Sue Hansen, Reference Librarian at NOPL’s Cicero Branch, is continuing her family tree research. In previous videos within our blog, Sue has provided various ways of using the information you have to locate your family in Ancestry. In this post, Sue will be researching her Grandparent’ Canadian Roots on Ancestry Library Edition from home.
By Sue Hansen
I am using the NOPL at Cicero library card to access Ancestry from home to find my grandfather, great grandfather, and great, great grandfather, who was born in 1849. I have made connections to my great, great grandfather’s father who lived in France, and his mother who lived in Ireland. This exciting news has put me on the path to discovering Canadian Census records that are new to the Ancestry library collection. I have found these census records in the New Collections Card Catalog. The record is written in French, leading me to refer back to the U.S. Federal Census in order to identify the spellings and various categories the census uses to convey family and surname, residence, occupation, age, religion, parent name, and parent’s birthplace. The addition of my parent’s birthplace helped me locate my great, great grandfather, Louis P. Touchette, who lived in Canada until his death in the United States in 1905.
Gravefinder led me to his grave marker in Watertown, NY, and eventually to his family and parents from Quebec, Canada. I was led to his place of residence around 1870, he was 20 years old at the time and living with 8 other siblings, listed in the Canadian Census. The family was Catholic. My great, great grandfather, Louis, was a master horseshoer and well-known fire department official. The family was fairly large and well established once they moved to the United States. I have more to follow up on his parents who were from France and Ireland. I will continue to follow up on great, great, great grandparents on the United Kingdom Census records and Western European records in the New Collections Card Catalog.
