Brick Wall Ancestor Got You Down? Try Some Transcribing and Indexing

A lot of people have more time for genealogy these days. Us genealogists are handling the new measures better than most, because we have no problem staying in and losing hours in pursuit of our ancestors. My job is considered essential, so I still get up and go to work every day. However, I'm still getting in more research time than normal due to physical distancing.

The downside to everything is that the Archives and Libraries are closed. But thanks to the digital age we live in, there is a TON of online resources for us to further our research. But what to do when that Brick Wall Ancestor starts making you tear your hair out? Why not take a frustration break and do some transcribing, indexing and/or tagging of photos. Several projects have started up over the last few weeks. These projects are gifts that keep on giving.

1. It helps the genealogy community as a whole. Someone years from now is going to be finding that record or photo and do a happy dance. 
2. By stepping away from your own research and focusing elsewhere, you'll have a clearer head when you go back to it. 
3. You get to hone your skills at deciphering handwriting.
4. You might stumble onto a record or photo that is applicable to your own research

So, this week, I'm going to provide links to projects. Now, I usually try and focus on Canadian research in my blog. But in the interest of genealogy as a whole, I'm going to include projects outside of Canada as well. 

https://www.familysearch.org/indexing/

Family Search

These guys have always got some projects going on. Just go to their Indexing page to get started. They have projects from all over the world in many different languages. A couple relating to Canadian research are:

• Canada, Nova Scotia—Church Records, 1864–1877 [Part B]
• US—Aliens Pre-Examined in Canada and Mexico, 1906–1954

Ancestry

The World Indexing Project by Ancestry is another global initiative. You will have to download the keying tool in order to participate. Each record set shows the language and difficulty level. No Canadian projects right now, but they have:

• United Kingdom-4
• Germany- 2
• Australia- 2
• Ukraine- 1
• Italy - 1

https://co-lab.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng

Library and Archives Canada

Co-Lab is the LAC's central hub for their projects. They have divided their "challenges" into different categories: transcription, translation, tagging, and description. There are 13 challenges on the go right now, including:

• Winnipeg General Strike of 1919
• Correspondence regarding First Nations veterans returning after the First World War
• Women lightkeepers, heroes by the sea

Here are some other projects I've found out about

Canada

• The Community Archives of Belleville and Hastings needs helps transcribing the 1871 assessment roles for the area townships.
• The Nova Scotia Archives has one project on the go right now on their Transcribe page.  Commissioner of Public Records - Refugee Negroes details Black immigration and settlement from 1783 to 1838.

United States

• The Newberry Library in Chicago has letters and diaries needing transcribing that deal with 19th and early 20th century life in the Midwest
• The New York Public Library has a few projects on the go. A really fascinating one is the NYPL Community Oral History Project. Volunteers are needed to help with the transcribing of oral histories about life in New York City.
• The Smithsonian always has projects on the go.Check out their Digital Volunteers page regularly to see what they have. Right now, they have 18 projects in progress. 
• The U.S. National Archives is another site with multiple projects on the go. I counted at least 20 projects on their Citizen Achivist page. They have everything from the beginner level to expert level
• The Library of Congress has 16 "campaigns" going on right now. Each campaign is made up of smaller projects.

And Elsewhere...

• University College London has huge project going on transcribing the writings of philosopher Jeremy Bentham
• Free UK Genealogy is a huge crowd sourcing project for UK BMDs and Census records
• Gould Genealogy made a post in February of 2019 of transcription projects in Australia. It's a year old but will give yo a good starting point in finding records to transcribe there.
• The UK National Archives have several projects that don't require on site access
• French site Geneanet has lots of indexing projects
• The NIOD in the Netherlands are looking for people to help transcribe WWII diaries

Look Locally

If you want a project that coincides with your own research interests, try contacting the local Institution or Society of your area of research. They are always looking for volunteers. I checked on Genealogical Society web pages across Canada, and almost all had a notice looking for transcribing/indexing volunteers. In the current COVID world, some of these projects could be on hiatus. However, if the material can be done from your home, then I'm sure they would be glad to have you on board. Some require you to be a member. Now is as good a time as any to try out a membership and see what they're about.

If you know of any transcription/indexing projects let us know in the comments. 

52 Ancestors: Week 23 - Place Names and Social Histories in Canada

We become so focused on the history of our family members that we don't always look closely enough at the history of the region they lived. If you're guilty of this, then you may be missing out on important clues as to why your ancestor settled in a particular place. This week's 52 Ancestor's prompt is "Namesake", so I decided to look at place name and social history resources.

Why look at social histories? These histories give you background on the first settlers of a region. You may even be lucky enough to have your ancestor named. So how does this fit into this week's theme, "Namesake"? Because sometimes looking at the name of a city or town can give you additional insight into those settlers. In some instances, a town may have gone through several name changes. The farther back in your Canadian research you go, knowing possible name and boundary changes becomes more important. For example, the City of Kawartha Lakes in Ontario used to be called Victoria County. Within the City of Kawartha Lakes is a community called Lindsay. It was so named because a surveyor's assistant by the surname of Lindsay died there in 1834 and the new town became named after him. But before that, it was a village called Purdy's Mills. An American family by the last name of Purdy settled there and built a dam, a sawmill, and a grist mill, which the village grew around. Another example is Kitchener, Ontario. Before 1916, it was called Berlin. As you might have guessed, some of the original settlers were of German descent.

Below are some of the ways to look for place and social histories:

Family Search
Family Search has a searchable digital library on their website. Type in your place name of interest to see what they have. Use the menu on the left to find the ones that are public access and can be read online.


Peel's Prairie Provinces
Go to their section on books. You can either search by place name, or you can browse their collection. Both can be done by author, title, or subject.


Global Genealogy
If you want to own a copy of a place history, check out Global Genealogy. This Canadian site has hundreds of books relating not only place/ social histories, but family genealogies and methodology as well. Options for purchase can include hard copy, CD, or PDF download.


Wikipedia
Now good old Wikipedia can steer you wrong sometimes. But it can still be a good resource. What you want to focus on is the source citations at the end of their articles. These can lead you to other sources. Try typing in a place name and see what turns up. You can check out their page List of Canada city name etymologies to get you started.


Canadiana
Among all the thousands of treasures on Canadiana are place and social histories. Type your place in the search engine, then use the menu on the left to narrow down to monographs. When I typed in "Tracadie", I initially got over 3000 hits.  By narrowing down to monographs, I was able to find several books on the Tracadie area of New Brunswick.


Ancestry
Instead of searching records, go instead to the card catalogue. Use the menu on the left to narrow your research to find the place histories. There are over 1,500 publications dealing with social and place histories in Canada.


HathiTrust Digital library
If you haven't heard of HathiTrust, you need to look at their website. It is a partnership of research and academic institutions from around the world. Their aim is to digitize books from these libraries and make them available to all.


Internet Archive
This list wouldn't be complete without Internet Archive. More and more Canadian Libraries have been uploading their collections to the website. Click here to access the list of Canadian Libraries and what they have online through Internet Archive.


Find My Past
After their initial misstep in lumping Canadian and US records together, Find My Past has been quietly building a Canadian collection of records. Search the A-Z section of the record sets, then narrow to Canada, then by province. There are not a lot in their collection but they do have some interesting titles


And don't forget to check provincial and local archives. Some of the archive websites, such as the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, have place histories.

52 Ancestors: Week 2 - The Challenge of Organization: Forms and Charts

https://pixabay.com/en/cluttered-desk-dirty-education-1295494/

This week's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks prompt is "Challenge". I have two great grandfathers by the names of John MCDONALD and James DOUGLAS that are challenges. I have yet to find which cabbage patches they came from. My biggest challenge however, is organization. I'm sure I'm not alone on that one, so I've decided to make my challenge post about forms and charts.

Once you start getting deeper in your family tree, being able to keep track of what you've looked at, what you have, and what you need to find becomes essential. Especially if you're like me and do the old school paper thing for at least some of your ancestors. I keep paper files of my direct lines. Collateral lines are kept on my Ancestry tree. I've built a little collection of links that I like to use to to find my forms.

Ancestry
Ancestry has a form for just about anything you might need for your research files.

• Pedigree charts to keep track of all those John McDonalds
• Research Logs for recording what record sets you've looked at
• Research Extract forms. handy when looking at charts and lists.
• Correspondence Logs to keep track of those letters/emails and phone calls
• Family Group Record Sheets to keep pertinent dates and children for each couple
• Source Summary Sheets to keep tracks of record sets that pertain to your ancestors
• 1851 Canadian Census Forms for New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, andCanada East and Canada West
• 1901 Canadian Census Forms in English and French
• 1906 Canadian Census
• 1911 Canadian Census Forms in English and French

Family Tree Templates.net

This great site has a ton of varieties of forms. They are free to use, though if you want fillable PDF versions for some of the forms, you'll have to pay a small fee.

• Pedigree Charts up to 12 generations
• Research forms galore covering everything from the standard ones to ones covering migrations and DNA

Family Search

• 1851 Canada Census
• 1861 Canada East and Canada West
• 1871/1881 Canada Census
• 1891 Canada Census
• 1901 Canada Census
• To Do List
• Possible Match Analysis Chart
• Time Line Chart

Family Tree Magazine

• Pedigree charts and Family Group Sheets
• Research trackers and Organizers

1916 and 1921 Canadian Census

I cannot remember where I first found these. Global Genealogy is in the main URL, but I could not find a way to find it on their main site now.

• 1916 Canadian Census Form
• 1921 Canadian Census Form 

Bailey's Free Genealogy Forms

Click here to access their free research forms:

• Pedigree charts
• Family Record Sheet
• Cemetery Logs
• Time Lines Forms
• Research Log
• Correspondence Log
• Relationship Chart

Taking the Time to Browse Part 2: Ancestry

In this series of posts, we are looking at websites where you might be missing information by not browsing through record sets. This post is about Ancestry.

Now unlike Family Search, Ancestry doesn't usually have browse only collections. At least none that I could find in Canadian record sets. What you want to do is instead of using the name search, look to the right and use the browse feature. There are some good reasons for doing this:

1. Sorry Ancestry, but sometimes your indexing needs work. Especially with non Anglo names. Here's a perfect example. One of my paternal great grandfathers was named Patrice Joseph Mallais. Using the name search, I could not find him anywhere in 1911. I could find him in St. Isidore New Brunswick in 1901, and in Taboustinac in 1921. The only Patrice Mallais in the area of New Brunswick I was looking at was a nephew of my great grandfather. So I decided to start browsing. I brought up the 1911 census, then chose New Brunswick, then started browsing through each district in the area that he was living in 1901. Lo and behold, just a few pages into the Suamarez district I found his family. PATRICE MALLAIS had been indexed as PAHIQUE MALLARS. It wasn't even close to being a variation of his name, which is why Ancestry's search feature didn't pick up on it.

2. The second reason to browse is that in each record set, there are the odd section or page that isn't indexed. A good example of this is the Canadian Voters Lists collection. It says it holds records for 1935-1980. However, if you look at the description of the record set, you'll realize that the years 1979 and 1980 are browse only.

3. Even in a record set that is fully indexed, a name or two gets missed. In the 1851 Census, I found the Ferguson family living in Toronto, Peel County. This particular page only had the bottom half indexed at the time. The first 21 names did not show up in the index. John Ferguson lived next door to his parents, John and Christina. John the younger showed in the index, but his parents did not. Since I first found the record, Ancestry has updated the indexing. John the elder and Christina now show up. But when I first found the record almost 10 years ago, they weren't. I was lucky enough to already land on the page because of John the younger. Otherwise indexing alone at that time wouldn't have given me his location in 1851.

So how can you find and be able to tell what has been indexed and what hasn't? Well on the main search page, you're going to click on Search:

https://www.ancestry.ca/

From the drop down menu you're going to click on card catalogue. Next you'll see:

https://search.ancestry.ca/search/cardcatalog.aspx#ccat=hc%3D25%26dbSort%3D1%26sbo%3D1%26

Now, once you've picked a record set to look at, here's how to tell if a page is indexed:

.This means it has been indexed.

See how the people icon isn't highlighted? This mean it hasn't been indexed.

Ancestry has almost 2,000 record sets that pertain to Canada. Here are some of the record sets that I have personally come across that using browse struck gold:

Canada, Voters Lists, 1935-1980 As I said above, the years 1979 and 1980 are not indexed. As well, OCR was used for the indexing. On more than one occasion, an ancestor's name was missed.

Acadia, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1757-1946 There are several sections that have not been indexed. As an example, some sets dealing with before and during the Acadian Expulsion have either been only partly indexed, or not at all. Also, only some years of certain parishes have been indexed.

Canada, Photographic Albums of Settlement, 1892-1917 Some of the photographs are captioned with names of people.

Canada, Fenian Raids Bounty Applications, 1866-1871 This collection is only partially indexed.

This is just a sampling. So, if you can't find an ancestor and you know they should be there, take some time to browse. You may find what you're looking for. Or, even better, take a look at a record set that looks promising. You may find something new.