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's First Hybrid Meeting is on Tuesday, September 6th @ 7:30 pm

 

Ontario’s Records of Inheritance on Family Search

Please join Durham Region Branch on Tuesday, September 6th at 7:30 p.m. for our first hybrid meeting!

Are you ready to go beyond census and births, marriages, and deaths? Estate files are rich source for finding family connections and revealing our ancestor’s social and financial circumstances, maybe even personality. As court records, they tend to be very reliable—and even come with indexes. 

Now that FamilySearch.org has digitized an extensive collection of Ontario surrogate court records—we can discover these treasures from home. 

This session will give a brief overview of how the court system worked in Ontario and a step-by-step explanation of how to access the records. It will concentrate on records for Durham Region available through FamilySearch.

Speaker Jane E. MacNamara is the author of Inheritance in Ontario: Wills and other Records for Family Historians (OGS/Dundurn) and 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 Ontario. She teaches courses for the OGS Toronto Branch, most notably hands-on courses about Ontario records—both onsite and online.

This will be the branch’s first hybrid meeting, that is, both in-person and via Zoom. It will be held in the basement meeting room of the Northminster United Church, Simcoe St. N., Oshawa, Ontario (NW corner of Simcoe St. N. and Rossland Rd. W.) for in-person.

For those joining via Zoom, kindly pre-register at the following link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYpf--pqj0uH9Z0C4Smfgs7zfITp24W0Ogi

Everyone is welcome!

Durham Region Branch Announces "Day of Learning" October 19th

Click HERE for more information.

April Meeting to Feature Jane MacNamara

Life on the Farm: Your Ancestor's Place in Ontario Agriculture

Speaker: Jane MacNamara

We often think of farming as a traditional occupation—something that hasn’t really changed much. But that is not and was never the case. Farmers had to react and adapt to changing conditions like climate, technology, economics, new markets and new competitors. Some farmers did more than adapt. They set out to be the most productive by innovating with new techniques and processes, products, and marketing. Farm journals and business records survive in many archives. Farmers may have had help and encouragement along the way from agricultural associations, community groups, government agencies, or private patrons. Digitization of many of the records of these pro-agriculture organizations has made them a viable source to help us understand the changes that were happening around our farming ancestors—and whether they were leading the way or following the pack. Jane's blog is "Where The Story Takes Me".

See our website for details about streaming our meetings.

WHEN:

April 3, 2018 @ 7:30 pm

WHERE:

Bobby Orr Room, Oshawa Civic Recreation Complex99 Thornton Rd SOshawa, ON L1J 5Y1Canada

Mini-Talk: 

Stephen Wood - "My April Fools - The Hillier Dilemma"

Free to all and free parking is on the east side of the building. Please come and bring a friend!

Our May Meeting Will be Streamed Live!

Our general meeting location is at the Main Branch of the Oshawa Library (basement auditorium), 65 Bagot Street, just south of City Hall, at 7:30 pm.

Jane Macnamara - Inheritance Interrupted: WW1 reflected in Ontario Estate files The sudden deaths of so many young Canadian sons (and daughters) changed the normal patterns of inheritance. However, the accompanying records are extremly useful for genealogy. http://wherethestorytakesme.ca/inheritance-interrupted/

Jane is a well-known genealogist and an entertaining speaker. She is the author of Inheritance in Ontario: Wills and Other Records for Family Historians, published by Dundurn and the Ontario Genealogical Society in 2013.

Also, at this meeting we will have the following items:

Brick Wall Bomb - a 10 minute brainstorming session on a problem from the audience 

Mini-Talk (10 minutes) - free software for auto creation of citations

Jane has graciously given permission for her session to be live streamed. The link will be posted on our website (just above the notice of the meeting) shortly before the meeting begins. The session will not be recorded.