1867: My Ancestors Living in Canada

I spotted this on Gail Dever’s genealogyalacarte.ca blog who said it first came from Patricia Greber’s My Genealogy Life blog.

It’s Canada’s 150th Birthday this year and today is Canada Day, so here is my list of ancestors living in Canada in the year 1867. I’m keeping it simple for me by just covering my direct ancestors.

This one was a bit difficult as the year 1866 brought the death of my fourth great grandfather that began a dramatic change in this family with the eight surviving children continuing to scatter with the winds until not long after 1867 only two children remained in Ontario.

Name	Arrival Date	Where First Settled
Martha Dunham Rider	1801	Fourth Town (Adolphustown,) Lennox, Ontario
Mahlia Rider Vincent	born	Ontario
Sarah Vincent	born	Ontario

I have a variety of collateral lines in Ontario at this time too but I do not have the time to list them all today. Perhaps another time.

Happy Birthday Canada and Happy Canada Day!

©2017 All Rights Reserved, goneresearching. All text and photos in this post are copyrighted & owned by me (goneresearching) unless indicated otherwise. No republication (commercial or non-commercial) without prior permission. You may share (tell others) of this blog as long as you give credit and link to this site (not by downloading or copying any post). Thank you.

Third Tip for Searching: Reel Content Specifics for Some LAC Digitized Microfilm Collections

I did not get much time this past week to work on the promised post about the Process of Searching for Land Patents so in the meantime here is another tip which should work for any LAC microfilm collection that is also available through the Family History Library Catalog at FamilySearch.

Part of the problem when working with the digitized microfilm collections of the Library and Archives of Canada (LAC) is that for the most part all you see is a list of reel codes with no descriptions of what is on each "film." (Remember, the digitized microfilm of the LAC is located on two websites: the Héritage website and the archived LAC website.)

Heir and Devisee at Héritage

At the Héritage website, you would think the "About" tab for a particular collection would contain a detail like that. Most of the time it does not. It simply tells you about the records not how they are organized on the microfilm. 

Every so often an "About" does mention what is on the reels for that collection but it is very generalized. That is the case of the Heir and Devisee digitized collection. There is actually a list of what volumes are on which reel but nothing to tell you what a particular volume number contains so you still do not have a clear understanding of what you are working with.

Heir and Devisee at LAC Archives Catalog

Using the MIKAN number (see my Two Tips post) listed for the collection and doing an Advanced search of the Archives Catalog over at the main LAC website, you bring up a similar description for the collection. The Archives catalog entry does list which reel numbers are associated with the collection but again not one detail for what is on which film.

Here's My Tip.
If a particular LAC microfilm collection is available through the Family History Catalog at the FamilySearch website, check the FHL catalog entry. It often has more details of regarding what is on which film. But because the FHL catalog entry does not make mention of the LAC reel number you have to compare the microfilm listings from both sites to see the whole picture.

Catalog listing for the same collection at FamilySearch.

So from the About tab for the Heir and Devisee digitized collection at the Héritage website, we learn that film H-1133 contains vol. 1-6.

From the About tab of the Heir and Devisee Collection at Héritage

Microfilm listing for the same collection at FamilySearch.

Comparing that information to film listing of the entry in the Family History Catalog for that collection we learn that those volumes are "Index of location certificates issued by the Land Boards v. 1 pre-1804 Heir and Devisee Commission records Eastern District v. 2 1803-1804 v. 3 1803? v. 4 1797-1802 (partial index) v. 5 1809-1841 v. 6 1785-1804." And, of course, we learn the FHL microfilm number for that reel known at the LAC as H-1133.

Now we have an understanding of what we are looking at and can finally utilize the collection with less hassle and involving less time.

As I said at the start of this post, this tip should work for any LAC microfilm collection available through the Family History Library.

Lastly, don't get me wrong. I love that formerly hard to access historical/genealogical collections are being made more accessible but what I am pointing out is that the end-user needs to be thought of in this process.

Sitting at home (or where ever) the end-user (you/me) does not have access to long-existing paper finding aids sitting on a shelf in an archive/library. These vital pieces of the puzzle are necessary to understanding collection organization and must be put online in some form also. AND that the steps needed (look here, check this, then look there) to properly utilize a collection are clearly indicated and follow-able on the website.

I hope this tip helps. Now I'll get back to that other post.

©2016 All Rights Reserved, goneresearching. All text and photos in this post are copyrighted & owned by me (goneresearching) unless indicated otherwise. No republication (commercial or non-commercial) without prior permission. You may share (tell others) of this blog as long as you give credit and link to this site (not by downloading or copying any post). Thank you.

Update: The Next Upper Canada Land Records Post is Coming Soon ... I Promise

I realize that there are quite a few of you waiting for the promised next post on Upper Canada Land Records. It is in the works but the day after the last post we had a family emergency involving a hospital stay. And then my laptop had an emergency of its own with its power cord.

Everyone is recovering now, including the laptop I think. I will be polishing up the promised post and double checking the links so the new plan is to release it next week.

Thank you for your patience.


©2016 All Rights Reserved, goneresearching. All text and photos in this post are copyrighted & owned by me (goneresearching) unless indicated otherwise. No republication (commercial or non-commercial) without prior permission. You may share (tell others) of this blog as long as you give credit and link to this site (not by downloading or copying any post). Thank you.

Early Protestants in Early Canada? Check the Marriage Bonds 1779 - 1858, Upper & Lower Canada

Library and Archives Canada

I am working very hard at balancing life and my "planned genealogy tasks" these days. But one find is leading to another and now yet another. Last year was a busy year and it appears I may have missed seeing/hearing of a third digitized collection for Canada.

So I took a small pause from working on/updating what is currently in my genealogy program to share yet another discovery.

Over at the Library and Archives of Canada in the Genealogy and Family History area, there are quite a few digitized collections. Under the Births, Marriages and Deaths category is a collection entitled, Marriage Bonds, 1779-1865 - Upper and Lower Canada.

Now I don't know exactly when this collection was added to LAC but the Marriage Bond page was last updated in February 2015. I don't remember if this collection was there at the time I discovered the Upper Canada Land Petitions in 2011/2012 or not. I did do a little search test and it appears these bonds are not over at Ancestry.com or at any of its variations. They also do not appear online at the FamilySearch.org website.

So what is a Marriage Bond? It's like an intention to marry or "official engagement." According to the LAC's record description for the collection, "The groom was required to enter into a bond with one or two people (sureties) who knew him and who were prepared to guarantee to the Crown that there was no legal impediment to the marriage. After obtaining the bond, a license was issued and the marriage took place a few days later."

In this case, these marriage bonds were prepared only for Protestant marriages by license.

So if you have ancestors in early Canada who were Protestant (or married Protestant) and you have not found them in the records of a church or pastor, you might want to search this collection.

On a bond you will find the names of the future husband and future wife and their place(s) of residence; the names of those acting as sureties; and the date and place where the bond was issue. (Often those acting as sureties were related to either the future husband or future wife.) Now remember marriage bonds were usually issued a few days prior to the actual ceremony, so the date on the bond is not the date of the actual marriage -- the marriage date was soon after the bond date.

These marriage bonds for Protestants are important because marriage licenses issued before 1867 were not retained by the government. This digitized collection is made up of bonds from two collections:

• 7,899 marriage bonds for Upper Canada (Ontario) issued between 1803 and 1865 -- RG 5 B9 (MIKAN 125556)
• 2,960 marriage bonds for Lower Canada (Quebec) issued between 1779 and 1858 -- RG 4 B28 (MIKAN 125694)

Here are some of my tips for the Marriage Bonds collection. Unlike other LAC digitized collections, these digital images are linked to your search results. Instead of searching a separate page with the digitized microfilm, here you simply click on the link to see the image desired.

Results Husband Search
Library and Archives Canada

Search Future Husband Surname
Library and Archives Canada

There are separate search filters for "future husband" and "future wife." So to do a complete, thorough surname search you have to search for your surname at least twice, once using "Future Husband's Surname" and once using "Future Wife's Surname." (Now if your surname has a lot of variations you will have to search those variations also. As far as wildcards, it looks like the multiple character (*) is supported at the end of a name. The single character (?) in the middle of a name did not work for me.)

Search Future Wife Surname
Library and Archives Canada

Results Wife Search
Library and Archives Canada

After getting your search results, to see an image simply click on the "item number" link for the result you want to investigate.

Item Page - Second Image
Library and Archives Canada

Item Page - First Image
Library and Archives Canada

At the Item page you will see there are two images (front and back) of the bond; some information abstracted from the bond; and details of the microfilm collection from which the bond was digitized.

Though you can scroll the image larger on this page, if you click on the image you can get a larger view. BUT to see the second image you need to go back to this initial Item page and click on the "2."

Enlarged Image
Library and Archives Canada

If you want to download the bond images, do so from the Item page where you will download via right-click a jpeg (jpg) of the image. If you try to download via right-click the image from the larger view, it only lets you download a png image. In this case, the jpg would likely work best.

In comparison to some other digital collections on LAC, these images of the Marriage Bonds appear to not be scanned as well. You simply can not enlarge the images, those online or downloaded, very much before the image goes "diggy."

Detail from Marriage Bond of Enoch F. Dunham
and Anne Chamberlain 15 June 1830 , Library and Archives Canada
RG 5 B9, vol. 19, number 4486 

I did not find any relatives in this particular collection which was a little disappointing. The Enoch F. Dunham that appears in these example images is from another Dunham line, Rev. Darius Dunham.

©2016 All Rights Reserved, goneresearching. All text and photos in this post are copyrighted & owned by me (goneresearching) unless indicated otherwise. No republication (commercial or non-commercial) without prior permission. You may share (tell others) of this blog as long as you give credit and link to this site (not by downloading or copying any post). Thank you.