Lambton County Archives Blog

Keeping Up With The Joneses: The Maxwell Settlement Part 2

I received some great feedback about my last blog, Lambton's Communal Experiment: The Maxwell Settlement. A lot of people are unaware of and fascinated by this pocket of Lambton County's history! I have been working closely with the Jones Diaries over the last few weeks, and I wanted to share some additional information about this amazing collection to flesh out the Maxwell story. So here is Keeping Up With The Joneses: The Maxwell Settlement Part 2!

I mentioned at the end of my last blog that the...

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Ontario Vital Statistics: New Years Are Here!

This morning the Lambton Room received an exciting package in the mail. It contained the latest round of Ontario Vital Statistics. We now have a new year's worth of records pertaining to births, marriages and deaths in the province of Ontario. We have birth registrations up to and including 1914; marriage registrations up to and including 1929; and death registrations up to and including 1939.

About fifteen minutes before the package arrived, I had just been discussing with one of my co-workers about...

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Lambton's Communal Experiment: The Maxwell Settlement

One of the most interesting stories of European settlement in Lambton County comes from an ardent believer in socialist theory, a man named Henry Jones. He brought settlers from Scotland to Lambton County to establish a communal settlement in the late 1820s.

Jones was inspired by Robert Owen, a Welsh entrepreneur and social reformer. Owen was disheartened by the wretched working conditions that plagued Britain during the industrial revolution, and introduced socialist reforms in the mill he managed...

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Genealogy Buffs Be Aware! Family History Centers

Early last week, I had the opportunity to tour Sarnia's Family History Center, an office nestled in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints building at 1400 Murphy Road. These institutions are present in LDS churches across the country and across the world, and their mandate is to help individuals research and better understanding their family histories. The Mormon faith believes that ordinances can be performed for individuals after their death, and this connection of ancestors with religion...

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Census Excitement and Chagrin

This past week, I had the opportunity to complete my first Canadian Census! In previous years I either lived with my folks or in student residence, but as an independent, rent-paying Canadian, I received a census form for my very own apartment. Both my room-mate and finance were puzzled by my excitement, but as a historian who accesses early census records on a daily basis, it struck me as a right of passage to be finally completing a census form for myself.

Unfortunately, the ten questions did not...

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