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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Elizabeth Florence Moodie...who's child is she?

Most of the time I write about different research techniques I use to solve a genealogy puzzle which comes my way either via a post in a group on Facebook or from the discussions in the Ottawa OGS/OPL genealogy drop-in. This time it is actually an issue I stumbled upon while reviewing a branch of my own tree. 

It all started with the following tree hint for Thomas Moodie who was born 25 Dec 1839 in Upper Canada and died 8 Dec 1913 in Perth, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada.

Screen capture from Ancestry for a family tree hint for Thomas Moodie (1839-1913), retrieved 2 Mar 2022.

Since I barely trust my own tree I'm definitely not going to trust what someone has recorded in their tree. So I, and hopefully you also, only use the hints from other trees as leads to follow up on. The majority of the time I can quickly discard the extra child or spouse. Yet in this case it sort of fit.

The extra child in this family was Elizabeth Florence Moodie (1868-1870). The reason I didn't immediately ignore this child was that she fit nicely in the gap between Annie Marie Moodie (1866-?) and Robert Thomas Moodie (1870-1929). The big stumbling block in just accepting this as correct is that the own of the tree didn't cite any sources. So it was off to do my own research.

The first step was just typing in Elizabeth Florence Moodie into Google (or your favourite search engine) to see what popped up. The second result was for a profile on WikiTree for an Elizabeth Florence Moodie born in 1868.

Screen capture of the WikiTree profile for Elizabeth Florence Moodie (1868), ID Moodie-204, retrieved 2 Mar 2022.

There (at least as on 2 Mar 2022) she is recorded as the daughter of Alexander Moodie and Rebecca Ferrier. Right away I know that something is not quite right with this profile information since it is unlikely that Elizabeth was actually born in "St Andrews Presby Church, Perth, Larark, Ont.". But it did give me a clue as to where to look...the church registers of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Perth, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada. I've used those registers before and a digitized copy of the microfilm of the original records held at Library and Archives Canada are available on FamilySearch under "Church records, 1830-1887" for the Presbyterian Church in Canada. St. Andrew (Perth, Ontario).

St. Andrew's Church Presbyterian Church (Perth, Ontario, Canada), "Register of Baptisms St. Andrews Church Perth U.C.," baptism of Elizabeth Florence Moodie, born 21 Jul 1868, baptized 13 Mar 1869; FHL microfilm 8,632,136, image 60.

That baptism entry records that she was born 21 Jul 1868 and baptized 13 Mar 1869, the child of Alexander Moodie and Ferrier of the township of North Burgess. What is interesting is that her mother's first name is not recorded.

What about finding her death in the same book or books? It wasn't too difficult to find the start of the burials on that same digitized microfilm beginning at image 72.

St. Andrew's Church Presbyterian Church (Perth, Ontario, Canada), "Burials.," burial of Elizabeth Florence Moodie, died 13 Oct 1870; FHL microfilm 8,632,136, image 78.

There it records that Elizabeth Florence Moodie residing in N. Elmsley [North Elmsley], born in Canada, died  Oct 13 [1870] (July 21) [written above], age 2y 2m. The age and the "July 21" written above the Oct 13 matches the date of her birth found in the baptism register. Even the age matches closely to Elizabeth's age. Yet no parents are recorded.

Fortunately she died in 1870 and the 1871 Census of Canada has "Schedule No. 2 - Nominal Return of the Deaths within last twelve months." and that schedule, like all nine other schedules for the 1871 Census of Canada, has survived and has even been digitized.

“Census of Canada, 1871,” images, Library and Archives Canada (https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?app=Census1871&op=img&id=4396356_00287 : accessed 2 Mar 2022), Schedule No. 2, line for Elizabeth Florence Moodie (age 2 years); citing Ontario Province, Lanark South (79) District, Elmsley North (C) Sub-District, p. 1.

There it has been recorded that Elizabeth Florence Moodie, female, age 2 years, C Pres [Canadian Presbyterian Church as the religion], died Sept from a bowel complaint and she was sick for 2 weeks.

We are even lucky enough to find her Ontario civil registration of death:

Ancestry.com, "Ontario, Canada, Deaths, 1869-1938 and Deaths Overseas, 1939-1947," database with images, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 2 Mar 2022), Elizbth F Moodie, died Sep 1870; citing Archives of Ontario; Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Collection: MS935; Reel 2, no. 013442.

But we have another mystery for both Schedule 2 of the 1871 Census and the Ontario civil death registration states that she died in Sep 1870 and not in October. What's going on here? The first thing that leaps out is that Thomas Moodie registered the death six months after Elizabeth died so he might not have had the correct date. Also in looking at the pages of "Schedule No. 1 - Nominal Return of the Living" from the 1871 Census it would seem that the household of Thomas Moodie was visited on 13 Apr 1871. With the law in effect as of 1 Jul 1869 for the civil registration of births, marriages, and death Thomas Moodie may have been advised that he had best register the death of Elizabeth before the enumerator came knocking on the door.

Something is curious on this death registration form though. If Alexander Moodie is supposed to be the father, a least according to that baptism register, why is Thomas Moodie of North Elmsley the informant?

Let's rewind just a little bit and go back to the WikiTree profile of the household of Alexander Moodie and Rebecca Ferrier. One of the siblings of the Elizabeth Florence Moodie is James A. Moodie. It so happens that he has a birth date recorded as 2 Oct 1868 on WikiTree. When I went to edit and save his profile to include a date and place of death, with a citation of course, WikiTree even brought it to my attention that another sibling had a birth date too close to his.

If Elizabeth Florence Moodie was born 21 Jul 1868 and James A. Moodie was born 2 Oct 1868 then they can't have the same mother. So I looked into James A. Moodie a little bit. On his 1944 Ontario civil death registration it states that the informant, his wife Sarah Jane, believed that James was born on 2 Oct 1868 and his parents were Alexander Moodie and Rebecca Ferrier. Even on the registration record for his marriage to Sarah J. Armstrong it states his parents are Alexander Moodie and Rebecca Ferrier. A quick check of the baptism register for St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Perth, Lanark County, Ontario finds on the page before Elizabeth's baptism the record of James' baptism in 11 Dec 1868 with a birth date recorded as 2 Oct 1868 and the father listed as Alexander Moodie and his mother Ferrier. Again, the mother's first name is not recorded.

Someone's record isn't telling the truth and my gut feeling is the baptism of Elizabeth is out of sorts.

But where to look next since "gut feelings" don't make for good citations?

A check of Find a Grave has a memorial page for Elizabeth Florence Moodie without an image. This always raises red flags for me since if the information in the memorial profile isn't recorded on the stone then where did the information come from?

In this case the biography provides some information concerning the source:

Name: Elizabeth Flora Moodie; Residence: N. Elmsley; Birthplace: Canada; Died: 13 Octr. (1870); Age: 2yr 2 mo. (July 21)
[St. Andrew's Burial Register]

Name: Moodie, Elizabeth Florence; Sex: F(emale); Age: 2; Religion: C. Pres.; Birthplace: O(ntario); Died: Sept.; Disease: Bowel Complaint
[1871 Census; N. Elmsley Twp., Lanark Co.]

I've already looked at those sources. Sigh.

Maybe there might be a newspaper clipping but I don't have a subscription to Paper of Record which has digitized the Perth Courier and, for right now, a visit to Library and Archives Canada is out of the question for me. But the Ontario GenWeb Project has a page for Lanark County which has a whole section with newspaper transcriptions from the Perth Courier which were supplied by Christine M. Spencer of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. These transcriptions are even searchable via Google. The search I used was:

site:sites.rootsweb.com/~onlanark moodie

That "site:" thing tells Google to only search URLs starting with the address of "sites.rootsweb.com/~onlanark". Note that there is not a space after the colon (:).

Yet I don't find anything from around that time for the death of a child of a Moodie.

What about Alexander Moodie and his family? If the death in 1870 of Elizabeth Moodie was recorded in Schedule 2 in the Elmsley North sub-district then Alexander would have to be also living there. I already know that Thomas Moodie and his family were in that sub-district since they were found on page 34. 

I could take the easy way out and just rely on searching Ancetsry or any of the other genealogy sites for Alexander Moodie in Lanark county but this is one case I want to double check the indexes in the off chance that family was not transcribed. So first it was a check on Ancestry for any Alex Moodie in Lanark. Two results came back but only one had the right age. That was Alexander Moodie, age 40 years, residing in Burgess North sub-district, with wife "Rebcca" and children including a James who was 2 years old. That is highly likely the James we've already seen in the baptism register and tracked through his marriage and death. But no Alexander Moodie in Elmsley North. Even manually walking through the records for Elmsley North results in no Alexander Moodie.

So based on all these little but very important clues and records I can state with confidence that the baptism registration is incorrect when it comes to listing the parents of Elizabeth Florence Moodie.

Elizabeth Florence Moodie who was born 21 Jul 1868 and died 13 Oct 1870 is the daughter of Thomas Moodie and very likely her mother is Jessie McLaren. She is not the daughter of Alexander Moodie and Rebecca Ferrier.

I'm going to let this sit for a little while before I update WikiTree with my findings and also the one-world tree on FamilySearch (unless someone beats me to it). So I ask you, gentle reader, have I missed something? Is my analysis of the available records totally off base? Let me know what you think.

Finding on the Ground: Then and Now in Ontario

When dealing with land records in Ontario one of the challenges I still struggle with is locating the property when the family lived in an urban area. So when I saw the following post in the Ontario Genealogy Facebook group I decided to give it another go.

"I have found my 2nd great grandparents, William and Jane Hughes on the 1871, 1881 and 1891 censuses in Orangeville. Is there any way to figure out exactly where in the Orangeville area they lived?"

There were several good suggestions such as looking on the Canadian County Atlas Digital Project and looking at Ontario city directories like those linked to by The Ancestor Hunt. Out of those suggestions, another clue was provided to help me locate the family in the census. William and Jane Hughes had sons Robert and William were tailors. One person suggested looking at the other census schedules since they provide real estate information.

And that is where I am going to start.

Out of the three Canada censuses mentioned in the original query, the 1871 census of Canada is the only one with surviving schedules beyond the Population Schedule. On Ancestry I started looking for a William Hughes residing in Orangeville with a Jane as a possible spouse and Robert and William in the household. Keep in mind that the 1871 census of Canada doesn't list the familial relationships so we have to often make assumptions as to the relationship or use other records to confirm the connect. I also used Ancestry for several reasons:

• Ancestry has images for the 1871 census available for viewing whereas FamilySearch doesn't. FamilySearch does have the census transcribed but I prefer looking at the image for other clues.
• The URL for the image which Ancestry presents includes details I can use to view the same image on the Library and Archives Canada site.
  
• The search system on the Library and Archives Canada site for censuses is not as powerful as that found on Ancestry
  

After searching Ancestry I found one household which fit the information about the family.

Here is the family of William Hughes in the Wellington Centre district (34), Orangeville sub-district (i), on page 66, starting at line 1, dwelling 236, family 236.

1871 Census of Canada, Wellington Centre (district 34), Orangeville (sub-district i), Schedule 1, p. 66-67, Household of William Hughes; RG 31; digital images, Library and Archives Canada (http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/ : accessed 13 Jul 2021); citing microfilm C-9948.

Now I turned to my own prior blog post "Ontario Concession and Lot in the 1871 Census of Canada" to guide me through the process to locate Schedule 4, Return of cultivated land and products on Ancestry. For that I needed to record the following details:

• District: Wellington Centre (34)
• Sub-district: Orangeville (i)
• Page: 66
• Line: 1
  

Moving through the virtual filmstrip on Ancestry I quickly came to image 54 of 85 which has the image of the Schedule 4 page which references back to page 66, line 1 of Schedule 1 - Nominal Return of Living (AKA the Population Schedule).

1871 Census of Canada, Wellington Centre (district 34), Orangeville (sub-district i), Schedule 4, p. 12-13; RG 31; digital images, Library and Archives Canada (http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/ : accessed 13 Jul 2021); citing microfilm C-9948.

If this was a rural property I would have expected to see a concession and lot number after the columns with the 66 and 1. Instead there are dashes which leads me to believe the property is within the village of Orangeville. Even then there are bits of information for us.

• William owns the property
• There are 3 acres occupied
• 3 acres have been improved
• 1 acre allocated for pasture
• 1 acre has been used to produce 100 bushels of potatoes

I still don't know where in Orangeville they reside. The directories I did come across were farmer and business directories and I didn't find William Hughes listed with an address. But, based on my own experience, that isn't too surprising. So off to my next stop, the land records.

For this I wanted to look at the Land Record books. Normally I'd start with the Abstract Index books but sometimes the Land Record books include a name index at the front and the Abstract Index books don't. But I don't have a lot, concession, or any other specific about the location. So I took a gamble in the hopes of short-cutting the search.

On FamilySearch I used the catalogue to search for the current county which has Orangeville within its bounds, Dufferin. For the place I typed "Canada, Ontario, Dufferin" to get to the land and property records for that county. Within the Land and property section I selected "Land record of Dufferin County, ca. 1821-1955" to open up the Land Records collection. Scrolling through the list of digitized microfilms I noted that the earlier Orangeville volume "O" books may be indexed. With any luck the index will help me.

I selected DGS 8548530, "Orangeville (indexed) 1825-1863; Orangeville (v. 1) 1841-1869; Orangeville (v. O, indexed) 1864-1869" as a starting place on the hope that William Hughes had land transactions in that time since he was already settled in Orangeville by 1871.

The Town of Orangeville Deeds volume "O" which I was interested in started at image 345 in that digitized microfilm reel.

As an aside, although the current town of Orangeville is in Dufferin County in Ontario and not Wellington County, until 1879 Orangeville was part of Wellington County. Yes, geography can be confusing and boundaries can shift or be created over time. This can actually be seen when you read the description page of that volume where it is recorded:

"This Register contains, exclusive of the Index 175 pages and is to be used in and for the Village of Orangeville in the County of Wellington for the Enregistration of Memorials, under the provisions of the Act of the Legislature of the Province of Canada passed in the Ninth Year of Her Majesty's Reign..."

In the index I came across a mortgage instrument for William Hughes and wife recorded as instrument 133 on folio 299. This looked promising.

After bouncing through the virtual microfilm images I came to instrument 133 starting on image 525. This was an indenture made on the 20th of February, 1868 by William Hughes of the village of Orangeville in the County of Wellington, Province of Ontario and Dominion of Canada, a weaver, and Jane Hughes of the same place as the first two parties with William Armstrong as the other party. 

William and Jane Hughes? That is the couple we are looking for. A good sign.

After reading through a whole bunch of legalese I came across the mention that the property is three acres. Three acres is the same amount of land recorded in Schedule 4 of the 1871 census of Canada for this household. I think I found the property.

A bit further on it states:

"...being composed of Part lot number Eight on the South Side of Factory Street in said Village..."

Just a second!

That's a street name and even a lot number.

This is easy now I though to myself. I just have to put into Google Maps the street name and Orangeville and it will appear.

And no such luck. It looked like there is no Factory Street in present day Orangeville. OK, not a problem. I just have more work to do.

This is where old maps come in handy. A quick search for "old maps of orangeville ontario" (without the quotes) on Google Images brought me to the "2017 - TRAILBLAZERS" page of the Digital Historian Project at the Dufferin County Museum & Archives. On that page I found an early map of Orangeville from 1875 (based on the map filename).

It wasn't too long before I found Factory Street and on the south side of the street there is even a lot 8.

Map of Orangeville, "2017 - TRAILBLAZERS", Digital Historian Project Canada Case Files. (https://digitalhistorianproject.wordpress.com/2017-trailblazers/ : accessed 13 Jul 2021), extract focused on Factory and Centre Streets.

Yet where is that street now? Does it even exist? Has it been renamed?

To answer that question I returned to Google Maps to look at the present day map of Orangeville. Using the clues in the older map. With a little bit of create work in Google Maps I was able to align the map to sort of have the same orientation of the old map. Lo and behold, doesn't this area look like that extract from the old map?

Screen capture from Google Maps centred on Hillside Drive and Centre Street, Orangeville, Ontario, Canada (accessed 13 Jul 2021).

It seems like Factory Street has been renamed as Hillside Drive. I now had a current street name and with that I can possibly use the Ontario Land Property Records Portal, OnLand, Property search function but I still needed a street number. I used the Street View on Google Maps and guessed that it might be around 5 Hillside Drive.

If you haven't used OnLand yet then you are in for a rough ride initially. It has a bit of a learning curve but the results can be worth it. I'm not going to go into the details of how I found the documents though. That will possibly be for a future post.

So when I put that address into the OnLand Property address search it returned:

PT LT 8, PL 170 AS IN MF138033 ; ORANGEVILLE

as the property details.

There is that Lot 8. It is referenced as part of Plan 170 (PL 170).

I wasn't going to celebrate until I could actually see the Abstract/Parcel Index book page for that property and I see William Hughes listed.

When I looked at in the Abstract/Parcel Register Book under Historical Books for the Dufferin Land Registry Office (LRO) and filtered by Orangeville as the municipality the list was way too short so that filter wasn't going to help me. But I did see that the various "PLAN ###" books didn't have a Township/Municipality assigned. Just great...NOT!

Scrolling through the list I quickly (yay!) found PLAN 170 in Book B113. Opening that book I found it only had 63 pages. I can easily deal with looking through 63 pages.

On image 26 I found the start of the Town of Orangeville, Lot 8, Plan 170 pages.

Screen capture from the Dufferin LRO, Historical Books, Abstract/Parcel Index for Town of Orangeville, Lot 8, Plan 170, page 1; Ontario Land Property Records Portal (https://www.onland.ca/ui/ : accessed 13 Jul 2021)

There is the B&S for William Armstrong and wife selling the property to William Hughes on 20 Feb 1868. The instrument is number 132. That is just one instrument before the one describing the mortgage William Hughes took out to pay for the property.

Here is the start of that instrument as found on FamilySearch in the Land Records book for Orangeville, Book "O":

Land records of Dufferin County, ca. 1821-1955, Orangeville (indexed) 1825-1863; Orangeville (v. 1) 1841-1869; Orangeville (v. O, indexed) 1864-1869, instrument 132; Registrar's Office, Orangeville, Ontario; DGS 8,548,530, image 525, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C3QZ-WF3K : accessed 13 Jul 2021).

To answer the original question "Is there any way to figure out exactly where in the Orangeville area they lived?", yes it is possible. All it took was the combined resources of:

• 1871 Census of Canada, Schedule 1
• 1871 Census of Canada, Schedule 4
• Ontario Land Record books on FamilySearch
• Ontario Land Property Record Portal (OnLand) Historical Abstract/Parcel Index books
• Google Maps
• Google Search
• some effort
  
• and a bit of luck

Ontario Concession and Lot in the 1871 Census of Canada

Unlike the 1851 (searching the Ancestry or Library and Archives Canada version) and 1861 (searching the Library and Archives Canada version) censuses of Canada West where the Agricultural schedule is recorded by name, the 1871 census of Canada records the details about the land by page and line number. So let's dive into that census to see what we can find.

Before we begin, make sure that you drop by the Library and Archives Canada page on the "Census of Canada, 1871". There we learn that the census officially began on 2 Apr 1871. What makes this census fairly unique is that almost all 9 schedules actually survived to be microfilmed in 1975:

• Schedule 1, Nominal return of the living
• Schedule 2, Nominal return of the deaths
• Schedule 3, Return of public institutions, real and personal estate
• Schedule 4, Return of cultivated land and products
• Schedule 5, Livestock, animal products, home-made fabrics and furs
• Schedule 6, Return of industrial establishments
• Schedule 7, Return of products of the forest
• Schedule 8, Return of shipping and fisheries
• Schedule 9, Return of mineral products

We are probably all familiar with schedule 1, "Nominal return of the living", since that is where we find all the names, ages, county or province of birth, religion, and other personal details we like to have in our records. It becomes critical to find the household in schedule 1 since all other schedules don't use the name of the head of household as the reference but instead the page and line number where the head of household is found.

If you are interested in learning more about this census, the Manual containing "The Census Act," and the instructions to officers employed in the taking of the first census of Canada, (1871) can be found on the Internet Archive.

If someone in the family may have died in the past year then make sure you take a look at schedule 2, "Nominal return of the deaths", to see if they are listed. But for this post we will be looking at schedule 4, "Return of cultivated land and products", to see if we can find the concession and lot number.

For these examples we will be using Luke McMullen, my 3rd great-grandfather, who arrived around 1840 in Lanark County, Upper Canada and settled in North Elmsley township. 

We will be using Ancestry to help me out in this task. Why Ancestry? Unlike the search system on the Library and Archives Canada site, Ancestry's search system often takes in account the various spelling challenges we have with the names of our ancestors. Also, their navigation buttons and virtual filmstrip makes it easy to move through the images of the census...no messing around with changing URLs in your browser.

First of all, start off by going to the 1871 Census of Canada search page on Ancestry. The easiest way is to search the Ancestry Card Catalogue for the keywords "1871 census of Canada" (without the quotes).

Screen capture of searching the Ancestry.ca card Catalogue for the "1871 census of canada".

Select the 1871 Census of Canada from the list of results to bring up the search page.

Screen capture from Ancestry.ca 1871 Census of Canada search page.

When we search for Luke McMullen who lived in Lanark, Ontario, Canada we get a number of potential results since we didn't do an exact match for any of the search fields. Fortunately the first entry in the list of results is him.

Screen capture from Ancestry.ca searching for Luke McMullen residing in Lanark, Ontario, Canada in the 1871 Census of Canada.

When we go to the record and finally open up the image of the census page we need to record a few details in order to find any associated land details in schedule 4, Return of cultivated land and products.

1871 census of Canada, Ontario, district 79, sub-district C, Schedule No. 1, p. 45, dwelling 151, family 151, Luke McMullen; RG 31; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 26 Apr 2013); citing Library and Archives Canada microfilm C-10017.

We need to write down the District, Sub District, page, and the line number where we find the head of household listed. So for Luke McMullen, recorded as "Luke McMullin", we have:

• District: 79 South Lanark
• Sub-District: C Elmsley North
• Page: 45
• Line: 1
  

All these details will help us make sure we are looking at the right page in schedule 4.

We are next going to use the navigation buttons on the image viewing page from Ancestry. 

Screen capture from Ancestry.ca for the image of the 1871 Census of Canada for Luke McMullen in North Elmsley Township, Lanark County, Ontario, Canada with arrow highlighting a navigation button.

Highlighted in the image above with the bright red arrow pointing to it is one of the navigation buttons that help you move through the images. We can also type in the image number in the box found near the bottom of the page or use the arrows at the bottom of the page to quickly move through the images in the filmstrip. We want to move through these images until we come to Schedule No. 4. As tempting as it is, don't stop at Schedule No. 2 to check for deaths but continue on past Schedule No. 3 until we get to Schedule No. 4.

1871 census of Canada, Ontario, district 79, sub-district C, Schedule No. 4, p 1; RG 31; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 Feb 2021); citing Library and Archives Canada microfilm C-10017.

Once we get to the first page of "Schedule No. 4.---Return of Cultivated Land, of Field Products and of Plants and Fruits" check to make sure we are still in the right district and sub-district.

We can see that we are still in District 49, Sub-District C Elmsley North. Notice that on the first line of the schedule there is no name. Instead the first two entries on a line are the page and line numbers. The next two entries on the line have the range/concession and number of the lot. So let's continue through the images until will get to the image with page number 45, line 1, the information we got from looking at Schedule 1.

1871 census of Canada, Ontario, district 79, sub-district C, Schedule No. 4, p 8, extract; RG 31; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 16 Feb 2021); citing Library and Archives Canada microfilm C-10017.

Once we get to page 8 we can see the line for page 45, line 1 giving the location as concession 7, lot 27 in North Elmsley where Luke McMullen owns 175 acres of land with 130 acres improved and 20 acres in pasture.

One important note concerning the use of concessions and lots. Not all townships and counties in Ontario used that system. A great example is Thorold Township in Welland County. In the 1871 Census of Canada you will find the "Range or Concession" with a "-" or left blank but a lot number is provided. This is where "The Canadian County Atlas Digital Project" can help you find the lot in a map once you have them on the ground in the 1871 Census of Canada in Ontario.