Building an UEL Toolkit

Rootstech 2015 is over. There are a lot of great training videos posted to their site. I would recommend that you take advantage of this opportunity to listen to some great lecture and increase your knowledge base. One of the videos I watched is Building a Research Toolbox by Thomas MacEntee. I like to bookmark sites that I find useful but have run into a couple of problems with using the bookmark feature in my web browser. First, I tend to get a lot of bookmarks. Even when I try to categorize them, they tend to get lost. The other and bigger problem is that they are not portable. I don’t have my bookmarks with me at the library, for instance. Then I have to spend time trying to find that website with all the answers. So I watched Thomas’ presentation and decided to make a toolkit for myself. You can watch the rootstech videos here. Thomas gives you a link to his toolbox and encourages you to take it and personalize it for your own use.

I decided to try and make a toolbox specifically for my UEL research. So far I count 7 direct ancestors who are listed on the UEL lists, never mind assorted uncles and relatives by marriage. If I were Canadian, I would have lots of opportunity to join a lineage society.

Here are the resources I have found so far by category.

Books:I go back to these 4 all the time.

1. Merriman, Brenda Dougall, CG; “Genealogy in Ontario: Searching the Records”, Fourth Edition; Ontario Genealogical Society; 2008. There is a newer edition of this book, the 30th Anniversary Edition, 2013. Chapter 11 is devoted to Loyalist Ancestors and discusses Loyalists lists, military service, land grants, claims for losses and the UEL Association of Canada. Merriman’s book is a good place to start. If you are doing a lot of research in Ontario, you may wish to purchase a copy for yourself. It is $30 and can be purchased from the Ontario Genealogical Society. A search on world cat located 2 copies of this book within 10 miles of my home.

2. Reid, William D., “Loyalists in Ontario; The Sons and Daughters of The American Loyalists of Upper Canada”; originally published by Hunterdon House, Lambertville, New Jersey, 1973 and republished by The Genealogical Publishing Company, Baltimore. Reid was an archivist for the Province of Ontario. During his career, he accumulated information on land grants given to the sons and daughters of the Loyalists. They are arranged by family groups and are invaluable information for the genealogist. I also own this book; I use it constantly. Also available in my local library.

3. Crowder, Norman K., “Early Ontario Settlers”, Genealogical Publishing Company, Baltimore, 1993. This book is also in my personal library and is also available locally. Crowder has taken military records, muster rolls and provisioning list from 1783 - 1789 and reproduced them in an indexed book. Crowder provides extensive notes on his sources so you can determine exactly where the data on your ancestor was found and validate it yourself. His Bibliography is also worth a review.

4. Fraser, Alexander,Provincial Archivist, “Second Report of the Bureau of Archives for the Province of Ontario, 1904”, L.K. Cameron, Toronto, 1905. This report includes all the loss reports filed by Loyalists and recorded in Canada. These reports were given in person to the committee and each Loyalist presented a witness to the committee to corroborate his testimony. I purchased this book on CD from Quintin Publications. It is available in its entirety on archive.org. You can get information on relatives such as parents, where the Loyalist lived in the United States, where he currently resides and a good idea of his net worth before the war.

I have too many resources for one post so I will continue this later.