I’m writer and genealogist Janice Hamilton. I have been researching and writing about my ancestors on this blog since 2013. Most of them came from Scotland, England or Ireland in the early 1800s, establishing new roots in Canada and the United States. Hamilton, Forrester, Rixon, Glendinning, Stobo, Bagg, Smithers, Shearman, Mulholland and Mitcheson are some of the families I have researched. To search this blog for a name, place or topic, use the search box on the top right, the categories listed on the left or bottom, or scroll to the bottom to check the dated Archives.
I am often curious to find out where my ancestors lived at different times of their lives. For most of my 19th and 20th-century Montreal ancestors, this has been relatively easy using online maps and city directories, and I have used the same techniques to find ancestors in Philadelphia, Winnipeg, and other cities. Once I locate them, it is fun to look at the same addresses today using Google Street View.
In Montreal, the main directory has been published by Lovells since 1842, and these resources are searchable online on the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) website. While the directories themselves are in English, this post should help you navigate that French-language provincial archives site. Go to http://bibnum2.banq.qc.ca/bna/lovell/index.html and, on the left, click on explore.
Then click on Montreal et sa banlieue (Montreal and its suburbs), then on serie principale (1842-1977) and choose the year you want to explore. You can search for either the name of the household head or for the street address. This directory often includes the occupation and/or employer of the household head.
A sample map of Montreal showing a corner of my ancestor’s property on the BAnQ site.
Once you find your ancestor’s home address you can try to find it on a map of the city during the same time period. The page http://services.banq.qc.ca/sdx/cep/accueil.xsp will take you to the BAnQ’s collection of digitized cartes et plans, or maps and diagrams. You can search by lieu (place), by region of Quebec or Canada, or by title of the map, date, author or subject.
If you are looking for the easiest maps of Montreal to understand, go to the left hand side of that opening page and click on the bottom choice of Collections, Pour en savoir plus, “Sur les cartes de Montreal utiles à la recherché” (to learn more about easy-to-use maps of Montreal).
This will take you to a list of useful maps of the city, such as Goad’s maps, which were created for insurance purposes and identify property owners.
Searching for property ownership documents is a whole other complicated story I’m not going to talk about here, except to say that these documents can be found — with a lot of effort. Go to https://www.mern.gouv.qc.ca/english/land/register/index.jsp, a site of the provincial department of Énergie et Ressources naturelles Québec, and follow the links to the Land Register of Quebec site.
First, though, you need to know the ward of the city your ancestors lived in, and the cadastral number of the property they owned, which is not the same thing as the street address. You may have to compare different maps of the same area over different time periods to nail this down, remembering that street names and numbers sometimes changed.
Once you have a firm idea of your ancestor’s geographic location, the 1874 map titled Cadastral plans, City of Montreal (http://services.banq.qc.ca/sdx/cep/document.xsp?id=0000337579) can help you to identify the cadastral number. Once you see the image of the map you want, you can click above it on the left to download it (télécharger l’image) or on the right for a full-screen view (image plein écran). Move the red rectangle in the small map at the upper right to navigate your way around the screen.
Good luck and have fun!
(This article has also been posted on the collaborative blog https://genealogyensemble.com.)
When William S. Bush (c. 1816-1892) decided to become a Baptist clergyman, he did not choose an easy life for himself and his family. He preached in several small towns in a rural, mountainous region of northern New York State, and although the Baptist religion was very popular in America at the time, each congregation was independent, and doctrinal differences could create frictions.
William was born in West Haven, Vermont, the son of farmer William Bush and Polly Bagg Bush (1785-1856). William’s middle initial stood for Stanley, a name that appears frequently in the Bagg family as a nod to Polly’s mother, Pamela Stanley.
I do not know what influenced him to become a Baptist. Polly’s family worshipped in the Congregational church in Massachusetts, but I doubt the Baggs were very religious. After Polly’s family moved to Canada in the late 1790s, her father and brothers became Anglican and her sister married a Catholic. I know nothing about William’s father.
The Baptists were active in spreading the gospel in Vermont. There were numerous churches in the state, they were well organized and they promoted education. It is quite likely that William studied at the Baptist-run Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution in Hamilton, New York.
Warren County, New York
There were two main branches of Baptists in mid-century New York: Old School Baptists who did not adopt any modern practices that were not found in the Bible, such as such as missions and Sunday schools; and Missionary, or New School Baptists, who did embrace such innovations. In addition, there were numerous independent Baptist churches. I do not know which beliefs William subscribed to.
In 1844, he was pastor of Johnsburg Baptist Church, Warren County, New York, and in the following years, he moved many times in that region. This kind of turnover appears to have been normal for the area’s Baptist clergymen. The 1850 census found him in Minerva, Essex County, New York. In 1860 he was back in Johnsburg. When the 1865 state census and the 1870 federal census were taken, the family was in Chester, Warren County, and in 1880, William was living in Horicon, Warren County.
In the 19th century, Johnsburg was a thriving town, and the construction of the railroad beside the nearby Hudson River in 1871 improved transportation. Logging was the most important local industry, especially in the winter. The logs were floated downstream on the Hudson, and local saw mills, driven by water power, kept employees busy. There were four local tanneries in the 1870s, with the tannery in North Creek turning out 30,000 hides a year. There was also some garnet mining in the area.
Despite the relatively harsh climate, a lot of the land had been cleared. Farmers grew beans, corn, oats and squash, and some grew rye to supply a local distillery. Others supplemented their incomes by selling valuable potash they made from wood ashes.
Slavery was an issue that no doubt concerned William, both as a preacher and as an individual. In the 1840s, this issue caused a rift between Baptists in the northern parts of the United States and those in the south, who defended it. William must have felt strongly because he registered for the Union army in the U.S. Civil War Draft in 1863, though he probably did not serve.
In 1860, William’s Aunt Sophia Bagg, the widow of wealthy landowner Gabriel Roy, died, leaving him and his siblings generous bequests. He and his brother, Phineas Bagg Bush, travelled to Montreal in January 1861 to receive their inheritances. The 500 pounds Sophia left him must have gone a long way to supplement his preacher’s salary, while the trip to Montreal would have provided an opportunity to meet his many Canadian cousins.
I have been unable to find a record of William’s marriage, so his wife’s maiden name remains a mystery. In census records, she appears as Sarah M. Bush, born in New York. The couple had at least five children, four of whom grew to adulthood.
Their oldest daughter, Sophia, (c 1843 – ) was born in Vermont. She last appeared living with her parents in the 1865 state census. Lydia, born around 1848, appeared in the 1850 census but must have died before 1860. Son George S. Bush (c 1846 – ) seems to have remained single all his life. Charles A. Bush (c 1858 – ) may have married and moved west, first to Arizona, then to Washington State, and Lora Bush (1860-1916) probably married Watson Huntley, remained in northern New York State and had several children.
William’s wife Sarah must have died before 1880 because in that year’s federal census, William, now aged 62, was married to his second wife, Diana, 59. A box in the census was ticked indicating that they had been married that year. Diana must have died soon after because William seems to have remarried again. Next to his grave in North River Cemetery, North River, New York, is the gravestone of his wife Mary A. Bush (1821-1889), who was born in England. William last appeared living in Johnsburg in the 1892 state census, age 75, occupation preacher. The census was carried out in February and William died that September.
New York Family History Research Guide and Gazetteer, p. 693
Notes and Sources
It has been difficult to find information on this family, partly because they lived in a rural area where there were few local newspapers and no such thing as a city directory. An obituary for Rev. William S. Bush was probably published somewhere. I have checked the digitized Warren County newspapers on the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society website, but have so far found no references to him.
Baptists say that only people who are believers should be baptized, so they do not baptize babies and their baptismal records do not indicate of date of birth. That presents a problem in a state that did not keep vital records until the early 1900s. Nor do Baptists believe that marriage is a sacrament, so unless an individual minister kept his own records of the congregation’s activities, there are no church marriage registers. Finally, Baptist congregations are basically independent, so they do not store the records they do have in a centralized location. For this reason, I have relied on censuses to research William S. Bush’s family.
I used www.ancestry.ca to find the U.S. federal and state census records for this family, and I came across several public member trees on Ancestry that mention his family. There is a photo of William’s grave on Find A Grave (www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=112480768) and this is where I found his date of death.
The website www.reynoldstonnewyork.org features articles and photos about late 19th-century life in the Adirondack region of New York State, including logging, saw mills and potash making. My information about the history of Johnsburg comes from a history of the town, www.johnsburgny.com/history.html.
