An Immigrant Ancestor is a person, in your direct lineage, (grandparent, great-grandparent, etc), who was born in another country and came to Canada to live. To search for that person you often need to supply personal information such as names, birth dates or deaths etc. Those details were sometimes recorded for the first time during a federal census which occurred every ten years.
This area of Eastern Ontario, to the East of Muskrat Lake, and encompassing present day Westmeath, LaPasse, Perretton and the Village of Beachburg was at one period part of the Province of Quebec. The first council meeting of the municipalities of Ross and Westmeath was in March of 1837 and the earliest census was taken 5 years later in 1842. The Historic Westmeath Township, continued until amalgamation with adjacent municipalities to become part of the new Township of Whitewater Region in 2001.
To find your ancestors in other parts of the Province of Ontario, click on Ontario GenWeb Census Project , where 1,009 census transcripts are now online – all done by volunteers.
This special census taken in 1851 profiled 166 settler households with the emphasis on tabulating crop and livestock production. It is available in its entirety in the Plant & Livestock Breeding section. It also gives the Concession and Lot where these crops were under cultivation. No other document gives as good an insight into how the new settlers were faring in providing for their families. This was a time when the great majority of the land taken up by settlers was labelled “under woods or wild“, and the clearings in the forest were often only 40 or less acres. We can’t imagine how hard-fought each cleared acre was. 1851 Agricultural Census.
In the Census of 1851-2, the whole of Renfrew County, in which Westmeath Township sits, had 1,260 habitations. More than half of these dwellings (750) were but shanties, crudely built and temporary structures. There were 1,312 families with 2,254 children under 15 years old.
What these hard-working pioneers weren’t to know was that two years later in 1853 – known as the Black Year,- “a ferocious holocaust” would sweep these clearings burning everything in its way. See Goulds’s Line.
Census records are usually consulted as a first step in starting to search your genealogy records. Many websites are available to help you trace your immigrant ancestor. The largest of these is Ancestry.ca. These are “User Pay” and will require that a membership fee be paid before you can access the record you seek.
The 1842 census for Westmeath Township lists 86 households, with information primarily focused on male head of household. . It includes names, occupations, and religions, along with the gender and ages of other household members. The township had a population of 628 people and ratable property valued at £7,056. This early census lists only male heads of households by name, occupation and religion.
More settlers had arrived with the Census enumerator listing 167 households. Now all members including wives and children of the household are listed by name.
In 1851 the names Canada West or Upper Canada were in use until the Province of Ontario came into being at Confederation in 1867. Canada East or Lower Canada was present day Quebec and many Canada East residents were coming from that area as labourers in the fast growing lumbering industry. Clearing land for settlement was hard back-breaking work. The forests had to come down first so that the settlers could homestead and begin cultivating the land.
Familiar names: This census is taken only 6 years after William Logan’s 1845 Survey and travels by canoe expedition upriver through this area, Please refer to “William Logan’s 1845 Survey of the Upper Ottawa Valley”, on this website. Some of these settler names are familiar because Logan describes visiting the homesteads.
The number of households in 1861 had grown to 300. Country of birth and the immigrant’s religion is listed. You can also see the occupation of the settler and the type of house. Only women who were female servants were listed as having an occupation.
Since Canada didn’t become a nation until 1867, this 1861 census is not a truly “national” one but a collection of the census data from New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Canada East (Lower Canada, or roughly southern Quebec), and Canada West (Upper Canada, or roughly southern Ontario). The first true Canadian national census was held in 1871.
You’ll see that only the Townships of Horton and Ross in Renfrew County are available at this time. Westmeath Township is not available on this free site. The work of transcribing continues to be done by volunteers. No easy task.
However on the National Archives site you can see each Westmeath township resident listed by name. Click on each name for full details about that person.
The number of households had grown to 527 and two enumerators were needed to take the census that year. The majority were listed as having been born in either Quebec or Ontario rather than in another country.
This is the last census that has thus far been transcribed by the volunteers at the Ontario GenWeb Project. Westmeath Township has not been completed. Their hard work has given us a much more easily readable and free rendering of census information. All users of the site thank them for their hard work.
How did all these newcomers arrive here? It is estimated that 1 in 3 Canadians will find an ancestor on ships passenger lists 1865-1935.
Your search will be easier if you know the name of the ship or the year your ancestor sailed. But for all students of Canadian history the harrowing tales of hardship and overcoming obstacles are awe inspiring. A good source for information on your ancestor immigration experience is the Pier 21 museum in Halifax
The National Archives of Canada (NAC) holds immigration records on passenger lists from before 1865 to 1935. However, the records before 1925 are not indexed. To find an immigrant ancestor you will need to know an exact date of arrival or the vessel sailed on. There is no easy way to search Canadian arrival records for the unindexed period other than reading microfilm during a visit in person to the National Archives in Ottawa.
$$$ User Pay Site: Well established genealogical search websites such as www.Ancestry.ca, are treasure-troves of information and well worth the membership fee if you will be continuing your search online. Passenger lists are explained on that site:
“There are no comprehensive ships passenger lists of immigrants arriving in Canada prior to 1865. Until that year, shipping companies were not required by the government to keep their passenger manifests.
Passengers from mainland Europe usually sailed to Great Britain, where they boarded trans-Atlantic ships at ports such as Liverpool, London, and Glasgow, and some Canadian immigrants arrived at American ports. Ships arriving on the West Coast carried passengers from Asia, Australia and Honolulu. Any immigrant destined for western Canada having landed in the U.S. could continue their journey by train from their port of arrival; however, none of the names of train passengers were recorded.
Lists for the port of Quebec include passengers who disembarked at Montreal between 1865 and 1921 because those ports were closed during the winter months when the St. Lawrence River was frozen. “
Those later voyages from 1865 on were under healthier and safer conditions. Tough lessons had been learned in the 1840s and a high price was paid for those lessons.
From the Ottawa Citizen, March 30,2013
Here are a few of the many genealogical websites and aids to make your hunt easier. There may be a fee for using them.
FamilySearch (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), familysearch.org. Draws on the church’s decades of record-keeping and research, including birth, death, probate and other records.
Library and Archives Canada, Varied collections, including Home Children and very old land records.
Ontario Genealogical Society. ogs.on.ca. Public records, tips on building a family tree, and the site lets you post family photos needing identification.
ancestry.ca (Canada) and ancestry.com (international). Multiple records, including censuses, military records and city directories; family trees submitted by users and others; tutorials; and software for building a family tree.
myheritage.com. Share family trees and photos.
Family-tree builder download.findmypast.com. Claims to have one billion records from the British Isles.
Expanding collection of United States records.rootsweb.com (part of ancestry.com). Allows family-tree builders to find and share information through message boards, mailing lists and the like.Other sources: Facebook, Google and other search engines.