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Born on St Patrick's Day: Happy 115th Mary

They say that its good luck to be Irish, and that the luckiest of all are those who are born on St Patrick's Day. No doubt this is what was said the day that my great grandmother was born. However, her life was not necessarily filled with the good luck that the superstition had predicted. As much as she had a hard life, her life was also an "ordinary" one of a young British immigrant to Canada. Despite that, the simple life she led in youth was filled with fun. She embrace the changing times, new found freedoms, and innovations. Its the heirlooms from that chapter of her life that fascinate me the most because they show aside to her that none of my relatives knew - a woman who was happy. So today, I am going to share the side of her that one of those heirlooms tells. I have a small black autograph book that was hers.  At almost 100 years old, the book binding has all but disintegrated yet the leather cover is in near pristine condition and the partially bound pages are al...
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UPDATE: British Genealogy Resources

 In addition to the main page of this blog I have created two additional pages which feature my favourite Canadian and British genealogy resources respectively. I recently updated the British resources to include links to some Scottish resources. 
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Taking the Mystery out of Illegitimacy: Researching Illegitimate Children

During the Victorian era, having a child out of wedlock was considered a major sin yet despite this it happened quite frequently. The main challenge with researching illegitimate children is determining their parentage. It was not uncommon for the mother or the child to make up a story that legitimized the birth. This could be something as simple as borrowing the name of a male family member, using their father's first name paired with their surname, or making up a fake name entirely. Reading between these manufactured truths can be challenging and often send us hunting for the wrong person or someone that never existed. From performing research on illegitimate ancestors in my own family tree I have learned some strategies that can help sort through the confusion.  1. Pay attention to census records Census records can tell us quite a bit about a person, including their marital status and where they were born. It is not unusual to find a few errors in a census as they are considered...
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Get to Know bac-lac: Immigration Records (Part II)

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In my previous post I discussed two strategies that can be used to find a person in Canadian Immigration records and showed an example on how to apply them to find a Form 30A record. In this post I will explain how to find someone in the more complicated  Passenger Lists, 1865-1922 .    This collection is not organized by surname but rather by shipping information. Basic searches can be conducted using with any/all of the following parameters: Name of ship Year of arrival Port of arrival Shipping line Port of departure If you desire to perform an advanced search you can add any/all of the following parameters to the basic search: Date of departure Date of arrival The search results are displayed in a table which can be sorted using any of the headers: Item number Ship name Port of arrival Date of arrival Note: In some cases there are two ports of arrival listed but only one date of arrival. This does not mean that the ship arrived in both ports on the same day, but rathe...
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Brick Wall Busters: 7 Strategies for Breaking Down Brick Walls

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Brick walls occur in every branch of our genealogical trees. They can stop our research all together and become a major time waster. I have had a handful of brick walls in my tree that I have been trying to breakdown for years now and only recently have began to get anywhere. While trying to break down these brick walls I uncovered several strategies that are helpful.  1. FAN Club research Sometimes referred to as 'cluster genealogy', this techniques requires you to build a social network surrounding your person of interest. The FAN club acronym was first introduced by Lisa Louise Cook as a way of dividing the social network into friends/family, associates, and neighbours. The conventional way of applying this technique is to use a table, however I have also found it helpful to create a diagram .  2. Create an evidence table An evidence table is a great way to analyze a large volume of information in a single table. The added bonus of this approach is that it can be performed ...
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How to Build a FAN Club Chart

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I am always talking about collecting information that tells you personal information about a person's life. In particular, I am always talking about identifying relationships. This is formally referred to as FAN. (Friends, Associates, and Neighbours) Club research. It is a great technique to use when trying to break through brick walls or just expand your knowledge of an ancestor. Collecting the research is one thing, but finding ways to apply it is another.   FAN club members can be found on any document. The best places to start looking are at major types of records such as BMD and census records. See who the witnesses were to the baptism or marriage, who was the informant for the death? Who was living with the family during a given year? Then once you have checked out those sources consider expanding your search to include newspapers, immigration records, old pictures, etc. Collect the information in a table being sure to check for names which appear multiple times.  I...
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Ford's Folly and the Slum of Little Hell

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Battersea: The Sinkhole of Surrey During the Victorian Era, Battersea had gained the reputation as being “the sinkhole of Surrey” due to its widespread poverty and slum-like conditions. Many of the poor in Battersea were subject to irregular income from the building trades. For a family to scrape by in the winter they would have to apply thrift spending during the summer. This was often complicated by the reliance on alcohol which was used as a means of escape from the depression of living in such widespread poverty. The irregular income caused many of Battersea’s poor to frequently be on the move. On average a family lived in one place for less than two years before moving no more than a few streets away. After hopping from neighbourhood to neighbourhood the family would eventually return to where they were once exiled from, moving in only a few doors away from their former address. Ford’s Folly and the slum of Little Hell In Keith Bailey’s report Orville Road, Battersea: a Victor...
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Courting Disaster: The 1915 Niagara Trolley Accident

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The worst electric rail crash in Ontario’s history and the  3 rd  worst in Canadian history (at the time)  occurred at Queenston Heights in Niagara Falls on July 7 1915 . In total the crash of car number 685 claimed the lives of 15 people and was responsible for injuring 130 people.  To put the scale of the accident into context, more lives were lost and more people were injured during the 1915 trolley accident than British soldiers during the battle of Queenston Heights.  The main occupants of the trolley were members of Toronto’s Wood Green Methodist and St John Presbyterian Sunday school groups. The two church groups had organized a day trip to Niagara Falls for the approximate 1,100 parishioners (majority of which were women and children). The accident occurred when the two groups were on their way home.  All day the weather had been ideal for taking portraits and going picnicking, however towards the evening hours (approximately 7:15 pm) it began to ra...
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Researching Addresses that no Longer Exist

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Ever since I was young I have said that I wanted to see the place where my ancestor's lived. I never cared if it was a castle or if it was a broken down shack in the woods. What I cared about was that feeling I get when I am able to stand somewhere that one of my ancestor's did many years ago. I spent the past four years researching where in England my ancestors lived with the hope that one day I will be able to go there and experience this feeling. Like many people, COVID had other plans. Its been a year since I initially was planning to take that trip and it seems like it might be at least one more before it can happen. In the mean time I have been revising my route and furthering my research. One of the first things that I do when I get an address for where one of my ancestor's lived, is search for it on Google Maps. Depending on where you are researching, the area may have changed so much that it is almost unrecognizable when compared to when your ancestor lived. For ex...
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