British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa

The British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa (BIFHSGO) was founded in 1994. The organization encourages "family history research and its dissemination by people with ancestry in the British Isles (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands)."[1] BIFHSGO is one of the largest Canadian genealogy organizations and has a library, online databases, and multiple monthly meetings. Each year they host a very highly regarded conference.

The organization works in collaboration with the Ottawa Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society to run an Irish Research Group. The group meets every fourth Tuesday of the month (except June, July, August and December) at 7.30 pm at the McNabb Community Centre, Craft Room, 180 Percy Street, Ottawa. BIFHSGO's Brian O'Regan Memorial Library has a large selection of publications concerning Irish genealogy and they have a full catalog online.

BIFHSGO has published Anglo-Celtic Roots since 1995. Editions from 1995 to 2015 are available to read on their website. Below you will find a table of articles that focus on Irish related genealogy research in Canada. Anglo-Celtic Roots contains many interesting articles about Canadian records, resources and personal testimonies about family history research. I encourage you to peruse the article titles to see if any can help with your research.

Year	Volume	Issue	Article Title
2008	14	Summer	Grosse Île and the Irish Memorial Historic Site
2004	10	Winter	An Irish Fling: Delightful Discoveries! Part II
2004	10	Fall	An Irish Fling: Delightful Discoveries! Part I
2000	6	Summer	Unravelling the Mystery of the Mathews of Sligo
1999	5	Summer	The Irish in Osgoode Township
1998	4	Summer	Southeastern Ireland Names in Canada
1996	2	Winter	Monaghan, Cavan and Louth Names in Canada
1995	1	Summer	I Found My Irish Ancestry in Canada

In the internet age, joining a genealogy society or organization is often overlooked as a way to help further your research, particularly by those who come to genealogy via online records and DNA tests. If you're tracing ancestors in Canada, and particularly the Ottawa region or in Ontario, then BIFHSGO seems like an organization worth being a member of.

EDIT 17 January 2016

Barbara Tose, President of BIFHSGO, was in touch to offer a correction and helpful updates.

In 2015 we found ourselves without a librarian and, after much deliberation, decided to give our library to the Ontario Genealogical Society-Ottawa Branch (OGS-OB). They are currently in the process of amalgamating our collection with theirs. So the Brian O'Regan Memorial Library no longer exists but the resources are still available at the City of Ottawa Archives under the Ottawa Branch's library. We continue to work with OGS-OB and support the library through donations of books and other resources as well as providing volunteers to assist the OGS-OB librarian, Grace Lewis. For the moment our catalogue, as it was in December 2015, is still available online. However, once the amalgamation is complete this will be removed as it will no longer be accurate for locating resources. However, the OGS-OB has their catalogue online and it can be searched using keywords (http://ogsottawa.on.ca/libsearch/).

I would also like to mention that we do hold monthly meetings for anyone in the area on the second Saturday of every month between September and June. A short educational program runs from 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. followed by a half hour break when people can socialize and peruse a variety of "Discovery Tables". The main meeting with a lecture of about an hour starts at 10:00 a.m. These meetings are open to the public and we welcome visitors from out of town. The program for these meetings can be found on our webpage (http://www.bifhsgo.ca/eventListings.php?nm=127).

And finally, our conference this year will be taking place Sept. 29-Oct. 1 and will focus on English and Welsh family history and Methodology/Evidence Analysis. Next year's focus will be Scotland and Ireland will be the focus for 2019.

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[1] British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa. About our Society. 2017. British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa (http://www.bifhsgo.ca/about.php): accessed 8 January 2017.

Irish In The Ottawa Valley - Bytown.net

I've yet to write a Canadian-themed post this year so that will be rectified by discussing the website Bytown.net. Opening the site, we are first greeting with a heading, outlining that it is  "a digital history of Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec, Canada, including the cities of Ottawa and Hull / Gatineau, 1600 to 2014." It seems to be something of a Rootsweb type site with a lot of contributors proving all sorts of historical and genealogical information. The important thing, though, is that there is a lot of genealogical and historical information on this site about Irish immigrants and their descendants.

'Control+F' will definitely be your friend on Bytown.net. The first page is lengthy, but provides links to other pages on the site that go into more detail. Indeed, on that first page you will find three tables of settlers in the Ottawa area. A significant number of the entries have an Irish county of origin listed and the name of the people can be clicked for more information.

The website also has a substantial bibliography of books for many different ethnic groups, including the Irish, in the region and country. If you do have ancestors who once lived in the Ottawa/Eastern Ontario/Western Quebec area, then this site is definitely worth checking out.

Access the site by clicking here.

Ottawa Valley Irish

Ottawa Valley Irish is a website maintained by M.C. Moran. It's one-half database, containing his Irish and French immigrant family tree, and one,half guide to doing Irish genealogy in Ottawa and wider Canada. The introduction outlines that:

This website covers the family histories of a number of Irish and French Canadian families in the Ottawa Valley area, including the Morans of Huntley township; the Laheys and Killeens of March township; the McGlades of Perth; the McCarthys of Kitley township; and the Derouins of Otter Lake.

It also offers tips and tricks for the pursuit of Irish and Canadian genealogy: how to trace your Irish ancestry through Canadian sources; how to search the census records and census substitutes; how to decipher, translate, and interpret the Catholic parish records; and more.[1]

The second paragraph of the introduction is achieved through Moran's blog posts. Interesting examples are highlighted from various records, such as this example of a marriage blessing. Many Catholic records in Canada were written in French, so it is very useful to see Moran's translation of these documents.

The 'resources' section contains links to websites and institutions, primarily in Canada, but also in Ireland, the U.S, France, and the United Kingdom. There is also a number of useful articles in the 'reading' section, in particular those about the Catholic Church in Canada.

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[1] MC Moran. Home. Ottawa Valley Irish. 2010. www.ottawavalleyirish.com: accessed 13 March 2014.

Irish Themed Genealogy Conference In Ottawa

The British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa (one of the organizations in the "Groups & Meetups" section of this blog) is holding their annual conference next week, from Friday 20 - Sunday 22 September.

On the Irish Genealogy News blog, Claire Santry has written a piece about the theme of the conference: Ireland. In it she outlines the considerable number of sessions about Irish genealogy that are taking place.

You can find more information about the BIFHSCGO conference on their website.

A Holy Grail: The McCabe List

Genealogists are always on the hunt for more sources that contain the names of their ancestors. We just can't get enough. When looking at an obscure or little know record set I immediately scan the names to see if it can be of benefit to Irish researchers. In the 1980s the northern Irish genealogist John McCabe found such a list while researching at the National Archives in London.

A section from the McCabe List

This source, which is simply known as the "McCabe List", contains the names, place of origin and other information for almost 700 Irish emigrants who settled in the Ottawa Valley in the late 1820s.

This source, albeit containing less names, is up there with the New York Emigrant Savings Bank records for the amount of brilliant genealogical information it contains. It's an absolute must for anyone who has Irish ancestry from the Ottawa Valley area.

You can view a transcription of the "McCabe List" here, and read more about it here.