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Saturday, February 26, 2011

Finally a find on my side

I've finally found something on one of my relatives.  In the 1911 census, my great grandfather was living in Dauphin Manitoba with one of his brothers and they both worked on building the railway and their birth country was Austria.  His immigration year is listed as 1906 while his brother's is 1910.  Searching ancestry had not turned up anything.  I recently got a subscription to findmypast and decided to give it a try.  I couldn't find much entering his last name and enabling variants but once I used a wildcard in the lastname I found him.  He arrived in Canada in 1902 on the SS Corinthian.  Using this information I went did a search of the database of passengers list (1865-1922) for the Corinitian on the Library and Archives Canada website and after searching a few pages there he was.  His occupation was listed as a furrier and his destination Toronto...  I then started a search for his brother.  While I didn't find him on findmypast may have found him on Ancestry, arriving in New York in 1907.  If this is really his brother, the passenger list records his birthplace as Bohorodczany,Austria and his mother's name as Maria...  If this is the correct person, he was eventually married to a woman named Julia, served in WWI and lived in Douglas Wis when he was attested as well as later in the 20s and 30s (census records)

Monday, February 7, 2011

Trying to find my Eastern Europe Connections

I've finally started the slow process of organizing all my papers.  I was looking through the stuff I've acquired for my side of the family and decided to take another crack at finding my Manitoba relatives originally from Ukraine. 

I didn't have alot of success in the census records. 
There are a few problems I'm encountering:
-I tried to transcribe the 1911 Winnipeg census when I was volunteering for Automated Genealogy but I found most of the records very difficult to read and there was alot of phonetic spelling going on.
-My great grandparent's last name was Krywyj but seems it sounded like Krovetz so at some point in history it becane Krovetz, sometimes Krowetz.  I'm not getting any hits on any of these spellings or other ones I can think of in 1911 or 1916 (automated genealogy or ancestry).
-My great Aunt told me that they lived on McGregor street when  she and my grandmother were born so I used the street listing site on Manitoba Historical Society to look up all of the census sheets in 1911 for families living on McGregor
-I know my grandmother was born in 1913 in Winnipeg but in the 50s she tried to do a vital stats search of her birth registration and it was not found.  I do have a copy of her baptismal record which was created in 58 but my mom thinks it is not accurate and the church actually used the details about a sister when they created it.  I tried to search for the names of the godparents in the census and could not get any hits on them either!


Next steps:

-My grandmother was apparently baptized @ St Volodymyr and Olga Cathedral in Winnipeg, Ineed to contact the Archepathy and see if I can get access to some of their records.
-Discover the church in Toronto where my BaBa and grandpa were married so I can see how she wrote her maiden name and confirm the names of her parents.   My great aunt married in the same church so will look her up as well.   I have conflicting reports about my great grandmother's name.
- I ran into a nice website regarding researching Ukranians in the Toronto area  (TUGG).  Which gave the interesting recommendation of obtaining copies of the 1940 Naturalization Registration File. 

I did a google search and came across a helpful site: http://www.naturalizationrecords.com/canada/ which lists out all of the questions asked to males and females on the registration card as well a pics of sample cards.
and I checked out the StatsCan website and was happy to read "This information was originally obtained under the authority of The National Resources Mobilization Act and the War Measures Act. Custody of the records was subsequently given to Statistics Canada, then known as the Dominion Bureau of Statistics.

As a result, the National Registration File of 1940 is not subject to the confidentiality provisions of the Statistics Act but is instead covered by the Privacy Act. According to this Act, when a person has been dead for more than 20 years, the information is no longer considered to be personal and can be disclosed."  It's a bit pricey $47.25 but I think might be well worth the cost to push my research along a little farther