Annual Reports

Most societies, governments, institutions and companies etc generated an Annual Report.
At Internet Archive they are not always under the title of the entity, ie Boston Fire Department Annual Report. Most times the title is just plain Annual Report.

I recommended to a friend who is interested in monarchs (one of the milkweed butterflies) the Annual Report of the Entomology Society of Ontario. This has lists of members including those from other cities across Canada including Montreal, but it is not always about ancestors. What are the monarch population trends from year to year? 

At Internet Archive when I search "annual report" I see 4-5 for the Boston FD, then scrolling down maybe a few more.  To get them all together I use the Advanced Search.  I put  Annual Report in the title box and Boston Fire Dept in the creator box. Now I get all 73 texts. 

Another way is to click on one of the links for Annual Report, Boston (Mass) Fire Dept and when it opens, under the title is a link to all texts for the Boston Fire Dept, and you will likely get more than the annual reports. To remedy that just add annual report to the search box.

Try it out!  Go to Internet Archive and search Annual Report. On the left you see that there are 91,735 texts.  Tick off texts, that is what we want. That's a lot of reports!

Not all Annual Reports have the same information, even year to year, but usually there is a list of officers, and depending on the entity perhaps a list of staff or members. Using the Boston Fire Department again as an example, the yearly reports are different, most have a list of officials somewhere, and some have list of members pensioned or died during the year. Others have a list of fire station locations, or a list of all the fires and alarms, their causes and which company responded.

The Annual Report for the Ontario Inspector of asylums, prisons and public charities may not give the names of asylum patients, but some give their initials and cause of death.  So if you know you have an ancestor that was in an asylum, you may be able to tell more about them from the reports. 

Ontario Asylum for the Insane and Idiotic

Some reports may even have photos, drawings or plans. 

One of my favourites is the Annual Report of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York because they have lots of goodies, like this one for 1911. There is a huge staff and long lists of partons, donors and members with their addresses.  One list is of people who left amounts of money to the hospital by year from before 1867

In previous pages there are small gifts from people and large endowments in memory of loved ones. Great place to look for your new York ancestor. 

For other hospitals, including more in New York, search Annual Report Hospital.


Those with Australian ancestors can do the same thing at Trove. As well as journal reports, there may have been some published in the newspapers.

For Canada only reports, you can search the newly-free canadiana.org