Canada 150 - Illustrated Atlas of Prince Edward Island

During our country's 150th anniversary celebration of confederation I will write posts titled Canada 150 with a link to a publication or website I find that may help you tell the story of your Canadian ancestors.
Click on the Canada 150 label on the right or at the bottom to see all the posts.

Today I have for you...

Illustrated Historical Atlas of ...Prince Edward Island

1880

This is more than an atlas, filled with cadastres, portraits, and drawings of residences.

Pg 93-94

There are a few places online to view this Atlas.  At Island Imagined where there is a list of what is on each page, Internet Archive (not very good quality of some images), and David Rumsey Map Collection.

At Rumsay maps, to get back to main page after viewing a page full screen, top right click back to media, then click Related (105). It shows 50 page thumbnails on a page.

Relevant Links

Island Imagined - Atlas of PEI

David Rumsey Map Collection - Atlas of PEI

Internet Archive - Atlas of PEI

  

Related post:  History of PEI and Censuses

Montreal Street Toponymy

Toponymy is the study of place names (toponyms), their origins, meanings, use, and typology.

One of my relatives lived on a street in Montreal called Campden Place.  Looking on Google street map it looked odd, tucked in behind the Cote-Ste-Catherine Metro, like it was on a back alley instead of a main street. So I wanted to know more about it.

What I found out is this IS the back alley.  The front of the houses open to a court yard accessed only by a foot path - no street.  

Photo by Maurice Amiel

It is apparently one of three streets in Côte des Neiges (with Beaminster Place and Bradford Place) making up what was then called Coxwold Village by the developer Terrace Construction in 1936. 

The City of Montreal Heritage section on their site has a portal titled La Toponymie for looking up the names of streets and how they got their name. You can even suggest a street name here. 

If your ancestors (or you) lived in Montreal you may want to check out this site... It is in French, and don't be fooled by the English link on the menu, as it takes you to a whole other place - but I found that a page translator works well (I open in Chrome and use Google Translator). This is what I learned about Campden Place.

Go to the Toponymy portal to search a street name, the page looks like this...

If you DO click on English in the menu it takes you to a page called: "Downtown moves Uptown - A Place Names Expedition".  From there you click on TÉLÉCHARGER to download the English PDF, which tells the who and how of some street and place names in Montreal.

Relevant Links


City of Montreal Topomyny

Submit a suggestion for a street name

Coxwold Village at Cultural Weekly



Related post:  Postcard Address Mystery

Scotlands Places now Free

We all know now that ScotlandsPeople website has had an overhaul and it is now free to view the indexes. We get so busy looking for our ancestor under People we forget to look for them under Places.  All resources on ScotlandsPlaces are now available free of charge.

Besides looking for maps and images for parishes and counties where our ancestors lived, you will also find these records:  historic tax rolls, burgh registers and official reports. Some records for some places are beyond repair so will not be available.

You can browse through all the titles, or go to Places A-Z on the menu bar and see what records are available for your area of research.

Looking for my Bruce ancestors in Fyvie I find 650 records including maps, broadsides and images (which I can filter), two tax rolls and a medical report.

Gail Dever at Genealogy à la carte says we are going to need this long weekend while we celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving and search the new Notorial Records at Ancestry.

Well you may need more than just one long weekend to look into all these records now available to you for free!


Relevant Link

Scotland Places

Postcard Address Mystery

I had a mystery of a postcard sent from my grandfather to my grandmother before they were married. Today I finally found the answer.

In 1907 while in Toronto on business, Tom Seale sent a postcard to his girlfriend Marion Tait addressed to her at 34 St Antoine Street. But that was not the address where the Tait family lived according to the Montreal City Directory...?? Hmmmmmm.

So today I was looking in the street section of the 1913 City Directory, checking out the cross streets where my grandparents (now married) were living at #42 Cazelais, down the street from her parents, and this is what was written:

Cazelais, formerly St Antoine Ave off 92 Chestnut, west to St Remi, St Henri Ward.

 AHA!! So I went back to the 1907 directory, and looking up Cazelais in the street section, this is what I found: 

Cazelais, formerly St Antoine Ave off 92 Chestnut, west to Cote St Paul Rd, St Henri Ward. For names of residents, see end of street directory.

At the end there is a section for "streets received too late for insertion in alphabetical order", and there was Cazelais, with the Taits living at number 34. So the Taits didn't move from St Antoine to Cazelais, the name of the street changed.

Next I went to google maps, searching for 42 Cazelais. Phew!  There is still a Cazelais street.  The marker got plunked down right between Walnut and Desnoyers (which used to be Chestnut). A very pretty tree-lined street.

But now another dilemma - the house numbers have all been changed!  The numbers are in the 4700's. The house numbers at one time started with 1 at the beginning of a street, and at some point in time all this changed to a standardized system in most cities. So I went through all the years street sections until I got to the 1930 city directory, and 34 Cazelais is now 4796 Cazelais, according to the same person living there this year and the year previous.

I found this post by Amber Daugherty on the Spacing Website that explains modern numbering of houses in major Canadian cities...

Ever wonder how a house gets an address number?

There is more explanation at this Wikipedia post of Transportation in Montreal.


Relevant Links

London, UK street name changes

List of Streets in Montreal that have been renamed

Street Name Changes in the USA

Darebin, AU Street Name Changes

Street names of Early Sydney, AU

List of Street Name Changes in Detroit 1891

Old streets, roads, lanes, piers wharves of New York, w/ former and present names 1882

Changes made to street names in Victoria BC, 1900-1914

Old Street Names of New Orleans

Related:

Montreal Street Toponymy

Location, location, location

Land records are another way to add dimension to your ancestors. Not everyone owned land, but if they did there may still be a record of it somewhere.  There are some indexes online, and you may be able to use that information to get more complete records from the state or province.  Estates were traditionally given as spoils of war to soldiers for their loyalty in battle. At the birth of Canada land grants were given to help populate the land.  Then, to boost the population even more, a 100 acre lot of land was given to couples that had 12 living legitimate children.


A Cadastre survey of land could include details of ownership, what the land is used for, and boundaries and dimensions of the land, used for tax purposes and in land disputes. When you buy a house in a development you get a cadaster with your paperwork, showing where your lot is, with the dimensions and boundaries.  Some of the earlier cadastres have the owner’s names written on them.  Cadastres have been used as early as 77 CE and a lot of countries use them.  There are quite a few of these cadastres online, and I will link to some of them below.

The largest that I found was the Canadian County Atlas Digital Project done by McGill University. It is a cadaster of Ontario, with names and acreage of each lot. Search under People for the land grant information, then get the map showing the location.
In US search Internet Archive using keywords : plat book.

Relevant Links:

Land Records

Free grants of land to parents with 12 kids

QuebecLand Register (follow links)

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) – Land Records

Letters Patent containing grants of land (mentioned in Report

 By Québec (Québec). Secretary's Office 1891

Index to Alberta Homestead Records up to 1930

Index to Alberta Homestead Records After 1930

Saskatchewan Land Grants

CPR to settlers in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta from 1881 to 1927

Nova Scotia Land petitions

New Brunswick Land Grants

PEI Land Grants

Return of Owners of Land – Ireland

Return of Owners of Land - UK 1873

USA- BLM Glo Records 

New Zealand: Copies of papers and despatches relative to New Zealand; Return showing .. land in the colony of New Zealand, sold by the government - 1845

Massachusetts Deed Purchase

Cadastres

Ontario Digital Atlas

Land map of Quebec and Ile d'Orleans

StJean - Ile d'Orleans

StLaurent - Ile d'Orleans

Ile Bouchard

Montreal Atlas 1880-81 

Montreal and Bout de l”Ile  

Beaconsfield Settlement, Andover Parish, N.B

Nova Scotia : click on a square and zoom in

Rainy River, Minnesota

Michigan Cadastre maps

Cadastres abrégés des seigneuries appartenant à la couronne Bas Canada1863

(Lauzon, Sorel, Sillery, etc)

Cadastres abrégés des seigneuries du district de Montréal 1863

Cadastres abrégés des seigneuries du district des Trois-Rivières 1863

Extrait des livres de renvoi officiels des comtés d'Hochelaga etJacques-Cartier 1872

Extrait du livre de renvoi officiel de la cité de Montréal : Extract of the book of reference of the city of Montreal. For different wards 1870’s

Cadastre map of Lunenburgh County, Nova Scotia 1864

Olcott's Blue Book of Land Values of Chicago - several years

Surveyor's Book - 1863, Glasgow Kentucky

The San Francisco block book; comprising Park Lane Tract, Market Street Homestead Ass'n., Stanford Heights, Sunnyside, City Land Ass'n., Lakeview, West End Homestead, University Mound Homestead Ass'n., Excelsior Homestead, Reis Tract, South San Francisco Homestead and Railroad Ass'n., Tide Lands, etc. : showing size of lots and blocks and names of owners, compiled from latest official records

Plat Book and Directory of Cheboygan Michigan - 1902

Atlas of Eaton Co, Michigan; w/landowners - 1873 

Georgia USA: The Cherokee land lottery, containing a numerical list of the names of the fortunate drawers in said lottery, with an engraved map of each district - 1838

Info on Cherokee Land Lottery

Old Montreal 1611-1803

Minnesota Plat Maps

Some Township Cadastre maps of Indiana 1881

The new district and county atlas of Queensland, 1878

Bakers Australian County Atlas

You are here.... X

Following yesterday’s article on Directories, the next logical step is maps. Old maps, new maps, local maps, world maps survey maps, streetcar maps, railroad maps. People have been drawing maps of one kind or another since the beginning of time.

Once you have found in the Directory the address where your ancestor lived, you surf on over to google maps, search the address and switch to street view to see your ancestor’s house. PrintScreen (hoping there is no modern car parked out front, or a funky lady walking her dog) and voila! Lucky you!  But that doesn’t work in all cases.  Taking yesterday’s example of my grandfather living in Montreal, I didn’t find his address right away in the directory. Why? The numbers only went to 89 and the postcard to my grandfather was addressed to number 102. I had to go ahead to another year that showed the new numbers, see who lived there, then go back to the other years and see where Mrs Dixon lived.  Aha!  Number 52.  Renumbered to 102. The street was not lengthened, as both directories had the street going between the same cross streets, so most probably new buildings went up in between the old.

Searching google maps for where another ancestor lived, I had the opposite problem.  So, what if the street your ancestor lived on is not even there? Or cut short to put in a freeway? This is where Google Earth does its thing!  This program is a great genealogical tool and well worth spending the time to learn all it can do. It is preloaded with many historical maps from the Rumsey Collection. If the map you need for the years you want is not there, you can load in one you find.  It overlays on the present map, then you wander through the streets looking for the one you know your ancestor lived on (no search available for old maps, although some may have a key, like Main Street go to K4.). Ahhhh, okay… now I see Main Street has been renamed John Doe Boulevard, and he lived between 1^st and 2^nd Avenue.   

This is a map of Kingston, Ontario that I uploaded to Google Earth and found where my ancestors lived and worked. In todays maps I could not find the address where my ancestor lived, but with the help of this map from 1900 I found where X marks the spot!.

     

With Google Earth you can not only see where your ancestor lived, but his family and friends, where he worked, where they moved to, etc and add pushpins (or other markers), you can embed videos and photographs – making a whole presentation!    

For more information Eric Stitt has a blog titled Genealogy through Google Earth. Also Lisa Louise Cooke has put together a Webinar on Using Google Earth for Genealogy, and I urge you to watch out for a re-broadcasting (see list of Webinar locations on the right).


Relevant Links

Google Earth

The Rumsey Collection

Maps of Quebec

Maps of Ontario

The map I used here – Detailed Map of Kingston 1900 (DejaVu) 

Historical maps of Western Canada

Find Canadian address by Township and Range

Historical Maps of US Cities 

Historical maps of Scotland

Info on historical maps of England

GenMaps– England, Wales and Scotland

Some England maps and London  

Vancouver Island Maps

Australia Parish Maps 

Survey of the high roads of England and Wales; part the first 1817