In the Saturday, October 4, 2025 edition of the Ontario Ancestors eWeekly Update, it was announce that the Ontario Land Records Index had been digitized and can be found on the Internet Archive in their Ontario Land Records Index collection. Jane E. MacNamara wrote a guest post for the Internet Archive Canada making the announce of this important release at Now Online! Ontario Land Records Index.
These sorts of digitization projects take a number of folks to make it happen. To put the OLRI into a digital format and place it online took a number of partners:
- Archives of Ontario provided a copy of the fiche to be digitized
- Toronto Branch of Ontario Ancestors (OGS) funded the project
- Internet Archive provided the place to host the digitized images
- Additional Technical support was provided by the Internet Archive Canada, Our Digital World, and the Canadian Research Knowledge Network.
Additionally there were key folks that Jane mentions in her announcement that performed that valuable task of fixing up the file names so we could actually use the digitized fiche in a manageable way.
What did we get from this project?
First of all, this isn't a plug in a name and the computer will magically bring us to the page with the name on it. This is the digitized representation of the pages of the fiche from the Archives of Ontario. We need to treat it as such but without the annoyance of finding a place with the OLRI and a working microfiche reader. We will be looking through the sheets and pages to find the information.
The digitized nominal index came from 53 sheets of fiche and the township order index from 75 sheets of fiche. You might think that that's not too many sheets to image. However, unlike microfilm which is one continuous roll of images, each fiche sheet can contain up to 270 very tiny pages. That can make it a bit more complicated to scan for digitization as can be seen in this 2-hour YouTube video of the Internet Archive doing microfiche scanning. For the OLRI, that's about 34,000 images to process!
Just what is this index and why is it so valuable for those researching their Ontario roots?
As Jane wrote in her guest post, this "is an index to those settlers who were allocated Crown land in Upper Canada/Canada West/Ontario." It was compiled in the 1970s by the Archives of Ontario and published in 1979. For many of us who have used the OLRI in the past, we quickly became familiar with the fiche found in the various archives and libraries that was so often scratched up from use over the years. Just as importantly, we knew which institutions had working microfiche readers.
When using the Ontario Land Records Index on the Internet Archive, at this time I recommend that when you get to the "Ontario Land Records Index" page, to select either the "Township Index" if you know where your person resided or the "Nominal Index" if you don't.
Next, click on "Title" in the "Sort by" menu bar. This will organize the sheets in an alphabetical order so that Fiche 04 comes after Fiche 03. Otherwise, the default sort is by the number of weekly views and that will really annoy you when trying to find that one sheet for "Bennet Rich J - Boulton Dary Edward" that is Fiche 04.
We also need to keep in mind that the OLRI is exactly what its name implies. It is an index.
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| Archives of Ontario, "Ontario Land Records Index," Alphabetical Listing by Township/Town/City, Fiche 19 Douro-Dungannon, p. 4069-4070, Drummond; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/olri_township-index_019_douro-dungannon/page/n169/mode/2up : accessed 7 Oct 2025). |
Here we can see the page from the alphabetical listing by township/town/city, AKA Township Index, for Drummond Township in Lanark County that has my 4th great-grandfather, Alexander Fraser, listed on it. How do I know that this is my Alexander Fraser and not the Alexander Fraser who lived about a dozen lots away on the same concession?
A bunch of research plus I had found him in the Abstract register book where he was listed as the first settler to be recognized the owner of that property by the Crown.
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| Lanark County (South), Ontario, Abstract index books, ca. 1800-1959, Drummond Township Abstract Volume A, p. 78, Township of Drummond, North East Half Lot No. 16 in 2nd Concession; digital images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSGS-WQFH-H : accessed 7 Oct 2025); DGS 8200306, image 96 of 601. |
I can also find him listed in the Alphabetical Listed by Name of Locatee, AKA Nominal Index. Of course, Alexander Fraser isn't exactly an uncommon name. So, I would need to know where he resided to make sure I was looking to the right person.
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| Archives of Ontario, "Ontario Land Records Index," Alphabetical Listing by Name of Locatee, Fiche 16 Fisher Andrew Jr - Fraser Joseph, p. 4264-4265; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/olri_nominal_index_nl_016_fisherandrewjr_fraserjoseph/page/n243/mode/2up : accessed 7 Oct 2025). |
Here is the abstract for his lot from the Township Index:
There is a bit to understand here. Fortunately for us, the Archives of Ontario has their "How to use the Ontario Land Record Index" PDF document to help us decipher some of what we see in the index entry.
- Hopefully by now if you have done any land record research in Ontario, you know that the "NE 1/2 16" for the lot means the North East Half of Lot 16.
- The Date ID code of "8" means that this was granted by an Order-In-Council.
- The Transaction Type of "FG" indicates that Alexander received this as a Free Grant — a transfer of land ownership by the Crown that wasn't done by a sale.
- Since it was a Free Grant, we learn that the "M" means it was a grant for his military or militia service.
As for the Archival Reference, that is actually the really useful part of this index for it points us to the record that was used to create this index entry.
To figure what that is , we need to consult the "Understanding the Archival Reference Code in the Ontario Land Record Index" page also from the Archives of Ontario. There we find that RG 01, Series CI3 is from the Fiats and Warrants. Clicking on the link that is provided in that document we find that volume 123 is on microfilm MS 693 Reel 138.
That would be sort of annoying, but acceptable if there wasn't another option, if we had to order that microfilm. Fortunately for me, I happen to know that many of the microfilms from the Archives of Ontario that hold the CI3 series have been digitized and placed online on FamilySearch. They can be found in the "Land records, ca. 1792-1876" collection. That collection does include the Ontario Land Records Index but not in the digitized format — that's why the release of the OLRI in a digitized format is so important.
However, if you didn't know that little fact, you might have discovered it by reading the "Finding Aid to Archival References in the Ontario Land Records Index (OLRI)" also found on the OLRI Internet Archive page.
Since I hadn't yet looked at that document, after looking through the list of volumes for the warrants and fiats I found volume 123 in the digitized microfilm titled "Military warrants (v. 121-122) bundle A127-Z140, 1831-1867 Military fiats (v. 123) 1817-1836 (indexed)" in Image Group Number (DGS) 8312358 with volume 123 starting at image 1027 of 1148. Within a few minutes I had found his entry in the register book.
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| Archives of Ontario, "Land records, ca. 1792-1876", Military fiats (v. 123) 1817-1836, RG 1 C-I-3, vol. 123, p. 69; digital images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSRG-BWDZ-S : accessed 7 Oct 2025); DGS 8312358, item 7, image 1122 of 1148. |
I remember when I didn't have easy access to the OLRI and it would take me easily an hour to find the source document in this collection on FamilySearch. It took me five minutes to find it this time. That is why this index is so valuable to those using land records in Ontario for their genealogy and family history research. The Ontario Land Records Index is a huge time saver.
Of course, not all the land records have been digitized and made available online as can be seen in that "Finding Aid to Archival References in the Ontario Land Records Index (OLRI)". It would be so nice to have the Canada Company land transaction records and others used as the source material for the OLRI also online but I will happily use whatever resource I can find.