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Monday, February 27, 2023

Beginner's Guide: Finding Ontario Civil Death Registrations

Along with people asking about finding Ontario birth certificates, which I discuss in my post "Beginner's Guide: Finding Ontario Civil Birth Registration", folks want to locate the death certificates for their long departed kin.

Ancestry.com, "Ontario, Canada, Deaths, 1869-1938 and Deaths Overseas, 1939-1947," database with images, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 3 May 2013), entry for Luke McMullen, died 21 Oct 1906; citing Archives of Ontario; Series: MS935; Reel: 126.
Ancestry.com, "Ontario, Canada, Deaths, 1869-1938 and Deaths Overseas, 1939-1947," database with images, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 3 May 2013), entry for Luke McMullen, died 21 Oct 1906; citing Archives of Ontario; Series: MS935; Reel: 126.

Before I begin this guide, I would recommend people read the "Death Registrations" page from the Archives of Ontario along with their "Research Guide 202 - Vital Statistics Records" to gain a basic understanding of what is available and why.

Registration or Certificate?

Keep in mind that usually folks aren't actually looking for the death certificate but a copy of the completed death registration. When my father passed away a few years ago the paperwork that was filled in was titled "Statement of death - Form 15" and also included "Medical Certificate of Death - Form 16" completed my the physician. The "Statement of death" has all the details about someone's death such as when and the place where they died, where they resided, the names of their parents, and the name and address of the informant. The "Medical Certificate of Death" includes all the information about their cause of death. There is also the Ontario Death Certificate but that document usually only has a name, the sex, marital status, date and place of death, age, date of registration, and the registration number. 

As genealogy and family history researchers we generally want the document with as much information as possible. So if requesting a document concerning the death of someone and the records are only available through ServiceOntario via their "How to get a copy of an Ontario death certificate online" page you will want to try to get the "Certified copy of death registration" or even the "Certified copy of death registration with cause of death information". Of course, due to privacy reasons, not everyone can request a certified copy so you may need to have a relative make the application on your behalf.

Years Covered

Death registrations are only publicly available from 1869 to 1951 from the Archives of Ontario. For death registrations registered after 1951, those are still currently held by the Office of the Registrar General of Ontario and can only be requested via Service Ontario. The registrations that are no longer protected by the veil of privacy are transferred from the Office of the Registrar General to the Archives of Ontario on a yearly basis for safekeeping and public access.

Why 1869 and not 1867 when Ontario became a province of the Dominion of Canada? It wasn't until January 23, 1869 when "An Act to provide for the Registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths" was assented to by the Crown. In that act it states that "This Act shall come into force on the first day of July, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine..." That is why you generally may not find any early deaths recorded in the civil death registrations. Although there are a few from before the July 1, 1869 date found in the records they were registered several years later after the death. But those very few entries are the exception.

Where are the Records?

Before diving into where the registrations may be found, it is worth noting that the format of the registration forms changed over the years. One may come across the form with six boxes per page, or with spots for only three registrations in a column format. The more recent registration forms only have a single registration of death on the page. 

However, there was also a registration form that is laid out horizontally. Both FamilySearch and Ancestry will generally only show you the left side of this two page register. So make sure you also get the second part of that register page!

Archives of Ontario

The Archives of Ontario is the repository for those registrations transferred from the Office of the Registrar General. If you are living in or visiting Toronto, Ontario then you can drop by the Archives of Ontario and look at the various microfilms in person. This includes the years 1948 to 1951 since they aren't available online yet. However, according to the Archives of Ontario site, the microfilms holding the 1949-1951 registrations aren't available since they are in the process of being digitized. So always check the Death Registrations page from the Archives of Ontario or email them for up to date information before visiting in person.

It is important to note that the Archives of Ontario does not have the death registrations available on their web site.

FamilySearch

FamilySearch has the digitized microfilms of the Ontario death registrations and indexes from 1869 to 1937 in their "Deaths - registration, 1869-1937 and index, 1869-1937" collection. This collection is freely available for use from the comfort of one's abode. FamilySearch also has their dedicated search page "Canada, Ontario Deaths, 1869-1937 and Overseas Deaths, 1939-1947" to aid you in your efforts to find a death registration so that you don't have to manually go through the digitized indexes and registrations.

You might notice that FamilySearch has "Overseas Deaths, 1939-1947" included in that search page. Those are the deaths of Ontarians who died overseas due to the Second World War. The images for those registration are found on FamilySearch in their "Ontario statistics overseas--deaths, 1939-1947" collection. Quite often the completed civil death registration is a bit sparse on the details but it is a great clue that you should probably look up that person's Second World War service file in the Library and Archives Canada "Second World War Service Files – War Dead, 1939 to 1947" database.

FamilySearch, in addition to their indexes created by way of their transcriptions of the registrations, also has the images of the government created Vital Statistics Index (VSI) for deaths on their site. In the days before the Internet and the mass indexing projects, the VSI is what folks would consult first on microfilm before looking on the applicable microfilm that held the registration of death form for the person they were seeking.

Ontario Registrar General,  Deaths - registration, 1869-1937 and index, 1869-1937, (Archives of Ontario, Toronto), 1913: extract from page for Carrick, Michael to Carscallen, Oswald Gurney; FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org: 27 Feb 2023), DGS 8105303, image 16.
Ontario Registrar General,  Deaths - registration, 1869-1937 and index, 1869-1937, (Archives of Ontario, Toronto), 1913: extract from page for Carrick, Michael to Carscallen, Oswald Gurney; FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org: 27 Feb 2023), DGS 8105303, image 16.

Yet even now these Vital Statistics Indexes are still useful to us. One reason is that the indexes are alphabetical by surname. One can, with practice, quickly glance through the years for possible names that have been "interestingly" read and transcribed from the original documents.

You might notice that in the "CONT." column in the example above for the VSI there are two codes: 91 and 21. The 91 indicates that it is a death (9) and is the original entry (1) where as the 21 indicates that it is a stillbirth (2) original entry (1).

What about finding online those deaths after 1937? For those we need to turn to Ancestry.

Ancestry

On Ancestry we have their "Ontario, Canada, Deaths and Deaths Overseas, 1869-1948" collection which has the death registrations from 1869 up to 1948. That collection includes the deaths related to those Ontarians who died overseas due to the Second World War.

Other sites

Some might wonder where is Findmypast or MyHeritage in the list of genealogy sites to use to find Ontario civil death registrations? I wondered the same as I was writing this post. It seems that both Findmypast and MyHeritage don't have the registrations for Ontario. Findmypast has indexes for British Columbia, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan though.

One of the other sites I will sometimes use is The Ontario Vital Statistics Project. I like this site for a few reasons. The first is that the records are transcribed by folks not associated with FamilySearch or Ancestry. So they might see the written words differently. Also, the transcriptions are alphabetical in columns and I can quickly glance through a page.

Partial screen capture from The Ontario Vital Statistics Project for Ontario Death Registrations "McL-McY" Surnames page.
Partial screen capture from The Ontario Vital Statistics Project for Ontario Death Registrations "McL-McY" Surnames page.

Still Can't Find it!

It could be as simple as the death may not have been registered with the civil authorities. For a number of years, even decades, the civil registrations of births, marriage, and deaths in the Province of Ontario fell far short of 100% coverage. In one case I was looking at the mother's death wasn't registered but her young son's death the following year was. According to the law no one should have been buried without a death registration filed but often it slipped through the cracks.

So where else can one look for clues concerning a death if it can't be found in the civil registrations? Some possible sources include:

  • Newspapers: I couldn't find a civil death registration for William Henry Chipman who died in Ottawa, Ontario on 10 Apr 1870. However, I did find his death in various newspapers since he was a member of the first parliament of Canada.
  • Parish registers: It is important to remember that parish registers generally only record the burial of someone. If we are fortunate we will find that the parish priest or clerk will have also recorded the date of death in the register.
  • Cemetery registers: Much like parish registers, cemetery registers are there to record the date of the burial. But since a person is not supposed to be buried before they are dead it can set an upper limit for the date when a person passed away.
  • Monumental inscriptions on marker and memorial stones: However, don't necessarily trust the year or exact date found on a marker or memorial stone in a cemetery or graveyard. Sometimes the stone is a replacement and the date may be based on the memory of whomever is paying for the new marker. See my post from 2013 "Zombie in the census?" for an example of this issue. Also, just because a person has a marker in one place doesn't mean that they died in that community or are even buried in that cemetery.
  • Schedule 2, "Nominal return of the deaths", from the 1871 Census of Canada: This schedule was supposed to record all deaths that took place in the year prior to the start of the 1871 Census of Canada which was 2 Apr 1871. Just like any other record made weeks or months after the event, the date in this schedule may be based on someone's faulty memory.
  • City Directories: Sometime a clue can be found for the death of the male head of household. The directory entry may switch from his name to that of his wife and she will have "widow of..." after her name.

Even if the death has been registered and one has a copy of the registration, see if you can find other records about the death. I have run into a case where the civil registration of death has the wrong date recorded. Both the grave marker and the newspaper have a date several weeks before the "official" date in the civil registration. Since a newspaper doesn't often report on a death before it has occurred, in this case I actually trust the newspaper more than the government record.


Hopefully some of the guidance in this post will help you find those sometimes elusive civil death registrations in Ontario.


Monday, February 20, 2023

A Reel Challenge for the 1871 Census of Canada

Recently in a Facebook group the following question was posted:

"Has anyone had any luck accessing Schedule 4 (Agricultural returns) of the 1871 Canada Census for Vespa township? Ancestry has schedules 1 - 3 and then the ‘roll’ stops and I can’t find it on Library and Archives Canada’s website."

When I looked at the image on the Library and Archives Canada site for the last page on their virtual microfilm reel I could see it ended at page 18 for Schedule 3.

1871 census of Canada, Ontario, district 42, sub-district D, Schedule 3, p. 18; RG 31; digital images, Library and Archives Canada (https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?app=Census1871&op=img&id=4396340_00685 : accessed 20 Feb 2023); Library and Archives Canada microfilm C-9962.
1871 census of Canada, Ontario, district 42, sub-district D, Schedule 3, p. 18; RG 31; digital images, Library and Archives Canada (https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?app=Census1871&op=img&id=4396340_00685 : accessed 20 Feb 2023); Library and Archives Canada microfilm C-9962.

In the past I too have run into this issue but I never really thought about documenting how I solved this little conundrum in my own research. Time to rectify that.

As an aside, some of you may be wondering why they were looking for Schedule 4 in the 1871 Census of Canada?  That schedule, the "Return of Cultivated Land, of Field Products and of Plants and Fruits", is invaluable for those seeking to learn where their rural ancestors resided during the 1871 Census of Canada since it can provide the concession and lot number where a family lived or at least farmed. However, the information isn't recorded by name on the pages of Schedule 4 but by the page and line number in Schedule 1, "Nominal Return of the Living" of the head of household. So there is no searchable name index for schedule 4. I write how to use that census in my post "Ontario Concession and Lot in the 1871 Census of Canada" which is part of my ongoing Ontario land records On the Ground series.

Here is the process I undertook to find the next reel. 

Be warned, there is a bit of playing around with URLs, that sometime long address you see in your browser of a  web page. You won't break anything if you make an error though.

Since we are looking at the 1871 Census of Canada we need to visit the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) page on that subject "Census of Canada, 1871". At this moment the page for this census is from the legacy LAC site. Sometime in the future Library and Archives Canada will move to the new site layout for the census pages. Hopefully we will still be able to do the same sort of work when they do.

Next we need to visit the "Districts and Sub-districts: Census of Canada, 1871" page. Why that page? That page not only tells us the various districts and sub-districts for that census and what may be missing but also the microfilm numbers where each sub-district may be found.

Although the person wrote "Vespa" as the township name, that is a typo. They actually meant "Vespra" which is found in district number 42, Simcoe North. In the list of districts and sub-districts for Ontario we can see that the Vespra sub-district is found on microfilms C-9962 and C-9963. The Medonte sub-district could have the same challenges since it too spans two microfilms.

Screen capture of the list of sub-districts for "District 42 - Simcoe North" from the Library and Archives Canada "Districts and Sub-districts: Census of Canada, 1871, Ontario" page.
Screen capture of the list of sub-districts for "District 42 - Simcoe North" from the Library and Archives Canada "Districts and Sub-districts: Census of Canada, 1871, Ontario" page.

In a perfect world the URLs for the digitized images of the microfilms would be sequential. Alas, we live in an imperfect world so it is a bit more of a challenge.

We do see that there are a number of sub-districts on microfilm C-9963, the reel that continues from C-9962 for Vespra. We find Barrie, Flos, Tiny, Tay, and Medonte on reel C-9963.

We next head to the "Search: Census of Canada, 1871" page on the Library and Archives Canada site. We also need to click on the "Hide/Show Advanced Search Options" link to show the advanced search options since we are going to search by a sub-district name.

Screen capture of the "Search: Census of Canada, 1871" page from Library and Archives Canada with District Number "42", Sub-District Name "Barrie", and Page Number "1" filled in.
Screen capture of the "Search: Census of Canada, 1871" page from Library and Archives Canada with District Number "42", Sub-District Name "Barrie", and Page Number "1" filled in.

Above we see that I've already selected the Province "Ontario" along with filling in the district number, 42, the sub-district, Barrie, and put in the page number 1. Why Barrie? In theory it should be the next sub-district after Vespra on the microfilm.

Screen capture of the search results from the Census of Canada, 1871 for "Ontario", District Number "42", Sub-District Name "Barrie", and Page Number "1" with JPG link highlighted.
Screen capture of the search results from the Census of Canada, 1871 for "Ontario", District Number "42", Sub-District Name "Barrie", and Page Number "1" with JPG link highlighted.

It doesn't matter the names returned. What we want to do is to click on the JPG line (circled in red in the image) to have the image of the page appear in our browser.

Partial screen capture of the browser view for Census of Canada, 1871 for Ontario, District Number 42, Sub-District Name Barrie, and Page Number 1.
Partial screen capture of the browser view for Census of Canada, 1871 for Ontario, District Number 42, Sub-District Name Barrie, and Page Number 1.

Again, it isn't really important what page we are looking at. What is important is the URL or address of that image from Library and Archives Canada. In this case the address of the page is:

https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?app=Census1871&op=img&id=4396754_00133

What we are going to be doing is playing with the "id" part of the URL and here it is 4396754_00133. It is made up of two parts, what I call the digitized microfilm number: 4396754, and the image number: 00133.

When we looked at the last page of schedule 3 for the Vespra sub-district the id part of the URL was 4396340_00685. That digitized microfilm number is 4396340 and adding 1 to that number definitely doesn't get us to 4396754. That's why we have to do this exercise.

Now we can start playing with the image number of the address.

The first thing we want to do is go to the first image on that digitized microfilm so we change 00133 to 00001 to create the URL https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?app=Census1871&op=img&id=4396754_00001.

Now we just  have to keep incrementing that number until we get to a census page. Just a word of warning, sometimes the LAC site can be a bit slow, so be patient with it.

On image 5 (https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?app=Census1871&op=img&id=4396754_00005) of that microfilm it shows pages 78 and 79 for the Sub-District of Flos. What the heck? That doesn't make sense! A few more pages on (https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?app=Census1871&op=img&id=4396754_00009) we are now seeing pages 26 and 27 for Division 1 of the Tiny Sub-District. Perplexed? So was I!

However, a few more pages later we get to a "START" slide. We are on digitized image 11 and are just starting?

Finally on image 18 we get to the first page of Schedule 4 for the Province of Ontario, District of Simcoe North (42), Sub-District of Vespra (D).

1871 census of Canada, Ontario, district 42, sub-district D, Schedule 4, p. 1; RG 31; digital images, Library and Archives Canada (https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?app=Census1871&op=img&id=4396754_00018 : accessed 20 Feb 2023); Library and Archives Canada microfilm C-9963.
1871 census of Canada, Ontario, district 42, sub-district D, Schedule 4, p. 1; RG 31; digital images, Library and Archives Canada (https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?app=Census1871&op=img&id=4396754_00018 : accessed 20 Feb 2023); Library and Archives Canada microfilm C-9963.

Those extraneous images we came across? I've found that sometimes the first few digitized images on the microfilm reels from Library and Archives Canada for the censuses may not be the actual start of the reel. I always look for the "START" slide.

See, it wasn't too hard to do this little exercise.

Ancestry

You can find the same image on Ancestry once you get the digitized microfilm number and image number from LAC. 

But Ancestry has its own quirks. When there are strange breaks like this in the digitized microfilm reels sometimes the folks at Ancestry who created their "filmstrips" get confused. In this case I really don't blame them.

The first thing we need to have is the starting part of the URL from Ancestry for where they hold the images of their "1871 Census of Canada" collection. The base URL address is:

https://www.ancestry.ca/imageviewer/collections/1578/images/

Then we need to add on the id part from the Library and Archives Canada URL of where LAC keeps their images. In this case it is 4396754_00018.

Putting them together gives us: https://www.ancestry.ca/imageviewer/collections/1578/images/4396754_00018.

If you have an Ancestry subscription that include Canadian records you will find that Ancestry displays the same image we found at Library and Archives Canada.

Screen capture from Ancestry of the 1871 Census of Canada, Ontario, district 42, sub-district D, Schedule 4, p. 1 with URL and Filmstrip visible.
Screen capture from Ancestry of the 1871 Census of Canada, Ontario, district 42, sub-district D, Schedule 4, p. 1 with URL and Filmstrip visible.

You might notice that the top of the page from Ancestry for this image states "Ontario > Simcoe North > Flos". Yet the image itself clearly states Vespra for the sub-district. They too were initially misled by those first few images on the digitized microfilm reel and went with the name of the sub-district on those first images.

FamilySearch

It is much easier to navigate through the digitized microfilm reels for the 1871 Census of Canada in the FamilySearch "Census of Canada, 1871 (schedules no. 1-9)" collection. However, to do that you need to visit a FamilySearch Center or Affiliate to view these digitized microfilms since they aren't viewable from home (the key above the camera icon).

Screen capture from FamilySearch for the "Census of Canada, 1871 (schedules no. 1-9)" collection with microfilms C9961 to C9965 visible in the list of microfilms.
Screen capture from FamilySearch for the "Census of Canada, 1871 (schedules no. 1-9)" collection with microfilms C9961 to C9965 visible in the list of microfilms.

As you can see, NAC no. C9962 ends with "d (Vespra, to schedule 3)" [NAC here stands for National Archives of Canada]. Yet NAC no. C9963 says it starts with " e-1 to e-2 (Barrie - town)". It would seem that the index entry for C9963 isn't quite accurate. I've run into that issue in other catalogue lists on FamilySearch, especially for the Ontario Township Papers collection.