29 April 2012

Timeline April 29 to 30

April 29
1429  Joan of Arc entered the besieged city of Orleans to lead a victory over the English.
1770  James Cook arrives at and names Botany Bay, Australia.
1903  A 30 million cubic-metre landslide kills 70 in Frank, Alberta, Canada.
1954  Jerry Seinfeld, actor, comedian, was born.
2011  Wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Kate Middleton.

April 30
1006  Supernova SN 1006, the brightest supernova in recorded history, appears in the constellation Lupus.
1492  Spain gives Christopher Columbus his commission of exploration.
1770  David Thompson, English explorer and fur trader in western Canada and the United States, was born.
1789  On the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, George Washington takes the oath of office to become the first elected President of the United States.
1803  The United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million.
1939  The New York World's Fair opened.
1993  CERN announces World Wide Web protocols will be free.

Yesterday's Branch Meeting


Yesterday, Ottawa Branch OGS made their second webcast from the City of Ottawa Central Archives. Susan Davis spoke on Social Media and Genealogy. There were 24 people on hand to hear her presentation and we were joined by six others via Live Meeting. The distant members came from as far away as Hamilton and Pickering but were able to attend the meeting, almost as if they were in the room. Almosst, as due to some technical issues with the sound system that kept dropping out, the distant members missed some of Susan’s words. However, they expressed their appreciation for the ability to join their fellow Branch members from the comfort of their own homes. But the distant members do miss out on the juice and cookies :-)

The Branch will work on resolving the audio issues for the next meeting. Both the equipment and technology are new to the Branch volunteers and we all know of the gremlins that lurk in complicated apparatus. In technical terms…Stuff Happens.

Live Meeting has been provided to the Ontario Genealogical Society through our association with the National Institute of Genealogical Studies and has been used by Ottawa Branch since January to conduct the monthly Board meetings. Board members who are on a tight schedule or unable to make it to the physical meeting are now able to participate from home. As a result, we now have a board member who lives out of town but is still able to contribute.

27 April 2012

War of 1812

I have just received the May/June 2012 issue of Legion Magazine. Headline is
'War Declared  The Battle with America Begins'. Contains a Feature 'Battlefields Then and Now'.
Battle of Lacolle Mill  30 March 1814 is highlighted. Also an Article 'The Call to Arms' by
Donald E. Graves. Another Feature is called '1812 Journal, Then and Now' which compares events in 1812 with events in 2012.
Of interest locally is an exhibition at the War Museum entitled 'Four Wars of 1812' which opens on 15 June. Anyone interested in this magazine can purchase a yearly subscription for $7.00 + tax for  six issues.   www.legionmagazine.com
Also 'Fort Wellington 1812 Garrison Weekend' 19-21 May  Prescott, Ont
Also Celebrate the Canadian Forces 5 June 2012  Across Canada  "Wing it"
Anyone interested in real Old stuff. The Hudson Bay Company celebrates their 342nd anniversary
on 2 May 2012
There are many more happenings in June

Timeline April 27 & 28

April 27
1509  Pope Julius II excommunicated the Italian state of Venice.
1773  The Parliament of Great Britain passes the Tea Act, designed to save the British East India Company by granting it a monopoly on the North American tea trade.
1791  Samuel Morse, American painter and developer of the telegraph, was born.

April 28
1789  The crew of the British ship Bounty mutinied, setting Captain William Bligh and 18 sailors adrift in a launch in the South Pacific.
1910  Frenchman Louis Paulhan wins the 1910 London to Manchester air race, the first long-distance aeroplane race in England.
1947  Thor Heyerdahl and a five man expedition sailed from Peru aboard a balsa wood raft named the Kon-Tiki on a 101-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia.

25 April 2012

Timeline April 25 to 26

April 25
1599  Oliver Cromwell, English soldier and statesman; Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland 1653-8, was born.
1849  The Governor General of Canada, Lord Elgin, signs the Rebellion Losses Bill, outraging Montreal's English population and triggering the Montreal Riots.
1859  British and French engineers break ground for the Suez Canal.
1874  Guglielmo Marconi, Italian Nobel Prize winning physicist 1909 and inventor, was born in Bologna, Italy.
1900  Wolfgang Pauli, Austrian born Nobel Prize winning physicist (1945), was born.
1915  World War I: The Battle of Gallipoli begins—The invasion of the Turkish Gallipoli Peninsula by Australian, British, French and New Zealand troops begins with landings at Anzac Cove and Cape Helles. ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand.
1953  Francis Crick and James D. Watson publish "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" describing the double helix structure of DNA.
1959  The St. Lawrence Seaway, linking the North American Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, officially opens to shipping.

April 26
1607  An expedition of English colonists went ashore at Cape Henry, Va., to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere. (They later settled at Jamestown.)
1785  John James Audubon, West Indian born American Naturalist, ornithologist, and artist was born in Haiti.
1822  Frederick Law Olmsted, American landscape architect; designed Central Park in New York City.

OGS By-law Vote


All members should soon have received their notice of the proposed By-law changes and the ballot. I encourage all to register your vote on this very important issue. Follow the instructions enclosed with the ballot and proposed by-laws.

Ottawa Branch Meeting 28 Apr 2012

The next meeting of Ottawa Branch OGS on Saturday 28 April at 1:00pm will be another webcast to our membership. The physical meeting will take place in Room 226 of the new City of Ottawa Central Archives at 100 Tallwood Drive, Ottawa and is open to the public. Members of Ottawa Branch who cannot make it to the venue are welcome to join us via Live Meeting, courtesy of the National Institute of Genealogical Studies.
  
Speaker: Susan Davis Topic:  Social Media and Genealogy

23 April 2012

Timeline April 22 to 24

April 22
1451  Isabella I, Spanish Queen 1474-1504, sponsored Columbus's voyage to the New World.
1509  Henry VIII became king of England following the death of his father, Henry VII.
1904  J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American nuclear physicist who headed the Manhattan  project, was born.
1970  Earth Day was observed for the first time.

April 23
AD 303 Saint George's Day
1564  William Shakespeare, English poet and dramatist, was born.
1621  Sir William Penn, English admiral and father of Pennyslvania's founder, was born.
1985  The Coca-Cola Co. announced it was changing its secret formula for Coke. (Negative public reaction forced the company to revert to the original version.)

April 24
1800  US Congress approved a bill establishing the Library of Congress.

22 April 2012

Continuing Timeline

I am going to try to continue the timeline with items that were not included the first time. Lots of events happen around the world but are they of interest!

19 April 2012

Timeline April 19 to 21

April 19
1775  The American Revolutionary War began with the battles of Lexington and Concord.
1897  The first Boston Marathon was run.
1900  The first Canadians ever to run the Boston Marathon were Jim Caffery, Bill Sherring and Frank Hughson. They placed first, second and third.
1903  Sir Oliver Mowat died in Toronto. He was Premier of Ontario from 1872 to 1896 and a father of Confederation.
1907  Tom Longboat, legendary Onondaga runner, won the Boston Marathon.
1933  The United States went off the gold standard.

April 20
1792  France declared war on Austria, marking the start of the French Revolutionary wars.
1902  Scientists Marie and Pierre Curie isolated the radioactive element radium.
1907  Port Arthur and Fort William were incorporated as cities. They later merged to become Thunder Bay.
1941  Prime Minister Mackenzie King and US President Franklin D Roosevelt Signed the Hyde Park Declaration committing the two countries to joint defence and economic cooperation.

April 21
1785  Trial by jury was established in Upper Canada.
1821  The Bank of Canada was incorporated.
1838  John Muir, Scottish born American naturalist and conservationist, was born.
1910  Samuel Langhorne Clemens, author, better known as Mark Twain, died in Redding, Conn.
1918  Arthur Roy Brown, Canadian air ace is credited with shooting down the Red Baron, Baron Manfred von Richthofen, in WW I in 1918. He was born in Carleton Place in 1893.
1926  Queen Elizabeth II was born.

17 April 2012

Timeline April 16 to 18

April 16
1786  Sir John Franklin, English rear admiral and explorer, was born.
1796  Molly Brant, sister of Mohawk chief Joseph Brant and mistress to Sir William Johnson, superintendent of Indian Affairs, died.
1867  Wilbur Wright, American inventor and aviation pioneer, was born.
1924  Henry Mancini, American composer, was born.
1935  Bobby Vinton, singer, was born.

April 17
1492  Christopher Columbus received a commission from Spain's King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to seek a westward ocean passage to Asia.
1521  Martin Luther went before the Diet of Worms to face charges stemming from his religious writings.
1524  Italian-born explorer Giovanni da Verrazano reached present-day New York harbor.
1840  The monument to General Isaac Brock at Queenston Heights was severely damaged by an explosion set off by Benjamin Lett, an Irish Canadian rebel.
1967  Roland Michener became Canada's 20th Governor General. Previous to this he was speaker of the House of Commons and High Commissioner to India.
1982  Queen Elizabeth signed into law Canada's new constitution in Ottawa.

April 18
1775  Paul Revere began his ride from Charlestown to Lexington, Mass., warning American colonists that the British were coming.
1906  A major earthquake struck San Francisco and set off raging fires. More than 3,000 people died.
1793  The first issue of the Upper Canada Gazette or American Oracle, the first newspaper in what is now Ontario, was published in Newark by Louis Roy.
1816  The settlement of Perth in the Rideau Lakes area was begun beside the Tay River.
1955  Physicist Albert Einstein died at age 76.
1999  Wayne Gretzky, the National Hockey League's all-time leading scorer, played his last professional game, at Madison Square Garden in New York.

16 April 2012

De Watteville [Swiss] Regiment

Ref; Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online

WATTEVILLE, LOUIS DE
b. 1776 Bern, Switzerland. d. 16 June 1836, Rubigen, Switzerland
De Watteville's Regiment was a Swiss unit in the service of Britain. It was made up of Germans, Italians, Poles, Hungarians and Russians with a handful of Greeks and Frenchmen. Roughly 1/5th of its strength, including all the officers, was Swiss.
They were at Cadiz, Spain since late 1811 when ordered on 15 Mar 1813 to sail for the Canada's.
On 5 Apr.1813 de Watteville, 41 Officers, 1,414 men, 8 servants, 45 wives and 38 children boarder six ships the next day and reached Quebec on 4 June after calling at Halifax.
The regiment was in the Battle of Snake Hill [Fort Erie] and a few others. For more info consult the above Biography on DCB.

There was another Reg't, De Meuron with a similar history. They departed from Malta 4 May 1813 for Canada. I found some ref's by Googling their name, even a web page

National Volunteer Week

There has been little heard on the media but this is National Volunteer Week. According to Volunteer Canada, there are 12.5 million of us across the county "on all fronts: community health care, sports and recreation, heritage and arts, environmental protection & advocacy, disaster relief, international development, and volunteer firefighting – the list is endless. The work of volunteers is essential to maintaining resilient communities at home and around the world."

If you would like to thank a volunteer, you can use the website at http://volunteer.ca/nvw to send an e-Card.

Better still, why don't you become a volunteer? We would be more than glad to share the load of running our organizations and sharing our hobby. After all, there are still over 22 million who are not volunteering. You can make a difference and you will feel better for helping others move ahead in the hobby. Every little bit helps.

15 April 2012

Timeline April 15

April 15
1452  Leonardo da Vinci, Italian artist, architect, scientist, inventor and engineer, was born.
1814  The warships Prince Regent and Princess Charlotte were launched at Kingston.
1912  The British luxury liner Titanic sank in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland, less than three hours after striking an iceberg. About 1,500 people died.
1945  British and Canadian troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.
1950  500 Dutch immigrants arrived in Toronto on their way to settle at Holland Landing.

13 April 2012

Timeline April 13 & 14

April 13
1598  King Henry IV of France signed the Edict of Nantes, granting rights to the Protestant Huguenots.
1858  A vicious spring storm created Toronto Island.
1970  Apollo 13, four-fifths of the way to the moon, was crippled when a tank containing liquid oxygen burst.
1997  Tiger Woods, 21, became the youngest person to win the Masters Tournament and the first person of African heritage to claim a major golf title.

April 14
1750  French troops began construction of Fort Rouille on the site of the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto.
1865  US President Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth while attending Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. He died the next day. A Major Henry Rathbone was present in the President's theatre box. [Rathbone is a 4th cousin 4 times removed of your blogger.]
1912  The White Star Line passenger ship the Titanic hits an iceberg on its maiden voyage.
1956  Ampex Corp. demonstrated its first commercial videotape recorder.
2002  Tiger Woods became only the third golfer in history to win back-to-back Masters titles.

11 April 2012

Timeline April 10 to 12

April 10
1850  Bishop Strachan left Toronto for England carrying a petition seeking a royal charter for an Anglican College, present day Trinity College.
1959  A nuclear research reactor began operation at McMaster University in Hamilton.

April 11
1785  Sir John Johnson and a group of officers drew up a petition to King George III on behalf of the United Empire Loyalists, asking that Loyalist settlements be separated from Quebec so they could have freehold tenure and English civil law.
1814  Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated as emperor of France and was banished to the island of Elba.
1829  William Booth, English minister and founder of the Salvation Army, was born.
1839  John Galt, organizer of the Canada Company and founder of Guelph, died in Greenock, Scotland.
1870  Vladimir Lenin, Russian Communist leader of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, was born.
1912  The Titanic set sail from Southampton, England, on its ill-fated maiden voyage.
1945  American soldiers liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany.
1962  The Nuclear Power Demonstration Station reactor at Rolphton came into operation.

April 12
1606  England adopted the Union Jack as its flag.
1778  John Strachan, Scottish born Canadian educator and first Anglican bishop of Toronto, was born.
1819  The Earl of Dalhousie was made Governor General of British North America.
1861  The American Civil War began as Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
1917  Women were granted the right to vote in Ontario.
1946  The 17th Governor General, the last titled holder of this office, Viscount Alexander of Tunis, was sworn in by the Senate.
1955  The Salk vaccine against polio was declared safe and effective.
1961  Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to fly in space, orbiting the Earth once before making a safe landing.

09 April 2012

OGS Conference 2012



OGS Conference 2012:  Borders & Bridges: 1812 - 2012, will be held 1-3 June 2012 at St. Lawrence College, 100 Portsmouth Avenue, Kingston, Ontario.

The War of 1812 was a border dispute between England and the United States. Issues such as borders; land settlement and pension records (on both sides of the border) of participants in the war of 1812 and other wars; immigration and migration; and genealogical resources in areas bordering eastern Ontario as well as in Ontario will be among the topics covered by speakers at the Conference. Other sessions will cover 21st century topics such as DNA, Google and other technology relevant to genealogical research.

Of particular interest to people curious about family history may be the pre-conference workshop “Starting Out in Genealogy”, offered Friday, June 1, 9:30 am – noon. People can register for this or any other Friday workshop without registering for the entire conference. 


Organizations that would like to exhibit in the Vendor area can find information at http://www.ogs.on.ca/conference2012/marketplace.

Genealogy Day and Region VIII OGS AGM

Region VIII Ontario Genealogical Society
AGM and Genealogy Day
hosted by Ottawa Branch OGS

Saturday, April 21, 2012
City of Ottawa Central Archives
100 Tallwood Drive, Ottawa, Ontario
Cost: $15 at the door (does not include lunch)

All Registrants will be eligible for a draw for $50 off the cost of registration at OGS Conference 2012

 9:30-10:00       Check-in.  Coffee and tea will be available on arrival.

Speakers include Robert Serré, Rick Roberts and Paul Henry, City Archivist. Lunch is included in the price of admission when you pre-register. Deadline for pre-registration is 10 April
More details  and registration form at

Marketplace will feature Global Genealogy, Archive CD Books Canada as well as the member organizations of Region VIII and some of the local heritage organizations.



Timeline April 9

April 9
1682  French explorer Robert La Salle reached the Mississippi River.
1806  Isambard Brunel, English engineer, who designed the first transatlantic steamer, was born.
1865  Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.
1917  Start of the Battle of Vimy Ridge in WW I. This battle continued until the 12th.
1917  Ellis Wellwood Sifton of Ontario was killed in the attack on Vimy Ridge. For his bravery on that day at Neuville-St-Vaast, France, he received the Victoria Cross posthumously.
2005  Prince Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles, who took the title Duchess of Cornwall.

08 April 2012

Timeline April 8

April 8
1513  Explorer Juan Ponce de Leon claimed Florida for Spain.
1875  The Supreme Court of Canada was established.
1892  Mary Pickford, actress, was born in Toronto.
1949  A Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts and Letters and Sciences was established. It was headed by Vincent Massey. The result was the establishment of the Canada Council in 1957.
2012  Bubbba Watson won the Master's Golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia.

05 April 2012

Timeline April 5 to 7

April 5
1790  The first town or municipal meeting in what is now Ontario was held in John Green's house near Grimsby.
1832  Brockville was incorporated as a town.
1887  British historian Lord Acton wrote in a letter, "All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

April 6
1483  Raphael, Italian painter & architect of the Italian High Renaissance, was born.
1829  Bytown's first post office opened.
1830  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was organized by Joseph Smith in Fayette, N.Y.
1891  The third Dominion Census was taken. The population of Canada was 4,833,239.
1896  The first modern Olympic Games opened in Athens, Greece.

April 7
1770  William Wordwworth, English romantic poet and poet laureate of England 1843-50, was born.
1860  W K Kellogg, American Industrialist and founder of the W K Kellogg Co., was born.
1868  Thomas D'Arcy McGee was assassinated on Sparks St. in Ottawa.

03 April 2012

Timeline April 3 & 4

April 3
1783  Washington Irving, American author; Legend of Sleepy Hollow, was born in New York City.
1875  Construction of the CPR began at what is now Thunder Bay.
1962  An act of the Ontario legislature establishing Trent University in Peterborough was given Royal accent.

April 4
1648  Grinling Gibbons, English wood carver and decorator of St. Paul`s Cathedral, London, England, was born.
1881  The second Dominion Census was taken. The population of Canada was 4,324,810.
1885  Ottawa had a large snowfall of 71 cm.
1887  Alexander Campbell and Sandford Fleming represented Canada at the first Imperial Conference in London.
1949  The North Atlantic Treaty was signed by Lester Pearson for Canada.
1968  Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., 39, was shot to death in Memphis, Tenn.

01 April 2012

Timeline April 1 & 2

April 1
1578  William Harvey, English physician; developed theory of blood circulation, was born.
1824  Samuel Cloves completed the survey of the Rideau Canal route and submitted his report to Lt. Gov. Sir Peregrine Maitland.
1892  The North American Canal Company was incorporated  to deepen the St. Lawrence River and to build canals from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario and from Lake Francis to Lake Champlain.
1924  The Royal Canadian Air Force was organized.
1968  Pierre Juno was appointed the first chairman of the Canadian Radio and Television Commission.

April 2
742  Charlemange, King of the Franks, King of the Lombards and Charles I of the Holy Roman Empire, was born.
1513  Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon landed in Florida.
1871  The first Dominion Census was taken. Canada`s population was 3,689,257.
1873  A charge was made in the House of Commons that Sir John A Macdonald and members of his cabinet had accepted campaign funds from promoters of the CPR. This Pacific Scandal brought down the government in October.
1975  The CN Tower was topped off at 553.33 metres.