Launch of LAC "Medals, Honours and Awards" Database

Victory Medal, First World War
Courtesy: LAC

Ottawa, December 9, 2010 — Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is pleased to announce the launch of a new online database, "Medals, Honours and Awards".

Through this online database, researchers can access more than 113,000 references to medal registers, citation cards, and records of various military awards. In addition to archival references, this research tool includes digitized images of some medal registers.

The database is available at: www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/medals/index-e.html

I checked the database and found a Barclay Webster, s/o Henry Bentley Webster and Ina Mary Barclay (my gggg aunt) who joined the 2nd Canadian Queen's Regiment.

I did not know that he was in the militia, and that he had received the Canada General Service Medal as noted below www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/medals/001099-110.01-e.php?PHPSESSID=u8farn7vbbhl9hqp3oa83u73m5&q1=Webster&q2=Barclay&q3=&q4=&q5=&q6=&interval=2 -

Name: WEBSTER, Barclay
Rank: Private
Regiment: 2nd Queen's Regiment Nova Scotia Militia
Medal/Honour/Award: Canada General Service Medal
Event/Time Period: Fenian Raid (1866)
Volume: 8
Page: 113
Reference / Acession Number: RG 9 IIA5
Microfilm: C-1862

There is a very brief account of him and his life on Wikipedia, as follows -

Barclay Webster - from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barclay_Webster

Barclay Webster (September 16, 1849 – ) was a lawyer, judge and political figure in Nova Scotia, Canada. He represented King's County in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly from 1890 to 1894 as a Liberal-Conservative member.

He was born in Kentville, Nova Scotia, the son of Henry Bentley Webster, a lawyer, and Mary Ina Barclay. Webster was educated at Acadia College, Dalhousie University and Harvard University. He was called to the Nova Scotia bar in 1872 and set up practice in Kentville. He married Ethel, the daughter of Leverett de Veber Chipman, in 1877. In 1890, Webster was named King's Counsel.

His son, L. Beverley Webster, died in London after fighting in the Boer War.

New Issue of OGS Families - Cont'd

To continue the overview that I started the other day of the papers in the Ontario Genealogical Society's journal, Families, there are four more papers in the November issue, and they are -

"Where Are The Records?" is an ongoing column by Gwen Patterson in which she takes often overlooked resources at the archives or library and sets them in context so that Ontario researchers can use them.

In this issue, she has a piece on "The Papers of Andrew F. Hunter (1863-1940), Simcoe County Historian" and there are newspaper clippings from The Family Herald and Weekly Star. These clippings concern Lost Persons and Deaths from 1936 to 1938.

"Unfolding Old Documents", by Dr. Fraser Dunford, the Executive Director of the Ontario Genealogical Society, goes through the work involved in taking old papers to ready them for scanning. There are photos, and the step-by-step process is described for those people who are faced with the same problem.

'The Edgars in Glengarry Country and Abroad", by James Somerville Edgar, tells the story of the searching for Charles Edgar of Newry, County Down, Northern Ireland.

"Documenting Ontario War Dead, 1918-1950", by military archivist Glenn Wright. Since November is Remembrance Month in Canada, Glenn has written a new book called Canadians at War 1914-1919: A Research Guide to World War One Service Records, which details the records in Canada.

This paper goes through the Circumstances of Death Registers (which are not online) in the Library and Archives Canada, and he tells us, in detail, how to use these records.

In the February issue, the lead article will be "How to Research Your Jamaican Ancestry from Canada", by Dorothy Kew, in honor of Heritage Day in Ontario.

It's one in a variety of other similar excellent articles written by enlightened and exciting authors.

New Issue of OGS Families

As the new editor of the Ontario Genealogical Society's journal, Families, I have had the pleasure of my first issue being recently released.

In this November 2010 issue, I covered the fact that 2010 was declared as the Year of the Home Child, and I published the following articles -

"Young Immigrants to Canada: The Children's Friend Society" by Marjorie Kohli. This article gives a history of The Children's Friend Society, and lists two pages of names of children who came to Canada from Britain in the middle 18th-Century. A typical entry reads, "Smith, Jesse on Active, house servant to Rev. Thomas B. Fuller of Toronto".

"The British Child Emigration Scheme to Canada (1870-1957)" by Perry Snow. Read about the legacy left by his father, Fred G. Snow, as he made his way to Canada as a Home Child. This article appears as a reprint courtesy of Chinook, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society.

'The Diary of Reverend William Bowman Tucker, 1859-1934" is an except from a diary of a Home Child, one who later went on to found the Montreal City Mission. Glenn Adams, his grandson, gave me his kind permission to reprint a small portion of the diary.

"Discovering the Story of Father" by John Fielding is a heart-warming story of a boy, Leslie Fielding, and how he made a life for himself after he came to Canada.

In the next posting, I will continue with Part II, telling you about more articles in this issue of Families, plus a special article in the OGS NewsLeaf.