Canada Passenger Lists

Passenger lists are one of the most important items you will want to search when looking for your ancestors.

FamilySearch continues to add more records to their collection of Canada passenger lists. These lists cover the period from 1881 to 1922 and the latest additions add a further 33,000 records to the collection.

This collection can be searched by first name and last name. Alternatively, you can browse through the 145,000 images in the collection, which are organized by port of arrival and month/year. Access is free. The link to the entry page for researching passenger lists at Family Search is Historic Canada Passenger Lists

Good luck with your search.

FamilySearch Now Requiring Free Sign In To Help Ensure Online Security

Beginning December 13, 2017, all users of the FamilySearch website will see a prompt to register for a free FamilySearch account or will need to sign in to their existing account to continue enjoying all the free expanded benefits FamilySearch has to offer. Previously, users could access many of the functions of the website without having to log in.

The change was prompted by some of FamilySearch’s partners, who have insisted on authenticated accounts before providing data to FamilySearch. Patron sign in will also enable FamilySearch to satisfy the ongoing need for user authentication. This authentication can deliver rich, personalized discovery, collaboration, and help experiences. Simply put, signed-in visitors can access more searchable content and enjoy more personalized services.

FamilySearch’s privacy policy has also not changed. They still do not share any personal information with third parties without the user’s consent. The most important point though is that the website will continue to remain free.

Since its launch in 1999, FamilySearch has added millions of users, billions of various historical records and new features, such as Family Tree, Memories, mobile apps, digital books, and dynamic help. In order to accommodate continued growth of these and future free services, FamilySearch must assure all its partners that its content is offered in a safe and secure online environment. Patrons creating a free account and signing in fulfills that need.

“A large percentage of our current site visitors are not benefiting from much of what FamilySearch has to offer because they don’t realize the need to simply sign in with their free account to do so,” said Steve Rockwood, FamilySearch CEO. “They are basically arriving in the parking lot but not coming inside for the main event,” he said about website visitors who do not sign in.

Without signing in, there are still a number of things you can do on FamilySearch. You can search the catalogue, digitized books, genealogies, the Wiki, and the learning center, and view user-contributed photos and stories.

If you have not already registered for a free account, visit Registering to use FamilySearch.org for information about creating a free account.

Saving a Web Page as a PDF File

I have been searching trees on Ancestry recently and have found trees containing several people in a line I am following, taking one line of the family file I am working on from Canada back to the 1600’s in France. Of course I am fact checking and sourcing every page as I work through the information. But, rather than going back and forth to the various pages and sourcing information on Ancestry, it is much easier to save the web page as a .pdf file.

An article by Tyler Lacoma in the Digital Trends web site tells exactly how to do that in a variety of different web browsers on Windows, Macintosh, Android, and Apple iOS (iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch).

Source: Eastman On Line Genealogy Newsletter

1921 Census Now Available at Library and Archives Canada

For those of you who do not have a subscription to Ancestry, there is good news. The Canada 1921 census is now available for free on the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) website.

Several years ago, LAC signed a contentious contract with Ancestry whereby in exchange for Ancestry taking the time to digitize and transcribe the Canada 1921 census (or more specifically, the microfilm of the census), Ancestry had the exclusive rights to put the census records on their subscription website for a period of four years starting in August 2013. Now, four years later, LAC has put the records on their website.

With some exceptions, national censuses in Canada are done every ten years. The Canada 1921 census was the sixth national census and it follows the one taken in 1911. One big advantage of the 1921 census is that it asks questions about the birthplace of both parents.

The 1921 census was taken on 1 June 1921. At that time, Canada had a total population count of 8,788,483 people, or about 25% of the country’s population today.

One thing to note with this collection is that the original records from the 1921 census were destroyed when the records were transferred to microfilm back in 1955. The quality of these microfilm images varies enormously, and the odd image is, unfortunately, unreadable.

These records can be searched by first name, last name, age, province and keyword. If you cannot find your ancestors by searching by name, you might want to consider scanning the images by location if you happen to know where your ancestors lived. Alternatively, try searching for your ancestors by alternative name spellings (the Ancestry translation was not always the best). See the LAC website for more details. Access is free.

Source: Internet Genealogy Magazine