Friday, March 23, 2012

Canadian Immigration & Census Records for Genealogy - 2012

Yesterday I gave a talk on Canadian immigration and census genealogy records at the Ladner Pioneer Library. On Thursday, March 29th, 2012, I'll be speaking again on the same topic at the Tsawwassen Library, from 2 - 3:30 pm. Free. 1321A - 56th St., Delta, BC V4L 2A6. Library telephone: 604 943 2271. Thank you to both libraries for sponsoring these talks.

There's little doubt in my mind that Ancestry.ca (or .com, etc. or Library Edition) offers the most flexible and comprehensive indexes for both Canadian genealogical on-line census and immigration resources. However, unless a researcher takes advantage of the free web indexes and resources for these topics, especially at Library and Archives Canada, FamilySearch.org and AutomatedGenealogy.com they may well be missing parts of their family puzzle.

Ladner Pioneer Library and the Tsawwassen Library are both part of the Fraser Valley Regional Library system which offers Ancestry Library Edition so participants may use the free Canadian genealogy websites to complement their free Ancestry LE searches at their local libraries. Thank goodness for public libraries - access to Ancestry LE's a great help for genealogists!

I'm posting my current Canadian Census and Immigration Sources handout here so that participants in my sessions have live link to the sites I discussed. (Google Docs link)

Although this is a 4 page .pdf file, it could be much longer, and, of course, sometimes things on the web change quite quickly, so if you are unable to find information on one or another Canadian genealogy sources, please get in touch with me and I will do my best to help.

Monday, March 12, 2012

US Census Taker - 1940 - Unexpected Duty

Have you signed up to assist with indexing of the 1940 US census? You can start by clicking here for the US Census Community Project right now - only 3 weeks to go!

Here are some more people I'll be looking for in April.

Boosting Her Total

SANDOVAL, Ill., April 4.---
A physician, arriving too late to officiate at the birth of a son
to Mrs. Otto Heinrich, found a young woman who
had served as mid-wife bathing the infant. "Are you a
nurse?" he asked. "No, a census taker," she replied.

Found in The Winnipeg Evening Tribune, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, April 4, 1940, page 20.

Thursday, March 01, 2012

Mum in the 1930s - A Silhouette Photo?

Here's something I've been wondering about for a while.

This is a silhouette of my Mum on photo paper. I believe this would be from the early 1930s. There is a studio name on the back as shown below- Lee Studio, Winnipeg. (That might be an initial with the studio name.) Nothing else; this was in an ill-fitting leatherette folder that I'm sure wasn't original.

It looks to me as if a photo was taken, her shoulder image masked and then her silhouette coloured in and rephotographed. Is this likely? Are these images common? I would be very interested to know.






I found some mentions of the Lee Photo Studio in Winnipeg newspapers, including this ad with a photo of A.L. Lee. Previously the Lee Photo Studio had been on Main St.


Glen C. Phillips lists Archie L. Lee as working in Winnipeg from 1916-1925 and also as prop. of the Western Art Gallery from 1905-1915 with Robert T. McFadden in The Western Canada Photographers List (1860-1925) (Milton, Ontario: Global, 2002). The Manitoba Photographers Index 1874-1912 database also lists an A.L. Lee. (On-line at Manitoba Historical Society website: http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/photographers/index.shtml ). I have found few specifics for A. L. Lee and the Lee Photo Studio in Winnipeg so far.