Saskatchewan Ancestors: Saskatchewan Historic Newspapers Online

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Saskatchewan

Newspapers are one of the more entertaining avenues of research. The obvious reason for using them is to find birth, marriage, and death notices. You can learn so much more from them though. If your ancestor did something newsworthy (good or bad) you can find them among the pages that we seem to forget about in our rush to the announcements section. Newspapers can also be useful in giving you a feel for the times your ancestor lived in.

One of the problems with researching Canadian ancestors as opposed to other countries is that there isn't one main repository for Canadian newspapers. There's no Chronicling America or British Newspaper Archive. Perhaps Library and Archives Canada could look into this someday. Until that happens though, you're going to have to look more locally to find newspapers online.

If you have Saskatchewan ancestors, then you should add to your browser's bookmarks Saskatchewan Historic Newspapers Online (SHNO). This collaboration between the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan History Online is a work in progress. They state on their website that when completed, they will have digitized Saskatchewan newspapers that cover communities across the province. Right now they have available from 1914-1918, but when done, they plan to have from 1878 to the 1960's.

http://sabnewspapers.usask.ca/

Under the Navigating the Collection tab, you can find instructions on how to use this resource. You can either use the search bar at the top of the page or browse by community.

Search Bar

By the search bar you can search by newspaper title, city, or date. I decided to try by newspaper title, and typed in "Chronicle". I got 564 results. On the left side of the results, it shows how you can narrow your results down. You can narrow down by particular issue, by town, by name of newspaper, or by date. I did notice that under "By Issue" most had two sets of digitized images. I'm wondering if one is a morning edition, and one an evening edition. They looked exactly alike to me, and it does not say one way or the other.

I also noticed that under "Town" Foam Lake is listed twice. It is listed as "Foam Lake, SK" and "Foam Lake". You might want to keep this in mind for your own searches that place names might be indexed under more than one heading.

Next I searched by City. Under the first search under "Newspaper Title" Foam Lake got 252 issues of the Foam Lake Chronicle. So I entered Foam Lake in the "City" search to see if I got different results. This time I got 253 hits, so off by 1 from the first search.

Lastly I tried by date. Here you will have to put in the date numerically, by year-month-day. So, for 12 April 1917 (how diligent genealogists are supposed to write dates), you will need to put 1917 04 12 in to the search box. This date gave me 36 community newspapers that had an issue digitized with this date. Each newspaper had 2 digital editions. Again, I am wondering if this is a morning and evening edition.

Browse the Collection Tab

Hitting this tab shows 96 communities listed alphabetically. Keep in mind that some communities are listed twice, like Foam Lake which I discussed above. Whitewood is listed as "Whitewood, SK" and Whitewood, Sk.". The other thing I noticed was there isn't just Saskatchewan communities listed. Also listed is:

• Calgary AB (26 issues)
• Jersey City, NJ (247 issues)
• Lloydminster, ALTA (196 issues). Under it is Lloydminster, SK (104 issues)
• Manitou, MB (12 issues)
• Toronto, ON (2 issues)
• Winnipeg MAN (52 issues). Under it is Winnipeg MB (624 issues)

Clicking on a community will take you the results page, where each digitized paper is listed. It has the same setup as you get from searching with the search bar. On the left you can narrow your results further. I clicked on Battleford, which had 728 issues. On the left, I can narrow down further to issues of either the Saskatchewan Herald, or The Battleford Press. Now here's a bonus: When I clicked on Saskatchewan Herald, I looked at the dates available and realized that they actually have issues not just from the 1914-1918 stated on the main page of the website, but they have also digitized issues from 1878 to 1887. Just a lesson that when you're looking at projects that are still works in progress, it never hurts to not just go by what the main page says, and explore a little bit to see what's been added since the website started up.

The Images

So, you've found an issue you want to look at. Click on the particular issue, and it brings it up. You can zoom in and out, and download it to your computer if you wish. It is also here that you can search for key words within the issue by clicking on the magnifying glass icon. It will highlight the first instance, but a click of a box will let you highlight everywhere in the issue the word appears. I looked at the 20 December 1886 issue of the Saskatchewan Herald. Seeing as how this is a December issue, I typed "Christmas" in the search box. From the highlighted text, I found out:

• St. George's Church will be having church services at 11 am Christmas morning
• Bremner, Sayer, and Sandon, freighters, were at the reserve on Sunday. "...Good things for Christmas..."
• Mahaffy and Clinkskill advertised that you can get a wide assortment of Christmas Groceries, and items suitable for gifts at their establishment
• H. H. Millie had a wide assortment of watches, clocks and jewelry that would be would be suitable for Christmas presents. 
• The Montreal Star is putting out a special Christmas "paper" filled with poems, stories, articles and "magnificent illustrations". You can send away for this keepsake for the cost of a 25 cent postage stamp. The publishers are also holding a contest giving away $300 in prizes to children who write to them a letter about the paper.

The SHNO has credited the following organizations for their help with this project:

• Saskatchewan Archives Board
• Saskatchewan History Online
• The Ministry of Education
• Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association
• Young Canada Works
• Conseil de la corporation de la Saskatchewan
• The Institute Francais, University of Regina

 

If you would like to contact the site with any questions or comments, you can fill out an online inquiry with the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan here.

Alberta Ancestors: The Alberta Heritage Digitization Project

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Alberta

If you have Alberta ancestors, then you'll want to check out the website Our Future, Our Past: The Alberta Heritage Digitization Project. The non profit project ran from 1999 to 2010, digitizing various media relating to Alberta's history and culture. It's the impressive collaboration between:

•  University of Calgary
•  University of Alberta
•  Glenbow Museum
•  Nickle Arts Museum
•  Provincial Archives of Alberta
•  Galileo Educational Network Association
•  Historical Society of Alberta

From the main page, you can see they sorted their collection into 12 categories:

Art

This is a collection of art from the Nickle Museum and the University of Calgary. Unfortunately, when I tried both the browse and search functions. I could not access anything. It kept asking for login credentials.

Calgary Stampede History

Clicking on this one will take you to the University of Calgary's webpage on the Calgary Stampede. By looking to the right of the page you'll see the link to access the Calgary Stampede Archives.

http://www.ucalgary.ca/stampede/

Now, if you scroll to the bottom of the page, you'll see you can browse by topic. There's thousands of photos, posters, postcards, Alberta Cattle Breeders catalogues, corporate records, dinner menus, prize lists, programs, and media guides. On a whim I looked at the Alberta Cattle Breeders Catalogues. On the inside cover of the 1902 cover was a list of officers for the Association 1901-1902:

http://contentdm.ucalgary.ca/cdm/compoundobject/collection/cesa/id/2677/rec/1

If your ancestor was a part of running the Stampede, you might find their names in the corporate reports. For instance, in 1932 the secretary was Miss. A. E. Hall, and Robert Spencer was the Grounds Superintendent. 

Early Alberta Newspapers

Now this is a must see collection. You can browse by year or by place. There are 41 communities listed, and papers run from 1885 to 2001. Not all places have all years. For example, Banff had the Craig and Canyon newspaper, which ran from 1900 to 1959. Everything is easy to navigate, and narrow down to specific issues. You'll be rewarded with digital images of the newspaper. I found out that in the 8 May 1902 edition, Mr. W. Rather of the Bow River Boathouse had just received a consignment of Peterborough Canoes, and that both Miss Galletly and Miss S. Bell Irving had come down with "la grippe".

Educational Modules

This will take you to some educational resources for teachers relating to Alberta history and culture.

Grande Prairie Photographs

This one is kind of a misnomer. It has the Isabel Campbell Photographic Collection, which is a collection of over 1000 historic photographs of the Grande Prairie area and its citizens. But it also has a link to the Grande Prairie Newspaper Collection. Here you will be able to access digital images of The Frontier Signal (1914-1916), the Grande Prairie Herald (1913-1938), the Grande Prairie Herald-Tribune (1939-1942), the Herald Tribune (1939-1948), and the Northern Tribune (1932-1939).

Southern Alberta Folklore

Here you'll find a collection of over 1000 items relating to Alberta local history and stories. Included are biographies, photos, obituaries, diaries, government documents, periodicals, and personal memories. There's also works of fiction, essays and speeches. You can browse by author, genre, place name, subject, contributor, source publication, or by title. I clicked under biographies the interesting title "Jack DuBois: cattle thief or good neighbour?". It is actually a newspaper clipping detailing how in 1907 Mr. DuBois, a well known and respected rancher, was under investigation for stealing other ranchers' cattle.

Do you know the poem, The Cremation of Sam McGee? Well, the obituary for the real Sam McGee is in the obituaries section!

Local Histories

A sections of books dealing with both provincial and local history. The search function is not available at this time but you can still browse. Browsing is done alphabetically by either title, author, or subject. Click on a letter, narrow further by letter combination, and then a list of publications will appear. I tried browsing for books on Lethbridge. I used "title", letter "L", combination "LE", and got 10 results. Six of these had lethbridge in the title. When I used "subject", "L", and "LE", I got 5 different results. I tried some other combinations for places. I kept running into "run time errors" for some of the links to take me to the digitized images of the books. Some worked though. You'll have to play around with it to see what works for you.

Medical History

This sections allows you to explore the medical history of Alberta through photos, journals, periodicals, and biographies of those involved with medicine. It doesn't only cover Alberta either. I found titles involving Ontario and British Columbia as well. It is set up the same way as the Local Histories section above. Also like above, the search capability has been disabled, and I ran into a lot of "run time errors".

Multicultural Alberta

This section lets you look at media relating to the different cultural groups of the province. You can search for specific items, or browse by ethnicity. You can also browse by media type: books, periodicals, or videos. Under Cultural Group there is:

• Chinese
• Finnish
• German
• Hungarian
• Italian
• Japanese
• Jewish
• Macedonian
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Ruthenian
• Slovenian
• South Asian
• Ukranian
• Other

Browsing through the book titles, I found books covering Ontario, and Canada as a whole, as well as Alberta. Also, while the majority are written in English, I did find books and periodicals written in German. I also found many Ukranian periodicals.

Historical Airphotos

Here is collection of over 30,000 digitized air photos covering the years 1922-1956. These are actual aerial photos, not maps. If you know a location where your ancestor lived, you could then see what the land looked like when they lived there.

Nitsitapiisinni: Kainai Plants and Culture

This section deals with resources relating to the Nitsitapiisinni, or Blackfoot. You can look at digitized books, pictures, and videos of their history and culture. There's also a really interesting map of the Blackfoot Confederacy Territory.

Alberta's Legislative History

This last section is actually divided into two parts: Alberta Law Collection, and Municipal Bylaws.

The Alberta Law Collection has documents relating to the Alberta Legislature. The Search function is disabled, but you can browse. Unlike the other sections above, all the links I tried worked. The documents you can view are: 

• Alberta Gazette (1905-1990)
• Bills of the Alberta Legislature (1906-1990)
• Debates of the Alberta Legislature (Hansards) (1972-1993)
• Journals of the Alberta Legislature (1906-1989)
• Ordinances of the Northwest Territories (1877-1905)
• Revised Statutes of Alberta (1922, 1942, 1955, 1970, 1980)
• Statutes of Alberta (1906-1990)

Municipal Bylaws have digitized bylaws for communities across the province and for various years. You cannot search (it's been disabled) but you can browse either by year or by community. I tried Canmore and they have the bylaws and rescinded bylaws covering from 1965 to 2009. This section may not have direct genealogical significance, unless your ancestor was involved with the town council in some way. But if you were looking for background information on something like property taxation, then you might make use of these. Most of us know that sometimes research will take you down some pretty strange avenues.

Funding for "Our Future, Our Past" came through a variety of sources. If you find information on your ancestors here, you can thank:

• Alberta Community Development, Community Initiatives Program
• The Alberta Historical Resources Foundation
• The Alberta Knowledge Network
• The Alberta Library
• The Alberta Law Foundation
• The Alberta Medical Foundation
• Canada's Digital Collections
• The Calgary Foundation
• Calgary Exhibition & Stampede
• Industry Canada
• Information Resources, University of Calgary

Criminal Ancestors: The Penal Press

Kingston Penitentiary
Source : By P199 - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9566448

Do you have a criminal ancestor that was jailed in Canada? Did you ever wonder what life was like for them? I stumbled onto a great website this week that needs sharing. The Penal Press is a website that has issues of prison newsletters from across the country.

Prison newsletters were huge in the latter half of the 20th century. At one point there were 250 different publications throughout North America. The Penal Press website has amassed a collection of individual issues that you can view as PDF downloads. Maintained by Professor Melissa Munn from Okanagan College and a team of students, it is a work in progress. They are always adding to the site, so keep checking back to see what's new. The focus on their site is Canadian publications, but they will accept publications from anywhere.

I looked at several of them from different institutions and the information they have is really interesting. There are articles relating to prison life, jokes, and editorials about national and world events outside. You can find articles to help inmates deal with addiction, family issues, and finances. There's club news, religious news, gossip columns, and calendars of events. I even found upcoming menus and nutritional information for prison food. Lots of them had a "Letters to the Editor" section, sports sections, and sections showcasing inmate poetry. If your ancestor was involved in the newsletter in some way, they are always mentioned as part of the newsletter staff. But here's some of the other little gems I found:

• The Hilltop Journal from Westmoreland Institution had a section called Dialogue (Us vs. Them), that gave short bios of inmates and guards.
• The Midnight Express from the Edmonton Institution had an article listing the sports banquet award winners. They also had individual player stats from the fastball teams.
• The Off the Wall from the Saskatchewan Penitentiary has a directory of prison clubs and groups. Each has the club or group's board position holders (chairman, secretary, treasurer,etc.). For example, in May 1988 Joe Kostka was the secretary of the Joint Jesters Drama Club.

Now, these are not keyword searchable. However, the issues themselves are not many pages, so a little scanning through the pages won't take long. There are four different ways to search through what they have:

• Newsletter

Sorted alphabetically by newsletter name, there are over 100 different publications listed, with a count of how many individual issues available beside it. There are many that have only 1 issue available, but the C.B. Diamond from Collins Bay has 99 issues digitized.

• Date

Here you can search by year. They have issues that cover the years 1949-2016.

• Institution

Here you can search by Institution name. Several of the prisons had more than one newsletter, or the name may have changed over time. Beside each institution name is the number of newsletters available to look at.

• Topic

Here you can look for articles relating to a specific topic of interest. Topics available include "Aboriginal Prisoners", "Education or Vocational Training", and "Sports". A good percentage of available issue have been indexed by topic, but not all. Those that haven't been have been put under the topic category of "Un-indexed Issues". As of writing this, there were over 400 individual issues in this category.

If you would like to find out more about prison newsletters in general take a look at Dr. Robert Gaucher's The Canadian Penal Press: A Documentation and Analysis" here. Near the end of it he has made an index of Canadian Institutions and the names of their publications.

If you would like to contact Professor Melissa Dunn about the project to digitize these publications, her contact information is on the Penal Press website as follows:

Melissa Munn
Department of Sociology
Okanagan College
7000 College Way
Vernon, BC, V1B 2N5
Tel: (250) 545-7291 (X. 2222)
Fax: (250) 545-3277
Mail:mmunn@okanagan.bc.ca

Nova Scotia Ancestors: Lunenburg County GenWeb

Lunenburg is more than just the home of The Bluenose. One of the major immigration groups in Canada came just after the Acadian Expulsion. In an effort to boost the non Catholic population in Nova Scotia, England recruited settlers from southwest Germany, and the Montbeliard region of what is now France and Switzerland. This group of 1453 settlers became known as the Foreign Protestants. After first being housed in Halifax, they were then sent to what would become Lunenburg. They were soon joined by other Germans from the New England area of the United States in the decade leading up to the Revolutionary War. If your family tree has names like Eisenhauer, Hubley, Zwicker and Boutilier, then chances are you are related to some of these original settlers.

One of the best places to begin searching your Lunenburg roots is the Lunenburg County Genealogy page hosted by rootsweb. This is a fantastic resource that needs to be bookmarked on your browser.

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~canns/lunenburg/

Beware: This is another one of those resources that you should book a block of time for. There's no "just a quick search" here. Many thanks to Gail Edwards and others who have obviously put an incredible amount of time and devotion into this site. I stumbled upon it about 10 years ago when I first started researching my Lunenburg ancestors, and it has been a huge help in my research.

Scroll down the main page and you'll get a list of headings:

• Lunenburg County Genealogy Resources

This handy page has links and information on where to find BMDs, court records, land records, cemeteries, genealogy groups, and census records. They also have the contact information for the various institutions you'll want to communicate with.

• Personal and Family Genealogy Pages

Here are links to over 50 different genealogy pages that relate to the Lunenburg area.

• Surname Resources

Links to two different sites. The first one, Lunenburg County Surname Registry, allows you to register your contact information under the surnames you are researching. Great for cousin finding. The second, Maritimes Most Wanted, has a link that is no longer valid.

• Birth, Marriage and Death Records

This section is worth visiting the site all on its own. Along with links and instructions on ordering from Nova Scotia Vital Statistics, you can also access the Chester Township Books. But the jewel in the crown is the Don Shankle database. A database of more than 50,000 birth, marriage and death entries, you can access it in three different formats. The first separates Lunenburg County entries from Queen's County entries. The second is births arranged by parents' names. These are arranged alphabetically by father's name, but you will also find illegitimate births by mother's name mixed in. If you see two dates, the first is the birth date, the second is the baptism or christening date. To use as an example, here's what it says about my 5x great grandparents, Valentine Eisenhauer and Anna Margaret Knickle:

"EISENHAUER","Valentine & Ann Margaret","Cath Barbara","1805-05-08","1805-05-25","DRL",,,"B"

"EISENHAUER","Valentine & Ann Margaret","Cath Regina","1812-12-06","1812-12-17","DRL",,,"B"

"EISENHAUER","Valentine & Ann Margaret","Christina Margare","1803-03-24","1803-04-08","DRL",,,"B"

"EISENHAUER","Valentine & Ann Margaret","Michael","1806-11-06","1806-11-20","DRL",,,"B"

"EISENHAUER","Valentine & Ann Margaret","Sarah","1807-12-29","1808-10-07","DRL",,,"B"

"EISENHAUER","Valentine & Ann Margaret","Sophia","1809-09-12","1810-08-20","DRL",,,"B"

"EISENHAUER","Valentine & Ann Margaret","Susanna Margaret","1805-05-08","1805-05-25","DRL","twin",,"B"

The third option is that you can download the entire database to your computer as a zip file for free. It is set up as a spreadsheet. Now, if you noticed on the extract above, there is the abbreviation of DRL in my ancestors' entries. This stands for Dutch Reformed Church, Lunenburg. A list of abbreviations for the source citations is explained in the first two Shankle database sections. Now, this is a transcription database, and we are taught to never totally trust a source that is not the original record. However, it has detailed source citations, so you can follow the trail to see the original source.

• Genealogy E-Books

A link to a free download of the book, Descendents of Ulrich Hubley of Nova Scotia, in e-book format.

• Church Records

These are transcriptions of church records from across Lunenburg County. You'll find Methodist, Lutheran, Baptist, Anglican, and Roman Catholic records. You'll also find Evangelical, Presbyterian, United, and even some civil marriages.

• Census Records

Here you'll find extracts of various census returns, ranging from 1770-1911.

• Wills

Two links here. The first are extracts from over 700 wills in Lunenburg County, as well as an index for them. These are set up as PDF downloads. The second is an index to wills for Lunenburg County covering the years 1770-1996. Unfortunately, the link provided no longer works.

• Lunenburg County Obituaries

Here you will find transcriptions of obituaries and death notices ranging in years from 1804 to present day. These files are downloadable right to your computer.

• Cemetery Listings

Another great resource. Here you can find a downloadable searchable index of Lunenburg County cemetery transcriptions. Also included in the index are burials at sea. Next down the page are headstone transcriptions for well over 100 cemeteries. Don't just look at the main list though. The next section entitled Master Surname Index has transcriptions for cemeteries not on the main listing.

• Passenger Lists

Not only will you find transcribed passenger lists of the ships that brought the Foreign Protestants, you can also find reconstructions of passenger lists for the Lydia in 1742, and the Cornwallis group arriving in 1749. As well, there is an index of over 1100 names that arrived on over a dozen ships in 1749. You can also get histories of the Cornwallis groups, and the ships themselves. They even have a transcription of the advertisement placed to recruit settlers for the Cornwallis Ships. The index is available for download in Excel format.

• Victualing Lists

These were lists made of provisions supplied not only to military regiments, but to the Lunenburg settlers when they first arrived. Here you'll find lists for the brief time the settlers were in Halifax, as well as when they first started settling Lunenburg.

• Military Records

These are transcriptions of muster rolls for the Lunenburg County militias from 1808-1819. 

• Diaries and Personal Papers

Downloadable transcriptions of the diary of D.J. Rudolph, the memoirs of James Albert Hirtle, and the family record of David Ueltschi.

• Lunenburg County Links

A series of links relating to the history and culture of the area.

• Nova Scotia Links

This section gives you links to helpful webpages that deal with Nova Scotia as a whole. It needs updating though, because almost all of the links either gave me the dread 404 message, or the site has moved to a new web address.

• Canada Links

The same as above, but pertaining to Canada wide resources. Unfortunately, none of the links seemed to work for me.

• World Links

Links to Swiss and German genealogy pages. The one titled Switzerland Genealogy doesn't work, but the other three do.

• General Genealogy Links

I did not try all the links, but beware that as with the ones above, these may or may not be outdated.

• Genealogical and Historical Societies

Links to groups around Nova Scotia.

• Books-Maps-Software Supplies

Just what the name says. A series of links to build that personal library collection.

• Queries

 A place to connect with other researchers. 

• Look Up Library

A rather unique page that has a listing of various Nova Scotia genealogy and history books. Under each title is the name of a volunteer that will look up information for you from that book. At first I couldn't figure out how to contact the person. Then I realized if you hover your mouse over the name, at the bottom of the screen pops up an email address for that person. It may be different on other devises, but I was using a Windows desktop.

• Photo Gallery

Pictures of the Lunenburg area, as well as pictures of people.

The last four headings gives you links to other GenWeb projects in Nova Scotia, Canada, the US, and world wide.

For more information on the history of Lunenburg, you can look at these sites:

novascotia.com

lunenburg.com

kaulbachhouse.com

explorelunenburg.ca