorate the bicentennial of the War of 1812.

The press release says that “When Thomas Jefferson made his infamous prediction that "the acquisition of Canada this year... will be a mere matter of marching," he underestimated the courage and determination of the men and women of Upper Canada, including their First Nations allies.

Our book, More Than A Mere Matter of Marching contains the fascinating stories of over 60 families whose experiences during the War of 1812 may never have been in print before. The book is 323 pages, contains both colour and black-and-white images, and an index of over 1700 names.

PRE-PUBLICATION PRICE (available Oct. 1 - Oct. 31, 2013): $25.00 shipping and handling
PUBLICATION PRICE: $30.00 shipping and handling”.

For further information, please visit the Niagara Peninsula OGS Branch website: http://www.ogs.on.ca/niagara/. Just click on to the button which says War of 1812.

Friday, September 27, 2013

Gene-O-Rama returns to Ottawa

After a year’s absence, the Ottawa Branch of the OGS, will be having a Gene-O-Rama 2014 at the Confederation Education Centre, 1645 Woodroffe Av., Ottawa.

It will be held on the 21 and the 22 March, 2014, and the featured speaker will be Toronto genealogist Jane E. MacNamara.

So mark your calendar.

For more information, go http://ogsottawa/geneorama/

Sudbury District (OGS) Branch Meeting

On Monday, October 21, 2013 at 7:00 p.m. there will be a meeting at the Parkside Ctr, 140 Durham Street in Sudbury of the Sudbury District (OGS) Branch.

The topic will be The Shouldering of Arms by Gary Peck. He will discuss what led to the First World War, with the intent to help better appreciate ancestors in the context of the times.

For more info, go to http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~onogs/ogs.htm

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Ancestry.ca UPDATE: Historical records of passengers travelling the St. Lawrence from 1819 to 1838

I just received word this morning about a new database, and this one will interest people if they have ancestor's who immigrated to Canada 1819 to 1838.

TORONTO (Sept. 26, 2013) – Ancestry.ca, Canada’s largest family history website, announced today the launch of almost 200,000 passenger records dating from 1819 to 1836, documenting passengers travelling between Quebec City and Montreal on the ships of the St. Lawrence Steamboat Company.

The St. Lawrence River is one of the world's great waterways and has played a vital role in the history of Canada, serving as the main route into the continent for French explorers in the 17th century. Throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th, the river carried hundreds of thousands of immigrants to Canada in search of a new life in a new land. For this reason, the St. Lawrence Steamboat Company passenger lists are significant source of information for genealogists and family historians.

“The passenger lists can offer Canadians rich information about their ancestors but also help paint a picture of the changing face of Canada through one of our most significant bodies of water,” says Lesley Anderson, a genealogist and Content Manager for Ancestry.ca. “The St. Lawrence River is an important part of our history, and we are proud we can offer the only known surviving historical records of the ships that operated on the river in the 1800s. This collection is truly a national treasure.”

The history of the St. Lawrence Steamboat Company is an important part of Canada’s history. Following the successful launch of his brewing company in the 1780s, John Molson and his sons expanded into the shipping industry by creating the St. Lawrence Steamboat Company. The vessels transported passengers and freight along the St. Lawrence River between Montreal and Quebec City.

Travellers during this time, who were mostly English speaking, often used the vibrant thoroughfare as a stepping stone to make their way into the United States. One method of entering the U.S. from Canada was to take a steamer from Quebec City to Montreal and proceed south by sleigh, foot or horse and buggy.

In this new collection of historical records, users can find the name of a passenger departure city and the amount paid for a ticket. Members can also see whether a passenger travelled in steerage or cabin, travel dates and if they travelled with family. The collection will help provide users with context for when their ancestors arrived in Canada or the U.S. This new collection supplements Ancestry.ca’s vast database of millions of historical passenger and immigration records, which also includes:

· Canadian Passenger Lists and Ocean Arrivals – These collections consist of all records of immigration to Canada by ship or overland between 1865 and 1935, a period of 70 years that saw the largest influx of immigration into Canada ever, from all parts of the world.

· Pre-Confederation Passenger Lists – These lists contain correspondence and dispatches regarding emigration from the British Isles from 1758 to 1851. The collection also includes letters from many people requesting information and assistance to immigrate to Canada. It showcases the waves of immigration to Canada in the century before Canada became a nation.

. U.S. and Canada, Passenger and Immigration Lists – These collections relate to immigration for the U.S. and Canada prior to the 1820s. Housing more than four million records of individuals who arrived on U.S. and Canadian ports from the 1500s through the 1900s.

To check out the new St. Lawrence Steamboat Company records please visit http:www. ancestry.ca.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

1911 Census Updated

Ancestry.ca has updated the 1911 Census database.

There are now over 7-million names on the database.

This database is an every name index, and it covers the provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, and Saskatchewan, and two territories - the Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories.

Go to the website at http://search.ancestry.ca/search/db.aspx?dbid=8947












Tuesday, September 24, 2013

The New Acadia Project

Warren Perrin, of the Acadian Museum in Louisiana, says that “The New Acadia Project is an archaeological/historical initiative that aims to locate the original mid-eighteenth-century settlements of the first group of Acadian exiles in the Louisiana territory.

Their descendants today comprise over 500,000 Cajuns in Louisiana and throughout the world.

The New Acadia Project seeks to locate artifacts which will help establish the locations of these Acadian settlements, evidenced to be near the Teche Ridge/Teche River, as early as 1765.”

Their goal is to raise $100,000 by private donation. If you would like a detailed summary of the project, you can go to www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~mar4160/nap.html