Edward's Genealogy Library

Edward's Genealogy Library is now passed to the Ontario Genealogical Society Ottawa Branch. It will take a while to incorporate these books into their library at the City of Ottawa Archives. Initially I had thought I would first offer them to Library and Archives Canada but they do tend to prefer Canadian material in their collection which is understandable being the National Library. Although some of his books fitted into that category I did not want to break up the collection so I did not pass the list to them to look at after all. However, I will put together all of the Kipp family material that he has collected of Canadian origin so that I can offer that to them and give it a permanent home. He has a lot of pictures of the Kipp families who went west and were amongst the first settlers in many regions of western Canada. He also published a genealogy of this family which is already in Library and Archives Canada. I would make it free and open access with no limitations so that another keen Kipp researcher can also make full use of all of his material. That will take me a bit of time to put that all together but I may put it at the front of my agenda once I am into doing that work. First we need to organize the house so that I can get back into research eight hours per day. We were both doing about six to eight hours of our own research each day broken up into various working periods through the day along with all of our exercise before COVID-19 struck.

 

Research on my Force Family and the Kipp Family

While attending the OGS Conference in early May, I managed to fit in a day of research at the Special collections Library at Brock University with a brief stop at their Map Library to look at a photostat of an early map of Louth Township dated 1814. The special collection is found on the 10th floor of the James A Gibson Library. As part of the collections there is the Friends of the Loyalist Collection at Brock University. This collection is a Loyalist oriented collection and is mainly on microfilm. It also includes New Brunswick Land Grants.

On Sunday May 5th, I met some Force relatives who had come to the Niagara area to do some research with us. We had a long chat Sunday evening and decided to visit the Rockway Cemetery on Monday to look for Force stones and to also look at the Beamer (Beemer) stones located there.

While attending the OGS Conference marketplace, I talked to several local societies about the Force family. They mentioned that we should consider visiting the Mayholme Foundation in St. Catharines.  I had never heard of it until then. I talked to their people at the OGS Conference as they had a booth there. They were quite knowledgeable and knew about the Force surname. No one else did!. Anyway we visited their collection and it was really worthwhile. If you are searching ancestors in the Niagara area, go and visit the Mayholme Foundation. They have a web page and you will likely be happy that you went to see them.

On the way home, we took a route through New York state and stopped at Canton, New York for a day. This gave me an opportunity to research the Francis Everington Kip Papers located in the special collections library of St. Lawrence University. We photographed a large number of pages including some photographs. Of particular interest were letters he sent home from California during the Gold Rush. These items will keep me busy for awhile.

Ontario Genealogical Conference 2014 Genealogy Without Borders

My wife and I attended this conference, which was held at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, May 1-4.
My wife set up and looked after a both in Marketplace, The Guild of One-Name Studies.

I attended lectures.

We both attended the Opening Ceremonies and the Houston Memorial Lecture. The speaker was Chris Paton, and he gave a very fast moving and interesting story about his family. His theme fit nicely with the theme of the past few RootsTech conferences which stressed family stories.

On Saturday morning I attended the Plenary session - Social Media Panel moderated by John Reid.

After the panel, I sat in on the OGS Annual General Meeting.
At this meeting awards were presented. My wife and I are on the OGS Awards Committee.

I am also the editor of The Ottawa Genealogist, the Journal of the Ottawa Branch OGS. I had submitted a 2013 issue for consideration in The Dr. Don Brearly Newsletter Award. I won! First time! Great feeling!

Other than that, the lectures I attended were interesting. Nothing popped out at me that would help me in my research. I did talk to Hank Jones, who I had met in Ottawa at one of our Gene-O-Rama conferences. I have Palatine ancestors and he has done great work on the Palatines.

Colonel By Day 2013

11:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Monday, August 5, 2013         
at the Ottawa Locks, 1 Canal Lane, Ottawa

To learn more visit: www.choocopo.ca/english/cbday.html.

The Ottawa Branch OGS will have a table there. Come by and say hello.