Genealogy: Canada: Censuses
Press F1 for context specific help.
Click on this button to perform the query. You may also perform the query pressing the enter key while in any text input field, or by the key combination Alt-Q.
Click on this button to display a district level report of the progress of the transcription effort for the 1871 census. You may also request this by the key combination Alt-C.
The Census of 1871 covered the new Dominion of Canada, which was divided into four provinces: Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. If you wish to limit the search to a specific province the choice is made using the selection list.
At present the only data entered is for part of Ontario.
The country was divided into Census Districts which corresponded approximately to electoral districts or ridings. Although some of these Districts have the same name as Counties, they do not generally have the same boundaries as the Counties with the same name.
Initially this selection list includes all Districts in the country. If a Province is selected then the District selection list is populated with an alphabetical list of the census Districts in that Province.
The Count field permits specifying how many records are to be displayed at at a time. The default is 20 records.
Each census District, generally the same as a County, was divided into census Sub-Districts, each conforming generally to a City Ward, Town, or Township. The selection list of sub-districts is populated when you select a District.
Larger census sub-districts were further divided into enumeration divisions or wards to try and balance out the workload for the enumerators. The selection list of divisions is populated when you select a sub-district.
Each page of the 1871 population census contained room for 20 individuals. It is anticipated that the user will choose to search an individual page only for the situation when the entire page, all 20 individuals, are the desired target set. Therefore selecting a specific page within a specific enumeration division ignores the Count field so that all rows of the page are displayed and changes the default sort order to display the records in the order they appear in the original.
This field is used to specify text which is matched against the given names of individuals in the database. This search is done as a case-insensitive pattern match, not a simple comparison.
Specifying simple text, comprising letters and spaces, matches against any names containing that text. "John" or "john" or "JOHN" will match "Johnathan" and "William John" as well as the simple "John".
The text may be a regular expression. There are too many options to enumerate here, but a few examples include:
This field is used to specify text to look for in the surname of individuals. If the value contains only letters and spaces then only names that match exactly (except for case) are found. Otherwise this uses the same pattern matching as described for Given Names. For example to match surnames starting with "McL..." and ending with "...n", such as "McLean", "McLain", "McLennan", or "McLellan" you could specify "^McL.*n$".
The meaning of this field changes if the Soundex option is selected.
The Soundex code has been used for decades to attempt to match names that sound similar. For example it is used by police forces to perform a rough match for the names of drivers. It is a problematic tool, as it is based upon the phonetics of British surnames. If you select this option along with a complete surname, not a pattern match, in the Surname field, then the search is made for surnames that "sound like" the given surname. For example specifying Soundex together with "McLean" will match all of the surnames in the pattern match example under "Surname", but many other names as well, such "McCallum", "McAllan", "McClain", and "McWilliams".
Select this option if you only want to look for male or female individuals.
Select this option if you wish to restrict the search based upon the marital status of the individuals.
This option is used to search for individuals based upon their listed occupations. This is again a pattern match. For example searching for "Labo[u]{0,1}rer" will match any occupation that contains either "Laborer" or "Labourer", including "Farm Labourer" and "R'y Laborer".
This option is used to search for individuals based upon where they were born. This is a pattern match. For example searching for "Canada" will also match "Canada East", "Canada West", "Lower Canada", and "Upper Canada".
This option is used to search for individuals based upon their religious affiliation. This is a pattern match. For example searching for "Meth" will match any religion containing that string, including "Wesleyan Methodist", "C. Meth.", "New Connexion Methodist", and "Methodist Episcopal".
The Origin field is used to search for individuals with a particular ethnic origin. Note that by the instructions to the enumerators the term "Canadian" only applied to Canadiens-françaises, and the term "American" was not to be used, regardless of how many generations the individual's family had been living in America.
The Birth Year and Range fields are used to search for individuals based upon how old they were at the time of the census in spring 1871. If Range is not specified then the Birth Year must match exactly, but you can use Range to perform an imprecise search.
For individuals less than one year old the age is expressed generally in months as, for example, "m5" for 5 months old, or "w2" for 2 weeks old, or "d8" for 8 days old. Generally the month of birth is available in the details.
The Birth Year is calculated from the Age as 1870 - Age, because the census was enumerated in the spring of 1871. If the Age is not numeric then the calculated Birth Year is 1870.
The Range field specifies a range in years on either side of the Birth Year.