Genealogy Em

If you look hard enough, your bound to find a black sheep or two in every family tree. In my case they were hiding in the places I least expected to find them. My grandmother was one of the most proper and well mannered women I have ever met. I'm pretty sure she is the closest thing I will ever meet to a saint, however not all of her ancestors shared these traits. One woman in particular was foul mouthed and not shy of throwing a fist (or two). To be honest, after reading of her fights, I think she could have held her own against one of London's prized fighters. This woman's name was Mary Ann Daniels (nee Taplin) - I spoke of briefly in a previous article  here . When I began performing FAN club research on her children I discovered that she had given birth to a son named Alfred during 1880 in the HM Westminster Prison! (Yikes! That is NOT a birth certificate I would ever want to have!) Of course this raised a number of questions for me: why was she in the prison? Why was s...

Ever since I was a young child I have been terrified of sailing on large vessels. There was no good reason for this as I had never had any bad experiences on ships or even with water. The origin of this phobia was unknown. It wasnt until s everal years ago while performing my genealogical research that I realized maybe my phobia of sailing was not completely  unfounded. As I began to trace the lives of one family   I noticed something strange - almost everyone died on the same day. They were the Taplin family - comprised of John, Caroline (nee Holton), Emma , Mary Ann , Sarah, Maria and Carrie (twins). John was a navvy. He spent much of his adult life travelling across England working on the railways. By late 1872 he had a new offer of employment, this time it would not be in England. He, along with his wife and three youngest children, were going to move to Tasmania so he could help construct a railway that would connect the now Australian state. The two eldest daughters...

One of the main reasons why I started this blog is because I noticed that there were few sites that focused on Canadian genealogy. Over the years I have amassed quite the list of resources. Some cover the entire country while others focus on specific areas that I'm researching. I have organized the list below by location and as always I have identified paid resources with ($).  Nationwide Canadian Genealogy Resources  I have provided more detail about the following resources on my Canadian Resources page.  Library and Archives Canada   Provincial Databases (some $) -  Familysearch Wiki - Canada Internet Archive Familysearch ProQuest  ($) Canadiana Military Resources I wrote a post on military resources and loyalists which can be found  here  and  here .  Database: WW1 Service Files Database WW2 War Dead Service Files The Commonwealth War Graves Commission Veterans Affairs Canada Wikipedia WW1 CEF Battalions Canadian Great War Project A S...

In my previous post ( here ) I wrote about the Canadian census collection featured on Library and Archives Canada (bac-lac). Although understanding where to find census information and what parts of it are important can be a challenge, the most challenging part by far is performing a successful search that yields a manageable number of results. As much as I LOVE to conduct searches using a Degrees of Freedom analysis (which I wrote about here ), the limited number of search fields on bac-lac makes this a near impossible task. To further complicate things, bac-lac does not perform "fuzzy" searches meaning that it does not search phonetically or for names with similar spellings. This can be especially challenging for names that have many variations or that were abbreviated on the census return. For surnames that contain a prefix this adds another level of complexity as the prefix may be placed at the end of the surname. For example the surname "O'Reilly" may have ...

People who know I love genealogy know that I am always talking about Library and Archives Canada (bac-lac). When I first was starting my genealogical research this website was my top resource. I still use it quite often when performing my Canadian research and each time it seems as though I discover a new set of collections.  Bac-lac is a website owned and curated by the Canadian government. They have a wide range of digitalized collections and an even wider range of ones that are cataloged or transcribed. Some of their most popular collections include census, immigration, and military records. They also have a page that offers genealogy help both in the form of basic tips and how to hire a professional (since I was a broke student when I started my research, I opted for the tips).  This post is going to focus on how to search census returns. I will write (and link) posts later on for the military and immigration records.  Census Records On the census records page, each c...

Timelines are one of the most overlooked genealogical tools. I love them because they put the events in order and allow me to identify gaps where information is missing, and they let me quickly tell if a record is a match. I started writing timelines out by hand on blank printer paper but quickly realized this was incredibly inefficient because it was easy to run out of space during a certain timeframe (especially if the family was frequently on the move) and thus have to rewrite all the information. For the past three or so years I have been using Excel. I love how easy it is to add information by inserting rows, and how easy it is to customize the way that the information is displayed. My timeline is not a conventional line but rather a chronological table of events. I colour code the cells of major life events to help me visually breakup the information. I have included below the blank template that I use to create my timelines.  On the left hand side I have a summary of the fam...

I remember when I was in elementary school and my history teacher told the class that "history is written by those who won the war". At the time I was in grade 7 and too young to realize the true depth of that statement. I didn't fully understand what he had said until years later when I began researching my own Loyalists roots. Almost every source I read on the American Revolution portrayed the Patriots such as Washington as heroes. They payed little attention to the Loyalist side of the conflict. Loyalist victories were glossed over, and even less mentioned were sacrifices and struggles of the Loyalist families. The true experiences of the Loyalists are best told through the few documents they left behind such as the Loyalist Claims.  One of my ancestors, who served with the Westchester Refugees, told the British government of the terror he faced because it was commonly assumed that he was a Loyalist. He "says he was considered a Torie from the very beginning becau...

Its that time of year again when everyone starts thinking about veterans. For genealogists this is the time when many choose to focus their efforts on finding their ancestors that served in the military. I have provided below a list of some of my favourite resources for finding ancestors that served in the Canadian military.  1. Library and Archives Canada Library and Archives Canada's (bac-lac) boasts a large military collection which contains service records for a variety of different conflicts. I have attached links below to two of their most popular collections (WW1 and WW2 service files). Due to Canada's privacy laws WW2 service files have only been digitalized for those who did not survive the war. All service files have been digitalized for WW1 regardless of if they survived the war or not.  Database: WW1 Service Files Database WW2 War Dead Service Files Each database allows you to perform a 'basic' and 'advanced' search. A basic search allows you to sear...

Often Degrees of Freedom (D of F) is used when solving algebraic math problems, however I have found that it is a particularly useful way of searching for and analyzing records. In math terms D of F has the following generic formula: Number of Total Variables – Known Variables = D of F For genealogists the above formula applies when the number of variables is viewed as the types of information that are present in the record, and the number of known variables are the information that we know about the individual. Similar to a math problem, having more known variables than the total of variables results in an over parameterized problem. You will have conflicting information or potentially no results at all. This is one of the most common mistakes made when conducting a search because it is tempting to fill in all the boxes with what we know even if all that information has nothing to do with what we are looking for. On the other extreme is an unspecified search where there are more ...

 I am a self-taught genealogist who has been tracing my family history for nearly a decade. I am passionate about not only building my family tree but about giving my ancestors a voice by uncovering and telling their stories. While researching my own family history I couldn’t help but notice the lack of resources posted online to help new genealogists trace their Canadian and British roots. I want to use this website to share what I have learned about Canadian and British genealogy while performing my own genealogical research! It took me a while to decide if and how I wanted to go about sharing my knowledge, and in the end I settled on a blog. I truly believe that I have found a niche within the genealogical community and I am looking forward to seeing what is to come in the future. I am currently working to establish a formal posting schedule. Although I have pre-written a number of posts already (focused on Canadian and British research as well as genealogical tips and tricks)...