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Home: Genealogy: Censuses:
This form permits you to specify the characteristics of individuals that you are looking for in the 1851 Census of Canada. This Census was originally intended to be held in 1851, simultaneous with the Census in Britain and other parts of the British Empire. However in 1851 there was a major administrative reorganization of the administration of British North America as the existing colonies of Upper and Lower Canada were joined to form a single Colony of Canada.
As part of this reorganization Upper Canada became the Canada West division, and the militia districts, which had provided the main administrative framework for much of the province, were eliminated and the counties, which until now had largely existed only on paper, were established across the board. Whole new counties, for example Elgin, were created by adjusting the boundaries. Existing townships, for example Nissouri and Dorchester, were split by new county boundaries. A census in 1851 would have caught this makeover in mid-stream. Therefore the census was postponed until 1852, permitting it to provide the statistical baseline for the new administrative structure.
Once you have made all of your desired selections, click on the button at the top of the form. You may also use the keyboard short-cuts Ctrl-S or Alt-Q to perform a query.
The button performs a search of the database to report on which Districts and Sub-Districts are included in the current database and the progress of the transcription effort for each area. You may also use the keyboard short-cut Alt-C to invoke this function.
Province
The Census of 1851/2 covered the Colony of Canada, which was divided into two provinces: Canada East and Canada West, often referred to anachronistically as Lower Canada and Upper Canada, the names they used when they were separate colonies. The choice of province, if desired, is made using the selection list.
District
Each of the provinces was divided into Census Districts which corresponded to the cities and counties into which the provinces were divided. Note that for Canada West the counties did not become administrative units until shortly after this census was completed, and even then there were some exceptions. For example Lennox and Addington were two separate Districts for this census; they were united as a single county when the administrative reforms came into effect later in 1852.
If a Province is selected then the District selection list is populated with an alphabetical list of the census Districts.
Count
The Count field permits specifying how many records are to be displayed at at a time. The default is 20 records.
Sub-District
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.
Division
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.
Page
Each page of the population census contained room for 50 individuals. It is anticipated that the user will choose to search an individual page only for the situation when the entire page, all 50 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.
Given Names
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:
Surname
This field is used to specify text to look for in the surname of individuals to look for. 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.
Soundex
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".
Sex
Select this option if you only want to look for male or female individuals.
Marital Status
Select this option if you wish to restrict the search based upon the marital status of the individuals.
Occupation
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".
Birth Place
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".
Religion
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".
Residence
This option is used to search for individuals based upon the text in the column labeled "Residence if out of bounds". This is a pattern match. This field is understandably very infrequently used by the enumerators since it is defined for members of a family who are not currently residing with their family. To minimize wasting this column I have added information from schedule B about the address of the property on the line for the head of household. This information is enclosed in square brackets to indicate that it is not present in the original population census image. Note that if you wish to search for lines containing square brackets you have to escape them because square brackets are part of the regular expression language. For example to search for records where the Residence field contains "[con 2" you need to specify "\[con 2" in this option.
Birth Year & Range
The Birth Year and Range fields are used to search for individuals based upon their approximate birth year calculated from their age at their next birthday after the census in spring 1852.