Sunday Program

Conference 2012 covers four days of activities.

Thursday / Friday
Saturday
Sunday this page

Here are the speakers.

SUNDAY, JUNE 3

7:30-8:30 Breakfast for ticket holders – cafeteria

8:30 Registration desk opens (until 10:00 am)

9:00-2:00 Marketplace opens

9:00 Research Room opens

9:00-10:00 Concurrent Sessions

S24: David Hemmings – Laura Secord’s Frontier Family Life in 1813

The concept that women could perform acts of bravery and patriotic duty on the front line in a war was not in the British Army’s psyche, nor that of male historians and politicians of the day. The most significant issue for those dealing in espionage and trying to raise children from behind enemy lines was the fear of reprisal or retribution on themselves or their families for an action against the enemy. With a severely-injured husband Laura Secord, whose house had been twice plundered by uncontrolled enemy soldiers and subsequently made into quarters for enemy officers, could not avoid being aware of military plans and manoeuvres. Exhibiting outstanding courage, loyalty and endurance, the walk she made to warn Lt. FitzGibbon and the resulting success at the Battle of Beaver Dams positioned the British and Canadian forces well for the remainder of 1813.

This address will cover the dangers and financial hardships of Laura Secord, and the lives of her seven children, during 1813 and for thirty years after the War. It will discuss the Laura Secord project which recently connected with all of her living direct descendants, added new family history research, and provided up-to-date genealogical and documentary sources.

S25: Sharon Callaghan – Digging Up Genealogy Gems – Quebec Land Records

This session presents Quebec Land Records, a rarely used source of hidden genealogical treasure. The three land registration systems – Seigneury, Township, Cadastre – are reviewed, including their time periods, locations and availability of resources. Pre-search preparation is highlighted, as well as examples of personal data that could be discovered.

S26: Chris Watts – I Never Thought to Look There! Some underused sources for English genealogy

Those researching English ancestors will be familiar with the standard sources of civil registration, censuses, wills and parish registers. This talk will first remind us of some of the aspects of these sources that may have been overlooked. It will then go on to describe a selection of other material that we may have overlooked, or with which we may not be familiar, such as: Estate Duty Office Registers; the contents of the parish chest; marriage licences; divorce; tithe maps, land tax, Lloyd George’s doomsday; manor rolls – to many researchers, new records to assist with English genealogy.

S27: Colleen Fitzpatrick – Genealogy and the Six Degrees of Separation: How to Find Anyone in the World

What if you could find anyone you wanted anywhere in the world? Wouldn’t it make the “impossible” brick wall less daunting and give you hope that you could locate a possible male relative to take a DNA test, or find the family member who has the family bible you saw as a child?

The Six Degrees of Separation is a popular way of describing how small the modern world has become – based on experiments that have shown that on the average any two people in the world are separated by only six steps. The Six Degrees is a measure of an individual’s social network, connecting him to others. But today, advances in communication technology – especially the Internet – have made it so much easier to “reach out and touch someone” – to short-circuit your Six Degrees from someone else and find him in sometimes far fewer than six steps.

If you are interested in fun and exciting ways of finding long lost cousins – or actually anyone for that matter, come hear this talk. The Six Degrees of Separation are History – come learn just how close we really are!

S28: Lois Sparling – Some Loyalist and Late Loyalist Families From Prescott County, Ontario

The area around Hawkesbury and Vankleek Hill was first settled by Loyalists such as the Cass and Van Kleek families, at the end of the eighteenth century. They were soon joined by other Americans seeking economic opportunities. These Late Loyalists included the Bangs and the Bancroft families. By the middle of the nineteenth century, some members of these families moved on to Wisconsin and other parts of the United States which were then opening up to settlers of European origin.

The sources for researching these families in Upper Canada and Canada West include Loyalist records, petitions for land grants, tax assessment lists, land records, court records and gravestone transcriptions. The Court House and Land Registry building in L’Orignal is particularly picturesque. It must be remembered that in this time period rivers were the primary trans­portation routes. Therefore, it is not surprising that the relevant Presbyterian church records were found across the Ottawa River in Chatham, Quebec. Contemporary genealogies researched and prepared by cousins in New England have also been important to research. Census records from 1851 and later show these families intermarrying with each other and those arriving in the area in the latter half of the nineteenth century from Quebec and the British Isles.

10:00-10:30 Break

10:30-11:30 Concurrent Sessions

S29: Stephen Young – WWII Service in the Royal Canadian Navy

What records are available and how to use them to document the naval career of your ancestor during the Second World War.

S30: Fran Murphy – Case Study: Lieutenant Leonard Kellogg, 27th Brigade Infantry, New York

If your family was American in the time of the War of 1812, the case study of this lieutenant will be of interest. Many members of families living in the border states of New York and Ohio and Michigan participated in the fighting and their family members were affected financially. By drawing on the case study of Lieutenant Leonard Kellogg (1781-1817) from Manilius, Onondaga County, New York, this presentation will explore the different military records of soldiers who fought on the American side of the War. The presentation will demonstrate how to find documents in military Service records from NARA, War of 1812 pension rolls, Regiment muster rolls, military cemeteries, local newspapers, and history collections.

S31: Lesley Anderson and Glenn Wright – From There to Here: Searching Immigration Records from Ancestry.ca and Beyond

In this presentation, we will review the immigration resources at Ancestry.ca, Library and Archives Canada, other web sites and all those records that are not indexed or digitized that can be used to discover how our ancestors arrived here from there – a vast topic, but we hope to direct attention not only to the well-known resources but to other, less familiar sources.

S32: Lisa Louise Cooke – How to Create Exciting Interactive Family History Tours with Google Earth

Google Earth is much more than just a mapping program. In this presentation you will learn how to harness Google Earth’s capabilities by using it as a creative multi-media way to tell your ancestor’s story and leave a legacy for future generations. Learn how to incorporate images, videos, genealogical documents, and historic maps and bring it all together in a unique virtual family history tour that you can share on blogs, websites, by email and more, as well as use to further your research through geographic analysis.

S33: Serge Paquet – Where is this and what is it called? Understanding townships, districts and counties

Terms like townships, districts or counties are important when crossing the bridge between records as diverse as early census records, assessment rolls, and land registry records, and those who created or hold them. Yet, how these levels of local government related, what they did and which ones produced what records can be difficult to understand. This session will look at what townships, counties and districts are and how these levels of local governments changed over time in Ontario, and the records they produced. We will also look at some of the tools that can help in locating and linking local governments. This session will not be about Archives of Ontario’s records per se, but resources available at the Archives will be included, and information provided in the session will help in researching various AO records, such as early marriage registers and court records.

11:30-1:00 Lunch for ticket holders – cafeteria

1:00-2:00 Concurrent Sessions

S34: Phil Ainsworth – Collision of the Flu Pandemic and an Idyllic World

On the heels of World War I and its massive impact, came the influenza pandemic of 1918 which further decimated the population when it was brought to North America by returning soldiers. A case study of the effects of the pandemic on Prince Edward County and parts of Hastings County is examined. The researcher used the death registrations for the period of September 1918 to March 1919, using records available on Ancestry.ca. Summary data were analysed by age group and sex to show how the age group most affected was the older youth and young adults, i.e. those normally least impacted by influenza. The local effects were also compared to those of Toronto, North America and globally. Other records such as newspapers of the period and school attendance records were studied for information on how the local community reacted and prevented a more severe spread of the disease. Descendants of victims were tracked down and interviewed. Photos and other material were collected.

The presenter shows the effects that were personally experienced by his ancestors. Genealogists should find the methodology used, reproducible to examine their own family histories. In particular the use of death registers, newspaper reports and school records is presented.

S35: Chris Watts – British Army (1760-1913): Officers and Other Ranks

Many thousands of men served in the British Army, many of them spent time overseas. Most, of course, returned with their regiments; death prevented others from returning home – but many there were who chose to settle. Copious records survive of the men, and officers, who comprised the regiments of the British Army. The originals of these are to be found at The National Archives (TNA) at Kew, just outside London, but some of the key material has been digitised. This material and how it may be used to trace the career and origins of British soldiers, whether an officer or an other rank, is described in this presentation.

The talk limits itself tracing those who served up to the start of the First World War. This is for very practical reasons, namely the fact that the organisation of the records changes quite markedly at that date and, in the time available, it will be a hard task even to cover the key material for that earlier period.

S36: Lois Sparling – Salt Lake City Here We Come!

The biggest and arguably the best genealogy library in the world is the Family History Library of the Church of Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah. Preparations for a research trip to any major repository require reviewing the online catalogue and planning your research strategies to make full use of what is available. For people relatively new to family history research, there will be a review of the basics such as checking the location, hours of operation and rules of the facility. There are supplies and equipment which are helpful to bring. There are research aids which the intrepid researcher can prepare for the trip, including copies of maps, alphabetized lists of surname variations and associated surnames, word lists and timelines.

It is important to understand how to use the FHLC to find all the records pertinent to the surname, the locality and the time period. It is also important to prioritize since, inevitably, there will not be enough time to carefully review everything you want to see.

S37: Meldon J. Wolfgang III, F.G.B.S – Keepers of the Family Stuff: Some “Best Practice” Tips on Maintaining the Family Home Archives for Genealogists and Family Historians
Despite the advent of the digital age, every genealogist/family historian has lots of “stuff” – loose papers, folders, index cards, notebooks, documents, newspaper clippings, photographs and much, much more, all containing important and often irreplaceable family information. Over time, all this “stuff” turns into the family archives, often entirely by accident.  Some genealogists are well organized; frankly, most are not. In fact, most rely on their memory to locate and identify items in the family archives. Can anybody else identify those folks in that 1906 photograph? Should you meet with an unforeseen catastrophe; will anybody else even know who “Hortense” was and why her scrapbook was in your closet? Are all those scraps of paper worth saving, or should they be consigned to the trash bin now that you’ve copied the information into your computer database?
An unorganized and undescribed collection of family photos and documents is difficult to work with, hard to maintain and prone to destruction, especially when it passes out of the control of the genealogist who assembled it all. Will your heirs know what you’ve left behind?  This session discusses the need to think like a professional archivist (even when your entire “family archives” fits on the shelf in your closet) and offers practical suggestions for processing, organizing, cataloguing and preserving the “family stuff”.

S38: Jane MacNamara – Ma owned the farm: Women as landowners in Ontario