Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Spot the Differences - Index -> Transcription -> Original

Have you ever come across a record when you are doing your genealogy and family history research that just didn't quite make sense but you went with it anyways? That is often the case when we are using indexes or transcriptions to aid us in the quest to fill in the blanks in the lives of our ancestors. However, by doing so those records can sometimes provide us with wrong information, throw us off track, or even confuse us further. Here is one such case in my own tree...

For a few years years I had the marriage of William Warrener and Ann Rudsdale recorded as happening on 5 Jul 1807 in Hutton Bushel, Yorkshire, England. That information came from the "England, Select Marriages, 1538–1973" index on Ancestry:

Screen capture of the index page for Wm. Warner in the England, Select Marriages, 1538–1973 collection on Ancestry.com
Screen capture of the index page for Wm. Warner in the England, Select Marriages, 1538–1973 collection on Ancestry.com
Later I learned about the Family History Library (FHL) microfilms and when their digitization project took off I was even happier. Since there is a FHL Film Number specified in the index entry I knew I should be able to view the film from which this index was created, assuming it had been digitized. Maybe there is additional information recorded in the source document. 

In May 2018 I did just that. Here is the snippet from where the index was created. That information came from transcriptions made in 1940 by Edward P. Stapleton. This transcription was microfilmed, and later digitized, by the folks at FamilySearch:

"England, Marriages, 1538–1973," database, FamilySearch, FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org : accessed 28 Jun 2012), Wm. Warner and Ann Rudsdale, 5 Jul 1807, Parish of Hutton-Bushel, Yorkshire; citing Marriage Records, FHL microfilm 558,353.
"England, Marriages, 1538–1973," database, FamilySearch, FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org : accessed 28 Jun 2012), Wm. Warner and Ann Rudsdale, 5 Jul 1807, Parish of Hutton-Bushel, Yorkshire; citing Marriage Records, FHL microfilm 558,353.
Do you see any issues with what has been transcribed for Wm Warrener of Hackness and Ann Rudsdale of H.B?

The first issue I noticed was the difference of names for the spouse of Ann Rudsdale. Assuming that there aren't two Ann Rudsdales of Hutton-Bushel marrying two different Williams of Hackness, her future husband is recorded as having the surname of "Warrener" in the banns and "Warner" in the marriage. Of course, that might be just how the names were recorded in the register so that can be easily explained.

How about the banns?

For those that aren't aware, the banns are the public announcements made in the church in the weeks prior to the marriage to allow anyone to object to the couple being wed based on little pesky details such as one of the parties already being married to someone else or the couple being related though a prohibited kinship1. The banns were usually read three consecutive Sundays unless there were extenuating circumstances.

If William and Ann had their banns read in the church on June 23, July 5, and July 12 how could they have been married on July 5?

This had always bothered me but I never did anything about it. However, with the ongoing microfilm digitization project by the wonderful folks that operate FamilySearch, many records are becoming available to us long-distance researchers. Recently I noticed that the parish registers for Hutton Bushel had been digitized but only viewable at a Family History Center or affiliate. I made a to-do item for myself for the next time I visited the Family History Center (about once a month). There could be even more information in the original document not found in the transcription.

Here is what I recently found in the parish register:
Parish of Hutton-Bushell (Hutton-Bushell, Yorkshire, England), "Marriages, banns, 1754-1816, 1822," Banns and marriage of William Warner and Ann Rudsdale, married 25 Jul 1807; FHL microfilm DGS 100557722, item 1, image 34.
Parish of Hutton-Bushell (Hutton-Bushell, Yorkshire, England), "Marriages, banns, 1754-1816, 1822," Banns and marriage of William Warner and Ann Rudsdale, married 25 Jul 1807; FHL microfilm DGS 100557722, item 1, image 34.

From the various handwriting in the signatures it would seem that this might have been recorded at the time of the wedding2. From the register it appears to state:
"Banns of Marriage between William Warner of the Parish of Hackness & Ann Rudsdale of Hutton Bushel were published June 21 28 and 5 of July"
also
"William Warner of the Parish of Hackness Bachelor and Ann Rudsdale Spinster of the Parish of Hutton Buschel Married in this Church by Banns this twenty fifth Day of July in the Year One Thousand Seven eight Hundred and seven..."
Oops, not just additional information was found but very different facts! 

It looks the transcription was just a little off. The banns were published not on June 23, July 5 and, July 12 but on June 21, June 28, and July 5. The marriage didn't take place on July 5 but on July 25. Well, at least the year is correct. Additionally, in the three places William is mentioned in the register his surname has been recorded as "Warner". Of course, I don't know if this is the record that Mr. Stapleton was using for creating his transcriptions.

Yet, this is why relying only on indexes and transcriptions can cause you grief in your efforts to document the family history of a line. Often the index or transcription is missing information or can even have the wrong details.

Whenever possible, try to locate the source of a transcription or index. If the document isn't readily available due to distance or cost at least make a to-do entry for yourself to periodically check for it being available online via the various digitization projects. You might just be pleasantly surprised at what you find.




1. See the Table of Kindred and Affinity in the 1760 printing of the "The book of common prayer and administration of the sacraments, and other rites and ceremonies of the Church, according to the use of the Church of England : together with the Psalter, or, Psalms of David, pointed as they are to be sung or said in churches" at https://archive.org/details/bookofcommonpray00chur_4/page/n693.

2. Anyone else get excited when they come across the signature on a document of their ancestor?

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

A Black Hole No Longer - Queens County, New Brunswick, Canada

One of the many challenges faced by genealogy and family history researchers is accessing records for places that are a distance from you. Even with the Internet, this problem still exists since many of the records are still only available in archives and libraries. This has long been the case for me when researching my ancestors that lived in Queens County, New Brunswick, Canada. For many years I considered that region of New Brunswick a genealogical black hole...people may have gone there but, aside from the decennial census, almost no trace could be found of them except in indexes. That is until recently.

NordNordWest. “File:Map of New Brunswick Highlighting Queens County.png.” Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Commons, January 29, 2010. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_New_Brunswick_highlighting_Queens_County.png.
NordNordWest. “File:Map of New Brunswick Highlighting Queens County.png.” Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Commons, January 29, 2010. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_New_Brunswick_highlighting_Queens_County.png.

In the past year the New Brunswick Genealogical Society has freely made available to all a number of publications on their web site. This includes two extremely useful books pertaining to Queens County. The first is the often referred to but hard to find History of Queens Co., N.B. by E. Stone Wiggins, LL.D. This work is the copy, made in 1993, by George H. Hayward, of the 1876 history of Queens County that was originally published, starting on 7 Oct 1876 and ending in 17 Feb 1877, in the Saint John, New Brunswick newspaper The Watchman. What makes this book so important for those researching families in Queens County is that there are short biographies of many families that resided in that county at that time.

The second book of particular interest to Queens County family history researchers is the Queens County, New Brunswick, Marriage Records, Registers A, B and C, 1812-1887 found on the New Brunswick Marriage Records page. This compilation by Elizabeth S. Sewell & George H. Hayward had been a challenge for researchers to find in their local libraries and archives. It is a challenge no longer.

However, that extract of the marriage records is just that...an extract. Here is a snippet of one of the families that I am particularly interested in, the Jenkins line.

Elizabeth S. Sewell and George H. Hayward, editors, Queens County, New Brunswick, Marriage Records, Registers A, B and C, 1812-1887  (Fredericton, New Brunswick: Elizabeth S. Sewell and George H. Hayward, August 2002),  51.
Elizabeth S. Sewell and George H. Hayward, editors, Queens County, New Brunswick, Marriage Records, Registers A, B and C, 1812-1887  (Fredericton, New Brunswick: Elizabeth S. Sewell and George H. Hayward, August 2002),  5.
What if you want to see where this information came from? The preface of the book states that the records were transcribed from Provincial Archives of New Brunswick microfilm reels F15491 and F15492. If you have access to a library that participates in the interlibrary loan program then you might be able to arrange to have those microfilms delivered to a local library for you to view.

However, this is another option and that is to visit a hopefully nearby Family History Center. Due to the massive microfilm digitization project undertaken by FamilySearch you can view and download pages from the digitized version of the Marriage registers A-C, 1812-1888, for Queens County, New Brunswick found on film 851191.

Here is the entry in the digitized microfilm of the marriage register for Maria Jenkins and W F Howe.

Queens, New Brunswick, Marriage registers A-C, 1812-1888, W. F. Howe-Maria Jenkins; FHL microfilm 851,191, image 442.
Queens, New Brunswick, Marriage registers A-C, 1812-1888, W. F. Howe-Maria Jenkins; FHL microfilm 851,191, image 442.
However, this isn't the original source of the information. A little bit of searching within the FamilySearch Catalog for "Canada, New Brunswick, Queens" results in finding several additional catalogue entries including Marriage certificates, 1812-1887.

Queens, New Brunswick, Marriage certificates, 1812-1887, W F Howe-Maria Jenkins; FHL microfilm 1,508,597, item 1, image 549.
Queens, New Brunswick, Marriage certificates, 1812-1887, W F Howe-Maria Jenkins; FHL microfilm 1,508,597, item 1, image 549.
Without being there for the marriage or holding the original piece of paper, this is as close as you are going to get to the register entry for Maria Jenkins and W F Howe (William Franklin Howe).

Of course, those aren't the only records available but due to the ravages of time we do get bitten at times when researching Queens County. For the 1851 census of New Brunswick that took place on 11 Jan 1851 the only sub-district where that census enumeration has survived for Queens County is for Wickham found on microfilms C-996 and M-74821. If you had family in the Gagetown area in 1861 you are also out of luck since those records haven't survived2.

We are fortunate that land books for Queens County have been preserved on microfilm and digitized for us. They can be found on FamilySearch in the New Brunswick, Queens County, deed registry books, 1786-1919; index, 1786-1993 collection. Much like the marriage registers above, there is no electronic index to bring you to the right page but with a little bit of practice and patience you can learn to find the right documents fairly quickly. Even better, unlike the digitized marriage registers and certificates, you can do the research from the comfort of your home.

The Provincial Archives of New Brunswick site also has a number of useful resources that covers Queens County that are easily and freely accessible from the comfort of your home. In no particular order:
  • Vital Statistics from Government Records (RS141): These are the birth, marriage, and death records in the government records that we always hope to find. You will find the images of the actual records. Keep in mind that not all counties started keeping records at the same time and not all records may have survived.
  • Daniel F Johnson's New Brunswick Newspaper Vital Statistics: This is the database created out the work primarily by Daniel F. Johnson and his extracts from newspapers. Whenever possible, try to view the source of the transcription. Sometimes you will find additional information that wasn't transcribed.
  • Index to Marriage Bonds 1810-1932 (RS551A): This is only an index of the marriage bonds. Keep in mind that the bonds do not mean they actually married. To see the microfilmed copy of the original bond you will need to order the applicable microfilm through the interlibrary loan program.
  • Wallace Hale's Early New Brunswick Probate, 1785-1835: This used to be a book that you could either purchase or get at your local library or archive. Now it is available online to search from your home. You will find extracts of the wills of some of the people that lived in Queens County.
  • Queens County Genealogical Guide: This has been put together by the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick to let you know what records and microfilms they have in their collections.
  • Place Names of New Brunswick - Queens County: If you can't quite read the name of a place that is scrawled in a record then maybe this page will be of great help. Along with a bit of information on the location often there is a cadastral map to view showing lots and owners.
  • Index to New Brunswick Land Grants, 1784-1997 (RS686): A searchable index, here you will find details about the size of the grant and the microfilm, volume, and page to view the grant.
For cemeteries there are a few online resources for you to peruse:
  • Find A Grave: Cemeteries in Queens County, New Brunswick: If a marker you are interested in hasn't been photographed you can always place a request. Keep in mind that it may take months (or even years) before some kind hearted person takes the photograph for you and places it on the site.
  • CanadaGenWeb's Cemetery Project: This project may also have photographs of markers or point you to resources where you can find transcriptions of the markers in a cemetery
  • Queens County GenWeb Cemeteries: This site has sort of survived the great Offlining of Rootsweb. Here you may be able to find images and/or transcriptions for a number of cemeteries. Be forewarned that there are still some issues with the pages with SSL security errors/warning.
  • Canadian Forces Base Gagetown Cemeteries: There are 44 cemeteries on the land occupied by CFB Gagetown including some in Queens County. Most of the markers have been photographed. Make sure you read the "Introduction" page to learn more about this project.
Knowing who might have received property and goods after someone dies can help establish family relationships. The digitized microfilms in the Probate record books, 1788-1941 and Probate records, 1785-1885 collections are available for viewing at your local Family History Center. There are no quick and simple searchable indexes to those films but they have digitized the indexes to the volumes to help you find the right book to review.

Don't forget to check the Queens County Heritage site to view their virtual exhibition or, if you are a descendant of Samuel Tilley UE, read the Some Descendant of Samuel Tilley, UE c1740-1814 genealogy.

I hope that this helps you out if you too have ancestors that lived in Queens County, New Brunswick, Canada.



1. See Districts and Sub-districts: Census of 1851, New Brunswick on the Library and Archives Canada web site to find out what other enumerations didn't survive.
2. See Districts and Sub-district: Census of 1861, New Brunswick.

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

"An Unexpected Hint Unveils...What?" Continued

In my post "An Unexpected Hint Unveils...What?" I looked at the curious circumstance of William John Gunnee and his second family in Australia while back in England it appeared that he had left his first family. So what happened to his first wife Maud Louisa Mansfield?

But first a quick recap concerning William and Maud.

On 8 May 1904 William John Gunnee married Maud Louisa Mansfield, the daughter of Harry Mansfield, a lighterman.

"London, England, Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921," database, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 4 Jul 2012), William John Gunnee and Maud Louisa Mansfield, married 8 May 1904; citing London Metropolitan Archives, Saint Michael And All Angels, Bromley, Register of marriages, P88/MIC, Item 024.
"London, England, Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921," database, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 4 Jul 2012), William John Gunnee and Maud Louisa Mansfield, married 8 May 1904; citing London Metropolitan Archives, Saint Michael And All Angels, Bromley, Register of marriages, P88/MIC, Item 024.
On 6 Jan 1906, Maud gave birth to a son, Harold Sheil Gunnee, at 19 Lake Street, Ratcliff in London.

England and Wales, birth certificate for Harold Shiel Gunnee, born 6 Jan 1906; citing 1c/375/201, Mar quarter 1906, Stepney registration district, Shadwell and Ratchiff sub-district; General Register Office, Southport.
England and Wales, birth certificate for Harold Shiel Gunnee, born 6 Jan 1906; citing 1c/375/201, Mar quarter 1906, Stepney registration district, Shadwell and Ratchiff sub-district; General Register Office, Southport.

Sometime between early 1905 and early 1907 he departed England and arrived in Australia where he met and wed Ethel May Millen on 17 Feb 1907.

What about his wife Maud Louisa (nee Mansfield) and his son Harold Sheil Gunnee back in England? What happened to them? This is where it continues to stay interesting. At least from a genealogy and family history perspective.

After 1905 in the record searches I first came across her and her son living in the household of Henry George Pocock in the 1911 census of England that took place on 2 Apr 1911. In that enumeration a Blanche Maud Pocock was also included and it looked like she was the daughter of Henry George Pocock but the relationship column was a bit confusing with pencil and ink notations.

1911 census of England, London, 8 Woollett Street, Poplar, Household of Henry George Pocock; digital images, Ancestry,com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 4 Jul 2012); citing  RG 78 PN 60, RG 14 PN 1718, registration district (RD) 22, sub district (SD) 3, enumeration district (ED) 2, schedule number (SN) 66.
1911 census of England, London, 8 Woollett Street, Poplar, Household of Henry George Pocock; digital images, Ancestry,com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 4 Jul 2012); citing RG 78 PN 60, RG 14 PN 1718, registration district (RD) 22, sub district (SD) 3, enumeration district (ED) 2, schedule number (SN) 66.
Possibly Blanche was the daughter of Henry's first wife since his marital status was "widower". So a few pounds and days later I had a PDF of her birth registration from the General Register Office of England and Wales.

England and Wales, birth certificate for Blanche Maude Pocock, born 22 Sep 1909; citing 1c/540/428, Dec quarter 1909, Poplar registration district; General Register Office, Southport.
England and Wales, birth certificate for Blanche Maude Pocock, born 22 Sep 1909; citing 1c/540/428, Dec quarter 1909, Poplar registration district; General Register Office, Southport.
Hmmm, it seems that Maud Louisa has taken the "Pocock" name as her own when she registered the 22 Sep 1909 birth of her daughter Blanche. That means I should be looking for a marriage of Maud Louisa Mansfield/Gunnee sometime between 1905 and 1909. I did find several possible marriages using the FreeBMD indexes but none to a Popock or variation of that name. I reversed the search to find any marriages for a Henry George Pocock in the same time frame. Still no good matches found. So I expanded the time frame to include up to 1912. Lo and behold a marriage for Henry G Pocock and Maud L Gunner appeared in the index for marriages registered in the fourth quarter of 1911.

Screen capture of Marriages Dec 1911 results for a search for Henry Pocock in the FreeBMD index.
Screen capture of Marriages Dec 1911 results for a search for Henry Pocock in the FreeBMD index.

I've seen "Gunner" as a transcription error before and the registration district, Poplar, is the same as their daughter Blanche. Even looking at the image of the index page it said "Gunner" but I took a gamble, paid even more pounds, and waited three weeks to get the marriage registration send to me by postal mail.

England and Wales, marriage certificate for Henry Pocock and Maud Louisa Gunnee, married 17 Oct 1911; citing 1c/1108/85, Dec quarter 1911, Poplar registration district; General Register Office, Southport.
England and Wales, marriage certificate for Henry Pocock and Maud Louisa Gunnee, married 17 Oct 1911; citing 1c/1108/85, Dec quarter 1911, Poplar registration district; General Register Office, Southport.
This definitely appears to be "Gunnee" on the registration and her maiden surname is Mansfield. All the information I know about her matches what is on this document. The address for both Henry George Pocock and Maud Louisa Gunnee matches that recorded for their daughter Blanche's birth. From the document Henry and Maud were married 17 Oct 1911, several months after the 1911 census, and it took place at the Register Office (not included in the image posted) and not in a church. Maud again states that she was a widow and Henry is recorded as a bachelor (not a widower!). That 1911 census enumeration really is an interesting mishmash of confusing details.

They had at least one other child, Gladys Ellen Rose Pocock1 born on 6 Jun 1913 in Barking, Essex, England. Henry, Maud, and Gladys could even be found in the 1939 Register of England and Wales in Barking, Essex. The red stroke through Maud's entry referred to a heavily redacted page providing the exact same information.

1939 Register, Essex, England, RG 101, piece 1057A, image 15, 82 Wedderburn Road, Barking, Essex, household of Henry G Pocock.
1939 Register, Essex, England, RG 101, piece 1057A, image 15, 82 Wedderburn Road, Barking, Essex, household of Henry G Pocock.

What about William John Gunnee and Maud Louisa Manfields' son Harold Shiel Gunnee? From the various records it appears that Harold kept the Gunnee name in his name but used the "Pocock" surname from his step-father. This can be seen in the Principal Probate Registry for the Calendar of the Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration made in the Probate Registries of the High Court of Justice in England.

Ancestry.com, "National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1995," database on-line, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 13 Jul 2019), entry for Harold Shiel Gunnee Pocock, died 23 Jan 1978.
Ancestry.com, "National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1995," database on-line, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 13 Jul 2019), entry for Harold Shiel Gunnee Pocock, died 23 Jan 1978.
Based on the marriage index and also the 1939 Register of England and Wales it appears that Harold married Rosalind Ellen Tyler in 1929 and they had at least four children.

I think a few lessons can be taken from this little bit of exploration into this branch of my family:
  • Census enumerations and other documents can't be taken as gospel, people don't necessarily tell the truth.
  • Always try to corroborate the facts found in the records you find.
  • If there have been corrections or edits to document then following up on the changes can sometimes highlight something "interesting".
  • Always expand your search if you can't find the event in the expected time frame. You might be surprised at what you come across.



1. England and Wales, birth certificate for Gladys Ellen Rose Pocock, born 6 Jun 1913; citing 4a/1168/267, Sep quarter 1913, Romford registration district; General Register Office, Southport.

Tuesday, August 6, 2019

An Anglophone's Tips for Searching Ancestry's The Drouin Collection: Quebec Vital & Church Records

Recently I spent a week delving into the "Quebec Vital & Church Records" within The Drouin Church and Vital Records collection on Ancestry. This collection was originally created by the Institut Généalogique Drouin and has been made available to Ancestry subscribers. It can also be found at GenealogyQuébec. Some archives and libraries may have free access to the GenealogyQuébec site. However, owning to the fact that I don't have a subscription to GenealogyQuébec1 and since libraries frown upon you staying until the wee hours of the night I've been using the Ancestry collection since I already have a subscription with them.

This was part of a personal research project to learn more about my late uncle's life partner's family. This paternal branch of her family lines of the Shirlow and Rapple/Rappel/Rappell was my first real deep dive into these records and it has been quite a learning experience. As an Anglophone with just a barely passing knowledge of French it has been interesting, frustrating, and yes, fun. Here are some of the lessons I can pass on to you to hopefully make searching these records a bit less painful.

creen capture from the image presented by Ancestry for Saint Edward Anglican Church (Montréal, Quebec, Canada), Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968, "1916 Parish Register,"  marriage of James Shirlow and Sarah Rappell, 22 Feb 1916; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 27 Jul 2019).
Screen capture from the image presented by Ancestry for Saint Edward Anglican Church (Montréal, Quebec, Canada), Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968, "1916 Parish Register,"  marriage of James Shirlow and Sarah Rappell, 22 Feb 1916; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 27 Jul 2019).

The Records

Keep in mind that these are church records. The majority of the records deal with recording church rites such as baptisms, marriages, and burials. In some cases they will also record the date of birth and death but there are no guarantees. In many of the records I've been looking at they also give the name of the parents, the father's occupation, and the mother's maiden surname. Burial records may also provide you with the spouse's name to help you figure out if this is the right person in your tree, and their age at death. Burial records for the women will often be recorded under their maiden surname along with their husband's name.

Language Challenges

Although the Shirlow and Rapple lines are of English speaking Irish descent some of the parish records were in French. As I was reading through some of the records the stuff I learned in my primary and high school French classes slowly came back to me. If your French language skills are as rust as mine (or worse) here are a few tips.
  1. Google Translate is a helpful resource in figuring out some of the words. It is not perfect though and will have some challenges but it will often give you the gist of what is written.
  2. Write down on a piece of paper the numbers 1 through to 31 with the words of their French equivalents. You will be seeing these words often. If possible, write it out in cursive so that you can see how they look.
  3. Write down the names of the months. For me "avril" and "août" kept messing me up when I was looking at some of the writing due to the poor quality of some of the scanned documents.
  4. Learn some of the key words and phrases (and approximate translations) found in the records. There will be other phrases and words that you will come across but this list is a starting point:
    • née: born
    • hier: yesterday
    • la même: the same
    • ce jour: this day
    • courrant: current (often used like "instant" for the current month and year)
    • veuve: widow (sometimes abbreviated as "vve" in the margin index)
    • veuf: widower
    • épouse: wife (sometimes abbreviated as "espe" the margin index)
    • époux: husband
    • fils: son
    • fille: daughter
    • décédés: died
    • cimetière: cemetery
    • cette Paroisse: this Parish
    • mil neuf cent: 1900
    • mil huit cent: 1800
    • nous, Prêtre soussigné: we, the undersigned priest

Church Shopping

OK, this is my own phrase for it but your ancestors may not have stuck with the same church or even religion throughout their lives. If they were of the Presbyterian faith, don't discount the Church of England or Anglican churches in the area when looking for records. You might also find them in the Roman Catholic parish registers in that area.

In Canada we are fortunate in that our census records will indicate which religion the person was practising. If you see someone listed as Roman Catholic but their spouse is Church of England or other Protestant faith you might find the marriage in a Roman Catholic church with a comment along the lines of "...the law of the Church which forbids mixed marriages..."

Cathedrale St-Jacque-le-Mineur (Montréal, Quebec, Canada), Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968, "1915 Parish Register,"  marriage of Chester Robert Shirlow and (Dora) Margaret Elvert, 30 Aug 1915; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 27 Jul 2019).
Cathedrale St-Jacque-le-Mineur (Montréal, Quebec, Canada), Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968, "1915 Parish Register,"  marriage of Chester Robert Shirlow and (Dora) Margaret Elvert, 30 Aug 1915; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 27 Jul 2019).

Additionally, there may have only been a few cemeteries in the area so those records may be held in different church than the one your ancestors regularly attended. Since I was dealing with folks that lived in Montreal I would often find their burial register entry in the collection for "Basilique Notre Dame" if they were buried in Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges.

If you can find the family either in the Lovell's Montreal Directory or in the later census enumerations that included the street address where they lived then Google Maps might help you figure out what churches they may have attended. However, some churches in large communities like Montreal no longer exist today so you might not be able to find them with today's maps.

Parish Registers

Depending on the community the church served, some of the parish registers for a year may be hundreds of pages in size. Even a parish with a register of 20 pages, depending on the quality of the document and writing, can be a chore to look though. Fortunately, the parish priest also didn't want to have to read every page when looking for an entry in their own register. Often you will find an index of surnames at the end of the register along with the folio number in the register where the entry can be found.

Lost Children

I consider the lost children to be those that were born and died, or in the case of parish records, baptized and buried, between census enumerations. If I find a entry for a known child in the register of a church I will often look up to ten years before and after that date for any additional children of the family.

Document Quality

If you have had any dealing with the scanned images of census documents the same rules apply with these images. Keep in mind that some of the documents you are looking at may be over two hundred years old or even older. That they have survived to this day and you can look at them from the comfort of your home can't be taken for granted. That said, some of them are really hard to read for several reasons:
  • The ink has faded over time
  • The documents have been damaged due to water, fire, and creatures
  • The handwriting may not be the greatest (almost as bad as my own...which is horrible2)
  • Pour quality of the microfilming. The contrast may be great for some parts but not for the remainder.

Transcriptions and Indexes

I really do appreciate the time, effort, and in some cases, money spent by the various commercial companies, churches, and societies to transcribe and index records. However, as any researcher knows, these transcriptions and indexes can also be the bane of our existence. The "Drouin Church and Vital Records" collection is no different. In some cases, it is almost worse than some of the census transcriptions and indexes I've used to locate family members in the digitized records.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not faulting the transcribers and indexers for all of the issues. The quality of the documents and scans they are working from would challenge anyone. So make use of wildcards like "?" and "*" in your searching of last names. I thought "Shirlow" should be easy to find but I was wrong. I had to search using "sh?rl?w" and then just "sh*w" plus restricting the location to Montreal, Quebec, Canada in my search query. I could then quickly scan the list of 100 to 200 returned names for possible matches like "Sherlow", "Sherlaw", and even "Shilow" to help me locate the key baptism, marriage, and burial records.

However, coming across many index entries of burials for people with the forename of "Epse" might throw you for a loop. In these cases the indexers wrote exactly what was written without understanding the context. Here is an example taken from the margin of a record:
Basilique Notre-Dame (Montréal, Quebec, Canada), Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968, "1892 Parish Register,"  burial of Mary Margaret Daniels wife of Henry George Tibby, 5 Sep 1892; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 28 Jul 2019)
Basilique Notre-Dame (Montréal, Quebec, Canada), Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968, "1892 Parish Register,"  burial of Mary Margaret Daniels wife of Henry George Tibby, 5 Sep 1892; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 28 Jul 2019).
The indexer wrote: "Epse Tibby Mary Margaret Daniels" for the name. This loosely translates in the document to be "Mary Margaret Daniels wife of Tibby". Her forenames are not "Epse Tibby Mary Margaret". If you have the time, take a moment to correct a few of these index issues to help out other genealogy and family history researchers in their own journey of documenting their family tree.

Also, the indexers are using the margin index entries created by the parish priest. The spelling there might not be correct for your family name at that time. However, baptism and marriage records will often have the signature, if the people could sign their name, at the end of the register entry. That is how your ancestor thought their name was spelled. Don't be surprised if the spelling is not how you spell it now! Here is an example for Rapple/Rappel/Rappell family and the changes in spelling over time and by family members based on signatures in the registers:

 


I hope that this post helps you navigate "Quebec Vital & Church Records" within "The Drouin Church and Vital Records" collection on Ancestry. I'm next off to look at the Legér branch of this family and they are all French Roman Catholics in Québec so my French language skills will be pretty much stretched to the limit! Wish me luck!



1. 24 hours access is $5 and allows you to look at 75 images. Monthly subscription is $13 and you can view 75 images per day. An annual subscription is $100 with access to 1050 images per week. See https://www.genealogiequebec.com/en/subscription for the details.

2. No fault of my primary school teachers, especially Mrs. Currie.

Friday, August 2, 2019

Songs of the Ottawa - A Confluence of History, Sound, and Digitization

A little while back, friend and blogger John D. Reid of Canada's Anglo-Celtic Connections, knowing of my interesting in history and music, sent me a link to a site called Songs of the Ottawa. This site is the result of Christina Wood's Master's Research Project at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Screen capture of the SoundCloud representation of "Hearing the River's Flows"
Screen capture of the SoundCloud representation of "Hearing the River's Flows"
 What was posted on the web site got my attention is several ways:
  • Through the use of data sonification she created songs that you could not only hear but also see through the posting of the songs on SoundCloud. You could see the patterns in the SoundCloud representation of the music that she talked about in the pages of two of the songs: "Hearing the River's Flow" and "On the Water"
  • As a IT professional that uses various scripting language to do my work, being able to see the Python code that she used to create the sounds was kind of cool.
  • Finally, seeing historical events presented in a different fashion, other than words on a page, got to me wonder what we might be missing when we, as genealogy and family history researchers, only concentrate on names, dates, and places and births, marriages, and deaths.
The music that was created is definitely not for everyone. However, due to the influence of several members of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, I've grown to appreciate music in all of its forms. With their repetitive patterns these works remind me of some of the new compositions I've heard over the past several years.

From a genealogical research point of view, in her essay she highlights the various resources that she used to find the data to sonify. These are many of the same resources that we can also use to delve deeper in the events that shaped our ancestors lives.

So if you have the chance, take the time to listen to the three songs and also read her essay. I hope you find it as intriguing as I did.

If our ancestors are the notes on the page, collectively they make up the symphony that is us.