Coffee Break Genealogy

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.