1891 Canadian Census ONLINE!

Great News! Ancestry.com has put the 1891 Canadian census online. It's indexed and linked to the images of the actual pages.

If you have a subscription you should check it out, I've already found several ancestors. If you don't have a subscription you may want to subscribe now or take a free trial to find your ancestors.

I've noted some errors that may cause researchers problems, including mixing of families. For example I searched for my PEER ancestor. I found his name. I clicked on the name for more information and could see everyone in his family. However there were 3 different surnames and many many individuals linked into his family, complete with relationships such as "Son" "Daughter" etc. A check of the image revealed that in fact there were 3 distinct family groups living in separate households but the transcribers had combined them all together as one.

Other errors were children, some as young as 2 years old, listed as living alone. In fact a check of the image revealed that each of these children were in fact living in family homes.

I also noted several occurances of one family being split. So a search brought up the husband. Clicking on his name showed him with no wife and one child. His wife came up separately in the search engine and clicking on her name showed her living alone with several other children. A look at the linked image revealed husband, wife and all children living as one family. Why these these separate families have been merged into one or one family split into more than one is a mystery.

What it means is you must check the images to verify the transcribed information.

Have fun! And be creative in your searches...... my McGinnis ancestors were hiding under the MISindexed name of "Linnis"