An article I read one time suggested that genealogy research could be done on one's break or lunchtime. I recently came across a list of names given to me by a friend a couple of years ago of her grandfather, his siblings and birthplace. At the time she had given me the list, I had done a quick check on ancestry.ca and wasn't able to pinpoint any of her ancestors with the limited information. But Ancestry has continued to add records and now has all of the Canadian census, as well as many more Ontario records. So I decided to give it a shot on my breaks.
As the family was of French heritage, when I did a search of the grandfather's name, one of the hits was from the Ontario Drouin Collection. Lo and behold, the record was of the bapitsm for the grandfather and his twin brother (the existence of twins was one of the pieces of information my friend had given me). The baptism record provided the second name for both babies. In the case of the grandfather, he had gone by his middle name, so discovering his official first name may be necessary for find entries on other documents.
The baptism record also provided the names of the parents. Searching those names found their marriage record which provided the names of their parents. Now I had several names to search for in the census, as well as marriage, birth and death records.
Searching those records led to discovering names of siblings which assists in confirming other entries. A witness in the burial record in the Drouin collection of a female matched the name of her son-in-law so I felt it was safe to assume that the female belonged in the branch I was searching. And with the date of her death, it was not surprising to find her husband listed as widowed in later census, as well as a later marriage for him.
It has been challenging finding census records for the various individuals. I had to remind myself that the individuals being enumerated may have had thick French accents and if the enumerator was English, may have been understood and record the name with a different spelling - which may or may not be covered by Soundex. I did find some individuals listed in censuses several decades apart, but not in the intervening years. As the individual was still in the same area in the later census, he was more than likely in the area when the other census had been done. Searching by first name in that subdistrict and scanning through several screens of names did unearth the "missing" families. Names of children, ages, occupations, etc matched the information I had found in the Drouin collection and b/m/d records.
Can genealogy research be done on one's coffee break? Yes - but very slow going. By the time I would find a new record, I was hard pressed to enter the information into my database. As I was saving the images to pass along to my friend anyway, I started to search and download the image and then do the database entries at home in the evening when I had more time. Of course I couldn't get to far ahead with the searching as I needed to check the updated database to verify the correct people to search for.
I continue to search to fill in more information before turning over the family tree to my friend for her to continue. From the minimal information of my friends' grandparents, with their death year and age at time of death, along with the grandfather's brothers names I have already been able to go back 3 more generations.
As I have found with my own genealogy, it is easier to find and verify records from some ethnic groups than others. In my case, German ancestors have been better documented that the British - or maybe it's just that the German names stand out more in records from British Ontario. In the case of my friend, the French families are easier to verify than her British ones of her grandmother.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Brick Walls
With many of the twigs of my family trees, including myself, having lived in Ontario I have been fortunate that most of the Canadian content of Ancestry has been Ontario sources. When an individual "went west" in the early 1900s I wrote off being able to expand, or verify, that branch. As they were not direct ancestors, they were low priority anway.
One of my first thoughts when my husband Terry was transferred to Regina Saskatchewan in 2008, was "Great, I'll be able to work on my western branches". The Regina Public Library is currently offering a series a workshop on Genealogy. Workshops include visits to the Saskatchewan Archives and Saskatchewan Genealogy Society. Unfortunately both facilities are only open weekdays, so I'll need to take time off work to spend sufficient research time at those locations. However, some of the material is available to me at the Archer Library at the University of Regina where I am now working.
More important brickwalls to smash are a couple of direct ancestors:
My 3great grandmother: Isabella (Greer) Bates. Records indicate that she arrived in Canada, pregnant with one young son with her husband having died enroute to Canada. The 1861 census shows the two sons living with grandparents Greer, but no indication of Isabella. Family records show she didn't died until 1878. My assumption is that she remarried, leaving her sons with her parents. But who did she remarry?
A brickwall on my father's side is the death and burial of his great grandparents. 1891 census have Robert and Mary Anne Allen living with their youngest sons in Euphrasia Twp., Grey Co., ON. Family records indicate Robert died in 1892 and unknown date for Mary Anne with both being buried in Markdale Cemetery. I have yet to find either in the Ontario death records and I never made a trip to Markdale Cemetery before leaving Ontario.
One of my first thoughts when my husband Terry was transferred to Regina Saskatchewan in 2008, was "Great, I'll be able to work on my western branches". The Regina Public Library is currently offering a series a workshop on Genealogy. Workshops include visits to the Saskatchewan Archives and Saskatchewan Genealogy Society. Unfortunately both facilities are only open weekdays, so I'll need to take time off work to spend sufficient research time at those locations. However, some of the material is available to me at the Archer Library at the University of Regina where I am now working.
More important brickwalls to smash are a couple of direct ancestors:
My 3great grandmother: Isabella (Greer) Bates. Records indicate that she arrived in Canada, pregnant with one young son with her husband having died enroute to Canada. The 1861 census shows the two sons living with grandparents Greer, but no indication of Isabella. Family records show she didn't died until 1878. My assumption is that she remarried, leaving her sons with her parents. But who did she remarry?
A brickwall on my father's side is the death and burial of his great grandparents. 1891 census have Robert and Mary Anne Allen living with their youngest sons in Euphrasia Twp., Grey Co., ON. Family records indicate Robert died in 1892 and unknown date for Mary Anne with both being buried in Markdale Cemetery. I have yet to find either in the Ontario death records and I never made a trip to Markdale Cemetery before leaving Ontario.
Welcome!
I've been doing genealogy research for a number of years. I had dabbled in it many years ago, but beyond the current generations and names of a few past generations I didn't know where to begin. In the relatively early days of the internet, I would occasionally do a search for some of the some of the names of ancestors. But with 'Allen' being one of the surnames, there would be too many hits and nothing ever seemed to fit. My mother's line of 'Schell' should be a bit easier, but again with not having many details earlier than my great grandfather, John Schell, I was never able to pinpoint my ancestor.
Then one "magical" night I hit paydirt - on both lines no less. When I searched for my paternal great grandfather, William Daisley Allen, I found Garnet Ferguson's site listing William Daisley and his wife Mary Jane Woodland and many of their offspring - including my father and his siblings. His grandmother was a sister of my great grandfather. I sent him off an email and we exchanged some emails in which I was able to supply him with some information on my branch and put him in touch with a cousin of my father who was doing research as well.
After doing a genealogy happy dance after finding Garnet's website, I thought I'd push my luck and try the Schell line. I was shocked, happily, when a listing came up showing a Canadian flag! I crossed my fingers and entered Margaret Hornsby's website. I did another happy dance when I found a John Schell married to Mary Deadman - my great grandmother! She didn't have my grandfather listed as one of the their children, but I did recognize the names of the children she did have listed. I sent her off an email and I was able to fill in some of her missing information.
In both cases, I was able to use information on both these websites to go back several generations. In the case of the Allens, I discovered that they were actually Irish, not English, as I had believed. I've not seen the actual family bible, but have seen a transcription from what was reportedly recorded at the front of the bible. The transcription indicated that the family had sailed from Liverpool England to Quebec in 1831. [Lesson: research history of ancestral areas. Apparently it was common for people to travel distances to seaports]
For the Schells, I learned that my Schells arrived in Ontario from the area of Europe now known as Germany by way of the Mohawk Valley, having married into various Palatine families. For a number of years, I travelled through the Mohawk Valley area of New York state to go to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. And over the years, I also travelled through the Markham area of Ontario where several of the Schells moved to from the Mohawk Valley. From there, branches moved to Michigan as well as the Simcoe County area which is all I had known.
From that fateful night, I have expanded my genealogy database to over 100,000 names. Knowing that one needs to take information from the web with a grain of salt, I use the information as suggestions which I try to verify from more reliable sources. With working at Queen's University, I had access to microfilm reels of the Ontario census. Over the years, searching has become a lot easier with indexes available online, as well as digitized images from many of the census.
I hit a stumbling block in 2006 when my Family Tree Maker database somehow became corrupted. I thought, no problem, I'll just restore from a backup. Unfortunately, whatever had corrupted the original database, the backup was also corrupted. I found a backup, several months old, that I could open and use but would some individual records were corrupted. Three years later, I am still working on recreating the database - in some cases individual record by individual record. In my recreation, I have split the database up with some branches having their own database. I have my father's lines done and my maternal grandmother. The Schells had such large families over the generations, I have split them into pre and post Ontario. As branches married into each other, this has necessitated decisions to be made which database the individual should be in with cross-references to the other.
Despite the corrupted database, and the time it is taking in recreating my databases, I have continued to use Family Tree Maker and usually purchased the annual updates. I continue to use FTM v.16 to recreate my databases, but once finished, I would transfer the file to FTM 2008 (and then 2009) and proceed with research on those lines.
However, this fall I decided to take the plunge and switch to Rootsmagic. I was getting peeved with the new version of FTM each year with, in my opinion, no new items to warrant a new version - a patch update maybe, but not warranting a new version. When I learned that no discount was being offered this year for existing customers, I decided I was not going to get 2010. If I had to pay full price like a new customer, I'd wait for a future version with relevant new features.
The latest release of Rootsmagic was offering a 'To Go' feature which would permit one to run the database from a thumb drive. I found that very intriguing as I have access to several computers but could only do my FTM updating on a specific computer. Rootsmagic offered an upgrade discount not just to their existing customers, but to users of other software, so I decided to try it out. I love the 'To Go' feature. I'm able to update my database on the spot when doing research at break and lunchtime.
Family Reunions:
Garnet Ferguson told me that he can remember, as a child, attending at least one of the Allen family reunions. I can remember attending a few myself during my childhood. The reunions had originated for the offspring of William Daisley Allen and Mary Jane Woodland. This reunion faded out during my childhood as generations became too isolated from that couple. Fortunately for me, the offspring of my grandparent Allen (Harry Woodland Allen and Gertrude Georgina Cooper) developed their own reunions, several times a year, so I grew up knowing my aunts, uncles and cousins. For similar reasons for the demise of the William Daisley Allen Family reunions, the Harry Woodland Allen reunions have decreased to one at Easter and it is questionable how much longer that will last.
Then one "magical" night I hit paydirt - on both lines no less. When I searched for my paternal great grandfather, William Daisley Allen, I found Garnet Ferguson's site listing William Daisley and his wife Mary Jane Woodland and many of their offspring - including my father and his siblings. His grandmother was a sister of my great grandfather. I sent him off an email and we exchanged some emails in which I was able to supply him with some information on my branch and put him in touch with a cousin of my father who was doing research as well.
After doing a genealogy happy dance after finding Garnet's website, I thought I'd push my luck and try the Schell line. I was shocked, happily, when a listing came up showing a Canadian flag! I crossed my fingers and entered Margaret Hornsby's website. I did another happy dance when I found a John Schell married to Mary Deadman - my great grandmother! She didn't have my grandfather listed as one of the their children, but I did recognize the names of the children she did have listed. I sent her off an email and I was able to fill in some of her missing information.
In both cases, I was able to use information on both these websites to go back several generations. In the case of the Allens, I discovered that they were actually Irish, not English, as I had believed. I've not seen the actual family bible, but have seen a transcription from what was reportedly recorded at the front of the bible. The transcription indicated that the family had sailed from Liverpool England to Quebec in 1831. [Lesson: research history of ancestral areas. Apparently it was common for people to travel distances to seaports]
For the Schells, I learned that my Schells arrived in Ontario from the area of Europe now known as Germany by way of the Mohawk Valley, having married into various Palatine families. For a number of years, I travelled through the Mohawk Valley area of New York state to go to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. And over the years, I also travelled through the Markham area of Ontario where several of the Schells moved to from the Mohawk Valley. From there, branches moved to Michigan as well as the Simcoe County area which is all I had known.
From that fateful night, I have expanded my genealogy database to over 100,000 names. Knowing that one needs to take information from the web with a grain of salt, I use the information as suggestions which I try to verify from more reliable sources. With working at Queen's University, I had access to microfilm reels of the Ontario census. Over the years, searching has become a lot easier with indexes available online, as well as digitized images from many of the census.
I hit a stumbling block in 2006 when my Family Tree Maker database somehow became corrupted. I thought, no problem, I'll just restore from a backup. Unfortunately, whatever had corrupted the original database, the backup was also corrupted. I found a backup, several months old, that I could open and use but would some individual records were corrupted. Three years later, I am still working on recreating the database - in some cases individual record by individual record. In my recreation, I have split the database up with some branches having their own database. I have my father's lines done and my maternal grandmother. The Schells had such large families over the generations, I have split them into pre and post Ontario. As branches married into each other, this has necessitated decisions to be made which database the individual should be in with cross-references to the other.
Despite the corrupted database, and the time it is taking in recreating my databases, I have continued to use Family Tree Maker and usually purchased the annual updates. I continue to use FTM v.16 to recreate my databases, but once finished, I would transfer the file to FTM 2008 (and then 2009) and proceed with research on those lines.
However, this fall I decided to take the plunge and switch to Rootsmagic. I was getting peeved with the new version of FTM each year with, in my opinion, no new items to warrant a new version - a patch update maybe, but not warranting a new version. When I learned that no discount was being offered this year for existing customers, I decided I was not going to get 2010. If I had to pay full price like a new customer, I'd wait for a future version with relevant new features.
The latest release of Rootsmagic was offering a 'To Go' feature which would permit one to run the database from a thumb drive. I found that very intriguing as I have access to several computers but could only do my FTM updating on a specific computer. Rootsmagic offered an upgrade discount not just to their existing customers, but to users of other software, so I decided to try it out. I love the 'To Go' feature. I'm able to update my database on the spot when doing research at break and lunchtime.
Family Reunions:
Garnet Ferguson told me that he can remember, as a child, attending at least one of the Allen family reunions. I can remember attending a few myself during my childhood. The reunions had originated for the offspring of William Daisley Allen and Mary Jane Woodland. This reunion faded out during my childhood as generations became too isolated from that couple. Fortunately for me, the offspring of my grandparent Allen (Harry Woodland Allen and Gertrude Georgina Cooper) developed their own reunions, several times a year, so I grew up knowing my aunts, uncles and cousins. For similar reasons for the demise of the William Daisley Allen Family reunions, the Harry Woodland Allen reunions have decreased to one at Easter and it is questionable how much longer that will last.
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