From November, 1849 to May, 1850, a ship
called the Mary Jane made its way (via Cape Horn) from Yarmouth, Nova
Scotia to San Francisco, California, filled with building materials for
houses and sheds, and carrying nineteen young men caught up in the
excitement over the California Gold Rush.
Although the HALEY family never panned any
gold in the state, they set up a farm and dairy operation in the county
and became known as one of the pioneer families of the state.
Among the better Internet resources on California include a listing of California Historical and Genealogical Societies at <http://hs.obitlinkspage.com/ca.htm> and the California USGenWeb Project Page at <http://www.cagenweb.com>. Both websites have listings of resources, societies, databases, and land grants of California.
Another great website to visit is that of
Jim Faulkinbury’s Great Register of California in which are listed
Foreign-Born Voters of 1872. Mr. Faulkinbury can also access (a small
fee is charged) the full naturalization database record and locate
information on your ancestor in California. The foreign born voters are
listed at <http://feefhs.org/fbvca/fbv-63.html>.
Both RootsWeb.com <http://www.RootsWeb.com>, a free website with WorldConnect (an excellent finding tool for the person being researched), and Ancestry.com <http://www.Ancestry.com> (a fee based website, although one can try it free first), are a very good way to research the U.S. National Census, which has been indexed from 1790 to 1930. Familysearch.org <http://www.FamilySearch.org> also has the International Genealogical Index (IGI) of people listed in their database.
It was the lumber, fur trading, and mining
in the near states of Michigan and Minnesota that drew Canadians in
large numbers in the middle 1700s to the 1800s. Lumberjacks from both
Ontario and Quebec went to these states to “work in the woods”, and in
doing so, helped lay the foundation for statehood.
Additional Articles
"A former newspaper reporter in Canada's capital, Ottawa, I became interested in writing about genealogy when researching my own ancestor, Andrew Barclay, an American Loyalist from Boston, Massachusetts, early in 1990. Quickly, my interest spread beyond my own family, and by 1994, I was editing a genealogy newsletter and by 1997, I was editing the Sourcing Canada series of books. Since then, I have gone on to write "My Ancestor Was French Canadian" and a series of booklets on Canadian genealogy. I love to travel the Canadian and American countryside looking for interesting people and places to photograph and to write about." - E.B. Lapointe
