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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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Free Genealogy Spring 2021

Many years ago when I first started genealogy, I was a broke student and didnt have the funds to purchase a subscription to a major genealogy site. I thought that I would quickly reach a point where the free research would end and I would have to find the cash or stop - thankfully this was not the case. I learned that many of the major sites offer free trials and free weeks or weekends throughout the year. The goal to performing free research is learning how to capitalize on these promotional offers.  The following list will continue to be updated as further promotional offers become available. Spring 2021 April 18-24: MyHeritage Birth Records
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Breaking through the Glass Floor of Descendancy Research

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 In life there are many things that we hear the term "glass ceiling" associated with. Although a metaphorical glass ceiling does exist in genealogy, not every researcher ends up hitting it. The reason for this is that we encounter brick walls in which (after much dedicated research) are able to break through. The glass ceiling is only encountered when the records run out. The purpose of this post though is to focus on research that is moving in the other direction - descendancy research.  In simple terms, descendancy research is defined as tracing all of the ancestors that descend from a single couple. The majority of these people are not your direct ancestors, rather they are your distant cousins. There are a multitude of reasons why you may want to find these people. Maybe they are the ones that inherited the family heirlooms and photographs; maybe one of them is the perfect candidate for that DNA test that will allow you to break through the brick wall; or maybe you just w...
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Geographic History and Genealogy

When I start researching a new place, the geography is one of the first things I look into. I find that the more I know about an area's geography, the easier it is for me to verify records. Until recently, I never realized how important it is to understand how the population of a community varied over time. Im not just talking about when the area was settled, but more so how the demographics shifted every 5 or 10 years.  What can be learned? There are many things that can be learned from studying the geographic history of a region, but I only plan to focus on the four main ones. 1. Border changes Over time the borders of parishes, communities, counties, and even countries are subject to change. These changing borders can make it confusing to tell if you have the right person in every record. What I like to do is save a few different maps showing the borders so that I can quickly reference them. I also like to draw a rough sketch of the map on a post-it note and plot out the communi...
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Why you ARENT Finding the Records you are Looking for

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At one point or another every genealogist is bound to hit a brick wall. I previously wrote about 7 brick wall busting strategies. These strategies have helped me greatly, but what has helped me the most is understanding how to properly conduct a search. If you want to know if you really have hit a brick wall, its time to start looking at if your behaviours are the cause.  1. Your filling in too much information When we use a site such as Ancestry, FamilySearch, etc. we are met with these digital forms of boxes. As tempting as it is to fill in everything you know, dont do it. Stop and think about what you want to find. Ask yourself what the goal of the conducting the search is. Once you know what it is you want to find, employ the degrees of freedom approach. I previously wrote two posts ( here  and  here ) explaining how to use this method.   2. Your search is too specific When searching it is easy to want to enter the specific BMD information, however th...
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Language and Genealogy

When it comes to research, we encounter many different languages that we dont understand. If your just starting out that might mean its technical terminology. For more experienced genealogists this might mean performing research in a foreign language. Much like starting genealogy, delving into foreign research can seem like a daunting and confusing task. To date I have conducted research in English, French, Latin, and Gaelic. Each time I attempted a researching in a new language, I found myself becoming increasingly more comfortable and proficient.  Leverage Technology For languages that we have a vague familiarity with, it is much easier to being this journey. As someone who has deep roots in Quebec, I knew that it would only be a matter of time before I was forced to recall what I had attempted (and failed) to learn many years ago in school. Lucky for me, there is technology that can help bridge the language barrier.  Depending on what you are researching, you will realize t...
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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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