Durham's January 7th Zoom Meeting: Where Have All the Obits Gone?

 

Please join Durham Region Branch on Tuesday, January 7th at 7:30 pm as Gordon McBean tackles the topic “Where have all the obits gone?

Some argued that there was no need for genealogical societies to record obits anymore, once online obituaries became available. After all, it’s all online now! Due to the high cost of publishing obits many people are only publishing brief notices and then using the Funeral Homes website to publish a complete obit. Funeral Home sites are not permanent and newspapers are closing and their websites disappearing.

A detailed obituary will focus on the important moments that made up the life of a loved one. Including short anecdotes which show readers the true character of the person who has passed away. An obituary is the final record of a person’s life: their achievements, interests, passions and milestones. Because published obituaries become part of the public record, obituaries keep the memory of those we loved alive. Who is ensuring the information will be preserved when newspapers shut down and websites disappear.

Gordon McBean, a member of the Manitoba Genealogical Society (MGS) since 1996, has been actively involved in the organization, including serving as past president and VP of Information Technology from 2011 to 2017. He played a crucial role in developing the MGS MANI online database, which now includes over 1,500,000 index records. A retired Educational Technologist from Red River College, Gordon supported staff with technology training and is also an avid photographer and outdoor enthusiast. In 2023, he was honored with the Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers for his significant contributions to genealogy and community service.

This will be a Zoom only meeting Everyone is welcome to attend.

Kindly pre-register at:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0scemtqzMvGNYLfDTYeSdlprT68-KXS9l_

Durham's Dec. 3rd Christmas Meeting (In-person only): Library Research - Bring & Brag - Christmas Potluck Treats

 

Please join Durham Region Branch on Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024 @ 7:30 pm as we celebrate the holiday season (in-person only).

The meeting will be held in the “Steven and Lori Wood Library” in the 3rd floor Boardroom of Northminster United Church. The library will be open at 7 pm, so bring your research questions and see what resources we have. The library holds a very eclectic collection, covering far more than Durham Region.

The meeting will start at approximately 7:30 and will feature items that attendees have brought for the “Show & Tell”. Look around your collection and bring something that you wish to brag about and astound the audience.

During this very informal meeting, we will be providing hot cider and other drinks. Please bring a few Christmas treat to share with others and enjoy the comradery.

Northminster United Church is located at the north-west corner of Simcoe St. N. and Rossland Rd. W. at 676 Simcoe St. N, Oshawa. The parking lot of the church is located off Carnegie Ave. (1 block west of Simcoe St on Rossland Rd).  Parking is also allowed on the side streets nearby, and in the school parking lot on the south-east corner of Simcoe and Rossland. The door to the meeting is located facing Rossland Rd. W. Please note that the lift for the church is extremely unreliable, so please use the stairs. We will have chairs on the landings for you to rest if needed.

Durham Branch's Nov. 5th Meeting - The United Church of Canada Archives

 

The United Church of Canada Archives – Kyle Pugh, Archivist

Please join Durham Region Branch on Tuesday, Nov 5, 2024 @ 7:30 pm as we welcome Kyle Pugh, the Archivist for the United Church of Canada Archives.

Celebrating its 100th anniversary next year, the United Church of Canada (UCC) is the country's largest mainline Protestant denomination.  Formed in 1925 with the union of the Methodist, Congregational, and Presbyterian Unions, the United Church Archives houses thousands of vital statistic registers and historic rolls.  Kyle Pugh, the Ontario Regional Councils Archivist, will be exploring these resources, as well as providing valuable tips on navigating the United Church's collections.

 Kyle Pugh is the Ontario Regional Councils Archivist at the United Church of Canada Archives.  In this capacity, he leads the team responsible for the acquisition and preservation of records from Ontario's regional councils and communities of faith.  

November is also our Annual General Meeting - please consider volunteering to help keep our branch strong.

This will be a completely virtual meeting.  Please register at the following Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEsdOyhrDMtE9L9G1RyvwHrmihXp-vIZmYS

Update on Website

 Our website is still under construction!

We are still at:  https://timetraces.com/durhambranch/

NEW!! Durham Region Branch's Temporary Website

Due to unforeseen circumstances, Durham Region Branch's website has not been updated for 10 months. The links still work, but we are unable to update and add our upcoming meetings!

With many thanks to Dan Delong, we have a new temporary website using our backup pages.

You will find it at:  https://timetraces.com/durhambranch/

We are currently working on streamlining our site and hope to have our new refreshed website up soon.

Thank you for your patience.

Durham's Sept. 3rd Virtual Meeting - All Kinds of Loyalists

 

All Kinds of Loyalists – presented by Kathryn Lake Hogan, U.E.

During the American Revolutionary War, approximately 35% of the population of the Thirteen Colonies was loyal to King George III of Great Britain. Was your ancestor one of them? How do you know if your ancestor was a Loyalist? In this presentation, learn what to look for in documents and records to determine if your ancestor meets the qualifications of being a Loyalist.

It all started when Kathryn Lake Hogan, UE, PLCGS, was a Girl Guide leader wanting the girls in her group to learn about their heritage. Why not teach them about researching their family history? To do so, Kathryn had to first learn how to research her own ancestry. That was over 18 years ago, and today, Kathryn is an author, educator, speaker and professional genealogist specialising in finding your ancestors in Canada. She is the owner of the Canadian-based genealogy business, Looking4Ancestors. 

Kathryn is the past Dominion Genealogist of the United Empire Loyalists’ Association of Canada, and a past Director-at-Large with the Association of Professional Genealogists. 

This will be a Zoom only meeting and everyone is welcome.  

Please pre-register at the following Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcqf-qvrD4rGdHeT-yEvJhRyx8hVtJ3nkrV

Durham's June 4th Hybrid Meeting - Untangling Township Papers with Jane MacNamara

Please join Durham Branch on Tuesday, June 4th @ 7:30 pm as we welcome one of our favourite speakers, Jane MacNamara. She will be joining us virtually.

Jane will be talking about “Untangling Township Records”.

Township Papers are a highly-organized series of records—resulting from the very hectic and disorganized activities of the Crown Lands Department. Consider some 72 metres of “orphaned” land-related records, often submitted or pulled from their original files because of a dispute or enquiry. Before being sent to the Archives of Ontario, these records were sorted by township and lot to make them accessible. Not quite comprehensive, but covering a large percentage of Ontario properties, these files may contain everything from warrants, location tickets, and settlement duty certificates, to assignments and transfers, explanatory notes and diagrams, letters from neighbours and other witnesses—anything that might prove ownership or occupancy and settle disputes. This session will show you how to check your ancestor’s property and neighbouring properties, understand the documentation you find and to follow the clues to untangle the full story.

BIO:

Jane E. MacNamara, Toronto, genealogy lecturer, instructor, and author of Inheritance in Ontario: Wills and other Records for Family Historians. She writes about genealogy at wherethestorytakesme.ca. A long-time member of OGS, Jane lectures about research methodology, Ontario, and English family history to genealogical and historical groups throughout southern Ontario. She teaches courses for the OGS Toronto Branch, most notably hands-on courses about Ontario records.

This will be a hybrid meeting. Everyone is welcome.  

In-person will be in our Branch library on the 3rd floor at Northminster United Church, 676 Simcoe St. N., Oshawa, ON. Parking can be limited.

For virtual attendees, please pre-register at the following Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMrfu-vqjsuE9QM46HVlxRwSrKKiedXg_54

Durham Branch’s May 7th Meeting (hybrid) : Following the Trails of the Betts Bibles – Beth Adams

 

It took close to 30 years to follow the trail from a Betts family bible in Pickering to an older one in California, that led back to family roots in Colonial Connecticut.

Beth Adams got hooked on genealogy when her Aunt Charlotte took her and her mother to visit the Betts House, an old stone home that her 2x great grandfather had helped to build on Westney Rd. in Pickering.  The house was fantastic — but the family bible her cousin Myra got out to show them was the clincher! Inside that bible was a typewritten transcript of the family pages from an even older bible! And there was another house at the end of the search!

Beth Adams is teacher who retired to Pembroke after a 30-year teaching career in Toronto. She is on the Education Committee for Toronto Branch and presents frequently for OGS, BIFHSGO, and UELAC. Beth started doing family history research in her late teens and has loved "chasing dead people" ever since! She has also helped family and friends with their DNA results.

In-person will be in our Branch library on the 3rd floor at Northminster United Church, 

676 Simcoe St. N., Oshawa, ON. Parking can be limited.

For virtual, please register at the following Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUpdO-grT4sHN0RczYjliRMYfgngEmr5Z98

Durham Branch's April 2nd Meeting - "They Sure Moved Around!"

Durham Branch presents “They Sure Moved Around!” on 2 April 2024

Please join Durham Branch at 7:30 pm April 2nd for a hybrid meeting as Sher Leetooze, local author and historian, presents “They Sure Moved Around!”

Sher will be in person at Northminster United Church, 676 Simcoe St. N., Oshawa, ON (NW corner of Simcoe Street North and Rossland Road West). Parking can be limited.

If joining online, kindly pre-register at:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAude2grzstHNx8Tsob2Zit6OsZ05EHGdda

Description:

Sometimes we lose our ancestors – not because they die, or we’re not doing a very good search – but because they moved away. Most of the time we don’t know why they moved, and we may never know why they moved.

Doing a recent genealogical search for a man from the US, I followed his family from Darlington Township down to Kent County and environs and in doing so blew some family myths out the window!

Ontario isn’t really all that big, so let’s look at some of the resources in other parts of the province that you can call on to dispel some of our ancestral fog!

Bio:

Sher has been doing her own genealogy for over 40 years – a family’s story is never quite finished! But besides doing her own family, Sher has assisted others to follow the paper trail backward for their families. You might say enjoys the genealogical search – anybody’s genealogical search! With each new search Sher learns about new resources that should not be overlooked, or looked at again. This is what she will speak about at April’s presentation.

Everyone is welcome!

 

Durham Branch’s March 5th ZOOM Meeting: The History of Camp 30 – Dr. Amy Barron

 The History of Camp 30 – Dr. Amy Barron

Tuesday, March 5, 2024 @ 7:30 pm – ZOOM only Meeting. Everyone is welcome!

How did a Bowmanville Boys Reform school end up housing top-ranking German POWs in the Second World War?  Durham Region played many parts in the overseas war effort including hosting important German officers whose one mission to get back to Germany led to many interesting escape attempts.  Life in Camp 30 had many interesting ups and downs, from local recreation activities to the “Battle of Bowmanville”.  And what will become of this important national historic site now?

Dr. Amy Barron received her PhD at the University of Toronto in the field of Mesopotamian history and archaeology, specializing on the military history of Iron Age Assyria.  She has excavated predominantly in the Middle East but has travelled widely studying the archaeology of various remote parts of the world from Peru to China.  Amy has taught archaeology, ancient history and classics at the universities of Toronto and Guelph and presently teaches museum studies in Fleming College’s post-graduate program.  She has worked in the museum world for over 30 years and loves sharing her passion for the past.

Please register at the following link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZItc--srz8qGNZ_T5v6QvIUuyz94fHMuKda

Durham’s website has been temporarily moved to the following url:

 https://timetraces.com/durhambranch/

Invitation: 2026 Census of Population Dissemination Consultation

2026 Census of Population Dissemination Consultation

It is imperative that the genealogists’ point of view be heard by the government and Stats Can when they are designing the next Canadian census! 

We don’t want a repeat of the debacle that happened when StatsCan refused to release the 1906 Census of the Western Provinces in 1998 and by implication all future releases as well. It took a court challenge and an intensive letter writing campaign, as well as the hard work of Senator Lorna Milne to get it released in Jan. 2003.  https://archive.ifla.org/IV/ifla74/papers/117-Milne-en.pdf

Instead we got an unsatisfactory compromise where people can opt-in to having their information released 92 years later. Of course, many people leave that question blank, because they really don’t know the implications. Their information will never be released, so there will be huge gaps in family information when the 2006, 2011, 2016, and 2021 censuses are released. It will be a sad day for future genealogists, demographers and historians; our grandchildren and great-grandchildren!

Use the link above to make our views known. You have until March 31st!

It took me about 7 minutes to fill this out. Unfortunately there wasn’t a comment field. 

Nancy Trimble, Durham Branch Chair

Durham Branch’s February 6th Meeting with Dave Obee - "Between Friends / Entre Amis: Cousins Across the Border"

Please join Durham Branch on Tuesday, February 6th @ 7:30 pm as we welcome one of our favourite speakers, Dave Obee.  He will be speaking on “Between Friends / Entre Amis: Cousins Across the Border”.  This meeting will be on Zoom only [link below].

Many of us have cousins in another country, and many Canadians and Americans have family members across that long, undefended border.  This talk gives some examples of cross-border ties, along with advice on how to search in the other country.  It could be that clues in one country can help solve genealogical mysteries in the other.  And yes, DNA testing is helping us to find relatives we did not know we had.

Our presenter, Dave Obee, is a journalist and genealogical researcher who has written a dozen books and given more than 700 presentations at conferences and seminars in Canada, the United States and Australia since 1997.  He is Editor and Publisher of the Times Colonist in Victoria, British Columbia.  

In 2012, the University of Victoria presented Dave with an honourary doctorate of laws for his work as a journalist, historian and genealogist.  He has received several other national and provincial awards. Read more about Dave. 

Dave also runs CanGenealogy, a link site that is selective and sorted for ease of use, and Volhynia.com, a website dedicated to the old German colonies in the northwest corner of Ukraine.

Everyone is welcome.  Kindly pre-register at the following link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAtd–rrj4vGt319WIcXInzLvxBRd7mstRz