Canada's fourth national census,
conducted in the spring of 1901, recorded the status quo of all residents as of 31 Mar 1901.
This was the first time Canada's national census asked for specific
birthdays, making it an extremely useful tool for
genealogy researchers.
The original handwritten census pages
survive and have been microfilmed. Copies of these microfilms were released
to the public domain in the early 1990s and today are available in many
libraries and archives, and are available on inter-library loan for
inspection.
Many genealogy resources, such as the
Norfolk Historical
Society
have transcribed
and indexed subsets of this census and offer their printed transcriptions
for sale at modest prices.
(These transcriptions typically transcribe only
"key" data for those residing in a particular town or township.)
The Government of Canada has also put
the entire 1901 Census online at: Census
of Canada, 1901. There is no charge to access that web site, so those
prepared to do their own transcribing of an unindexed, handwritten resource,
organized only geographically, can have at it whenever they like.
One word of warning, however: for
most -- particularly those who do not know precisely where their ancestors
resided -- reading microfilmed handwritten records of people you are not
interested in can eat up a lot of time and energy. Think of it as looking for a
needle in a haystack.
In theory, a better solution can
be found at Automated
Genealogy, a web site that asks volunteer site visitors to
transcribe and proof-read each page of the microfilmed census.
Transcriptions are much easier to read, online or off.
Unfortunately,
Automated Genealogy's transciptions have not been traditonally indexed, so their transcriptions seem
like another (albeit smaller and easily to navigate) haystack.
The quality of Automated
Genealogy's transcriptions and proof-reading of Norfolk County pages varies with the skill of their
volunteers, who too often don't seem know the names they are transcribing the way
local volunteers at the Norfolk Historical Society did. This
is the value-added that local transcribers bring to the table.
It is confusing enough when the
census-taker got the name (and/or other data) wrong. Complicating that with iffy transcriptions can leave genealogy researchers scratching their
heads.
Hopefully, that's where we can help.
Not for all of Canada mind you, just Norfolk County. In July 2008 we began
to s-l-o-w-l-y review both districts of the 1901 census that collectively cover Norfolk
County. Sub-district by sub-district (typically a town
or township) we will be analyzing each line of each page, and posting subsets
of our transciption of the microfilmed data to the B-M-D
Etc.
Armed with our indexed subsets of the
data, genealogy researchers should find it much easier to find the same
folks in the Automated
Genealogy data subset, and from there review the
source microfilm for themselves. All online, all for free, all in just minutes.
One small word of caution: the subsets
you'll find here are not exact transcriptions of each entry. We
have changed newborns ages from 10/12th of a year to 10 months. Wives,
daughters, neices, sisters, mothers and mothers-in-law are assumed to be
female. Single women are sometimes titled "Miss." Sons,
fathers, fathers-in-law, nephews and sons-in-law are assumed to be male.
Questionable transcriptions appear in [square brackets], accurately
recorded nonsense
responses deemed questionable are followed by [sic]. A Jones
residing in a Smith
household is referenced twice: once under Smith, once under Jones.
A Blume family was enumerated as
Bloom. We recorded them as Bloom [sic] but filed their
entry under Blume. A Winter family was enumerated as Winters. We recorded
them as Winters [sic] but filed their entry under Winter. A
Sebring family was enumerated as Sebering. We recorded them as Sebering
[sic] but filed them under Sebring. Delhi's enumerator spelled every instance of Mabel "Mable." We
recorded it as Mable [sic].
Several
abbreviations have been written out in full: S-in-L became son-in-law,
canning f. hand became canning factory hand, or canning f[actory]
hand. Which is why we recommend comparing our transcription to the scan of the
hand-written original.
The birth date
provided in the 1901 Census does not always agree with the birth
date provided on the same person's cemetery stone, obituary, death notice,
or registration. We recommend thoroughly checking the entire historical
record.
