[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] 1901 census and Prairie towns

[Gary Warner]

 Dave (the following message also for others on the list),

Thanks for the information.  Your book and the Manitoba volume of the
Gazetteer of Canada.should save a lot of people a lot of time in trying
to figure out where their ancestors were in 1901.  Your method is an
easier way to get where I finally got last night, but some of the rest of
you on the list might be able to do as I did last night in successfully
finding some information.

As it turns out, Dave, you are absolutely correct, as I managed to find
my grandfather in the 1901 Census last night, and he is indeed in the
Franklin Municipality District.  Here are two different ways that I did
it that did not make use of the books you mention, however, and some
observations about the 1901 Census along the way:

Method 1

1.  I went to the white pages on line, and did a search for Emerson,
Manitoba.  I think you can use any of the search engines to do this, but
I used the one at
http://www.infospace.com/info.msn/redirs_all.htm?pgtarg=& ;qvref=msn. I
did the search without entering a surname, so the return brought up the
first part of the alphabet for Emerson.  I selected a name at random, and
then went to the "neighborhood map" for that part of Emerson.  I then
zoomed out a few times and then panned to the east and actually found
Overstoneville.  I guess it really is still a town (it is not big enough
to have a postal address with that name included, however, so I could not
do a search directly for Overstoneville.  I also tried just now to look
for Ridgeville, which the map I found in my things last night indicates
is just west of Overstoneville, but again no luck.  I also just tried to
find a listing for Tolstoi, Manitoba, and it was successful- it found the
one telephone in Tolstoi!!!  I mention this last hit because it is
apparent that you can search for pretty small places, and the telephone
maps are pretty good- they even include the roads.)

2.  Having found a map for Overstone, I zoomed out some more to see what
other towns were in the area, one of which was Franklin, just to the
northwest of Overstoneville.

3.  Next I went to the English version of the Canada Census for 1901 at
http://www.archives.ca/02/020122_e.html and did a search for Emerson,
Manitoba.  As I noted on the list last night, that only returned the data
for the City of Emerson, but it did tell me that the main census district
is Provencher.  I then did another search, using the "maximum" references
per page instead of the default 20, and by entering "Provencher" instead
of Emerson.  The return was 131 entries, most of which include actual
copies of the census pages.

4.  As I sorted through the 131 returns, it became apparent that the
"Sub-district" name was the name of a town in southeast Mantoba.  By
comparing the "Sub-district" names to the map found in Item 2 above, I
was able to discover that Franklin was the most likely place to find my
grandfather.  I searched the images for Franklin, and sure enough, my
grandfather was there.

An observation:  Provencher district appears to be most of southeast
Manitoba.  I do not know the actual limits of that District, but it
appears to but up to near Winnipeg on the north, the provincial boundary
on the east, the USA border on the south, and somewhere east of Morden on
the west (Morden is in Lisgar District).  It seems that entering town
names is the way to find out the limits of a District.  The use of town
names for the name of the sub-district seems like a very good idea-
certainly better than the US Census method of using a  number.

Method 2

My wife has paid a subscription to Ancestry.com.  I have never been a big
fan of the big genealogy sites, as I have never found any of my people on
them, since they do not have east European records.  This time it was
different.  My grandfather's name in Poland and Volhynia varied from
Eduard Geiger to Eduard Jaeger- actually both surnames are on his birth
record.  I did a search for Eduard Geiger- no luck.  I did a search for
Eduard Jaeger- no luck.  I did a search for Edward Jaeger- no luck
again.  I did another search for Edward Jager- and this time I found that
some very nice people have extracted his name from the Provencher
District in the 1901 Canada Census.  He is correctly listed in the
Franklin Municipality, but he is listed with the file data for La
Broquerie and De Salabery sub-district.  He was nevertheless there!. 

Some of you may not want to pay a subscription to Ancestry.com, but you
might still want to do a search on the site for your ancestor.  The
search is free to the point where it tells you where a name is found.  In
my case, I can see that my grandfather is listed in the Provencher
district records in La Broquerie and De Salabery records without actually
logging into the site as a member.  You can do the same to see if your
ancestor has been extracted by anyone.

A bigger question is- Are these extracted records from the Canada Census
only on pay sites, or are they also somewhere in other groups like a 
Manitoba genealogy society???

Gary Warner

At 10:06 PM 6/6/2002 , Dave Obee wrote:

  RE:

  > The problem I have is that I am told that my grandparents did not
  live in
  a
  > town.  They lived east of Emerson, Manitoba in a place called
  > Overstone.  That place no longer exists, although I did find it on
  an old
  > map some years ago.  I do not have that map in front of me, but it
  seems
  to
  > me that it was about 20 or 30 miles east of Emerson.
  >

  If you're looking for it in the 1901 census you could check for
  adjacent
  towns, bigger towns, districts with funny names, etc. for hours.

  Or, check the Manitoba volume of the Gazetteer of Canada. It has an
  Overstoneville (not Overstone) northeast of Emerson, at 32 - 1 - 5 -
  E. That
  means Overstoneville is in section 32, township 1, range 5, east of
  the
  principal meridian.

  Then go to the handy book called Back to the Land, compiled by yours
  truly,
  which relates all Prairie land descriptions to census sub-districts.
  Look up
  T1 R5 E1. The book tells you that T1 R5 E1 is in the Franklin
  sub-district
  of the Provencher district.

  Of course, the section number is in the top row, which means that if
  they
  were a mile north of Overstoneville, they would be in a different
  township,
  namely T2 R5 E1. The good news is that that is also in Franklin.

  How's that?

  Dave Obee, Victoria.
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