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Recording Canadian Census data

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{{stub}}This guide explains how to use GRAMPS Gramps to record information contained in the various Canadian censi. It demonstrates how to enter Repositories, Sources, People and Families. How to link them together to ensure that every piece of information is attributed back to its source.
For genealogists with Canadian ancestors, the Canadian Census returns are a very important source of information. Censi have been conducted every 10 years in Canada since 1851, with additional censi of the western provinces in 1906 and 1916. Most Canadian censi are available free of charge in online databases maintained by [http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/census/index-e.html Library and Archives Canada]. The most recent census of the Northwest Provinces, taken in 1916, is available via [http://www.ancestry.ca Ancestry.ca]. Other online resources include [http://automatedgenealogy.com/ Automated Genealogy] and [http://www.familysearch.org/eng/search/frameset_search.asp?PAGE=census/search_census.asp Family Search].
[http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/census-1901/001013-119.03-e.php?sisn_id_nbr=10964&page_id_nbr=84850&interval=80&PHPSESSID=kb5kqn77hgkccphhrmcu5rcc07 1901 Census of Canada, Province of Ontario, District 129, Sub-district a-2, Schedule 2]
As it turns out, Schedule 1 contains a return from the street where one Patrick Murray was living in 1901. As we walk through the information on this page, we'll see how to extract useful information and record it in gramps. Schedule 2 contains additional information, including the street where the dwelling was located and the actual date of the pollsterenumerator's visit.
===Title line===
===Sub-sub-title line===
Below the sub-title we can see the name of the pollsterenumerator, <u>H.C. Moore</u> and the dates he visited the households on this page <u>April 1 & 2</u> as well as the page number <u>2</u>.
All of this information is valuable and will be stored in the source record and source reference.
===Add a census event===
To do this, we begin by opening up Patrick Murray for editing (or adding him if he is nor already in the database). Next, we'll use the '+' button to add an event. An event dialog will pop up. We'll then choose the event type "Census" from the drop-down menu and add the date, which we found on the third line of the census form. In the case of Mr. Murray, the census took place over two days, so I could enter "from 1 April 1901 to 2 April 1901". However, Schedule 2 records the actual date the pollster enumerator visited the house, which is April 2, so we'll use that. Next, we will want to record the place, which is East Toronto Village, but we can do better than that. Schedule 2 for this census tells me the actual street address, so that's what we should use. We'll then fill in the description line. A good description would be "Census of Patrick Murray Household". Writing our description this way means we can share this event for other members of the household, saving us redundant data entry. Next, we will click on the "Sources" tab to add our source.
===Add a census source===
Next, we want to fill in the Reference information. We know the date, so we can again enter "2 April 1901". The next line is more complicated and the heading "Volume/Page" doesn't really do justice to what is truly required. Keep in mind that the idea is to put sufficient information so that someone reading your source information (even you, years later!) can use it to find the source material for his- or herself. We will need to capture the information from the title lines, so we should enter "Ontario, District 129, Sub-district a, Division 2, East Toronto Village, Schedule 1, Page 2", but that is a little verbose. It is acceptable to use abbreviations for common terms, so "Ont., sched. 1, dist. 129, s.dist. a-2, East Toronto Village, p. 2" is sufficient. Before we leave this section, however, we need to record the entry for Patrick Murray. His name was Robert Bruce Spafford and you can see his entry on line 23. We'll record the whole entry for the family (number 17) giving us:
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ont.ON, dist. 129, s.dist. a-2, East Toronto Village, sched. 1, p. 2, hh. 17, fam. 17, lines 17-22
where "hh." is an abbreviation of household and "fam." is an abbreviation of family.
You may want to record notes about the source or the source reference. Keep in mind that notes entered in the notes tab for the shared source information will apply to the whole census. You could use this to record background information about the census as a whole. For example, [http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/census-1901/index-e.html Introduction - Census of Canada, 1901] contains some background information as does [http://www.ancestry.ca Ancestry.ca]. (If you intend to cite information from those sources, be sure to follow their guidelines for using their copyrighted material.)
You may also wish to record notes pertaining to the particular source reference. Perhaps you have some some interesting facts about the pollsterenumerator, or the weather that day was remarkable in some way, or you want to record something about the street as it was in that era. You could use the source reference notes for that.
===Add event attributes (optional)===
We now need to add the information from Schedule 2. We'll follow the same process used for Schedule 1, however we just added the source record (for the census as a whole) and repository, so we do not need to so that again. From the event sources tab, we click the "Add existing source" button. From the dialog that pops up, we select the Fourth Census of Canada. Now we only need to fill in the source reference information. We know the date, so we enter "2 April 1901" in the date field. In the Volume/Page field, we enter information similar to that for schedule 1:
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;ON, dist. 129, s.dist . a-2, East Toronto Village, sched 2, p. 1, hh. 17, line 18<p>'''Note''' In this case, Schedules If you saved the image for Schedule 1 and 2 are on the same microfilm reel, so we do not need you'll want to add a separate repository reference. Otherwise, we would need to add another repository reference, using also save the repository set up when we entered data from Schedule 1image for schedule 2 as described above==See also==* [[Census]] [[Category:Documentation]][[Category:Tutorials]]

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