Here's a Quick Way to find Your Ancestors

Hi again,

One of your best friends in tracking accurate data, beyond the living, is the government. For decades and, in some cases, for centuries, governments have been keeping data on their subjects.

The first place to start, now that you have concrete facts on some of your ancestors, which you accumulated through older living relatives and the graveyard, is your provincial or state archives. Archived files such as: birth records, marriage records, land grants, ship's passenger records, death records, and census returns are all readily available and, often, on line.

For me, it was my choice to start with the census returns. I knew the county, the province, and the last known time when the individual was alive at census time. I determined this from the death date on the headstone. The death date of the last person my grandmother remembered, and that I had confirmed in the cemetery, was 1906.

Census returns in Canada occurred every ten years and were normally done in the first year of the decade. So, returns were done in 1871, 1881, 1891 , and 1901. I checked the 1901 census for the correct province and county and, lo and behold, found my great-grandfather. His age was a perfect match.

The census return revealed a wealth of information concerning marital status, literacy, occupation, religion, and country of origin. Under marital status, he was listed as a widower.

Excited by the success, I now did a search in the 1881 census, when he was ten years younger . . .

To be continued . . .

Gary