GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021 - Census Record

GENEALOGY CHALLENGE

Census Record - January 10th entry of a 31-day challenge to post a document, photo or artifact on social media every day in January.

by Nancy Gilbride Casey


A census is one of the cornerstones of family history research, a document which can tell so much about the members of a family: their residence, ages, relationships, neighbors, occupations, marital status, and much more. It's a "one-stop-shop" for genealogical research.

As an example, these pages from the 1881 Canadian Census gives a snapshot of two generations of my grandmother Mary Josephine Baker's ancestors, living in Port Dalhousie, St. Catharines, Ontario, in the spring of 1881.








In number 214 (number assigned to the dwelling visited by the enumerator) lived Joseph Baker and Sarah (Dyer) Baker, with their 8 month old son Patrick.¹ They were Grandma's grandparents. Her father, Edward Joseph Baker, had not yet been born.



Immediately above them numbered 213, Michael and Catherine Dyer—Sarah Baker's parents—were recorded.²

Further down the page listed in dwelling 219, are Joseph Baker's parents, Joseph Baker, Sr. and Barbara (Schlitz) Baker, along with his siblings Nicholas, Mary and John.³






Besides showing that the families all lived close to one another, this census also provides more interesting details.

We learn that the older generations were immigrants:

• Michael Dyer, aged 65, and his wife Catherine (Manley) Dyer, aged 60, were both born in Ireland.
• Joseph Baker (Sr.), aged 53, and his wife Barbara (Schiltz), aged 49, were both born in Germany.
• Sarah Dyer Baker, aged 20, was born in Scotland, but is of Irish heritage.

Amongst the Bakers, we see some of Joseph's siblings Nicholas and Mary, were born in the United States, while the youngest, John, was born in Ontario. Prior to living in Port Dalhousie, the Baker family had lived in Sheldon, New York. While their exact date of immigration from Germany has not yet been pinpointed, it appears that they settled in this upstate New York community just after arriving in the United States.

In terms of occupations:

• Michael Dyer and Joseph Baker are listed as "labourers." This would typically mean they were engaged in unskilled, manual labor of some kind.
• Joseph Baker (Jr.) and his brother Nicholas, were both employed a "train brakemen." This highly dangerous job on the freight train, would have required them to walk atop moving cars and manually apply brakes.
• John Baker, age 11, Joseph's youngest brother, is shown as "going to school."

The census also notes that each member of these families was "R. Catholic."

In just a few pages captured in time, this Canadian census revealed fascinating details about multiple generations of my Baker ancestors.

NEXT UP: Immigration Record



¹ 1881 Census of Canada, Lincoln, Ontario, population schedule, enumeration district 145, subdistrict G, p. 42, dwelling 214, family 217, family of Joseph and Sarah Baker; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1577/images/31229_C_13255-00163 : accessed 10 January 2021); citing Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa; image 22/24.
² 1881 Census of Canada, Lincoln, Ontario, population schedule, enumeration district 145, subdistrict G, p. 42, dwelling 213, family 216, Michael and Catherine Dyer; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1577/images/31229_C_13255-00163 : accessed 10 January 2021); citing Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa; image 22/24.
³ 1881 Census of Canada, Lincoln, Ontario, population schedule, enumeration district 145, subdistrict G, p. 43, dwelling 219, family 222, family of Joseph and Barbara Baker; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1577/images/31229_C_13255-00163 : accessed 10 January 2021); citing Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa; image 22/24.