records are amongst the most useful American sources. Originally, land was granted by the monarch and, after the Revolution, by the federal government. Subsequent land transfers were recorded in deeds and re-grants, which tend to be recorded comprehensively, mostly in county courthouses. In areas where religious records are sparse, or lost, evidence of landownership and transfer is often a key element to proving an American family tree.
FURTHER READING
A.K. Bradley, History of the Irish in America (Chartwell, 1986).
J.P. Colletta, They Came in Ships (Ancestry, 3rd edn, 2002).
The Mormons’ Irish Research Outline (1st edn, 1993).
D. Radford and K. Betit, Ireland: a Genealogical Guide for North Americans (The Irish at Home and Abroad, 4th edn, 1997).
L.D. Szucs, They Became Americans: Finding Naturalization Records and Ethnic Origins (Ancestry, 1998).
By 1867, 20 per cent of Canada’s population – some 174,000 people – had Irish roots. In 2001, this figure had risen to 3,822,665 people, some 13 per cent of the total population. Brian Mulroney (b. 1939), Prime Minister of Canada (1984–93), for example, was the son of Benedict Mulroney who migrated from Bagenalstown, Co. Carlow.
Archives
The National Archives are in Ottawa. Each province has a provincial archive.
Civil Registration
Civil Registration started in the Canadian provinces as follows: Nova Scotia, 1864 (but excluded births and deaths between 1876 and 1908); Ontario, 1869; British Columbia, 1872; Saskatchewan, 1878; Manitoba, 1882; New Brunswick, 1888; Newfoundland, 1891; Alberta, 1897; Prince Edward Island, 1906; Yukon and Northwest Territories, 1896; and Quebec, 1926.
Records are with the provincial Registrars General and, Quebec excepted, access is usually only by application – see www.cyndislist.com under each province. Some records have been transferred to Provincial Archives, however, such as the 19th- and early 20th-century ones for Ontario, and some earlier ones for British Columbia and Alberta. www.ancestry.com now has some Ontario and British Columbia Civil Registration online.
Censuses
Early censuses include one for Nova Scotia from 1770, and of heads of household for Ontario (1842, 1848 and 1850) and Quebec (1825, 1831 and 1842). Canada has had full censuses every ten years from 1851, though those for 1851 and 1861 are mainly concerned only with Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland, the lands further west not yet having been colonised. The whole of Canada, such as it was, is covered by censuses from 1871 onwards and those up to 1901 are available for searching. The 1881 census is at www.familysearch.org and 1901 is online at www.collectionscanada.ca/02/020122_e.html and www.automatedgenealogy.com/census/cache/NationalSummary.jsp.
Directories
Those for Montreal date from 1819, with many for the cities from the mid-19th century. They are fairly inclusive in terms of householders,
Colonisation of Canada
Canada was colonised from the 17th century, by the British in Newfoundland and the French in Quebec. In 1670, the British founded the Hudson’s Bay Company, to promote trade and colonisation. British control spread, especially due to the Seven Years War between England and France. The capture of Quebec, achieved by General James Wolfe (see p. 54) at the cost of his own life, led to British control of all Canada.
The Irish came in most numbers in the 18th and 19th centuries – as free settlers (as opposed to convicts). From about 1807, merchants shipping timber to Britain for the navy realised they could make money carrying settlers the other way, so did much to encourage migration. In 1825, the government commissioned Peter Robinson to bring 2,000 new settlers from Ireland to Peterborough, Ontario, where they were given land, a cow, and implements including kettles and three bushels of seed potato. Colonisation of Canada continued throughout the 19th century and in some senses it is still ongoing.
Migration between Canada and America has been constant and researching Irish roots in one country often involves looking in the other as well. Because the passage to Canada was cheaper than to America, many Irish, especially Famine migrants, went there and then tramped south. They were seldom welcomed, for they often carried diseases acquired in Ireland or on the voyage. In fact, quarantine stations had operated at Grosse Isle at the mouth of the St Lawrence River from 1832, but they were far too small for the Famine years. With ships queuing right down the St Lawrence, the system collapsed and fever-ridden Irish refugees flooded into Quebec, Montreal and St John’s.
Records of US-Canada border crossings between 1895 and 1956 are now on www.ancestry.com.
however humble, sometimes listing occupations as well as addresses.
Religious registers
Copies of many of Canada’s surviving church registers, of all denominations including Catholics and Presbyterians, are on microfilm at the National Archives of Canada. The earliest are from 1620 in Quebec, but many started much more recently, when settlements (with churches) were founded in the wilderness. In New Brunswick, marriages were also reported to county clerks, and records up to 1888 are at the Provincial Archives. Marriages often name both sets of parents. All Prince Edward Island baptisms 1777–1906 are indexed and online to 1886 at www.gov.pe.ca/cca/index.
Newspapers
There are good collections at the National Archives and provincial archives and libraries, many of which have collections of clippings of genealogical interest, such as the Alberta Provincial Archives’ ‘old timers’ clippings 1956–9, relating to people who had settled there
How Irish was Captain Wolfe?
Although born in Kent, England, James Wolfe (1727–59), the great British general who was killed whilst successfully capturing Quebec from the French, had Irish roots. His father was General Edward Wolfe (1685–1759), whose brother Captain Walter retired to Dublin, and whose sister Margaret married George Goldsmith, a cousin of the writer Oliver Goldsmith. John Ferrar’s History of Limerick (1787) makes Edward a grandson of Captain George Wolfe of Limerick, a Royalist who fled to England, but the genealogist and herald Sir Anthony Wagner argued that this was not so, and that Edward’s father was actually an earlier Edward Wolfe, an army officer of Dublin. When James II came there, Wolfe was thrown out for being a Protestant, but later rejoined under William III. Records at the Deeds Registry, Dublin, show
‘that in 1686 Edward Wolfe of the City of Dublin, later a Major, had a lease of a moiety of the lands of Kilmurry and Kilmekanoge in the half barony of Rathdowne, County Wicklow, for the lives of himself, his wife Margaret and his son Edward and that on his death at some date before
