Toronto Family History Centre Bulletin 05/2009 February 5, 2009

Editor: Helen Billing



In this Bulletin

Announcements

Winter Closings of FHC – Closed February 14th to February 16th inclusive for Family Day

FHC Refunds

OGS Annual Conference 2009





What’s New

New on Ancestry – England & Wales Birth Index 1916-2005; London, England Marriage Licences 1521-1869; Australia, New South Wales Certificates of Naturalization; and a starting page for African-American Research.

FreeBMD Update



Additions to our Permanent Collection

New transcription of parish records of the Diocese of Timmins – Italian sounding names only



The Forum

Three new questions.



News from the Trenches

Re: Another Never Give Up Story from last week

The Great Western Railway and “Railway Time”

Are We All Crazy?



Were You Aware…

Subscription to Footnote

Kent Parish Registers Online

National Archives UK Podcasts

Re Digitised Online Newspapers

Moving Here – 200 years of Migration

Petition to Open Civil Registration Records for Public Access

1911 UK Census

1891 Canadian Census Now Free Online





Announcements

FHC Refunds

Some patrons have ordered films or fiche in the past that were actually unavailable from the Family History Library. Those patrons were contacted and told that a refund was owing to them. These refunds are now two to four years old. These refunds will be added to our donations by the end of February, if the contacted patrons do not advise us otherwise.



OGS Conference – Oakville May 29-31

The Ontario Society of Genealogists is having its annual conference at Sheridan College this year, hosted by the Halton-Peel Branch. There is a full weekend of nine workshops and 35 presentations by 23 speakers. For full details, see www.ogs.on.ca/conference/index.html and note the reduced costs for registering before March 31.





What’s new

Ancestry – New Databases and Updates

England & Wales Birth Index 1916-2005 – This is a valuable new database to extend birth index information from FreeBMD. I found that mother’s maiden name is not always entered or available to search. One close example: searching for my husband and his siblings using just two surnames found his siblings but not my husband. His mother’s name is clearly legible on the GRO image. A child whose mother was not married has the same name under “Last Name” and “Mother’s Maiden Name”. Ancestry is working on the marriage and death indexes for the same timeframe.

London, England Marriage Licences 1521-1869 - This database contains abstracts of marriage licences granted in the Dioceses of London from 1521 to 1828, Westminster 1599 to 1699, and Canterbury from 1543 to 1869. While an abstract is not a complete transcription of the original record, it almost always contains all the essential information within it. The records in the database are for licences granted in a particular diocese, but they include details of marriage licences granted to people all over the UK.

New South Wales, Australia – Certificates of Naturalization 1849 to 1903. This is a very useful new addition to Australian immigration but do not expect to find your British relatives here – Australia was a colony. But they may by under the New South Wales – Assisted Immigrant Passenger Lists 1828-1896, also available on Ancestry.

1861 Scotland Census updated

African American Research - In honour of Black History Month, Ancestry has created a landing page dedicated to African American research. There you’ll find helpful how-to articles, links to these and other Ancestry collections that will be helpful to African Americans seeking their family story. This is the site address: landing.ancestry.com/a...lid=23560.



FreeBMD Update

FreeBMD has done another update and its 162,001,022 distinct records for births, marriages and deaths now go into the 1930s.





Additions to our Permanent Collection

Erminia Pisecny has donated to our library a printed transcription of Timmins Ontario Catholic Diocese Records from many years which appears to contain mostly Italian names and Northern Ontario Marriages of people with Italian names for 1900-1926. This transcription can be found in a binder in the section of our bookcases dedicated to Ontario information.

****NOTE: IF anyone needs a look up done let me know since I have the files but haven't put them online yet****



The Forum

Questions:

Q1/05/2009. UK.

With regard to the new CDs in your collection, what information would actually be in Kelly's Suffolk Directory of 1912 or in any directory?



Q2/05/2009. UK &?

Where is Charles Edward Willgriss Ottaway?

(Born GRO-1850, 1Q, Maidstone, Kent, England, V, 357, Died ?)

He was one of 3 sons (and 2 daughters) of Edward Steele and Mary (Ayres) Ottaway that were born in Maidstone and he is recorded in the 1861 England census, but not in those of '71, '81, '91 or 1901. According to his Marriage Certificate, he married Ella Anna Whidden (Spinster) on Dec. 20, 1876 in Islington, Middlesex, England. Her father was John Whidden, an Attorney, and Charles's occupation is shown as "Gentry". The witnesses are Charles's brother, Arthur Kingsley Ottaway, and his sister, Fanny Elizabeth Willgriss (Ottaway) Stocker. Since no record of Ella was found in the 1861 or 1871 England censuses, I wonder if "Whidden" is spelled correctly on the Certificate, even though it is spelled 3 times the same way. Since there was no record of Charles's death in the FHC files to 1935, it is assumed that he left England to live elsewhere sometime after 1876.



Since his 2 brothers emigrated from England, their history is shown below as their destinations may provide a clue to Charles's whereabouts.

Henry Wilgress Ottaway, born 1852. Left London, England and arrived in Lyttleton, New Zealand on Sept. 30, 1869. In 1877, he married Annie Scott in Christchurch, NZ and they had 5 children in NZ. In his Death Certificate of 1905, it states that he lived 16 years in NZ and 16 years in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. If this is correct, then his years from 1885 to 1889 are unaccounted for. I found no record for any event for Charles in the web site, Registry of BDM Victoria Australia.



Arthur Kingsley Ottaway, born June 1859. During 8 months about 1901, he left England, went to the USA looking for employment and returned to England. It was speculated that Charles was already living in the USA and that's why Arthur chose that destination. However, there was no record found for either of them going there via Ellis Island. Arthur and his family immigrated to Canada in 1910/1911, but no record was found of Charles ever being in Canada.



Any suggestions on finding Charles' whereabouts would be greatly appreciated.



Q1/05/2009. UK.

I am looking for a recommendation for a nice Bed and Breakfast within easy walking distance of The National Archives at Kew. Does anyone know of such? (I will forward specific recommendations to the researcher but list general information here.)





Answers:

No new questions last week and no new information for old questions.





News from the Trenches

Re: Another Never Give Up Story

Last week David Parker wrote about his great uncle Joseph, who was killed in an industrial accident and identified thereafter by his brother-in-law, Abraham Kirk. John Pepper writes in response: “It seems as if David might be assuming that when Abraham said Joseph was his brother-in-law, this meant that Joseph was married to Abraham's sister (whereas Joseph is not known to have married). But Joseph could equally have been a brother-in-law without being married if his sister was Abraham's wife. But maybe the facts don't permit that possibility.”



The Great Western Railway and “Railway Time”

I was listening to one of The National Archives UK podcasts last week: “God’s Wonderful Railway”, actually the Great Western Railway. I was surprised to find out that when the GWR was built in the early 1800s, each town or station had its own time, called local time or local mean time. Greenwich Mean Time had been established by then but, for example, Reading local time was 3 min 51 seconds behind GMT and Bristol was 10 min 19 seconds behind GMT. (Did they start the day when the sun came up?) This meant that it was extremely difficult to set a railway timetable. So Railway Standard Time was established. The Great Western, led by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Britain’s most famous engineer, adopted GMT. Standard time was first adopted by most British railways on December 11, 1847, when they switched from local mean time to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). By 1855 almost all of Great Britain's public clocks were using GMT. But GMT was not legally adopted in Great Britain until 1880; the Isle of Man followed in 1883, Jersey in 1898, Guernsey in 1913 and Ireland in 1916.



Similarly in North America, before 1883, local mean time was used in all of North America and there were many different local times. This caused problems for train schedules. Sandford Fleming proposed standard time at a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute on February 8, 1879. The owners of the major railroads met in Chicago to make the Standard Time System and most states began using the system soon after the railroads. The U.S. government did not officially use the system until almost fifty years later. In Canada, Pierre Berton writes in The Last Spike: “The concept of a transcontinental railway was also responsible for changing the casual attitude towards time. Heretofore every city and village had operated on its own time system. When it was noon in Toronto, it was 11:58 in Hamilton, 12:08 in Belleville, 12:12 ½ in Kingston, 12:16 ½ in Brockville and 12:25 in Montreal. In the state of Michigan alone there was 27 different times, most of them established by local jewellers…. As railways lengthened across the continent, … railway schedules were in a state of total confusion.”



What does this have to do with Family History? I think that it is helpful to have an idea of what was going on where and when your ancestors lived. The history of railway building and railways themselves had a huge impact on migration patterns within countries. Here are a couple of examples in my own family. My great-grandmother moved to London very shortly after a railway station opened near her town in Buckinghamshire. Another Buckinghamshire family had a child born in North Wales, most probably because the father, a gameskeeper, was put out of a job when the railway cut down the wood where he worked.



FindMyPast has Great Western Railway Shareholders records from 1835 to 1910 online. These shares were considered very important and were passed down from generation to generation. If you are lucky enough to have an ancestor who did own shares, these records could be a mine of information. FindMyPast is available without charge at the FHC.





Are We All Crazy?

Linda Reid has sent us this clip from the Lost Cousins' electronic Family History News, February 2009:

“WHY DO WE DO IT?

You'd think they would have better things to do, but it appears that psychologists are intrigued by what motivates someone to research their family tree. An article in the December 2008 edition of the psychologist asks whether researching your family tree is a sign of a dysfunctional personality! Perhaps we should ask what it is that they have against capital letters?”

My comment (as my mother often says to me): "Everybody's crazy but thee and me, and sometimes I even wonder about thee!”





Were You Aware…

Subscription to Footnote

The Family History Centre has a subscription to the US history website - Footnote.com. The Footnote.com collections feature documents relating to the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWI, WWII, US Presidents, historical newspapers, naturalization documents, and many more. Footnote.com has partnered with the US National Archives and has an online repository for original documents. Some examples of available records are: Homestead Records for Nebraska, Massachusetts Vital Records Index 1841-1895, Texas Birth Records, Civil War Records, and Pennsylvania Archives. They have recently added a new Black History Collection – February is Black History Month. To see a complete list of available records, go to www.footnote.com/documents/?xid=395 .





Kent Parish Registers Online

The LostCousins February Newsletter also mentioned that some Kent parish registers in the Medway area can be looked at online at CityArk: cityark.medway.gov.uk/...;DateList= . If you scroll down on this page, you will come to a list of parishes in the Medway, Kent area for which you can look at images of the Parish registers. This is great if you are interested in one of the hundred parishes listed but I did find looking at the images fairly tedious. I think that it is much easier to read at film at the FHC but what do you think?



National Archives UK Podcasts

Several podcasts have been added since the new year. “Child Emigration to Canada - British child emigration schemes from 1618 to 1967” and “Introducing the 1911 Census” may be of interest to readers. Go to www.nationalarchives.g...dcasts.xml .





Re Digitised Online Newspapers

John Pepper wrote in with this helpful suggestion: ‘You mention that the "f" for "s" in old type creates search difficulties. I suppose a possible way around this would be to enter search words with "f" where "s" would be. But anyone who tries this needs to be aware that the elongated "s" (which does look almost exactly like an "f", especially in print) was not used for capital "S" or final "s". Thus, for example, "surpass" looked like "furpafs" (NOT "furpaff", "Susan" looked like "Sufan", and "Simmons" is just "Simmons".’





Moving Here – 200 years of Migration

Frances Radford writes: “I just found the site called Moving Here at www.movinghere.org.uk which has some digital images relating to immigration to England. I found a couple of people here inbound from Australia and Singapore in 1951.” One of the partners of “Moving Here” is the PRO UK and it has some incoming ship’s manifests. But Moving Here has a lot of cultural (stories & photographs) and historical information as well. It has links for tracing Caribbean, Irish, Jewish and South Asian roots. Look at its site map for more info: www.movinghere.org.uk/...temap.htm.





Petition to Open Civil Registration Records for Public Access

A group in England has started a petition to the government to open the civil registration records from 1837 to 1908 under the 100 year rule. This would enable one to obtain the birth, marriage and death information but not to receive a certificate and, for genealogical purposes, the information is usually all you need. It further requests that it be made available online. Only British citizens (including expats) can sign this petition. Go to this website petitions.number10.gov...MDrecords/ to sign.



1911 UK Census

Good news – searches of the 1911 Census can now use wildcard characters - ? can be any one character and * stands for any number of characters. Maurice Hardman wrote earlier in the week with a clever way to find siblings/parents etc. without spending any cash. Unfortunately he has now informed us that that particular loophole method is no longer available. Peter Calver of LostCousins spotted this item in an email to users of findmypast.com : "The census will be available on findmypast.com later this year, as part of a brand new subscription package. Existing findmypast.com subscribers will be offered an add-on package at a preferential rate."



1891 Canadian Census Now Free Online

Library and Archives Canada has put the Canadian 1891 census online at www.collectionscanada.....01-e.php. One can search and download the images without charge. One can now search the 1851, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901 and 1911 Canadian censuses and the 1871 Ontario census on the LAC Website. FamilySearch.org is working on transcribing the 1861 census.