Converting Section-Township-Range-Meridian to Latitude-Longitude in Canada

In a recent post in the members only British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa Discussion Group on Facebook a question was asked about how to find a group of Saskatchewan homesteads on a map.

If any of your relatives settled in the Canadian Prairie Provinces and you've looked at the 1906, 1911, 1916, 1921, or 1926 census you might have seen the Place of Abode asking about the section, township, range, and meridian for anyone not living in a city or town.

1926 census of Canada, Saskatchewan, district 20, sub-district 23, Rural Municipality of Fairview, p. 2, dwelling 11, family 11, Margaret Gilchrist; RG 31; digital images, Library and Archives Canada, Library and Archives Canada (www.bac-lac.gc.ca : accessed 24 Jan 2020); citing Library and Archives Canada, item no. 1018757.

The locations were given using the Dominion Land Survey (DLS) method that was used to divide up most of Western Canada (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and parts of British Columbia) into one mile square sections. These coordinates boil down to a legal subdivision, typically one of 4 quadrants - NE/SE/SW/NW, section, township, range, and meridian. I'm not even going to describe how all this came about since the Library and Archives Canada landing page for the Land Grants of Western Canada, 1870-1930, Wikipedia page on the Dominion Land Survey, and the Saskatchewan Land Information Services Corporation page on Measuring Land in Saskatchewan do a much better job than I ever can, so I refer you to those pages.

So, just how do you plot these co-ordinates onto a modern map?

I looked at a number of sites and many of them do a great job if you have only a few locations to plot. However, after between 3 and 20 plots you had to pay for monthly subscription or a small amount, usually less than a dollar and sometimes literally only pennies, to do more. However, I found that the Oil and Gas industry also uses this mapping system since the Dominion Land Survey addresses are used as legal land descriptions. After a bit more searching I came across the SCADALink DLS/LSD to Lat/Long page provided by Bentek System out of Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Screen capture of Bentek System's DLS/LSD to Lat/Long page with Margaret Gilchrist address.

It isn't the fanciest or prettiest page but, gosh darn, it just works and I love when I come across a web page that is designed for functionality with no bells or whistles.

The census enumerations for Canada generally only asked for the section (SEC), township (TWP), range (RNG), and meridian (MRD). Unless the enumerator wrote down NE, SE, SW, or NW you won't know which quarter of the section they were living on, unless they owned the whole section. In those cases I will just leave the LSD as the number "1" which is in the south-east corner of the section.

In the screen capture above for Margaret Gilchrist from the 1926 census of Canada I entered in the details from the enumeration leaving the LSD as "1". I clicked the Convert button and it did its magic giving a result of 51.345549,-108.257044.

So what can I do with that set of numbers? Well you can click the "Map" button and it will zoom into the coordinates in a Google Map page embedded with the SCADALink page. Or you can copy those numbers into Google Maps directly, maybe even creating your own map plotting where your relatives lived.

Screen capture of Google Maps with Margaret Gilchrist address plotted.

Sometimes you might come across situations where a transcription is missing a key part of the details such as the meridian. This has happened to me several times with the Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, Canada, Homestead Grant Registers, 1872-1930 collection on Ancestry where the meridian is missing.

Here the record for the transcription for Harold Geo. Armitage's entry is missing "Meridian":

Screen capture of the record page for Harold Geo Armitage in the Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, Canada, Homestead Grant Registers, 1872-1930 collection on Ancestry.

But since they provide a way to view the image of the register gaes you can check what was really recorded (fourth entry from the top).

"Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, Canada, Homestead Grant Registers, 1872-1930," database and images, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 24 Jan 2020), entry for Harold Geo Armitage, application date 4 Nov 1914, image 6; citing  Homestead Grant Registers. R190-75-1-E. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

"Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, Canada, Homestead Grant Registers, 1872-1930," database and images, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 24 Jan 2020), entry for Harold Geo Armitage, application date 4 Nov 1914, image 7; citing  Homestead Grant Registers. R190-75-1-E. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

As you can see on image 7 it seems that someone forgot to transcribe "2" for the meridian, or more accurately, W2. We can verify that information by searching the Land Grants of Western Canada, 1870-1930 at Library and Archives Canada for an Armitage at section 10, township 49, and range 14. Only one appears in the results.

Screen capture of search for Armitage at section 10, township 49, range 14 in the Land Grants of Western Canada, 1870-1930 at Library and Archives Canada.

Now we can properly map the location!

I hope that this helps you put your ancestors and relatives on the ground in the Prairie Provinces of Canada.

Did William Innes marry a Murdoch or Shaw?

A number of years ago I first came across the name William Innes, brother-in-law, as an informant for the death of John Smith Murdoch, my second great-granduncle. The name was a curiosity and I wondered which side of the family he was on. Since John Smith Murdoch had a sister, Margaret, did William Innes marry her or was William connected to Ellen/Helen Shaw, John's wife, side of the family?

Burgh of Glasgow, Scotland, "Statutory Deaths," 1858 Deaths in the Central District, p. 38, John Smith Murdoch; digital image, General Register Office for Scotland, ScotlandsPeople (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk: 20 Jun 2009).

At that time and after a bit of researching I realized I would have to order some records from ScotlandsPeople to answer the question. However, I had more important records to purchase first so I put this question on the back burner.

Jump forward to the present day and I was filling in the gaps in my records using the Scottish Civil BMD Registrations found on FamilySearch and available for viewing at the Family History Centers and their affiliates and what did I see recorded as the informant of David Murduch, John Smith Murdoch's son, birth? You guessed it...William Innes, David's uncle.

Scotland Registrar General,  Registers of births, marriages, and deaths, 1855-1875, 1881, 1891; and general index, 1855-1956, (The New Register House, Edinburgh), 1858 Births in the Central District in the Burgh of Glasgow: 30, 90, David Murdoch; FHL microfilm 280,518.

This is where it gets into hazardous territory to a genealogy and family history researcher. Do I take the time to find out the connection or not. Since I'm writing about this you can well imagine the course I took. Time to set out and find how William Innes is connected to the Murdoch family. I did set one limit on my exploration: I could only spent time and not money to research William's connection.

I started off with a few assumptions about William Innes:

• He was about the same age as John Smith Murdoch, plus 15 or minus 5 years¹
• He married either a Murdoch or Shaw²
• He resided in Glasgow itself or in Lanarkshire around 1858³
• He resided in Glasgow or at least in Lanarkshire in the 1851 census⁴

Of course, these are only assumptions and might have to be re-evaluated as possible facts are presented.

I did come across a William Innes married to a Janet in the 1851 census of Scotland residing at 97 Saltmarket Street in Glasgow.

1851 census of Scotland, Royal Burgh of Glasgow, Parish of St. Andrews, enumeration district (ED) 15, page 1, schedule no. 1, William Innes; FHL microfilm 1,042,436.

• William appears to have been born about 1815 making him 13 years older than John Smith Murdoch.
• He resides in Glasgow in 1851
• It isn't a Margaret but this Janet could be a Shaw.

From this census I do have an address, 97 Saltmarket Street, and the statement that William is a spirit dealer. Might I be able to find details about the birth of his daughter Janet? Will it list her mother's maide surname? Also, is William recorded in a city directory of Glasgow?

William's daughter, Janet, was born before civil registration started so I have to rely on the Old Parish Registers available on ScotlandsPeople and also on FamilySearch. Since I'm being frugal it was back to my local Family History Center to look up the record.

Parish of Glasgow (Lanarkshire, Scotland), "Registration District 644," baptism of Janet Innes, 28 Sep 1845; FHL microfilm 102,921.

This looks to be the right person and look...her mother is Janet Shaw! This looks promising.

This is where luck is very, very important. I searched for Janet Innes on ScotlandPeople to learn when she died⁵. Assuming she is Helen Shaw's sister then I already know that Helen's parents are John Shaw and Janet White/Whyte.

Screen capture from ScotlandPeople for a search of the death of a Janet Innes started from 1851 with a birth year 1819 +/- 5 years.

Now not all the returned results include the mother's maiden surname but note the first result...Whyte. Even better, the death is in the time frame where I can view records for free from a Family History Centre or affiliate.

Scotland Registrar General,  Registers of births, marriages, and deaths, 1855-1875, 1881, 1891; and general index, 1855-1956, (The New Register House, Edinburgh), Registration District 644/04, 1856 Deaths in the District of Calton in the Burgh of Glasgow: 54, 162, Janet Innes; FHL microfilm 252,432.

This looks to be the right Janet Innes. She is a wife of a spirit merchant and the daughter of John Shaw and Janet Whyte. However, she died at 93 Saltmarket Street. That's only 2 doors down from the address in the 1851 census.

This is where the Scottish Post Office Directories becomes your friend. I started with the 1851-52 post-office directory for Glasgow and looked for Saltmarket Street.

Post-Office Glasgow, Post-Office Glasgow Directory for 1851-1852, 444; digital images, National Library of Scotland (digital.nls.uk/directories/browse/ : accessed 6 Dec 2019); Saltmarket Street odd numbers 3-95.

If you look at the second last line in the directory you will see that Wm. Innes, a spirit dealer, had the properties at 93, 95, and 97 Saltmarket Street.

What about a possible marriage for William Innes and Janet Shaw? That, as they say, is problematic. I've found an 1840 marriage for a Janet Shaw to a William James or Innes within the FamilySearch indexes for the OPRs and the image confirms that it might be James or Innes for William's surname but his occupation is a baker. Unfortunately the church register doesn't record the names of her parents.

I did come across the death of a William Innes, a spirit merchant, on 13 Jul 1858 at 93 Saltmarket Street. If I had been willing to spend a few pounds I could have viewed the documents pertaining to his will and administration on ScotlandsPeople. Additionally, I might have checked out the "Scotland, Lanark, Glasgow, Glasgow Sheriff Court, probate records" collection at my local Family History Center⁶.

Assuming that my research is good⁷ then it appears that William Innes didn't marry Margaret Murdoch but a Janet Shaw. Too bad that the line I'm researching is the Murdoch line. At least this is one mystery resolved.

---

1. Why 15 years? Why not? If William married Margaret Murdoch (born about 1826) he could be older than Margaret by a decade or more. 15 years just sounded right as a starting point.
2. To be a brother-in-law and an uncle to the same family William had to have married either Margaret Murdoch, John Smith Murdoch's older sister, or a sister of Helen Shaw.
3. Since he is an informant he probably lived near to the John Smith Murdoch family and they resided in Glasgow.
4. This is a stretch but I had to limit the scope of my searching somehow. Helen Shaw and Margaret Murdoch were both born in the Glasgow area so I figured they were married there also.
5. I know, I'm not supposed to spend money on this research endeavor. However, searching ScotlandsPeople is free. It is only getting the images that costs you money.
6. That is for the new year I think.
7. I haven't recorded all the paths I took to get here in order to eliminate other possible people.

Scottish Civil BMD Registrations on FamilySearch

In Scottish Census and OPRs on FamilySearch I covered the available census returns and Old Parish Registers on FamilySearch. In this post I'm going to look another collection of Scottish records on FamilySearch, the civil registrations.

For civil registrations of births, marriages, and deaths in Scotland I had almost always made use of ScotlandsPeople. That was until I came across "Registers of births, marriages, and deaths, 1855-1875, 1881, 1891; and general index, 1855-1956" on FamilySearch. Now this collection only has the years 1855-1875, 1881, and 1891 but any time I can save a pound or two in my research I will gladly take it. Researcher beware, it does take a multi-step process to find the correct images and it is not as straight forward as just clicking a button, paying your 6 credits, and viewing the record. So patience and some practice will be needed. Like the other FamilySearch Scottish collections I mentioned in Scottish Census and OPRs on FamilySearch, you will need to visit your local Family History Center to do the work.

The Registers of births, marriages, and deaths, 1855-1875, 1881, 1891; and general index, 1855-1956 is composed of two parts, indexes and registrations. The indexes are broken down by year and the registrations are broken down by parish/registration district number and year. Depending on the year, the indexes are also broken down along gender lines. Some of the districts and years have been indexed by FamilySearch but most haven't so you will probably have to follow these steps.

Screen capture of McKinlay in Males, A-Z 1855 index in Scotland, Registers of births, marriages, and deaths, 1855-1875, 1881, 1891; and general index, 1855-1956, (The New Register House, Edinburgh); FHL 103244.

Here is an example of an index entry for a number of McKinlay births from the Males A-Z, 1855 index. The one of particular interest for me is that of James McKinlay registered in Paisley (High), number 387.

To make use of this index I first need to translate the registration parish from "Paisley (High)" into a number. To do that, go to the National Records of Scotland Registration Districts page and download the Parishes and Registration Districts of Scotland by name guide. Next, look through the name guide under the "RD Name" or "Registration District" column for the parish.

Screen capture for Paisley from the Parishes and Registration Districts of Scotland by name guide from the National Records of Scotland Registration Districts web page.

As you can see, there are a number of Paisley registration districts. However, in this example we are looking for the period starting from 1855 for one that has "High" in it. It looks to be number 573/1 since we want the district number as it was known back then. We also know that it is in the "County or Burgh" of Renfrew.

I could also have searched for James McKinlay on ScotlandsPeople. The searching on ScotlandsPeople is free but it will cost you money to view the images.

Screen capture of ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk for a search of the 1855 birth of James McKinlay.

Here it gives us the same information as found on the index on FamilySearch but without having to translate the registration district name into a number. The reference is broken down into two parts, the registration district, 573/1, followed by the number of the registration, 387.

We can head back to FamilySearch and the Registers of births, marriages, and deaths, 1855-1875, 1881, 1891; and general index, 1855-1956 to look for the digitized microfilm that has the parish/registration district holding the births we are interested in.

Screen capture of births for Scotland, Renfrew County, Registers of births, marriages, and deaths, 1855-1875, 1881, 1891; and general index, 1855-1956, (The New Register House, Edinburgh); FamilySearch Catalog 79310.

Just a heads up, the parish/registration microfilms aren't in alphabetical order but in numeric order by registration district/parish number. As you can see, the parish numbers for this part of Renfrew County follow the numbers from Buteshire. But don't let that confuse you too much.

For the 1855 birth registrations in parish/registration number 573/1 which can be found in Renfrewshire we will need to click on the camera icon for film 103367 (DGS 8045422). If you are trying to do this from home you probably have a key icon just above the camera icon. This means that you need to go to your local Family History Center to view the images.

Screen capture of births for Scotland, Renfrew County, Registers of births, marriages, and deaths, 1855-1875, 1881, 1891; and general index, 1855-1956, (The New Register House, Edinburgh); DGS 8045422.

Once you can view the digitized microfilms you will need to scan through the various images to locate the start of the parish/registration district you are interested in. Fortunately it isn't very hard to do and, once you get used to doing it, the microfilm pages with the district names and numbers will almost pop out for you. Next you need to find the page with number 387 on it.

In the case of James McKinlay I was very lucky to have him born in that year. When the civil registrations started in 1855 they used two pages to ask for the information. This meant I got a bit more important information about his parents that I wouldn't get in following years. But it also means I need to stitch together two microfilm images...but that process was already covered in my post Genealogy and Microfilm ICE.

You can do the same sort of searching for marriages and deaths that were registered between 1855 and 1875 along with the decennial census years 1881 and 1891.

One drawback of what is available on FamilySearch in this collection is that the Register of Corrected Entries (RCE) is not available. These are the documents referred to in a birth, marriage, or death registration that has corrections or updates to the registration. If there is a marginal note to a RCE then you definitely want to view that document. If that happens you will need to use ScotlandsPeople and pay to view the record.

I certainly hope that this helps you out in researching your Scottish ancestors.

Scottish Census Returns and OPRs on FamilySearch

I was recently wanting to retrieve census returns along with baptism, birth, and marriage registrations for several potentially connected branches of my Murdoch and McKinlay family that resided in Scotland. Normally I would head over to ScotlandsPeople and pay a few pounds to quickly access those records from the comfort of my home. However, being on a tight research budget for my own genealogy and family history, I was feeling a bit frugal and decided to see what FamilySearch had available.

First of all, the fine folks at FamilySearch have digitized the census returns of Scotland for the following decennial enumerations:

1841	Residence on 6 Jun 1841. Enumerators were instructed to round down the ages of persons 15 years and over to the nearest five years. Hence a given age of 28 would be recorded as 25, one of 63 as 60 and so on. If a person lied about their age, this, combined with the rounding down, could severely distort the actual age. You will find instances where enumerators did not adhere to this instruction on age and inserted the given age.
1851	Residence on 30 Mar 1851.
1861	Residence on 7 Apr 1861.
1871	Residence on 2 Apr 1871.
1881	Residence on 3 Apr 1881.
1891	Residence on 5 Apr 1891.

Due to the efforts of many volunteers the census returns have been indexed to make our lives a bit easier when trying to find our ancestors. Unfortunately the images of those records aren't available from home. Yet that's not too much of a problem for me since there is a Family History Center in Ottawa that isn't too far from where I live, even if I use public transit.

Once at the Family History Center I was able to search for the people I wanted to find in those census years. Then, by clicking on the image presented, I quickly viewed and saved the pages from the census returns to a USB stick. Of course I also made sure I saved the pages that described the enumeration districts in question.

1871 census of Scotland, Lanarkshire, Blythwood, Civil Parish of Barony, enumeration district (ED) 10, Description of enumeration district; FHL microfilm 104,026, image 465.

FamilySearch also has a number of the Old Parish Registers or OPRs searchable on their site. Again the images are only viewable from your Family History Center. But they are searchable on FamilySearch.

Other than expending time to save some money why would you want to use FamilySearch and not ScotlandsPeople to look through the census returns and Old Parish Registers?

On ScotlandsPeople there are 14 recorded Church of Scotland marriages in the Parish of Eastwood in Renfrewshire for people with the last name of McKinlay. To view all of those images it would require me to purchase 84 credits on ScotlandsPeople. That works out to be 2.8 packs of 30 credits. Since I can't purchase fractions of credit packs I would have to buy 3 bundles of 30 credits for a total of £22.5 or about $38 Canadian.

Instead I can copy the list from ScotlandsPeople into a spreadsheet to create a to do list for my visit to my local Family History Center. A check on FamilySearch reveals that the Parish registers for Eastwood, 1674-1854 are digitized and indexed. However, yet again the images are available for viewing only at the Family History Center. With this collection being indexed I can search FamilySearch from home using film number 001041057 to also create a to do list for my next visit.

Of course, the Family History Centers are only open on specific days and times and they do frown upon you wearing your pyjamas at their computers. Yet if you have a number of these records to review the necessity of having to get dressed and visiting your local Family History Center may just outweigh this inconvenience.

Next time I will write about some of the Scottish civil birth, marriage, and death registrations that are freely available on FamilySearch and how you can find them.

This hobby of ours can get quite expensive at times so finding ways to save money can be a big win.

Genealogy and Microsoft ICE

Normally I write about the various resources, paper and digital, and processes that I make use of when I try to solve a problem in my genealogy and family history research. Today's post is a little bit different. I'm writing about a piece of software that I have found to be invaluable in dealing with digitized images: Microsoft Image Composite Editor or ICE. For those that don't have a Microsoft Windows based system, unfortunately this tool won't help you out since it is for Windows 64-bit and 32-bit systems only. And if you like to spend money in your genealogy research then I have to disappoint you. ICE is free. Yes, you read that correctly, this is a FREE although unsupported product from Microsoft.

So just what is this tool and why do I find it so useful?

From the Microsoft page for their Image Composite Editor, where you can also download the installation package, they describe the product as:

"Image Composite Editor (ICE) is an advanced panoramic image stitcher created by the Microsoft Research Computational Photography Group. Given a set of overlapping photographs of a scene shot from a single camera location, the app creates high-resolution panoramas that seamlessly combine original images. ICE can also create panoramas from a panning video, including stop-motion action overlaid on the background. Finished panoramas can be saved in a wide variety of image formats, including JPEG, TIFF, and Photoshop’s PSD/PSB format, as well as the multiresolution tiled format used by HD View and Deep Zoom."

So how does this apply to my genealogy research?

Many of the probate files and land records have documents that are so big that you can't fit the whole image of the page on the screen of the microfilm reader. If you are doing your transcriptions right then and there you probably have no issues but what if you want to save an image of the page for either later transcribing or for archive purposes on your computer. You need to take several partial pictures of the page to capture everything and somehow stitch them together into one page later on.

Wouldn't it be nice to take the images of those pages and stitch them together to create a single page?

Before	After

Just a second...stitch them together? That's in the description of ICE! Keep in mind that even though a panorama is thought of as a horizontal picture ICE can also do the same to vertical images.

Before we begin here are a few key things to keep in mind:

• The images that you have must have some overlap. The more the better (20% seems to work well) but I have worked with images with only 10% overlap.
• Whenever possible save your original images from the microfilm reader as TIF. This format can create very large files but all the quality is preserved.
• Try to save the images from the microfilm reader with a name that make some sense and flags that the image file is just one of several. I usually save the image file with a letter after the page number. For example, 03a and 03b are the parts of page 3 that I need to reassemble with ICE.

ICE is easy to use but I'll walk through a simple stitching together of two images into a single page.

Here I have started a new Image Composite Editor session by importing the two parts of page 15 from the estate file of Abraham Hoover, dated 30 Sep 1831, from the Lincoln County (Ontario, Canada) Surrogate Court Estate Files (1794-1859) found on the Archives of Ontario microfilm MS-8411. These are the two images from the "Before" above.

I don't do anything fancy and just leave it as a "Simple Panorama" on the import screen.

Next I click on the Stitch button and let the computer do its magic. If all works well a single page is created and displayed on the screen.

If all looks good it is on to step 3, "Crop". ICE shows what it believes the image should be cropped. But you can adjust the boundaries as you see fit.

In this case, I got rid of a bit of the black on the top and side and also the bit at the bottom from the next page.

Finally we can save the image by clicking on the "Export" button at the top. If the images were originally as TIF files, I will always export the final image as a "TIFF Image". If you want to save it as a JPEG image make sure you select "Superb" for the image quality. Once you have selected the file format to use click on the the "Export to disk" button and give the new image file a name. In my case it will be "15.tif" since it is a combination of the images 15a and 15b.

Depending on how you work, and of course after verifying that the resulting image is correct, you can now delete the original image files, 15a.tif and 15b.tif in this case.

This tool may also help stitch together those multi-page passenger lists that you find on Ancestry, Findmypast, and other genealogy sites. But it will all depend on how much overlap exists between the pages. Your mileage may vary.

Hopefully this piece of free software will help you in your genealogy research challenges as you hunt down and save to your computer those crucial documents that help you break through the annoying brick walls.

When was Josias Inch and Jane Hoskin married? 1763 or 1764?

With relatively easy to use online genealogy databases and images along with the capabilities of computers to search large amounts of data very quickly, today's genealogy research can be very easy at times. Yet, it can also be challenging at the exact same time. This is one of those cases.

At the Ottawa Public Library Local History & Genealogy Drop-In Club that meets every second Tuesday at the Nepean Centrepointe staff of the OPL and members from the Ottawa branch of Ontario Ancestors attempt to help those researching their family tree by providing guidance and suggestions. A while back we had a question about the Inch family that resided in the Port Hope area of Ontario. Since then we've been working with that researcher every few sessions digging through the records and providing suggestions as to where to look next to answer questions about the family. Recently I ran into her at the Ottawa Stake Family History Center where she was working on researching her Inch family that came from Cornwall, England. She had the basic details of the family in Cornwall from other sources but now she was looking for the records to confirm or refute the information that had been provided to her¹.

But on with the research...

For today's research problem we are looking for the date of the marriage for Josias Inch to Jane Hoskin. According to research by others, they were married in St. Breward, Cornwall, England in the mid to late 1700s.

For records in England I often first head over to Findmypast. Findmypast started in England as the 1837online.com site with images of the General Register Office register pages. While they have branched out from just English collections they have continued to enhance their offerings of England and UK records with new collections being added almost every week.

In searching for Josias Inch in Cornwall within the Parish Marriages of the Birth, Marriage & Death (Parish Registers) collection for England we came up with seven matches with four of those matches in the time period we are interested in.

Screen capture of search results for Josias Inch in Parish Marriages on Findmypast.com

This makes it easy since the first three results all seem to agree that the marriage took place in 1763. The last result is actually the same as the first but just presented in a different format.

The Phillimore Marriage Registers, 1531-1931 collection is made up of the marriage registers transcribed and published by William Phillimore Watts Stiff (later he changed his surname to be Phillimore) prior to his death in 1913. Yes, I could save the image provided by Findmypast to my computer but, from the transcription provided by Findmypast, I learned that the transcribed record for the marriage of Josias Inch and Jane Hoskin can be found in the Cornwall Parish Registers Volume 1. A quick hop over to the Internet Archive and a few minutes of searching I was able to find the complete volume there. Even better, I could download that book to my computer!

W. P. W. Phillimore and Thomas Taylor, editors, Cornwall Parish Registers. Marriages  (London, England: Phillimore & Co., 1900), 1: 22; marriage of Josias Inch and Jane Hoskin, 14 Feb 1763.

Well that was easy. We can stop right there and we are done, right?

Not quite.

There is an asterisk '*' beside the entry. At the bottom of that page we see that the asterisk means that the information is from the Bodmin Transcripts. Why didn't Phillimore just use the parish registers. On page 5 of this volume he explains that between 1753 to 1813 the church marriage records are apparently missing and he made use of the extracts made by Rev. Thomas Taylor, M.A., Vicar of St. Breward. These extracts were created from the Archdeacons' Transcripts held in Bodmin, Cornwall, England.

What about the other two transcripts for the marriage of Josias Inch and Jane Hoskin? The transcription from the Cornwall Marriages collection was made by the Cornwall Family History Society but we don't know where they got their information. But it does states the marriage took place on 14 Feb 1763 in the parish of St. Breward. The record from "England, Boyd's Marriage Indexes, 1538-1850" was provided by the Society of Genealogists and only states the marriage took place in 1763 in St. Breward. Again, we don't know the source they extracted this information from.

Can we possibly find the Archdeacons' Transcripts somewhere else?

Often the place I turn to for more records is FamilySearch. A search of their catalogue reveals that they have in their digitized collection the "Bishop's transcripts for St. Breward, 1676-1773" that was microfilmed from records at the District Probate Court in Bodmin, Cornwall. What is nice about this collection is that you can view it from the comfort of your own home.

In looking up the details about these transcripts for Cornwall, it seems that the Archdeacons' and Bishop's transcripts might be the same since Cornwall was an Archdeaconry. A Bishop's or Archdeacons' transcript isn't necessarily accurate since it is a copy of the parish register but in our case, with the missing register entries for the years we want, it is the best we have.

Parish of St. Breward (St. Breward, Cornwall, England), "Transcript of the Register Book of the Parish of Simon Ward alias St Bruer, March 1763 to May 1764," marriage of Josias Inch and Jane Hoskin, 14 Feb; FHL microfilm 90,240, item 7, image 770.

But notice a little problem...

The dates for the marriage entries are from March 1763 to May 1764. However, all those other records we looked at on Findmypast from various collections all state the marriage took place in either February 1763 or just 1763. However, in the calender's I've used, February comes before March. If we look closely at the entries we see the months increase until after the marriage of John Colmer when it goes from November to February for Josias Inch's marriage followed by another marriage in the parish taking place in April that was recorded after Josias'. That would mean that according to this transcription they were married in 1764 NOT 1763!

Could we have uncovered a century long error in the records that ancestors of Josias may have been using? I think so. It is a problem I've seen before in transcriptions of parish records since often they go from Lady Day (March 25) to Lady Day².

From this I believe we can safely state that Josias Inch of the Parish of St. Tuly and Jane Hoskin of the Parish of St. Breward were married on 14 Feb 1764 in the Parish of St. Breward, Cornwall, England.

This becomes yet another reason why we always need to hunt down the records that transcriptions are created from.

---

1. It is something we constantly harp on in the Drop-In Club. Always read the information on the image and if no image is provided look for source of the transcription. We also stress the need to be organized whether using paper or a computer for your record keeping.

2. Lady Day was, before the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in England and it's colonies in 1752, the start of the new year.

Transcriptions and Their Sources...An Adventure

One the many challenges often faced by genealogy and family history researchers is finding the original source of those transcriptions we often use in our family trees. Over the past week that has been a consuming task for me as I prepare to work on updating and creating source citations for the entry of my 4th great-grandfather Joseph Starr (1757-1840), son of Samuel Starr and Abigail Leffingwell, on Wikitree.

Starr's Point Cemetery ( Kings County, Nova Scotia), Joseph Starr (died 8 Jul 1840) marker; personally photographed and read by Ken McKinlay, 17 Sep 2009.

Up until very recently one of the resources I turned to for early records in the area of Kings County, Nova Scotia, Canada that my Chipman and Starr branches originally settled in in the 1760s has been the "Township Books, Kings County: Aylesford, Cornwallis, Horton" compiled by Lorna Woodman Evans in 1996¹. It is still an important reference book for me since it lets me quickly locate information on the families I'm researching in that area.

On page 120 in the compilation by Lorna Woodman Evans she recorded:

"Joseph Starr died at Cornwallis in 8th inst. aged 84,
one of the oldest inhabitants of that port of N.S.
- Haligonian of 18 Aug. 1840."

This would mean he died on 8 Aug 1840 but his marker says he died on 8 Jul 1840. An ugly conflict that needs to be resolved.

With the digitization project by FamilySearch of the microfilms in their possession I've been able to find copies of the Horton Township book, 1751-1895 and the Cornwallis Township and church records, 1720-1920 on FamilySearch.org.

This is where my latest research adventure really starts.

When I reviewed² the digitized copy of the Horton Township book found on FamilySearch I couldn't locate that entry for Joseph Starr. Of course, what made it more of a challenge is the Township book isn't exactly in alphabetical order by family name. The older part of the book is mostly sorted by family name but later sections are a mishmash with family groups interspersed with pages listing deaths for a specific year. After much reading I was able to locate all the other Starr entries in Horton Township except for one...Joseph's. So I went back to the beginning, the beginning of the compilation that is, and read the explanatory notes by Lorna. There she wrote:

"The Horton Township records are preserved in copies of at least four slightly different books. Three copies are found in the K.H.S. Family History Library: one is a photocopy of an original book kept by the Horton Dyke Commissioner, another is a microfilmed copy of a handwritten book with added margin notes and the third is a microfilmed copy of a very neatly handwritten record with entries as late as 1895. In addition to these three copies Douglas Eagles mentions a transcript of the Horton Town Register held at the Public Archives of Canada³ in Ottawa."

"We want to thank Douglas Eagles for allowing the use of his Horton Township Records which he published in 1974. Nearly all of the Horton information recorded here came from his work, with the exception of a few details found in the third copy of the township book previously mentioned."

Based on the handwriting and the FamilySearch description that third copy of the township book appears to be the one that FamilySearch microfilmed and recently digitized. The beginning of the digitized microfilm states that it came from the "Public Archives of Nova Scotia, Halifax.Can." with the title recorded as "Horton Township MG-4 Vol 74." This matches the description found on the Nova Scotia Archives page for the Township book of Horton Township, Kings County.

Since I reside in Ottawa I figured I'd check if a copy of Douglas Eagles' book was available at Library and Archives Canada since it appears they heavily relied on his work. A search using LAC's Aurora system revealed that his "Horton Township records, Kings Co., Nova Scotia : register of births, marriages and deaths, 1751-1895" was available. I was doing this research from home but with the new Aurora system I could place my order without having to visit LAC. However, with it being a preservation copy it could take between 2 to 5 business days to be retrieved. To my surprise I received an e-mail the next day stating the book was waiting for me at Library and Archives Canada. A day later I popped into the Special Collections room and quietly began to check out Mr. Eagles book. This time I started at the beginning and came across this little but significant note on page iii:

"Notices of a few marriages and obituaries gleaned from the "Haligonian" and the "Nova Scotian" by Ross Graves of Upper Stewiacke, N.S., and 'bible' information on several families contributed by John Duncanson, 193 Queen St. Sarnia have been included and gratefully acknowledged."

I also came across the entry for Joseph Starr's death on page 77:

"Joseph Starr d. at Cornwallis on 8 inst aged 84 years, one of the oldest
inhabitants of that part of N.S. Haligonian of 18 Aug. 1840."

Could it be that those several days of reading and rereading the digitized microfilm was for naught? Could it be that Mr. Eagles added information not found in the Township book? It seems that way.

What about the Haligonian newspaper? Could I find a copy at Library and Archives Canada? No such luck. Maybe at Nova Scotia Archives? Well...sort of. They only have the 7 Aug 1840 edition of the Haligonian and General Advertiser. That's "annoying". A search using Worldcat reveals that both Acadia University in Wolfville and the University of Kings College in Halifax have copies. But they can only be consulted on-site and popping over to Nova Scotia, as much as I would love to, just isn't in the cards for the immediate future. So yet another to-do item goes into my genealogy research software.

However, if the notice was in one newspaper might it be found in other newspapers of the time in Nova Scotia?

On the shelves of the Genealogy Services room at Library and Archives Canada you can find a number of books with transcriptions and family histories. I found "Vital Statistics From Halifax Newspapers, 1840-1843" compiled by Jean M. Holder and assisted by Grace L. Hubley and published by the Genealogical Association of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society in 1985 in Halifax. There on page 27 I came across:

"A.R., Sat., 15 Aug. 1840
454. + 8 July at Cornwallis: Joseph STARR, 84"

From checking the list of acronyms at the start of that compilation I learned that "A.R." is the Acadian Recorder. I also know that Nova Scotia Archives in their Nova Scotia Historical Newspapers collection has placed online a digitized copy of that newspaper. Even better, they have the 15 Aug 1840 edition available. Here is the entry clipped from that edition of the Acadian Recorder.

"Died - Joseph Starr," Acadian Recorder, 15 Aug 1840, p. 3, col. 1; digital images, Nova Scotia Archives (https://archives.novascotia.ca/ : accessed 19 Oct 2019), Nova Scotia Historical Newspapers.

Hmmm, "8th ult."not "8 inst". This puts his death as occurring on 8 Jul 1840.

Now I at least have the information on the grave marker which states he died "July 8th 1840" matching up with at least one newspaper. That's a good thing. I still need to review the Haligonian at some point in the future to see if the transcriber made a mistake or the newspaper was in error when originally printed.

During this research escapade I also took the time to check Thematic Guide 1206 to Parish Registers⁴, Volume 1 found in the second floor Reference Room of LAC. I often consult that guide to see if there are parish registers held at Library and Archives Canada that might help me out in my latest quest. Unfortunately they haven't digitized this 2 inch binder so it can only be reviewed onsite. However, I did see that they have listed several entries for Horton, Kings County, Nova Scotia:

• C-3027: Civil registers BMD 1751-1895 (MG 9, B 9-7)
• C-3021: St. John's Anglican Church, Cornwallis, Annapolis Co. B 1783-1902, M 1783-1911, D 1830-1920 includes Horton, and Wilmot.
• C-3022: St. John's Anglican Church B 1823-1877
• H-1806: Eagles' Compilation of Township Registers, etc. BMD 1751-1895
• H-1806: Eagles' Cemetery Recordings for 19 Horton Township cemeteries BD 1767-1873

Could the "Eagles' Compilation of Township Registers, etc. BMD 1751-1895" be the same as the book I read in the Special Collections room?

It just so happens that the Héritage Project site holds digitized copies of a number of the C, H, and T microfilms from Library and Archives Canada. It isn't the easiest site to navigate but when it comes to being able to research from the comfort of your home I'm not going to complain too loudly. A quick check and I discover that H-1806 is in fact digitized and available on the Héritage site. After a few minutes of bouncing around the 810 pages of that digitized reel I found the start of Mr. Eagles book (explanatory notes starting on image 151). So now you too can review his material from your home.

A few lessons to take with you if you've made it this far in my post:

• If you have conflicting information then take the time and effort to resolve the conflict. You might be surprised at what you find.
• Always read the introduction pages to any transcription books. You may find clues as to where they got the information. You might even discover new facts and sources.
• If a book cites another book, make sure that you review that book also (repeat as often as necessary to get to the original source).
• Not everything is digitized and online but it is getting better over time.

---

1. Evans, Lorna Woodman, compiler. Township Books, Kings County: Aylesford, Cornwallis, Horton.  Kentville, Nova Scotia: Family History Committee of The Kings Historical Society, 1996.

2. Not just once but I looked through that digitized copy for many hours over several days!

3. Now part of Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa.

4. Yes, I keep asking the Genealogy Services staff when they will have that guide available online since it is invaluable to those using the Héritage Project site.