Re: Irish immigrant to Canada

Bill wrote:
Annailis a écrit :

> I read in a text from a US author that said that at that time, so many
> families were comming from Quebec, bringing illnesses with them, that it
> was almost a plague.
>
> Thanks Cecilia

Considering the conditions most had to travel under from Ireland as well, it's not surprising about the illnesses. And conditions when they got to Canada weren't always the most delightful.
One of my Irish ancestors who I assume was a famine immigrant left Ireland ca 1850 and ended up in Hamilton, Ontario for the 1851 census


How did you find ?

Fortunately I had a great uncle who wrote down a little about his family history. That pointed me in the direction of the right censuses to look at. Mind you the family name's spelling changed somewhat over the next 5 censuses until they settled on one.
(Incidentally the images of the 1851 census are available online through Archives Canada).

(listed as a labourer). He and his family were living with 5 or 6 other families in one house. Sometime between then and the 1861 census he'd lost his wife and possibly one child (that's another confusing story) and gained another spouse and children, plus moved slightly north and reduced the living arrangements to only two families to a house!

Haven't found any of them in ships' records, church records (they being Catholics are hard to come by), birth records, etc. Only in censuses and some death records. A lot of those records just don't exist or aren't available for Upper Canada pre-1860's.

I know, I read through church records to find a family that looks like mine but with differences. These records are scarse since at that time there were almost no regular priests or pastors in the beginning parishes so the chronology of the writings for a single family could be disrupted because the priest was in another region and the parents forgot or omitted to declare a birth. There are also land records of the government and some rare registers from landlords and agents in Ontario.

Out of that is pure nothingness.

The great uncle was a Jesuit priest and even he couldn't find or access the marriage certificate for his ancestor's second marriage.

Fortunately if they stay in one place long enough the elusive ancestors leave footprints that can be traced.




For this time period I'd consider official documentation of ancestors comings and goings to be the exception not the norm.

I've come to the realization that I probably will never
know quite as much about him or his first family as about the English immigrants who were landowners - other than that he must have been of very sturdy stock.


That's what I consider since quite a bit of time.

Remember as well that the U.S./British North American border was a lot more open back then than it is now. No passports required!

Right but US was a lot more serious in compiling population. They were making censuses before Canada begins.

That's the only last chance we have when having UK emigrants in our lineage, hoping they crossed the border at some time.

The U.S. existed as a nation a lot longer than Canada so had more time to get serious about compiling statistics. Many members of my ancestral families crossed back and forth across the U.S. border and didn't leave "official" traces that I've discovered.

Ann

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Relevant Pages

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