52 Ancestors: Week 22: Cemetery Records on Canadiana

This week's 52 Ancestors prompt is "At the Cemetery". I'm going to look at some of the more unusual records you can find on the Canadiana website relating to cemeteries. Through my research I haven't found a lot on there that pertains to indexes and transcriptions. However, I did find some interesting records.


Monographs

• The first Catholic cemeteries of Montreal : and a guide to the present cemetery  by Simeon Mondou (1887). Go to the image 200 to see the cemeteries listed. If your ancestor owned a business in Montreal in 1887, then check out the last set of images showing advertisements.

• Glenwood Burying Ground (Picton, Ont.) The Trustees of Glenwood Burying Ground : rules and regulations. (1911)

• Saint John Rural Cemetery Company. Fernhill Saint John Rural Cemetery Company : acts of assembly and by-laws for the government thereof, together with reports of directors and treasurer and an alphabetical list of the proprietorsof lots, New Brunswick 1898.

• List of missions of the Church of England in Newfoundland and Labrador : with a tabular statement of the number of inhabitants, members of the Church of England, clergy, licensed lay readers, churches, school chapels, cemeteries and the approximate extent of each mission, to accompany a map of the diocese.  by Joseph James Curling (1877).

• A monograph of St. Paul's Cemetery  by George Mulane. Published in Halifax 1902.

• Customs and arts of the Kwakiool by George M. Dawson (circa 1888). Starting on image 348 is an outline of their burial practices.

• The "Last Post" Imperial Naval and Military Contingency Fund : roll of honour

• A sermon, delivered at Plantagenet, Upper-Canada, August, 1828, at the interment of John Chesser, Esquire

• Baptist Burial Ground (Woodstock, Ont.) Baptist Burial Ground, Woodstock, Ontario : Board of Trustees, R.H. Burtch, chairman ..

Government Publications

• Bill : an act to authorize the formation of companies for the establishment and management of cemeteries in Upper Canada. Act to authorize the formation of companies for the establishment and management of cemeteries in Upper Canada (1850)

• Bill : an act for more adequately securing the health of localities in Upper Canada against risk from infection arising from bodies of persons who die of malignant infectious diseases lying uninterred. (1860)

• Bill : an act to incorporate the Congregati[on] of the Most Holy Redeemer (1900)

To see all 1,846 monograph results on Canadiana using the search word "cemeteries" click here. Try playing with search terms. You might find some surprising things. For example, I tried "funeral" and start getting results for funeral invitations. I then tried "funeral notices". I got over 4,000 results. The top results were invitations and notices dating back to the early 1800's. Here's one for a Mr. Jacob Duseler from 1832:

Some publications I didn't include above but are worth looking into for cemetery information on Canadiana:

• Place histories
• Directories
• Church newsletters

As always with Canadiana, book yourself a good chunk of time to explore the site.

52 Ancestors: Week 12 - 12 Sites to Further your Canadian Research

Everyone knows about the big search sites for record sets. But when you're missing out on a lot if you only stick to Ancestry, Family Search, My Heritage and Find My Past. There are lots of other sites that are FREE that you can go to that can give you information. This week I'm going to point you towards 12 sites that you should add to your internet bookmarks for Canadian research.

I thought at first that this would be a simple post. My trouble was narrowing it down to 12! Canada is the second biggest country in the world, and is quite ethnically diverse. I could probably list 12 French Canadian sites, or 12 military sites, or 12 sites that just deal with a certain geographical area with no problem. We have 13 provinces and territories, and I could probably highlight 12 collections at each one that are wonderful. In the interest of trying to find something that will appeal to everyone, I decided to try and list sites that will give you the most bang for your buck, so to speak. This list is not a "best of", so don't be offended if your favourite isn't listed. I also won't be delving too deeply into any of them. You can explore all they have to offer on your own.

1. Library and Archives Canada (LAC)

http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/genealogy/Pages/introduction.aspx

If you're new to Canadian research, Library and Archives Canada is our National Archive. No list would be complete without it. Free to use, it has the widest variety of records to help in your research. It's very user friendly, and has both online and offline collections. I've highlighted just some of their collections in previous blog posts:

• Immigrant Ancestors: The Canadian Naturalization Records
• Railway Ancestors: Railways Employees (Employees Provident Fund) at the LAC
• Military Ancestors: Courts Martial Records of the First World War at LAC
• Ancestors in Service: Porters and Domestics Records through the LAC
• Research Your Ancestors in the Canada Gazette

2. Canadiana

This wonderful website has digitized collections of government records, magazines/periodicals, newspapers, and books. It also has photographs, brochures, and pamphlets. Canadian genealogists were ecstatic when they recently changed it to a completely free website.

http://www.canadiana.ca/

Click on the Collections tab to access three separate collections:

• Early Canadiana Online
• Canadiana Online
• Heritage

They also have a search engine to find collections from archives and repositories around the country through the Public Collections tab. Clicking on the Student Voice takes you to a portal to search digitization of student newspaper from colleges and universities.

I and every other Canadian genealogist are still exploring all this website has to offer. You can read my posts Library and Archives Canada Microfilms on Heritage Website and Love and Marraige on Canadiana to give you an idea of what you can find on there.

3. Historical Atlas of Canada Online Learning Project

Historical maps are essential in genealogy research. Looking at them gives you clues into further genealogy research. Can't find your ancestor in one township or county's records? Looking at historical maps can show you boundary changes. Ever wonder why they worshiped at church A, when church B was closer? A map can show you there was a river in between them and church B, so church A was actually easier to get to. 

The Historical Atlas of Canada Online Project is a work in progress. They have been digitizing maps from the 3 volume Historical Atlas of Canada and making them interactive to boot. 

http://www.historicalatlas.ca/website/hacolp/index.htm

This 3 volume set is on my wish list of "Things I HAVE to Have". However they are kind of pricey. Amazon has them right now at about $90 per volume. Until I can get my hands on them, this website has been immensely helpful. As I said it's a work in progress. Keep checking back to see if a map you're looking for has been digitized yet.

4. Peel's Prairie Provinces

http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/aboutsite.html

If you're delving into research of the Canadian West, you'll want to bookmark Peel's Prairie Provinces. Dedicated to the history of the Canadian West, it is hosted by the University of Alberta. According to the website, "...Peel contains approximately 7,500 digitized books, over 66,000 newspaper issues (4.8 million articles!) 16,000 postcards, and 1,000 maps." It's a goldmine of information on the various cultural and ethnic groups that settled in the West. My recent blog post Photographs on Peel's Prairie Provinces gives an overview of what you can find in their postcard and photo collections.

5. Internet Archive

https://archive.org/index.php

This one is a go-to for genealogy research in general, not just Canadian. The amount of material you can find on here is makes it a rabbit hole. A lot of genealogical and historical societies have uploaded all forms of media onto it. I've mentioned Internet Archive in many blog posts as a source for different kinds of records. Here are a few:

• Getting Lost in City Directories
• First Nominal Census in Canada
• Military Ancestors: The weekly newspaper "Canada"

You will have to play around with search terms and fields, just because of the sheer amount of information on there. My suggestion is to wait until you have a "genealogy day" to explore it. 

6. Hudson's Bay Company Archives

https://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/archives/hbca/index.html

Canada's history and heritage is hugely intertwined with the Hudson's Bay Company. Founded in 1670, the HBC had posts in just about every corner of Canada. If your ancestor came over during the l600s and 1700s, there's a good possibility that they had some contact with the HBC.

The Hudson's Bay Company Archives was given UNESCO status in 2007. There is not a whole lot of their information on line right now, but don't despair. Just last month, it was announced that a huge digitization project is going to start. As part of Manitoba's 150th anniversary, over 1000 microfilms from the Archives are going to be digitized and put online for free. You can read about the announcement on the CTV News website.

As for what's available right now, you can look at the blog post I did called Manitoba Ancestors: Hudson's Bay Company Archives.

7. Maritime History Archive

https://www.mun.ca/mha/

If you have Maritime Ancestors, check out the Maritime History Archive. They have records that cover both coasts of Canada. If your ancestor came from the UK or the US, there are records that can be found for them on here too. I wrote a 2 part blog post about this great site. You can access Part 1 here, and Part 2 here. 

8. Dictionary of Canadian Biography

http://www.biographi.ca/en/

Not all of us have famous (or infamous) ancestors. So why include this one? I've included this one because your ancestor doesn't necessarily have to be a politician, explorer, or captain of industry to be included. If your ancestor came in the early years of Canada, there's a good chance they might be in here, or at least mentioned in someone else's biography. As an example, I typed "Landry" in the search box. This is one of my Acadian surnames. 115 entries are on the website that either involve someone with the surname Landry, or a Landry is mentioned in someone's biography that doesn't have the surname Landry.

At the bottom of each entry are footnotes showing what sources were used. Now you know where to look for the original information. As well, they also list related biographies to your selected person. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography has 22 volumes at the moment. Volumes I to XV are fully online, Volumes XVI to XXII are only partially online.

9. The Ancestor Hunt

http://www.theancestorhunt.com/

Simply put, historical newspapers are awesome. And not only to find birth, marriage and death notices. Even if they didn't do anything heroic or naughty, you can still find them in the everyday activities of their area. Kenneth Marks runs a blog called The Ancestor Hunt, and has compiled a huge collection of newspaper links for mainly the US and Canada. The link to his newspaper links is here. He also has links for Canadian obituaries, BMDs, and photos. He has helpfully divided the Canadian links by province to make your searches easier.

10. Canada's Gen Web Cemetery Project

https://cemetery.canadagenweb.org/

This free site is volunteer run, and has information on over 18,000 cemeteries across Canada. It has a very user friendly set up. Please keep in mind that they do not do research or take photo requests. However, volunteers have posted their willingness to help on their own, and not as part of the site.

For each cemetery listed, they have contact information for the cemetery. They have also listed helpful links on the internet and contact information off the internet for groups and societies that have more information. It's a nice starting place for your cemetery research.



11. Canadian Great War Project

http://www.canadiangreatwarproject.com/index.asp

This site says that it is the largest fully searchable database of Canadian men and women that served in WWI. What I find so delightful about the Canadian Great War Project is that they are so many ways to search. It has information not only on the soldiers, but on war diaries, statistical information, and medal information. This is just a sampling of what it has to offer.

Take note though, in the process of modernizing and updating, the site is going through some growing pains. The University of Victoria is helping the site owner, Marc Leroux, with this. It's a work in progress so keep visiting the site to see what new things they have to offer.


12. CanLII

https://www.canlii.org/en/index.html

The Canadian Legal Information Institute is a database of court cases across Canada. You can search by keyword and/or province. The years covered varies depending on the province. Most of these cases run from the 1970's to the present day. However, you can find some earlier years as well. I found one from Quebec dating back to 1902. A good site for more recent events in your Family Tree, genealogically speaking. You can get a good amount of information on cases, either by PDF of documents, or by transcription. This is by no means a complete database. I could not find anything on their site about adding more historical years of cases, but keep checking back.

What's your go-to website? Leave a comment with a link to it.

Ontario Ancestors: Toronto Trust Cemeteries Collection

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

All the various cemetery sites online are great for finding inscriptions and pictures of your ancestors' tombstones. But one resource that many people overlook are the registers for the cemetery. The reason for this is because it involves a little more of the old fashioned leg work and persistence. You are not going to find these online. You have to track down where the registers are kept, and then find out if you'll even have access to them. This will involve letters, emails, and/or phone calls. You may even have to make a personal visit, depending on the policy of the register holders. In our digital age of instant gratification, this may seem like too much trouble. You may think that since you have the tombstone information, then there's no point in trying to track down the register. You would be wrong though. The registers can hold any or all of the following information:

• Full Name of the deceased
• Birth date
• Age at death
• Death date
• Death Place
• Cause of death
• Name of nearest relative
• Marital status
• Burial date
• Owner of the plot. This could lead you to more family members.

If you have Toronto ancestors, you're in luck though. Thanks to the Toronto Branch, Ontario Genealogical Society and Family Search, you can look at the registers of the Toronto Trust Cemeteries Collection online, for free. This was a massive indexing project that took from 2009-2015 to complete. In all, over 360,000 names were indexed. Thanks to their efforts, researchers can look at the records of four major Toronto cemeteries:

• York Burying Ground (Potter's Field) 1826-1855
• Necropolis Cemetery 1849-1989
• Mount Pleasant 1876-1988
• Prospect Cemetery 1890-1985

Now take note that not all the images contain the burial register itself. From what I can see, more recent burials are index books only. Also note that not all years are on here. In the Mount Peasant Cemetery for instance, the volumes skip from 1933-1949. 

You can find links to this collection on Ancestry, but your best bet is to actually go to Family Search itself. The images on Ancestry takes you to Family Search anyway, so why not just go the source.

You can go to the search page of the collection here.  

https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/1627831

You have two options. You can search for a specific name, or you can browse by cemetery. 

Searching by Name

I have a great uncle named Garfield DOUGLAS. The poor little guy died just shy of three years old in 1923, of whooping cough. According to his death registration, he was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. So I entered his name and right at the top of the search results was his entry. Clicking on it gave me this information:

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:2763-TPB

Now did you notice on the right underneath the image, it says that the information may contain more information than was indexed. So by clicking on the image it also had this extra information:

• He died at the Hospital for Sick Children
• His death date was 8 February 1923
• Also listed on the grave location was "north grave" in brackets
• The Medical Attendant's name was Stanley Copp
• Rev. Broughall officiated the burial
• B.D. Humphrey was the undertaker

Some of this information I knew from the death certificate. But if I did not have a death certificate, then I would now have information that would help me to seek one out. I found the "north grave" information interesting. I'm not sure if this means there are more than one internment here belonging to the Douglas family. It bears looking into. Also, there's the name of the reverend. By finding which church he belonged to, I could possibly be able to find church records for the family.

As a side note, I also noticed in the image an entry a few above him, for a Grant MACDONALD. This little guy was only 5 years old when he died of bronchial pneumonia. I do not think he belongs to my particular McDonald line. That wasn't what interested me. It was the fact that according to the register, he died 8 February 1923, "put into the vault" 10 February, and wasn't buried until 26 April. If you were looking for a church burial record for him, you would have to look not in February, but April in the church registers to find it. A little tidbit of information you wouldn't have gotten from his tombstone. 

Browse by Cemetery

Now let's look at a later burial. My great grandfather John McDonald died in 1964. I used the browse function for him because it's actually faster than wading through all the John McDonalds I know are going to come up using the search function. I knew he was buried in Prospect Cemetery. But, I've never been able to find him on any of the cemetery sites online. So, I clicked on Browse through 7,234 images, then Prospect Cemetery. I then clicked on Volume 5, 1963-1972. This particular volume is an index book. It is indexed by first letter of surname, and then by year. In a rare stroke of luck for me, there is only one John McDonald buried in prospect in 1964. 

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DR19-29C?i=99&wc=ST3P-82H%3A973088201%2C973088601&cc=1627831

The index says that John is buried in 13-768B, and his entry is listed on page 106414. What's also interesting is that what looks like "acg" is written before the location. I used this information to email the Mount Pleasant Group of Cemeteries, of which Prospect is now a part of. They were very prompt and helpful, replying back the next day. The information I was given was:

• He was 69 years old and 7 months when he died
• His next of kin listed was my great grandmother Edna
• His birth place is listed as Kingston, ON
• His death place was Newmarket, ON
• He died of Myocardial Infarction
• The "acg" stood for Adult Common Grave

I emailed the lady asking about the Adult Common Grave part, and she replied back explaining that it was a Social Services burial. This did not really surprise me, as the family had always been quite poor. One of the streets they lived on in the 1930's actually no longer exists, and was part of the "Toronto slums" in the first part of the twentieth century. There are actually 5 people buried in the plot, and unfortunately, there is no marker. She attached a couple of maps for the cemetery to the email, showing on them where his location is. I thought this was really kind of her to go the extra step that way. The fact that there was no marker explains why I have never been able to find him on Find-A-Grave, or any of the other sites. 

I've never seen a digital collection like this one. Hopefully, this will start a trend into bringing cemetery registers online. I have seen the odd transcription or compiled database put up here and there, but human error can always come into play with a transcription. Even with this collection, the indexing doesn't give you all the information that's available. 

If you know of any similar other digitized register collections in Canada, then let me know, and I'll feature them in a future post. 

Cemeteries

Saint Paul's Anglican Church and Cemetery. Trinity, Newfoundland
Source: http://www.fotosearch.com/DSN024/1823198/

It sounds morbid to non genealogy people, but I love cemeteries. I find them very peaceful to walk through. I also find it interesting to read the headstones.You can learn so much from them, besides birth and death dates. Family members are sometimes buried in one plot, and can give you new avenues of research. Even if not buried together, families that have been rooted in one area for a long time will be in the same cemetery. But what do you do when you're researching from a distance?



1. Cemetery Websites

Here are some of the main sites out there to find Canadian graves:

• Find A Grave

Find A Grave is a well known cemetery site. Using their search engine, you can insert a name into the search engine, and they'll show you everywhere that person has been listed as buried. The problem with this site is that unless you are searching in the US, you can only narrow by country. There is no way to search by province. A man by the name of Ken Lange helped us Canadians out though, by designing a search page for Canada that lets you narrow down your search to a province. You can search either by name or by cemetery. The link to his page is here.

• Canada's GenWeb Cemetery Project

Run by volunteers, this site has indexes to over 18,000 cemeteries across Canada. Some of the cemeteries listed are not indexed on the site itself. However, where possible, they've included links to where you can get an index. For instance, my grandfather's family was a part of St.Peter's and Paul's Roman Catholic Church in Bartibog, New Brunswick. By clicking on it, I get the location of the cemetery. It also provides the link for the Miramichi Branch of the New Brunswick Genealogical Society, who has the index. You can also search by name, and narrow your search to a particular province.

Keep in mind that this is an ongoing project, so you may not turn up anything. I put in "BOUTILIER", one of my very common Nova Scotia surnames, I only got 27 hits. None of them were part of my direct ancestors. keep checking back though if you don't find anything at first.

• Billion Graves

The free option of using Billion Graves lets you search by person. You can also see a GPS map of all cemeteries in a specific area.The cemeteries are color coded to let you know how much, if any, of the interments are on Billion Graves. Surprisingly, when I zoomed in on Lindsay, Ontario, neither of the two cemeteries in town have any records on there. Sounds like a good volunteer project in my future. Also on the free version is the ability to connect your tree to the site to search for graves. By hovering on the "Research" tab, you can see what else you do on the site for free. You can also see the benefits of upgrading to the Billion Graves Plus option.

• Canadian Headstones

This site is a non profit website that has over 40,000 records. You first click on the Province or Territory you want to search in, then narrow by surname. The search box is in the top right and labelled quick search. You can then filter by given name, and also by specific area if you choose. I left the given name blank and searched with the surname GREENING in all of Newfoundland and Labrador. I got 67 hits. I clicked on 6 or 7 of them and they all had pictures. It's by no means as extensive as some of the other sites, but keep checking back.

• Interment.net

You can search this site by name, but I found it was quicker to search geographically. First click on province, then region. It will list the cemeteries in that region that have been transcribed. By clicking on the specific cemetery, you will get a list of all interments transcribed. There are no photos. I think this is the quicker way of doing this because if a particular cemetery or region has not been done, you will not waste time wading through possibly hundreds of results. By using MCDONALD in the surname search, I got 183 results. It would be very frustrating to wade through all that and then find the cemetery I was looking for isn't even on the site.

2. Provincial and Local Archives

If your ancestor's grave is not on the cemetery websites, try the local or provincial archives. Many of them have collections of cemetery transcriptions. You probably won't get a picture, but at least you'll have a transcription. Some are even online. Others are available through inter library loan

The Provincial Archives of New Brunswick has a large cemetery database on line. You can do a conventional name search, with the ability to narrow by county if need be. What I like though is the search by cemetery function. Select the county, and it will give you the cemeteries in that county on their database. It will then let you choose from all the surnames that are listed there. They have them listed by the spelling that was on the headstone, so look through the list for variations. It will then give you the results for that particular surname. By clicking on details you will get the headstone transcription.

The Trent Valley Archives in Peterborough, Ontario has transcriptions of Peterborough County cemeteries on site.

3. Genealogical and Historical Societies

Most genealogical and historical societies have collections of cemetery transcriptions. If they have an online presence, they might have something on their website. The Fort St.John North Peace Museum has a link on their website to a rootsweb page of cemetery transcriptions of the North Peace area of British Columbia. Even if they don't, you can contact the society. Most of them offer research services.

4. Local Libraries

Most libraries have collections of local history in their reference departments. Try contacting the library in the area of your ancestor to see if their collection include cemetery indexes and transcriptions. The local societies may have donated a set to the library.

5. Library and Archives Canada

LAC holds a lot of cemetery indexes. Most are available through inter library loan. You can search to see what they have by using AMICUS. They suggest searching using terms like "cemetery Calgary" or "Beechwood Cemetery".

6. Contacting the Cemetery

If you know where your ancestor is buried, try contacting the cemetery to get information. I recently had good experiences with two Toronto cemeteries. One of the sadder stories in my family tree is a great aunt and uncle. My great aunt Pauline MCDONALD died of influenza at 2 years old in 1934. One year later her brother Baby Boy MCDONALD was stillborn. According to their death certificates, they were to be buried in St. John's Norway Cemetery in Toronto. I emailed the cemetery asking for details of their graves, and in less than 2 hours I was emailed back by Jeremy. Both babies were listed in the records, but since they were "poor graves", their exact location in the cemetery is unknown. This was not a surprise to me about them being poor graves, as the family lived at that time in one of the poorest areas of Toronto. Jeremy was kind enough to give me a transcription of the records.

My great grandfather, John MCDONALD was their father. I know he was buried in Prospect Cemetery. From the FamilySearch index database Ontario, Toronto Trust Cemeteries, 1826-1989, I was able to get what I was sure was his burial entry in the index book. I emailed the Mount Pleasant Group (who oversees several cemeteries) with the information from the index. Within a day I had a reply from Susan. She was able to tell me which plot my great grandfather is located in. There is no gravestone, as he was a Social Service burial, and there are 4 other people interred in that plot. Along with a transcription of the burial record, she also sent me 2 maps showing the location of the burial. As she noted in her email, there are 47 burials with the name of John McDonald in Prospect Cemetery. With the information I gave her, she was able to right away find my John McDonald. So it's a good rule to make sure you give as much detail as you can, especially if you are dealing with a large cemetery, and/or a common name. 

If you know of any other avenues or websites to pursue for Canadian graves, feel free to leave them in the comments, and I'll add them in.