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June 28, 2005

Bill S-18 providing access to the 1911 Census passed the House of Commons today

Bill S-18 providing access to the 1911 Census passed the House of Commons today

At 8:00 AM PDT Tuesday June 28th MP Dominic LeBlanc, Deputy Government Whip, rose and stated words to the effect that "If the Speaker would seek it, I believe he would have the unanimous consent of the House to deem Bill S-18 -- An Act to amend the Statistics Act, to have passed Third Reading". That consent was given.

Bill S-18 has now passed all necessary stages in both the Senate and the House of Commons and all that remains to be done to make it law is for it to receive Royal Assent. It is expected that assent will be received shortly.

It is believed that the Library and Archives of Canada has already scanned images
of the 1911 National Census of Canada and they should be available online almost immediately.

Excerpt of email from Gordon A. Watts
Co-chair Canada Census Committee

June 26, 2005

June 23, 2005

FEEFHS Conference Minnesota August 2005

The 11 Annual FEEFHS Conference is in Saint Paul, Minnesota August 19-21. There are about 90 sessions to choose from over three days.

Details are available at The Federation of East European Family History Societies

June 20, 2005

English Census Records Research

English Census information has been added to AllCensusRecords.com If you are looking for English ancestors, you'll want to check out this site.

Ships Passenger Lists online for 1821

Olive Tree Genealogy Free Genealogy Databases
Olive Tree Genealogy today uploaded 20 more free ships passenger lists for ships arriving in New Orleans Louisiana, New York, Philadephia Pennsylvania and Charleston South Carolina 1821 to 1859.

New York Ship arrivals with passenger names July 30 - Dec 31 1821


List of Passengers on Ship Amity to New York

List of Passengers on Ship Stephanian to New York

List of Passengers on Ship Juffraw Johanna to New York

List of Passengers on Ship Ambuscade to New York

List of Passengers on Brig Spring to New York


List of Passengers on Brig Superb to New York

List of Passengers on Brig Mentor to New York

List of Passengers on Brig Catharine to New York

List of Passengers on Brig Kate to New York

Philadelphia Pennsylvania Ship arrivals with passenger names July 30 - Dec 31 1821


List of Passengers on Brig Rising Sun to Pennsylvania

List of Passengers on Brig Jane to Pennsylvania

List of Passengers on Brig Hibernia to Pennsylvania

List of Passengers on Brig Betsey to Pennsylvania

Charleston South Carolina Ship arrivals with passenger names


List of Passengers on Brig Catharine to Charleston South Carolina 1821 - 1830

List of Passengers on Brig Phoebe to Charleston South Carolina 1853 - 1859


New Orleans Louisiana Ship arrivals with passenger names July 30 - Dec 31 1821


List of Passengers on Brig Baltic to New Orleans

List of Passengers on Brig Neptune to New Orleans

List of Passengers on Brig Leopard to New Orleans

List of Passengers on Brig Bel dame to New Orleans

Louisiana New Orleans Ship arrivals with passenger names 1831-1836


List of Passengers on Brig Parker & Sons to New Orleans

June 19, 2005

Ancestors At Rest - FREE Death Records

AncestorsAtRest.com has been busy. Check out this site for death records of all kinds - coffin plates, funeral cards, funeral
home records, cemeteries, obits, and more.

PS ~ Family Tree Magazine chose AncestorsAtRest as one of 101 Best Undiscovered Web Sites of 2005.

June 15, 2005

1920 census FREE from June 15-17!

Here's a scoop! From June 15-17 Ancestry is allowing FREE ACCESS to the 1920 USA census! That's right, it's free, no credit card required, and you heard it here first.

I've set up a special page for the free census

This isn't a free trial, it's totally free access (no credit card asked for) so enjoy!

June 13, 2005

San Francisco 1867 Great Register Online!

Sfgenealogy.com has a new TAG production, the San Francisco 1867 Great Register.

The Register is a voter registration index that contains information on approximately 16,365 individual males,including naturalization details for many of them.

Naturalization details include date, place and court of naturalization

http://www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/1867g/sfgr67.htm

For more naturalization records online see http://naturalizationrecords.com/

June 12, 2005

The ABCs of Immigration Research

Monday, June 20, 7 p.m.
Jewish Genealogy Society
Albert Einstein Residence Center,
1935 Wright Street,
Sacramento

There's the Ellis Island Web site but a whole lot more. Learn about recently computerized passenger records of other U.S. ports, including Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco, plus online passenger lists of those leaving Europe via the port of Hamburg. In addition to Internet resources, Lester Smith will discuss valuable immigration records that are not yet online or indexed.

The June 20th program can help you begin your personal research or discover more about those on your family tree. All are welcome. For more information about the Jewish Genealogy Society of Sacramento, visit their Web site
http://www.jewishgen.org/jgs-sacramento/, e-mail the JGSS at jgs_sacramento@yahoo.com or leave a message at 916-486-0906 ext. 361.

June 11, 2005

Castle Garden - Searching for New York passenger arrivals

Castle Garden existed as a processing station for immigrants between 1855 and 1890. There is no separate set of records for Castle Garden, as there is for Ellis Island.

Passenger lists for the Castle Garden time period are available on microfilm so if you know a date of arrival or a ship name you can order the microfilm or have NARA do a lookup for you.

Check the complete list of film numbers (NARA or FHC) for ships going to New York after 1820. Find your date (year, month, day if known) and write down the NARA
or Family History Centre film number you need

NARA & FLH Films for New York Passenger Lists

For more help with this time period see Castle Garden:Ships Passenger Lists to New York 1 Aug.1855 - 18 Apr. 1890

June 10, 2005

Finding passengers on ships lists to Baltimore Maryland

There are 2 separate indexes for Baltimore for the years 1833-1866. One lists passengers on federal lists, the second lists passengers on city lists. You can't just check one - if you check one and don't find your ancestor, you have to
check the other one.

For a list of Film Numbers for Ships to Maryland, after 1820, see
http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/filmnos_baltmd.shtml

For online Ships to Maryland see
http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/tousa_md.shtml

If you want to search multiple websites at once for passenger lists, there is a custom search engine for Ships going to Maryland at
http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/searchmdships.shtml

Filling in the 1847 - 1892 gap for passenger lists to New York

Check my free online project to fill in the 1847-1892 index gap for passenger arrival records in New York.

This project consists of 3 sets of records:

1. NY Times extracts for ship arrivals and passenger names

2. Images (and some accompanying transcripts) of actual passenger lists in this time period

3. NY Almshouse records for 1855-1858 (contains year of arrival and ship name)

The complete index of NY Times years and shipping news extracts is at
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ote/ships/nytimes.htm

Images of ships passenger lists for these Unindexed NY years are online at http://www.rootsweb.com/~ote/ships/

The Almshouse Records start at
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ote/ships/ny_alms1855.htm

Also check online ships and links to ships in this time period starting at
http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/tousa_ny182549.shtml

Steve Morse NEW IMPROVED Search of Ancestry.com

GOOD NEWS!!! -- You can now search on Ancestry.com without having to put in three characters for the name. Up until now, if you entered a partial first name or a partial last name, you had to enter at least three characters plus a wildcard character.

Steve Morse has written some new code that gets around this limitation by searching on all combinations of the letters that you left out.

For example, suppose you want to search for all people with first initial J and last name Smith. Steve's software will automatically search for all Smiths with first names starting with Jaa, then Jab, then Jac, etc. up to Jzz.

It might take as much as 5 minutes to get all the results, but it's automatic -- you submit one search and Steve does 676 searches for you. If you search for all Smiths with first name starting with Ja, Steve can do that faster (less than ten seconds) because he only has to do 26 searches in that case.

To use this feature, go to Steve's website at http://stevemorse.organd select any of his search forms that search on Ancestry.com (e.g., any of his passenger search forms other than Ellis Island, and his census search-by-name form for any census year).

Then enter less than three characters for either the first or last name, and Steve's new software will kick in, doing repeated searches on your behalf.

Have fun!

June 9, 2005

Pennsylvania German Pioneers by Ralph B. Strassburger & William J. Hinke - What It's All About

Pennsylvania German Pioneers by Ralph B. Strassburger and William J. Hinke, published in 1934 by the Pennsylvania German Society, Norristown, PA gives all available lists for each ship - the Captain's list, the list of signers of the Oaths of Allegiance and a third list which is supposedly a duplicate of the signers of the Oath but really isn't. It is signatures of those who signed a different oath.

To quote from the Strassburger book

"The order relating to the duty of the captains had three points. First, they were to make a list of all the people they imported. .... Not even the first point, that they should hand in lists of the names of the people they imported, was interpreted alike by all the captains. Most of them thought that to give the names of the male adults was all that was required. Only twenty-five captains have given complete lists of all the men, women and children.

Three captains have given the names of the men and women, but omitted the children, while sixty-four captains atoned somewhat for their remissness in carrying out the orders by giving the ages of the passengers, an item that they had not been asked to give, but which we are glad to insert, wherever they are found. Sometimes the captains give the total number of freights, children being counted as "half freights."

In two instances (Nos. 1-2) the totals in each family are given. Looking at the captains'lists as a whole, we must say, that they are of all sorts and descriptions. Each one made his list to suit himself, without any reference to the orders of the Council."

June 8, 2005

Family Tree Magazine Best 101 Undiscovered Websites of 2005

I'm very excited to announce that Family Tree Magazine chose my website USA and Canada Naturalization & Citizenship Records at http://naturalizationrecords.com/ as one of 101 Best Undiscovered Web Sites of 2005.

Go to http://www.familytreemagazine.com/101sites/2005/ and to see the sites chosen this year. NaturalizationRecords.com is in the category DOCUMENT DISCOVERIES

If you haven't explored NaturalizationRecords.com before,you might want to head for the Site Map at http://naturalizationrecords.com/sitemap.shtml after you read the introduction.

June 6, 2005

Marriage Bonds Ontario & Quebec 1779-1865 online

It is difficult to trace a marriage that took place in a Protestant church in Quebec(Lower Canada) and Ontario (Upper Canada) before 1867.

Marriage bonds were prepared for Protestant marriages by licence. After obtaining the bond, a licence was issued and the marriage took place a few days later.

Library and Archives Canada holds:

2960 marriage bonds for Lower Canada (Quebec) issued between 1779 and 1858

7899 marriage bonds for Upper Canada (Ontario) issued between 1803 and 1865

A typical search reveals:

~ Name of the future husband
~ Name of the future wife
~ Their place of residence
~ Names of the sureties (people who knew the groom and would guarantee that no legal reasons existed why the couple could not marry)
~ Date and place where the bond was issued

These bonds are now searchable online at Library & Archives Canada at

http://www.collectionscanada.ca/022/012/index-e.html

Terrace Lawn Cemetery Improvement Project - North Bay Ontario Canada

From Murray Pletsch, Chairman
Friends Of Terrace Lawn Cemetery Committee
North Bay, Ontario, Canada

Dear Fellow Researchers:

1. Terrace Lawn Cemetery is a large 91 years old cemetery near the centre of North Bay, Ontario.

2. The cemetery is slowly but surely deteriorating, mainly because the plots have been all sold and the maintenance of the cemetery is relying mainly on the interest from the Perpetual Care Trust Fund. Most of you likely know with the reduced interest rates over the past 10 years or so....the interest on these funds is also reduced and one does not need to be a banker to paint a clearer picture.

3. All the grave markers in the cemetery have been photographed and are accessable at the Link below.

4. This message is general in nature, but more specifically addressed to descendants of ancestors buried in Terrace Lawn Cemetery in North Bay and who are dispersed all over the world. Should you know a friend or family member who are
descendants, please pass the message to them.

5. The message? Please check http://home.cogeco.ca/~terrace for details about the project and how your help can really make a difference.

June 5, 2005

New Jersey Naturalization Records

There are new free records online for New Jersey Supreme Court & Burlington County Court, Clerks Office for Naturalization records 1818-1898 (P Surnames)

These are found at NaturalizationRecords.com website

June 2, 2005

New York Naturalization Records

I have just finished uploading several more files of surnames in the free online New York Naturalizations records at http://naturalizationrecords.com/
These new records consist of the following additions to the previously uploaded files:

New York Naturalization Petitions Indexes to Books 10-12, 1844-1851. The new additions today are for surnames D, E, F, G, H, J, K, L, & M. The total number of names of individuals in the new uploads is 1,015.

The start of this project is at
New York Naturalization Petitions

The new database is Naturalization Petitions Indexes. New York. Books 3-9, 1834-1844. The surnames completed today and uploaded are M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V Total number of names uploaded today for these years is 1,556

The start of 1834-1844 project is at
Naturalization Petitions for New York 1834-1844


That brings the total number of new names online today to 2,571 (hopefully one is an ancestor!)

The rest will follow as my volunteers finish transcribing and indexing these records. A huge thank you goes to Clinton, Laura, Peggy and Sandy for their hard work on these records.

As always, these naturalization records are FREE for all to use. Just let each page load completely and then scroll down to read the names or choose other pages.