Friday, 18 September 2015

UE Loyalist lineages: Now easy to research online for free! Part III

The third in an eight part series to help people with potential UE Loyalist lines access the wealth of documentation available online for free, as well as offline sources that can provide further evidence linking generations.


Step 2. Search FamilySearch again, access Canadian vital records there or at provincial sites


The initial FamilySearch query in Step 1, if done broadly, would have screened the following provincial vital records/indexes as well:
Two collections are not indexed but the images are online for browsing. New Brunswick, Provincial Returns of Deaths, 1815-1919 (80,741 images) and  Prince Edward Island Death Card Index, 1721-1905 (15,903 images). (PEI has a very small population).

If your research led you to expect a vital record from one of the sources, but it did not appear, make sure to adjust the query (type=death only, etc.). Go broader (removing date or place restrictions) or, if you get too many potential records to weed through, use the census information to further refine the query by date and place. If that still does not work, search on every known family member who could also have a vital record. Your ancestor may fall outside a record set's timeline, but their children or sibling may be recorded. As mentioned above, some families were reticent about registering and some townships were not developed enough to properly support the registrarial functions. Additionally, as always, try to anticipate any way the name could have been mangled when indexed.

Unfortunately FamilySearch does not have the index for the Drouin Collection, which is the primary index for civil registration-type information for Quebec, but some pay sites do.

Neither Newfoundland or the Northwest Territories were Loyalist settlement areas. While Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta,  and British Columbia were not Loyalist settlement areas, there is greater chance a subsequent generation went to those provinces. Manitoba vital statistics can be searched separately, as can Saskatchewan's (coming online in batches). Alberta is an online vital record dead zone, however the settlement began there quite late, so using Canadian censuses to trace back towards 1851 will likely indicate another provincial origin where the documentation trail can be more easily accessed.

Continue on to Step 3...

SERIES INDEX

PART VII - Step 6: Search wills, obtain evidence linking to later generations
PART VIII - Future possibilities


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