A Challenge: 1861 Census of Canada - Agricultural Schedule

Recently a genealogy researcher colleague of mine asked for some assistance in locating the agricultural schedule from the 1861 Census of Canada. This was her question to me:

My problem is I want to look at a microfilm reel of LAC but I find the Heritage search engine terrible.

I am looking for C-1305 the 1861 census for Ottawa County.  What I want is the agriculture schedule that follows the nominal one.  It may not be on the site.

Is there a way to just ask for a particular reel.

Normally it would be as simple as viewing the microfilm at the Library and Archives Canada building here in Ottawa but with the COVID-19 lock down in effect in Ottawa (and much of the world) and the various buildings closed to the public it makes for a bit of a challenge.

The first step for me was the obvious one, try various searches on the Héritage project site just to verify what is being found:

• "C-1305" - That microfilm didn't appear at the top of the list.
• "census" - Various census returns for the Township of Augusta, 1801 & 1818 returns for Edwardsburgh Township (includes various years forElizabethtown, Johnstown District, Oxford-on-the-Rideau Township, Westminster Township, and Woodhouse Township), Lower Canada/Canada East census returns for 1825, Department of Indian Affairs: Census records, and also other census returns but no 1861.
• "agricultural" - Lower Canada / Canada East census returns for 1825 and many other microfilms that pertained to agriculture but no 1861 census.

So it appears that my colleague's finding that the digitized microfilm reels for the 1861 Census of Canada is not on the Héritage project site is correct.

As an aside, I agree that the Héritage project search is not great but I can't really fault the search engine itself. The challenge is that the search system only looks in the metadata and descriptive information of the microfilms. Often the information provided is minimal at best and I've found that it doesn't list all the volumes found on the microfilm. When using the search feature on the Héritage project site make sure you check out the "Search Tips" page. Even I learned a few new tricks in reviewing that page.

However, back to the matter in hand, finding the 1861 Census of Canada agricultural schedule returns.

Next it was off to the landing page for 1861 Census of Canada on the Library and Archives Canada web site to find out what they have to say about the various schedules.

Schedules
Personal Census

The enumeration data were collected using documents known as schedules. Each province submitted unique schedules. Questions were asked either in French or in English in Canada East depending on the language spoken by the enumerator.
Agricultural Census

Agricultural returns provide information such as lot and concession number, acreage, livestock and agricultural products. The agricultural returns are listed by the name of the head-of-household and can be found after the personal returns for the entire county.

In some cases, the name of the head of household was indexed both from the personal census and from the agricultural census returns. This has resulted in more than one entry for one individual and is particularly noted in the returns for Canada West.

So it appears that the Agricultural schedule for the 1861 Census of Canada was microfilmed. Note the sentence that I've underlined, it should be found after the personal returns for the entire county.

I know that Ancestry has the images of the Personal schedule of the 1861 Census of Canada searchable online. Might the agricultural schedule also be included but not indexed at the end of the county returns? Even if you don't have your own subscription to Ancestry you may be fortunate to be able to access to the Library edition from home via your local library's web site like what the Ottawa Public Library has done during these challenging times.

On Ancestry go to the "1861 Census of Canada" collection page. However, don't search by name. Instead we are going to browse the collection.

First of all, do you know what province Ottawa county is in? If you said Canada West or Ontario you need to guess again. It is in Canada East (now Quebec). Yes, that got me too!

So select Canada East from the Province drop down box and then click on Ottawa county. This will bring up the first page of the returns for Ottawa county.

Screen capture of the 1861 Census of Canada, Canada East, Ottawa county, image 1 from Ancestry.ca.

We aren't going to scroll through the virtual microfilm but instead we will type in the last page number in the box at the bottom of the screen, "577", to see if it is an image of the Personal or Agricultural schedule for Ottawa county.

Screen capture of the 1861 Census of Canada, Canada East, Ottawa county, image 577 from Ancestry.ca.

It looks like it is still a Personal schedule from Ottawa (Outaouais) county. With the virtual microfilm strip displayed we can see that the next county is Pontiac in Canada Eest. So it doesn't seem like the Agricultural schedule is included on Ancestry.

But don't give up yet, there is one other place. However, it will take a bit of copying and pasting and some work on our part.

We need to first to look at the URL that Ancestry has used to display that last page:

https://www.ancestry.ca/interactive/1570/4108806_00007?backurl=&ssrc=&backlabel=Return#?imageId=4108807_00556

It is made up of several parts. The "https://www.ancestry.ca/interactive/1570" is the base of the 1861 Census of Canada interactive viewer but don't bother going there since it isn't for us humans. "4108806_00007" is the census page we first started from. The key piece of information though is what comes after the "imageId": "4108807_00556". We are going to need this for the next part and the Library and Archives Canada data collection image page starting point for the 1861 Census of Canada (I found this through my use of the LAC site and looking at their images):

http://data2.collectionscanada.gc.ca/1861/jpg/

Putting the two together plus ".jpg" at the end creates http://data2.collectionscanada.gc.ca/1861/jpg/4108807_00556.jpg and if you click on that link you bring up the same page as seen on Ancestry.

But what does that give us?

What if you increment the image number 00556 to 00557 in that URL, does it give you a page or an error? Go ahead, give it a try, I'll wait.

If you did every thing right (you did remember to keep that ",jpg" at the end of the URL?) you saw a page that isn't on Ancestry. Curious isn't it? There are even more pages after that until we get to http://data2.collectionscanada.gc.ca/1861/jpg/4108807_00560.jpg.

1861 Census of Canada, Canada East, Ottawa County, agricultural schedule,enumeration district (ED) Ottawa, cover page, digital image, Library and Archives Canada. Collections Canada (http://data2.collectionscanada.gc.ca/1861/jpg/4108807_00560.jpg: accessed 22 Mar 2020).

This looks very promising. If we keep incrementing that image number we find the pages for the agricultural schedule for that county.

Now this doesn't work in all of the cases. If you get something like the following text:

Object not found!

The requested URL was not found on this server. If you entered the URL manually please check your spelling and try again.

If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster.
Error 404
data2.collectionscanada.gc.ca
Apache

Don't worry. It just means probably one of two things...
1. you forgot the .jpg at the end of the URL, or
2. you've tried to go beyond the end of the microfilm.

If it is #2 then just increment the number before the underscore to hopefully get to the next microfilm. So in the case of this microfilm we are looking at the virtual reel 4108807. The last image is image 00776. If you try to display 00777 it gives you the above error. To get to the next virtual reel use 410888_00001 and continue on...hopefully

Yet the reels presented by Ancestry aren't necessarily in the same order as what Library and Archives Canada has laid out. An example of this is for Lanark County, Canada West. The LAC equivalent last page is http://data2.collectionscanada.gc.ca/1861/jpg/4391940_00653.jpg. But if I increment the image number to 00655 I see the following:

Screen capture of the 1861 Census of Canada, Canada West, Lanark county, image 655 from Library and Archives Canada, Collections Canada.

Right away I can see that I need to change to the next reel. It might be 4391941 but until you look it might not be (it wasn't in this case). However, the last place in the list for Lanark County is Smith's Falls. If I look on Ancestry in the 1861 Census of Canada for anyone living in "Lanark, Ontario, Canada" with an exact keyword of "Smith's Falls" I should find an image to give me a clue. At first it didn't find anyone so I removed the apostrophe and found people living in  "Smiths Falls".

It is a really long URL from Ancestry when I look at the image and at first I didn't see any imageID= in it. So I clicked the "next image" icon on the image. There again the URL was really long but at the end of it I saw "imageId=4391558_00297" so there is hope yet. I used that number to create the URL on the Collections Canada site as the starting point. A bit of hopping forward I found the agricultural schedule for the 1861 Census of Canada for Lanark county, Canada West at http://data2.collectionscanada.gc.ca/1861/jpg/4391558_00341.jpg.

Why should you care about the 1861 Census of Canada agricultural schedule?  Is knowing the number of bushels of turnips really that important? Probably not, but the agricultural schedule does give you the lot and concession where they lived if they resided outside of a town. With that you might be able to find the land records showing where they bought or received as a grant the land they farmed, and to whom the land was sold after the family moved away.

As you can see, it isn't a simple process to find these agricultural returns for the 1861 Census of Canada but it can be done with help from Ancestry and a little bit of work on your part.