Don't Miss the Free BMD Postems!

Mike of Genealogy Gazette mentioned a little known and under-used resource for genealogists on his Twitter feed. I checked it out and realized he's right - it's a gold mine for genealogists that is overlooked for the most part!

Those of us with English ancestry no doubt know of Free BMD. This is the volunteer based website where you can search indexes to find the GRO reference for birth, marriage and death certificates. It's invaluable. I use it frequently. But I never realized there is a little feature called Postems.

Postems allow visitors to add information to an index entry once found. So a genealogist could find an entry for an ancestor, send for the certificate and then enter some of the details on the Postem for that index entry. Mike pointed out that if more genealogists filled these out we could all benefit.

Of course we have to avoid posting copyright material so I personally would not copy and submit the actual certificate word for word. But there's no reason a summary could not be submitted - for a birth registration you could simply submit the parents' names.

After reading Mike's tip, I immediately went to Free BMD and started adding my Postems for ancestors whose certificates I have, and who are found in the index on that site. I simply added one or two sentences such as this one for the marriage index entry for my ancestor Charles Simpson

"Charles Simpson married Sally Page. I have photos. Contact me at lorine@blah.com"

Now anyone looking for Charles will hopefully see that Postem and can contact me!

Further exploration of the FreeBMD website revealed that visitors can search all Postems! So I searched for "SIMPSON" I was amazed to get 220 hits! These are all Postems, that is, user-added notes and details. I'm not about to slog through all 220 so I simply began adding more targeted keywords to find the Simpson entries I would be interested in.

What a great resource. I hope all my readers with English ancestry will give it a try and start adding their own Postems. My New Year's Resolution is to add *ALL* of my English ancestors' certificate details to the FreeBMD Postems in the year 2011. Why  not join me?

12 Months of Finding Ancestors: Almshouse Records More than a List of the Poor (Part 4)

Welcome to Part 4 of a 12 month series about finding and using less obvious genealogy records to find ancestors. Almshouse records (or poorhouse records) are often overlooked in our genealogy research.

Almshouse records have a two-fold benefit, one obvious, the other not so obvious. I'm sure it's pretty obvious to all of us that records kept for an Almshouse or Poorhouse will include a list of residents. So if your ancestor was impoverished you may find out that he or she was in an Almshouse, and you may find more details that were unknown to you.

Also we as genealogists need to realize that in the early 1800's port cities in the USA bore the burden of immigration. By the time they arrived, so many immigrants were tired, hungry and poor they ended up in the City Almshouse. So be sure to check Almshouse records for the port city where your ancestor arrived.

Here is where the less obvious benefit comes into play. In my own research into Almshouse records for New York I stumbled on some fascinating information. Within the lists of residents in the almshouse I was researching were the names of the ships each resident sailed on from their homeland to North America.

The 1819-1840 Almshouse records contained for each resident the Date of Admission; Age; Place of Birth; Vessel Name; and Where From. A quick glance at the list revealed many of the residents were entire families. Many left from Canadian ports which may indicate they first arrived in Canadian ports rather than New York. Canadian arrival ports were much cheaper than American ones.


The 1855-1858 Almshouse records I consulted were more detailed. They contained the Individual's name, age, where they were from Name of Ship, Date of sailing, Ports of departure and arrival, Captain's Name, Owner's Name, Date of Bond, Sureties, Date Discharged, Death Date and Remarks.

Olive Tree Genealogy has published one side of each ledger page (there are 2 sides per person) for these New York Almshouse records online and you can consult them by using the links given above.

I do not know if other port cities in other states contain the same amount of detail in their Almshouse records but it is worth a look if you are hunting for an immigrant ancestor.

12 Months of Finding Ancestors: Upper Canada Sundries (Part 3 of a 12 Part Series)

Welcome to Part 3 of a 12 month series about finding and using less obvious genealogy records to find ancestors. The Upper Canada Sundries are an invaluable genealogical resource but many researchers have never used them.

The Upper Canada Sundries, aka Civil Secretary's Correspondence  are found at LAC (Library and Archives Canada) and at the Ontario Archives. They consist of 32 volumes on 14 reels of microfilm and are an assorted collection of, as the name implies, correspondence.

The main responsibility of the Civil or private Secretary to the Lieutenant Governor was management of correspondence. The Secretary ensured that it was acknowledged, referred onward or filed. Closely related were the duties of receiving and acknowledging Addresses, petitions, memorials and applications for office; transmitting Messages and public documents to the Legislature; and referring petitions to the appropriate public offices for opinion or advice prior to submission to the Executive Council.

Although the province of Upper Canada did not come into existence until 1791, supporting documents of earlier date have been incorporated into some series of its records.

The Sundries are filed chronologically. There is no name index but the wealth of genealogical information makes them worthwhile to browse through. They contain an assortment of such genealogical items as undated petitions, marriage certificates, land records, letters, petitions for land, testimonies during wartime, military records, petitions for mercy for those charged with treason, etc.

Following is one example which I found during a lengthy search of the Upper Canada Sundries. It concerns the daughter of my Loyalist Ancestor Isaac Van Valkenburg aka Vollick. It reads as follows with my notes inside square brackets [ ]:

This will testify that Albert Hainer a Private in the late Corps of Rangers [referring to Butler's Rangers, whose disbanded soldiers settled the Niagara area of present day Ontario], is married to Catharine Folluck [sic. More commonly written as Vollick or Follick], the daughter of Isaac Follluck, likewise a soldier in said Corps and that she comes under the description of a Loyalists Daughter, and is entitled [can't read next word] U.E. [Unity of Empire, a title applied to Loyalists once they were accepted by the Council and officially declared a Loyalist] and that said Albert Hainer now has five children.

Dated Newark, 14 May 1796.

Source: FHL 1683290 p. 137 of Civil Secreatry's Correspondence, upper Canada, Upper Canada Sundries 1791-1800 RG5 A1 Vol. 1A pp41-556.

It has some pretty amazing genealogy information! I have more proof that my Loyalist ancestor Isaac was in Butler's Rangers, that he had a daugher Catherine who married Albert Hainer before May 1796 and that Albert and Catherine had 5 children by that date. This document also tells me that Albert was also a soldier in Butler's Rangers and that Catherine's father has been approved as a Loyalist (as per her being allowed the title of U.E. after her name)

This leads me to more research - I would now hunt for petitions for both Isaac Vollick, his daughter Catherine and her husband Albert Hainer. They should all have applied for land as Loyalists and their petitions should be found in the Upper Canada Land Petitions.

And thus a new avenue of research opens for me. (As an aside, I have already done this research and have found many petitions for all members of the large family Isaac Vollick brought with him from New York.)

12 Months of Finding Ancestors: Life Insurance Records (Part 2 of a 12 Part Series)

Welcome to Part 2 of a 12 month series about finding and using less obvious genealogy records to find ancestors. Last month we talked about Medical Records and how they are often overlooked in our ancestor searching.

This month let's explore Life Insurance records. These can be difficult to find, and you will have to be very creative in your hunt for survining records. But you can start with a check of local archives as well as websites for various insurance companies. At the Insurance Company websites be sure to look to see if they have a historical archives.

Family Tree Connection holds many Insurance Company records You can search for a name of interest but must purchase a subscription to view details.

Some records are in books. We were lucky enough to inherit a book called "Report of the Superintendent of Insurance of the Dominion of Canada for the Year Ending 31st December 1890"

The book was published in 1891 in Ottawa, Canada, and included in its pages are approximately 60 pages of names of shareholders and guarantors for various Insurance and Assurance Companies across Canada.

The date for the list of names is 1890 and the wonderful thing about these is that they include people from all over Canada, as well as USA and Europe.

Each individual has a residence listed, in some cases, an actual street address. What really intrigued me about these lists was that the residences included such places as:

Ontario, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Scotland, New York, Quebec, Vermont, Pennsylvania, NWT, England, Illinois, India, Newfoundland, Manitoba, Cape Breton, Jamaica, Ireland, Kentucky, Tennessee, Massachussets, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Channel Islands, and Wales.

These lists can be used simply to verify that an individual lived in a certain place in 1890. They also contain quite a bit of detail for some entries, which are terrific clues for further research. We transcribed the names in this book and have placed them online for genealogists to search

You can see a list of the Company Records that we have transcribed and published online. Just click on any link to view the list of names. This is an ongoing project for OliveTreeGenealogy.com and you will have to check back to see when it is updated with more names.

The complete list of Company Records follows:

* The Accident Insurance Company of North America (List of Shareholders)
* The Boiler Inspection & Insurance Company of Canada (List of Shareholders)
* British America Assurance Company (List of Shareholders)
* Canada Accident Insurance Company (List of Shareholders)
* The Canada Life Assurance Company (List of Shareholders)
* The Citizens' Insurance Company of Canada (List of Shareholders)
* Confederation Life Association (List of Shareholders)
* The Dominion Life Assurance Company (List of Shareholders)
* Dominion Safety Fund Life Association (List of Stockholders)
* Dominion Plate Glass Insurance Company (List of Stockholders)
* Eastern Assurance Company of Canada (List of Shareholders)
* Federal Life Assurance Company (List of Shareholders)
* Guarantee Company of North America (List of Shareholders)
* London Life Insurance Company (List of Shareholders)
* Manufacturers' Accident Insurance Company (List of Stockholders)
* Manufacturers LIfe Insurance Company (List of Shareholders)
* North American Life Assurance Company (List of Guarantors)
* Quebec Fire Assurance Company (List of Stockholders)
* Royal Canadian Insurance Company (List of Stockholders)
* Sun Life Insurance Company (List of Shareholders)
* The Temperance and General Life Assurance Company (list of Guarantors)
* Western Assurance Company (List of Shareholders)

I urge researchers to hunt for Life Insurance records for an elusive ancestor! It is another set of records that is not often thought of but the details you can find about an ancestor can be quite thrilling!

12 Months of Finding Ancestors: Medical Records (Part 1 of a 12 Part Series)

Welcome to Part 1 of a 12 month series about finding and using less obvious genealogy records to find ancestors.

An excellent set of records to find out more detail about an ancestor are medical records. Often you will find information about family members - parents and siblings or other relatives.

Medical records will be found in various repositories, depending on the town, province, state, county or country you are looking in. It also depends on the year of your interest (privacy laws differ in every country) and the type of medical record you want.

For example you might want asylum records or hospital records or medical records from a prison or institution.

The first step I suggest is to search the Family History Library Catalog. This will allow you to see what records, if any, have been microfilmed by the Family History Library in Salt Lake City Utah. I did a quick search by title for MEDICAL and found over 300 sets of records including the following examples:

* Danvers (Mass.) medical records, 1878-1917 Massachusetts State Hospital (Danvers, Massachusetts)
* City of Halifax and Town of Dartmouth medical examiners' reports, 1895-Jan. 1931 Halifax and Dartmouth (Nova Scotia). Medical Examiner
* Applications for medical licenses, 1788-1848 Lower Canada. Provincial Secretary (while not medical records of patients, this would be an excellent resource for anyone seeking an ancestor who was a doctor)
* Kentucky medical history, WPA research project records, 1801-1940 Redmon, Sherrill
* Medical account books of Thomas Henry Dunn in Middlesex County [Virginia] 1852- 1853 Dunn, Thomas Henry
* Medical bills, 1826 Dunsfold (Surrey)
* Medical or physicians registers, 1886-1982 Prince Edward County (Virginia). Clerk of County Court

Next, look at what medical records are held state-wide or province-wide or county-wide. Find out what has survived, where it is stored and what you are allowed to access

Then look at what medical records are held locally (by city, town, township, parish, etc) Find out what has survived, where it is stored and what you are allowed to access

When I wanted to find out what happened to my husband's great grandfather's sister Ada, all I had to go on were whispers that Ada had died in the insane asylum in London Ontario in the early 1900s.

My first step was to find out if that asylum was still in existence. I discovered it was, but under a different name.

Next step was to phone the current hospital that used to be the insane asylum and ask about their records from 1900-1920. They informed me those were deposited in the Ontario Archives based in Toronto

Next I visited the Ontario Archives website, looked for what they had in medical records. There they were:

RG 10-279 London Psychiatric Hospital patients' clinical casebooks 1867-1906
RG 10-280 London Psychiatric Hospital patients' clinical case files 1906-1974
RG 10-281 London Psychiatric Hospital patient registers 1870-1957
RG 10-282 Records of the Medical Superintendent of the London Psychiatric Hospital 1878-1970
RG 10-283 Records of the Bursar of the London Psychiatric Hospital 1865-1923

Next I emailed the Archives to inquire about obtaining Ada's medical files. They conducted a search and emailed back to inform me that Ada's records were there (100 plus pages!) and that they were available if I submitted a Freedom of Information request. This of course is specific to Ontario and that is why you must search your own area's privacy laws and regulations once you find the medical records you need.

A little tip - if submitting a request for information in Ontario under the FOI (Freedom of Information), you have two choices. You can use an FOI request form which requires payment.

To avoid payment, you can simply write a letter stating your name, what information you are requesting, and that you are requesting this under the Freedom of Information, and send that letter to the instutition or repository that holds the records you want.

After submitting my FOI request via letter to the Ontario Archives, they copied Ada's file, censored it (but not too much was blacked out) and mailed the copies to me. This file contained a wealth of detail about poor Ada and what happened to her, when she died and the official cause of death, but the files also contained information on Ada's parents, including copies of letters sent by her brother and mother to the hospital.

All in all it was a lengthy task to find those medical records but well worth the effort.