New Search Tool for Canadian Find A Grave Records

There is a fairly new Find a Grave search page that makes it easy to narrow down the results when looking for Canadian gravesites and cemeteries.

Ken Lange was frustrated with searching for Canadian records and stated that “for the most part, we all love Find A Grave, and I’m sure everyone has benefited from information gleaned from the site at some point in time. However, as a Canadian, I have long been frustrated by the fact that when searching for memorials in Canada, you can’t narrow the search down even to a province… Canada is a big country, and while not at populous as the US, this still leads to unnecessary sifting through records, especially for common surnames. I don’t know if there are existing tools out there to address this problem, and I’m hoping that Ancestry will fix this sometime soon. But out of frustration a while back I took matters into my own hands and modified the Find a Grave search page for Canadian searches so that you can at least specify a province.

I don’t know if it will work with all browsers in all environments, but I’ve had it working in IE, Firefox, and Chrome.”

Follow the link below to search for Canadian gravestones and cemeteries at FindAGrave.

Find a Grave Search Page for Canadian Searches

Happy hunting!

Findmypast to release four Irish collections in September, 2016

Findmypast plans to release four Irish record collections in September, 2016 that should help many family historians further their research. According to Brian Donovan, global head of Irish Collections at Findmypast.com, the British-based online genealogy company will release the Valuation Office Field and House Books on September 15^th, 2016. These records, which contain about two million names, will allow us to go back a generation earlier than Griffith’s Valuation.

Another large collection that will interest many family historians will be the Merchant Marine Records that contain almost one million names. What is especially interesting about these records is that they provide the individual’s age, place of birth, next of kin, and their entire career. Half of the merchant marines were from Ireland and the other half were from Britain, continental Europe, and America.

Two other Irish collections planned for release are Irish Wills 1858-1922 and Catholic Qualifications and Convert Rolls. (During the 18th century, the only way for Catholics to own land, have a profession, run for office, or go to school was to go to court to convert to the established Episcopalian church.)

For anyone who is not a subscriber, Findmypast offers some Irish collections for free, such as the 1901 and 1911 censuses and Irish Catholic parish registers. They are able to do so because of their partnership with The National Archives of Ireland.

Note: One of the perks of being a member of the Qualicum Beach Family History Society is that members are entitled to a 50% discount subscription to Findmypast. Members must log in and then open the “Find My Past Membership” page for more information on receiving the discount code. Trouble logging in? Contact the webmaster for your login information.

Confusion and joy from AncestryDNA test results

In his blog of August 4th, 2016, Chris Paton stated, “A few months ago Ancestry very kindly supplied me with an AncestryDNA kit for a review. The results from my test are now available – was it worth the effort?

There are two ways that AncestryDNA says it can help with your ancestral understanding, based on an examination of a tester’s autosomal DNA, which is inherited from both parents. The first is to give you a statement as to your ethnic identity and make-up, the second is to match you to potential cousins. My conclusion from the results is that one of these is just odd in terms of what is presented, whereas the other is indeed likely to be a massively major tool for the ancestral toolkit … “

To read the entire article, please click here.