In my post "Searching the 1851 Census of Canada West Agricultural Schedule - Ancestry Version" we saw how to search Ancestry for the agricultural schedule of the 1851 census of Canada West to locate concession and lot where my 4th great-grandfather, Alexander Fraser, resided. However, not all of us have access to Ancestry so what about using the census enumerations held by Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and available for free?
The first step is to get to the Census of 1851 on the Library and Archives Canada web site. When you arrive on the Library and Archives Canada site lick on "Search the Collection" and then "Censuses" on the items listed.
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| Screen capture of the Library and Archives Canada home page showing the items under the Search the Collection tab. |
Doing that will bring up the Censuses landing page. On the left side of the page the various enumerations available on Library and Archives Canada are listed from the 1825 census of Lower Canada to the 1926 census of the Prairie Provinces.
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| Screen capture of the Library and Archives Canada Censuses landing page. |
Click on the 1851 Census to bring up it's page.
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| Screen capture of the Library and Archives Canada Census of 1851 landing page. |
Before diving into searching the census, do yourself a favour and review the various bits of information about the Census of 1851. You may learn what has actually survived, why better images of the pages can't be made, and some of the acronyms that may have been used on by the enumerator.
Like with Ancestry we need to find the household in the population schedule. To start that process click on the "Search Database" button to bring up the search screen.
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| Screen capture of the Library and Archives Canada Census of 1851 Search Database screen with minimal details about Alexander of Drummond Sub-District, Lanark District entered. |
This is where is becomes a little bit challenging. Unlike Ancestry or other genealogy focused web sites, Library and Archives Canada really doesn't have a system behind the scenes to help you with misspelled names or transcription issues. If the District Name, often the county, and Sub-District Name, sometimes the town or township, are known then that information may be entered into the advanced search options. The other gotcha is that the transcriptions appear to have come from Ancestry and, as we saw in the challenges with using Ancestry to do the search, the transcriptions may be a little out of whack
In the above image I didn't even put Alexander's surname in the search box since when I did that it only returned the entry for Alexander Fraser Esq. And from the exercise undertaken with Ancestry, I know that is the wrong Alexander Fraser for my family research.
After a bit a searching I found the family in the results under the surname of "Traser".
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| Screen capture of the Library and Archives Canada Census of 1851 search results item page for Alexander Traser. |
As with the results from Ancestry we want to look at the image and also record the neighbours. In this case they are the families of John Hunter and Evin Griffith.
Before we continue I want to point out an interesting curiosity with Library and Archives Canada making use of the indexes created by Ancestry. When I did that basic search for Alexander in Drummond Sub-District, Lanark District I noticed that a number of the returned results didn't have ages listed for the individuals. The same sort of lack of information occurred on Ancestry, could they be the Agricultural schedules?
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| Screen capture of the Library and Archives Canada Census of 1851 partial search results for Alexander of Drummond Sub-District, Lanark District. |
A quick check of the first one revealed that it was indeed the Agricultural schedule but for that other Alexander Fraser, Esquire. However, the second returned result, "Alexander Jeans", turned out to be my Alexander Fraser.
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| 1851 census of Canada East, Canada West, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, Ontario, Lanark (county), district 19, sub-district 180, Drummond Township, p. 39, Agricultural schedule for Alexander Fraser; RG 31; digital images, Library and Archives Canada (http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/ : accessed 10 Feb 2021); citing microfilm C-11732. |
How do we know that it is the right one? By looking at the neighbours. We see that the John Hunter and Evin Griffith we found in the population schedule surround Alexander Fraser in this schedule.
However, if we can't find the right page in the agricultural schedule by searching the database there is another way. Library and Archives Canada has created a PDF file for the 1851 Canada West - Agricultural Census listing the District and Sub-District along with the associated image held in their CollectionsCanada site.
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| Screen capture of the 1851 Canada West - Agricultural Census PDF from Library and Archives Canada searching for "drummond". |
Here we can see the search results within the PDF file when looking for Drummond. Why Drummond? That is the name of the Sub-District from the page in the population schedule we found previously. To look at the images we need to click on underlined links to data2.collectionscanada.gc.ca. Then it is the manual process of reviewing each image for the name we are interested in. Again, knowing the name of the neighbours can help us to identify the correct head of household in the agricultural schedule.
Those page numbers listed in the PDF can also help though to cut down the number of pages we need to look at. The "a" pages are the ones with the names. The page numbers in the parentheses are the page numbers stamped on the top right corner of the page.
Hopefully these instructions will help you find where your ancestor was "on the ground" in Canada West in the 1851 census.
1. For the Census of 1851 I have sometimes used the free FamilySearch site to search for the individual in the census and learn the District and Sub-District numbers and names. Unfortunately, FamilySearch doesn't have the images on their site.
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