FALL 2019 VOLUME 40—3 !!!AncesTree! ! The Nanaimo Family History Society Quarterly Journal ISSN 1185-166X (Print)/ISSN 1921-7889 (Online) ! President’s Message by Dean Ford It looks like fall is upon us as the weather is getting What’s Inside cooler — time to stay inside and work on your President’s Message Pages 1-2 family stories. At least this summer we were fortunate enough that we didn’t have to deal with Genealogy News Briefs Pages 3-5 smoke from forest fires. Rattling an Old Skeleton Page 6-7 I would to thank those members who were able to give a presentation at our September meeting. It They Celebrated Pages 8-10 looks like a few of you were able to attend family Genealogy and Food Page 11 reunions or meet new family members. My wife and I were able to do this too. Psst!! Want to Buy Your Pages 12-13 Family’s Coat of Arms?? Maureen Wootten has been busy booking Membership Connections speakers for our upcoming meetings — if you have Pages 14-15 an idea about a possible future speaker, please let Wartime Evacuee Pages 16-17 Maureen or a member of the executive know. Faces of Our Ancestors Pages 18-20 The Nanaimo Family History Society will host a one day introductory genealogy seminar on March Company Wife Page 21 28, 2020, for members of the public. If you know of anyone who is interested in starting genealogy Future Guest Speakers Page 22 research, this seminar will be a great first step. We Web Updates Page 23 are also looking for help from our members in hosting this event. If you are interested in serving Members’ Miscellany Page 24 on the committee, please advise a member of the executive. As they say, more hands make light Contact Information Page 25 work. Save the Date! Nanaimo FHS Nov Meeting Nov 18, 2019 “We return to the lives of those who have Nanaimo FHS December Social Dec 9, 2019 gone before us, a perplexing möbius strip, until we come home, eventually, to Nanaimo FHS Jan Meeting Jan 20, 2020 ourselves.” Colum McCann contemporary Irish author 1965– ) from The Transatlantic PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor AncesTree Volume 40-3 Fall 2019 President’s Message continued from Page 1 current location of all our books. Thank you to the members who have stored our books in their As part of our public outreach, the executive has homes over the last few years. Your assistance been busy setting up outside talks in order to has been very much appreciated. promote our society. If you know of a group that would be interested in a short presentation, please Have you noticed the recent update to our notify a member of the executive. website? In the past, the loading of the passenger index would sometimes lock up a computer due to The executive along with Lorie Heshka and the size of the file. These files have now been Veronica Ford met twice over the summer sorting made smaller and should take less time to load. If our library books and placing the Canadian you had a problem with this before, please give it collection in the LDS FHC for members of both another try and good luck finding your ancestor. groups to peruse and sign out. The British collection will be stored with Carolyn Kemp and the I look forward to seeing everyone at our next remaining books will be held at our meeting room meetings and don't forget that our Christmas social at Beban. Once the sorting has been completed, is December 9th at 2:00 pm. the website catalogue will be updated with the WELLINGTON CEMETERY PROJECT by Cheryl Smith Nanaimo Archives Volunteer Through the Nanaimo Archives, the Wellington Cemetery project was created with hopes of identifying burials in this historical location from the early pioneer days. The cemetery is located at 4700 Ledgerwood Road, Nanaimo, BC and is surrounded by a small residential area close to Nanaimo North Town Centre (Rutherford Mall.) It is one of few links left to the town of Wellington. Due to years passing, there are few markers left and many of them are damaged, becoming unreadable. There is a diverse group of interments and the cemetery is divided into four religious denominations. This project has sent me in different directions. To help me source additional interments, I have used Terri Hunter's Wellington Cemetery Research Project material provided through the Archives. This collection of information was created in 1977, and it has been extremely helpful providing me with a great starting point. I have used a copy of a hand-drawn map of recorded interments and have been utilizing the library for referencing micro fiches from The Nanaimo Free Press, cross referenced church records, and continue to speak with individuals who may have family members buried there. I have been successfully finding new additions, and with much help from Christine Muetzner, finding new and interesting stories of these local pioneers. The purpose of this research is for an upcoming tour of this cemetery in the spring. This project is slow and frustrating at times but also very interesting. It is nice to know that with this research, a larger collection of pioneers interred there will be remembered in days to come and not be lost. EDITOR’S NOTE Cheryl Smith also has access to the many files and collections held by our society. The hard work of many NFHS members over the years is part of the data currently in use by Cheryl and Nanaimo Archives. If you have information about family members or others buried at Wellington Cemetery, please contact Cheryl. PDF compression,Nanaimo Family OCR, History web optimization Society using a watermarked ISSN 1185-166X evaluation (Print)/ISSN copy of 1921-7889(Online)CVISION PDFCompressor 2 AncesTree Volume 40-3 Fall 2019 GENEALOGY NEWS IN BRIEF LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA ✴ Canadian Army Overseas Honours and Awards 1939-1945 An easily searchable site that contains PDF links to images that provide specific details about how the award was won. ✴ Delivery time for WWII service files have been extended to almost 18 Months. As of June, 2019, LAC advised that they were still processing requests received in January 2018. ✴ Insights into the 1926 Canadian Census of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. SASKATCHEWAN HISTORIC NEWSPAPERS A new site for those of you researching on the prairies is the free collection of Saskatchewan newspapers at Saskatchewan Newspapers on Line. The site is easily searchable and contains digitized copies of Saskatchewan newspapers from 1878 to the mid 1960’s. GRADUATES FROM SAINT JOHN NB 1886-2017 High school class photos from Saint John High School have been digitized and placed on line to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the school. More than 125 photos are available for perusal. Student names are available on many of the photos. UBC HISTORIC PHOTOS An antique and art dealer, Uno Langmann of Vancouver and his wife Dianne have donated 18,000 historic photos of British Columbia to the University of BC library. The photos are currently being digitized and some are now available for viewing on the UBC library website. Some photos are of postcards with messages on the backs also digitized. Many are labelled with names. A great collection for genealogists and history buffs. Easily searchable! ALBERTA NAME INDEX ANI or the Alberta Name Index has been launched by the Edmonton branch of the Alberta Genealogical Society. The site offers an easily searchable index of Alberta names recorded in probates, local histories, obituaries, coroner records, land records and other sources. NOVA SCOTIA LAND PAPERS 1765-1800 Nova Scotia Archives now has a freely accessible data base that contains images of petitions made by individuals and groups seeking grants of Crown lands on which to settle. “This is a searchable database for petitions made to government by individuals or groups of people seeking grants of Crown Land for settlement purposes in early Nova Scotia. The database contains 11,464 names, and will link from the petitioner's name to the fully digitized document file created for that particular land grant — 1890 files, containing 9,259 image scans. If you're searching for online information about early land settlement in Nova Scotia, you've come to the right place!” TIMMINS, ONTARIO NEWSPAPER DIGITIZED The Timmins public library has copies available of the Porcupine Advance Newspaper 1912-1950. GENEALOGY NEWS BRIEFS continue on page 4 PDF compression, Nanaimo Family OCR, History web optimization Society using a watermarked ISSN 1185-166X evaluation (Print)/ISSN copy of1921-7889 CVISION (Online) PDFCompressor 3 AncesTree Volume Volume 40-3 Fall 2019 GENEALOGY NEWS BRIEFS continued from page 3 WORLD WAR II RUSSIAN SOLDIERS’ DATABASE If you had relatives serving in the Russian armed forces during WW II, Memorial is a site to check. It contains over five million records of soldiers who died, went missing, or became prisoners of war. The site is free,easily searchable, and requires no registration. WORLD WAR II VICTIMS DATABASE Arolsen Archives (formerly known as International Tracing Service) has uploaded over 10 million records detailing concentration camp victims, forced labourers and displaced persons. No registration is needed to access the free site, which continues to grow as more records are found. FINDING YOUR ROOTS RETURNS Season six of the PBS series began October 8, 2019 and continues through to the fall of 2020. Host Henry Lee Gates Jr. states that Finding Your Roots is "part of a larger mission to inspire us all to seek out the stories of our ancestors -- to see history as something that we are all a part of, that we all have a stake in -- and, in realizing this, to help us arrive at a deeper understanding of what it means to be part of the human family.” Noted Canadian genealogist Gail Dever suggests “that while watching Finding Your Roots, take note of the way Dr.