Monday 28 September 2015

The Athletic Club



Like the old Gentlemen's Clubs, the formal Athletic Club was for men only, some taking rooms there.  There were billiard and card rooms, a dining room, and perhaps a parlor for women to take refuge on Ladies' Night, as well as bedrooms or suites for the young men.




Other sports clubs had their own "Club House" while still others met at a venue central to its members, like the Montreal Snow Shoe club met at the McGill gatehouse on Sherbrooke Street. The Clubs were for amateur athletes only.





The Athletic Clubs offered all manner of sports - lacrosse, cricket or croquet, tennis, squash or hand ball, bowling, bicycling or swimming, or perhaps skating, curling or snowshoeing.

High Wheel Bicycle Club Group Photo - circa 1885


Search others using keywords [name of sport] + club, association, etc then try adding town or state. Check local libraries and archives for information on local clubs.

Did your ancestor belong to an athletic club?



Relevant Links


The Gatehouse at McGill

An Athletic Club House - Thesis, 1900

Boston Athletic Assoc year Book 1890

London Bicycle Club Gazette, Vol I

The Second Annual Amateur Athletic... Sports (Races), England 1903

Athletic Clubs of America 1915

Sporting and Athletic Records 1897

Columbus Athletic Club 1922

Forty-sixth Games of the New York Athletic Club 1891

Souvenir of the Providence Athletic Assoc, Rhode Island 1899

Roster of the Columbia Athletic Club of Washington DC, 1889

Grand CWA Championship Meet: St John's Bicycle and Athletic Club, NB 1896

Club Book: Crescent Athletic Club of Brooklyn

Vancouver Cycling Club, meet of the Canadian Wheelman's of BC 1894

Voyage du Club le Canadien à New York 1887 (Snow Shoe Club)

New York - Turnvereins in der New York turn-halle, 1900

Annals of the Olympic Club, San Francisco 1914

The Olympian: Olympic Club of SF

List of Subscribers of the Victoria Skating Club of Montreal 1874

Victoria Skating and Curling Association of Toronto: list of members 1887

Schedule of games: British Columbia Amateur Lacrosse Association 1893

Potomac Athletic Club 1890

New Illinois Athletic Club 1906

Year Book and Roster, 1905: Missouri Athletic Club, St Louis

Toronto Athletic Club 1891

Athletic Queensland, 1900

Athletic Games and Reception, Company "I", 47th Regiment, NY 1903

New York Athletic Club, various

Ottawa Bicycle Club 1890

Souvenir and program of the 12th Annual meet of the Canadian Wheelmen's Assoc 1894

The Springfield Wheelmen's Gazette, Mass 1884-1886

Bicycle Club Directory of Massachusetts, 1894

Berlin Lawn Bowling Club, Kitchener Ontario 1905

Register of the Appalachian Mountain Bowling Club 1898

Rules of the Halifax Archery and Croquet Club 1873

Montreal Archery Club 1859

Junior Lacrosse League of Montreal 1889 

Quebec Curling Club, list of members 1869

History of the Staten Island Cricket and Tennis Club 1872-1917

St George's Cricket Club, NY 1859

Victoria Cricket Club, BC - various 

Official Souvenir of Police Athletic Association of Greater New York, 1905

The Edinburgh Skating Club 1865




Related Post:  Wild World of Sports



Sunday 27 September 2015

Serendipity Sunday - What's in a Name?





This week I came across this book:  Anglo-Saxon names from the time of Beda  (c 700) to that of King John (c 1200).





Relevant Link

List of Anglo Saxon names from the time of Beda to that of King John, 1897


Thursday 24 September 2015

Canadian Genealogy Resources


Everyone doing their family history has their own list of links and resources that are helpful to their genealogical research.



Besides doing my and my husband's family history, I have also helped others do their research in Canada, and I have amassed a list of sites and resources that I have used for Canadian genealogy and have shared with individuals wanting to know where to go for records, help and information.

I am making the PDF of my list available for download by clicking on the link below.  Feel free to save it and share it.



Relevant Links

Canadian Genealogy Resources


Monday 21 September 2015

The Post Office



The Post Office by Augustus Pugin Senior and Thomas Rowlandson
for Ackermann's Microcosm of London (1808-11).



When my husband's great grandfather, who lived on the Rainy River in Koochiching Minnesota, decided to retire from full time farming, he opened a general store in Central Village and became the village's first postmaster.



Several of my indirect Seale line were Post Office employees. A few men from the Quebec line were postmasters, and cousin Henry Seale worked as an Assistant Inspector for the Post Office in Kingston, Ontario in 1918.
Look under Post Office in the local directories and almanacs.


The salaries of Canadian postal workers are in the Sessional Papers of the Dominion of Canada, under Auditor General Report.  We find that Henry Edgar, as a Postal Inspector at Kingston, made $1350 for the year ending March 1919.  





When I was young we lived in a small town and our Post Office, established in 1948, was in the basement of someone's house. They had a section set up with a wicket behind which, in my time, Mr or Mrs Giroux sold stamps, mailed parcels and did other post office business.  This is the record of post masters for this post office...



Lists of Unclaimed Letters at the Post Office were often posted in local newspapers, as well as the Government Gazette. Also check University websites, some have lists of unclaimed letters addressed to students who have graduated and moved out of the dorms without giving a forwarding address.


Relevant Links

LAC - Post Office and Postmaster database search

Sessional Papers of the Dominion of Canada

Post Master finder - USPS

List of uncalled for letters, Wabash County, Indiana, 1861

List of letters unclaimed at Kingston, Ontario: Chronicle & Gazette 1833

Alphabetical list of Postmasters in Canada 1862

List of Post Offices in the United States, w/names of Postmasters etc 1828

Registered Letters of Canada: loss reported (missing money or contents) 1886

Registers of money, letters and packages sent to prisoners, US War Dept 1861-1865

Unclaimed Letters posted in the Victoria Government Gazette, AU

Allen County Genealogical Society Indiana - Unclaimed Letter Index

Unclaimed Letters at the Milwaukee Post Office 1836

List of Postmasters in Tasmania Newspaper 1853

The History of the Post Office Down to 1836 - UK

Canada Postal Guide 1821

Guide official du service postal Canadien 1917

Post Office Distribution Lists for Canadian Provinces

Newfoundland Post Office Circular (various years)

The Post Office of India and it's Story 1921

British Postal Museum -Appointment Records (available on Ancestry UK)

Unclaimed Letters at the Post Office, Auckland NZ to Dec 1862

Unclaimed Letters at the Post Office, Nelson, NZ 1857

Index to the Postal Working Map of Shanghai - 1904

Pre 1875 PEI Postmasters Database

Undelivered letters to Hudson's Bay Company men 1830-1857 (Google, limited view)

(Check at World Cat for libraries holding the above mentioned book)



Sunday 20 September 2015

Serendipity Sunday - Who are you wearing?





Englishman Charles Worth was the first "fashion designer", with his house in Paris, France in 1858. Before that the textile industry and tailors and dressmakers were largely responsible for fashion design and innovations.    


I recently came across this book...





Costume: Style of dress characteristic of a certain period, country or profession.

Knowing how our ancestors dressed helps in the telling of their stories. 


Doing a search for "costume" at Internet Archive gave results of many books with illustrations of period dress from all over the world, including Canada, America, England, France, Russia, Greece, China Japan, Italy, India, etc.

The Victoria and Albert Museum has a web page of interest: Chronology of Fashion 


Related Post:  Fashionably Early...




Tuesday 15 September 2015

Glasgow Lunatic Asylum Records



The University of Glasgow Library has been digitizing material from the Mental Healthcare Archives.  They are one year in on a 2 year project. 

They have made available for browsing the over 100,000 images they have completed from the Gartnavel Royal Hospital and Crichton Royal Hospital. These include staff handbooks, photographs of the buildings, staff and patient outings, reports, ledgers and correspondence, as well as register of patients and register of deaths. And patient case notes!  The patient records span 1814-1913.



You have the option to download just the page as a jpg or the whole document as a pdf.      
"The images can be freely downloaded and reused in any situation, so long as attribution is given to NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Archives, in association with Glasgow University Archive Services."  

Browse the images via the Welcome Library Digital Collection. Click on the titles for more details, or click on the "View Online" link.

For background on the collection, read about it at the University of Glasgow Digital Center blog. 



Related Post: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.


Monday 14 September 2015

Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica


In my article No Luck of the Irish I wrote about how I discovered my Seale family pedigree.  This pedigree was found on page 48 in Volume III of the Fifth Series of Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica published in 1918.








Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica was a quarterly peridoical of Genealogies and Heraldry of Great Britain and Ireland... and so much more, being the miscellanea!  They hold not only family trees, but also monument inscriptions, births, marriages, wills, coats of arms, and notes on some of the people and places. There is not the same type of information for every surname. I was lucky enough to find a family tree with loads of information, but there are no wills or notes for me... darn!


Following are the publications that I could find online, in series and volumes. In the fifth series there are 10 Volumes of which I only found 3.  Check if your local library has them on film, hard copy or digital.

(Note: The date is of publication, the dates of the records go back to 1700's and earlier)


Relevant Links

Original Series:

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 1 (1868)

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 2 (1876)

New Series:

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 1 (1874)

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 2 (1876)

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 3 (1881)

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 4 (1883)

Second Series:

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 1 (1886)

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 2 (1886)

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 3 (1886)

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 4 (1886)

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 5 (1886)

Third Series:

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 1 (18960

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 2 (1898)

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 3 (1900)

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 4 (1902)

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 5 (1904)

Fourth Series:

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 1 (1906)

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 2 (1908)

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 3 (1908)

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 4 (1912)

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 5 (1914)

Fifth Series:

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 1 (1916)

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 2 (1916)

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vol 3 (1918)

Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica Vols 4-10 (1920-1938); not yet found online
You can order them for viewing at your local Family History Center.







Sunday 13 September 2015

Serendipity Sunday - History of Prices in England



While doing my research on my Tait ancestors I came across these publications..




These helped me tell the story of my ancestors, giving prices of produce, dairy, beer and wine, cattle, candles, fuel etc, and what wages they might have made per day.  

I then found that there are issues for various years from 1259 to 1793 of "A History of Agriculture and Prices in England".

So I went in search of other publications that would give the cost of goods and wages at various times and places in history.




Related Links



A history of agriculture and prices in England:


















Related Posts:





Monday 7 September 2015

Scandals and Divorce in Edinburgh



One of the publications I came across doing my Scotland research this week, from the Commissariot of Edinburgh and #22 on the Scottish Record Society Finding Guide, is...


Consistorial Processes and Decreets, 1658-1800.





This is their version of family court.  The records include scandals, divorce, seperation and aliment (alimony), marriage or legitimacy, etc. Reading the Preface tells us where these original records can be found, some entries giving volume and page number. When there was no process (thrown out of court) it is indicated by "no warrants".



As you can see, processed or not, there is quite a bit of information in these indexes, giving father's name, dates, occupation, spouse name, etc. There is a nominal index in the back.


Relevant Links




Related Post:  More Than BMD




Sunday 6 September 2015

Scottish Record Society - Finding Guide




"The Scottish Record Society is one of Scotland’s oldest historical societies, and is dedicated to publishing calendars, indexes and texts of historical records."

In my article of Scotland Genealogy Resources one of the links I gave was for publications of the Scottish Record Society at Archive.org. The link list just names the SRS of Edinburgh and a volume number. 






To make it easier to find the records you want, I have made in a Word Document a Finding Guide with a list of each publication naming city, records given, and years.   

You can download the Finding Guide here.



Relevant Links

Scottish Record Society




Related Posts:

Scotland Genealogy Resources

Guilds and Apprenticeships



 

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