Obtaining Citizenship Based on Descent

Do you have Canadian ancestors?  Do you think you might be interested in Canadian citizenship? Perhaps your ancestry takes you to another country that permits citizenship based on your recent ancestors. If so, you may want to learn more about how to go about applying. (Many thanks to StLGS secretary and Ask Louie researcher, Debbie Benoit, for writing the first part of this week's post.)

Secrets of the Census, Part 7: 1900

Our last post in this series was in January when we reminded our readers of what happened to the 1890 census and why we don't have digital copies of it for most of our ancestors. (Did you miss that post? You can read it here.) We now come to the start of a new century and a world that was in the throes of major changes. It was the year The Wizard of Oz was published, work began on the subway system in New York City, and those new-fangled automobiles scaring horses and humans were labeled "devil wagons." Hawaii became a U.S. territory, McKinley was president, and a new baseball club, the American League, was formed in Chicago. The census takers for the 1900 federal census began their jobs on 1 June and were given just thirty days to complete their tasks, no small feat for a U.S. population that exceeded 76,000.000! This first twentieth-century census gives us new and important information on our ancestors.

Find Your Ancestors in the Newly-Released 1931 Canadian Census

If you have ancestors from Canada, you know that there is a Canadian census, like ours, conducted every ten years, but unlike ours, a complete national census is not available before 1871, since Canada did not become a confederation until 1867. The first census for the Confederation of Canada covers just the four original provinces: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario. The next census, in 1881, covered the entire country as it existed then. There are earlier censuses for Canada, but they are for individual provinces and territories. All these early censuses are digitized and available online, most on FamilySearch for free and on Ancestry and Findmypast with a subscription. For a complete listing of available Canadian censuses and where they are located, see the article in the FamilySearch wiki, called “Canada Census.”