First Edition Published September 7,
2015
Last Revised on November 17, 2022
Copyright by Fred Blair
How to
Find War of 1812 Related Documents for Your Ancestors
Part 6: Other Sources
This is
a series of blogs on how to find Upper Canadian documents from about the time
of the War of 1812, but some of these strategies could be applied to other
British provinces. This discussion will
focus on documents from before, during, and after the war.
There are other resources that can
provide details about an ancestor’s military service or life in Upper Canada
during the war. I have accessed a number
of these and have a list of others that I would someday like to find. I have noted which documents I have copies of
below. Enquires are welcome but I may
charge a fee if a large number of look-ups are requested.
Library
and Archives Canada War of 1812 Document Search Engine
This search engine is online at http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/war-of-1812/Pages/search.aspx
Unfortunately, many of the documents
in this collection have not been indexed and are therefore not accessed by this
search engine. If you are lucky, you may
find a document of interest to you.
Upper
Canada Land Board Records
The Land Board Records may help you
with ancestors who settled between 1789 and 1794. They are available online in digital
microfilm at
http://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.lac_mikan_205141
The Ontario Genealogical Society
published The Index to the Upper Canada
Land Books in 2001.
Ontario
Land Records
The Ontario Land Records included
requests for land, land leases, land patents granted, and other land
transactions. The Ontario Archives has a
name index and a township index to these records. Their Research Guide is online at
http://www.archives.gov.on.ca/en/access/documents/research_guide_205_land_records.pdf
The Land Book Abstracts and related
documents can now be found online at
If you
know the Concession and Lot number where your ancestor lived or even the area,
you can find when they held title to the land in these books.
For the York County books, enter
“York” in the search engine window. From
the choices select “YORK REGION (LRO 65)”.
In the next window click on “Historical Books.” There are 2 options in the next window,
select “Browse Books”. Next click on
“Browse Abstact/Parcel Register Book”.
You now only have to select from 3299 results. If you know the Township or Municipality you
can select it in the box in the top right-hand corner. If I click on “York” Township, I get down to
155 results. You can now select the
Concession and Lot numbers for the land record you want to look at. This will take you to a digital copy of the
book which you can search by page number until you find the Concession and Lot
number you are looking for.
I found the lot that my house was
built on but before I got to 1895 the pages ended and there was a note to look
at the Plan with a plan number. You now
have to go back to the page where you found “Browse Books” and click on “Search
Books”. At “Property Description” select
“Plan” and enter the plan number.
All those other options looked
interesting as well, particularly “Wills”.
You may want to explore them further.
The
Sundries were the correspondence of the Civil Secretary of Upper Canada, and
later Canada West, from 1766 to 1841.
There is a variety of documents in this collection including letters,
petitions, reports, and certificates.
Some of Upper Canada Land Petitions, character references, family
histories, and war losses also ended up here.
These documents were filed by date.
The collection of digital microfilms is online at
http://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.lac_mikan_125539
A name index is
online at
http://uppercanadagenealogy.com/sundriesS.html
Prize Money Lists
Men
who took part in an engagement with the American’s and captured items of value
for the British were entitled to a share of the value of those goods. The Extracts
from the Prize List and other Honours Awarded for the Capture of Detroit,
August 16, 1812, Particularly Relating to the 41st Regiment of Foot
transcribed and annotated by Jim Yaworsky was online on May 20, 2019 at
http://www.fortyfirst.org/transcripts-12-detroit-prize-list.html
There are no doubt
other prize money lists that I have not found yet.
Prisoners of War and Parolees
In 1819 the
British sent an agent to Washington D.C. to prepare a registry of British
prisoners captured by the Americans and British citizens granted paroles by the
Americans. The register was online in
2019 but was inactive in 2021
https://www.1812privateers.org/Great_Britain/prisoners.html
There
are alphabetical links on the home page. There is an appendix of additional names
starting with the letters A-C at the end of this register.
Does anyone have a
link to this register?
It has been my
experience that some prisoners were not recorded in this registry or were
recorded with a variation of their surnames and that there were discrepancies
between the dates in the registry and in other sources. Another problem with the registry was that
militia rank and file were identified by name but not usually by the regiment
in which they served. If your ancestor
served as a private and had a common name, it may be difficult to prove that he
was the prisoner named in registry.
Another good
source with indices is David F. Hemmings & Joshua J. Lichty, Captured in
the War of 1812, Prisoner of War Camps in America, Niagara Historical Society
& David F. Hemmings, 2012.
Orphan’s Pensions
The Ontario
Archives has a copy of a poster of a list of orphans and their guardians who
received a pension in 1817. The poster columns
were the rank, name, regiment or corps, action where they were killed or how
they died, the date, the name of the guardian, the period of the pension, and
the amount. Unfortunately, it did not
name the orphaned children. I have a
copy of this poster. I have published as
transcript of this poster, without the last two columns, at
http://images.ourontario.ca/TrafalgarTownship/3571896/data?dis=dm
1816 & 1818 Widow’s Pensions
There are lists of
widows who received pensions at
http://images.ourontario.ca/Partners/kfpl/KFPL000096967p0004f.pdf
http://www.olivetreegenealogy.com/mil/1812/data_widows.shtml
1816 & 1817 Disabled Veteran’s Pensions
The Ontario
Archives also has a copy of a poster of a list of disabled veterans who
received a pension in 1817. The poster columns
were the rank, name, regiment or corps, action and date of the wound, the
period of the pension, and the amount.
Unfortunately, it did not record what part of the veteran’s body was
wounded. I have a copy of this poster. I have published as transcript of this
poster, without the last two columns, at
http://images.ourontario.ca/Partners/kfpl/KFPL000096967p0004f.pdf
http://images.ourontario.ca/TrafalgarTownship/3571955/data?dis=dm
The Loyal and Patriotic Society of Upper
Canada
During
the war a number of aid societies were formed to assist people left destitute
by the war. The Loyal and Patriotic
Society was one of the more prominent groups.
In 1817, they published a report on the workings of the society and who
they had assisted. There were many
reports on the problems individual families were encountering, the plight of
wounded men, and the losses that resulted from a number of American
attacks. This book of over 400 pages is
available online at
https://dr.library.brocku.ca/handle/10464/4754
In
2019, I completed a name index for this book which has also been published by
Brock University as a research aid on the same webpage.
War Casualty Lists
I have been asked
for a list of war casualties a few times but have not seen a complete
list. I have seen some lists for
specific battles. There are a number of
problems with these lists. Sometimes the
reports of the number of dead compiled by officers do not agree and even if the
total number was accurate there may not be a complete list of names.
The Lists of Traitors
There is a list of
traitors online at
http://www.archives.gov.on.ca/en/explore/online/1812/loyalty.aspx
Colonel
E.A. Cruikshank’s A Study of Disaffection
in Upper Canada in 1812-15 contains some lists of traitors in the London
and Western Districts beginning on page 60 of Section II in The Proceedings and Transactions of the
Royal Society in Canada – Third Series, Volume 6 online at
https://archive.org/stream/proceedingstrans36roya#page/n0/mode/2up
The Assize Court Records of Upper Canada
Linda Corupe, UE,
published her transcriptions and index to the Early Assize Court Records (Court
of Oyer and Terminer) of Ontario, Volume 2, 1810-1818 in 2008. As well as the names of those tried in the
courts, there are the names of jurors, witnesses, and members of the justice
system. You may also find the Appendices
and End Notes helpful.
Linda
has other publications available on her website at http://www.lindacorupe.com/pubs.html.
Local Sources
If you know the community in which your war veteran
was living about the time of the war it is sometimes helpful to look at local
sources such as family history and historical societies, libraries, museums,
and archives, historical plaques, and histories and surviving documents. You can read more about post war township
assessments below.
Some of the Kingston Gazette
newspapers survived the war and can be found online. I used http://vitacollections.ca/digital-kingston/96757/issues/1812 for the 1812 and one 1814 issues.
The Toronto Globe & Mail also
has an online archive that is available by subscription. I can access it for free through membership
in a local library. I have found some
stories about veterans, obituaries, and the 1875 Veteran Pensions there.
Post War Township Assessments
In 1816 a number
of townships in Upper Canada began to assess property holders. These assessments often include the names of
people who were living in the same township during the war. A number of families also relocated during
the war and may not appear in the township assessments where you expected to
find them. The Ontario Archives has
copies of these assessments on microfilm which can be accessed there or through
inter-library loan in Ontario.
I have transcribed
a few early assessments for different organizations but only a limited amount
of information was included in the transcriptions. It is always best to look at a copy of the
original rather than a transcript.
The 1847 General Service Medal List for Upper & Lower Canada
In
1847, the British awarded this medal for exceptional service to Upper Canadians
who served at the Capture of Fort Detroit in 1812 and the Battle of Chrysler’s
Farm in 1814 and who were still alive in 1847.
Lower Canadians received the medal for service at the Battle of
Chateauguay.
This was a silver
medal with the recipient’s name engraved around the rim. I have heard that Britain was severely in
debt after the Napoleonic Wars and that they could not afford to issue medals
for the other battles in Upper and Lower Canada.
http://www.fortyfirst.org/transcripts-12-detroit-prize-list.html
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:War_of_1812_Military_Decorations
https://www.warmuseum.ca/war-of-1812/content_assets/military-general-service-medal-1793-1814/
The 1860 Veteran Address
In
1860 the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, visited Upper Canada. One of his duties was to lay the cornerstone
for Brock’s Monument in Queenston on September 18th. The Globe and Mail published a number of
reports about the visit and the preparations for it. On June 29th, there was a report
of a meeting of survivors of the war in the town hall in St. Catharines. They decided that veterans of each county
were to send representatives to a meeting in Toronto on July 7th. The July 9th Globe reported that a
committee had been chosen to prepare an address to the Prince. The address was to be circulated throughout
the counties for veterans to sign before September 18th. The September 19th Globe reported
that a number of veterans had been present and listed the names of twenty-nine
men who were known to have been there. The
event was somewhat disorganized. The
Globe also contained a copy of the address and the Princes reply. The September 20th Globe lamented
that the veterans had marched up the hill and back down again after the address
but had had no reception with the Prince.
On September 26th, there was a report that 1,193 veterans had
signed the address. The average age of
the men was seventy with some as old as ninety-five. The number of men per county was also
listed. A later report declared that
forty veterans had been present at the address.
Has a
copy of this address with the veteran’s names survived?
1875 Veteran Pensions
In 1875, the
Canadian government decided to offer a pension to the surviving veterans of the
war. An amount was budgeted for the
grant but the number of applications exceeded expectations and the value of
each pension was reduced to $20.00. The
grant generated a lot of reports about particular veterans in local
newspapers. I have seen the report in the
Hamilton Spectator but the copy I had was poorly photocopied and difficult to
read. The Toronto Globe & Mail also
has reports on veterans.
The Statement
Showing the Name, Age and Residence of Militiamen of 1812-1815, Ottawa, 1875 is
online at
https://archive.org/stream/cihm_93576#page/n5/mode/2up
I believe the
commission interviews were never microfilmed and are on file in Ottawa. They may reveal a veteran’s recollections of
the war. Does anyone know the collection
number and how to access the applications?
Other Sources
I
have had several years to find and read histories of the War of 1812 in Upper
Canada. If you know which community your
veteran ancestor was living in check out local histories and local history and
family history societies. Search online
book collections for relevant history.
Most of the
sources that I have used will be published in the Stories Bibliography Page on
this website. Enquiries are welcome
about other sources I have not published there yet. Sometimes I just do not remember a source
until someone else jogs my memory.
I
also have a list of books that I have found listed in bibliographies but that I
have not been able to find a copy of to read.
I do
not expect that this list of sources will ever be complete. If you have found something interesting that you
would like to share please email me at the address in the header above.
End
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