Automated
Genealogy
dot Com
1901 Census
When Aunt Ethel returned from her motor
trip to Boston, she handed me a small box. Inside I found a red pen
nestled in blue velvet. I could hardly believe what she was telling me.
It was not a straight pen that I would dip into my ink well nor was it
a fountain pen that
I filled with ink. It was a ball point pen that didn’t require any ink
-
the first one I had seen and you might say this revolutionized the
writing process.
Lindsay Patten watched the way his mother worked with other people on
her family
lines and it seemed to him that genealogists were not really using
computers
to their full advantage so he wrote some programs to automate comparing
databases. Then he placed the programs on a web site so users didn't
have
to install anything, they just needed a web browser.
Next he set up a project to transcribe the 1901 Census and thus
AutomatedGenealogy dot com came to be. Five hundred registered
volunteers chipped in for the common cause - erasing distance and
letting widely scattered people work
together - and in so doing have transcribed more than 800,000 lines.
At the present 78% of the 1901 census for New Brunswick has been
transcribed and placed on this searchable database web site. It is
available for viewing online without a fee.
Using the surname indices for the district and polling district levels,
searches can be done by surname with included links to the pages the
names appear on. Yet still available is the opportunity to walk along
the road your
ancestor lived, making note of the names of their neighbours. A click
of
the mouse and you have the digitized image page of the 1901
census from
the National Archives with complete census data.
A search of Kings County for the surname Pendergrass, found a
family of four on page 2 of Springfield Parish. Nelson Pendergrass
who was born June 10, 1875 is listed as the head of household and is
unmarried, his mother Fanny is a widow born on February
25, 1840, his sister Hannah M. was born on February 15, 1867
and his unmarried brother Orman M. was born July 10, 1882. Their
neighbours were the Ellisons and the Greenslades.
The link to the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick lists the
birth at Mud Pond, Kings County of Orman Pendergrass as 10 Jul 1882
with parents John Pendergrass and Fannie Dyer and also a marriage for
an Orman Pendergrass of Kings County to Carrie E. Spragg on 02 Oct.
1918. The link to the digitized page at the National Archives tells us
they were all born in New Brunswick and were members of the Baptist
Church.
Since census records for other provinces in Canada are being
transcribed, a national surname index has been placed on the Automated
Genealogy web
site.
By combining volunteers, computer technology and the speed of the
internet, the ability to quickly and easily view records has arrived.
To search the 1901 census, visit http://automatedgenealogy.com
and click on the 1901
in the top right hand corner.
**
Query 1112
Walters: I am interested in finding out where my grandfather James
H. Walters was born in 1851. He died in 1909 and is buried in South
Branch Baptist Cemetery.
Carl Walters, 52 Bills Corners Rd., RR#6
Simcoe, Ont., N3Y 4K5. E-mail mylifeis2serve@hotmail.com
