International Institute of Genealogical Studies

Optional Print Course Material: Australian: Local History and Regional Sources

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

This course includes newspapers, maps, directories & almanacs, electoral rolls, government records, local council records, sewerage and utilities, libraries, universities and museums, cemeteries, local area studies, including regional histories, business records, membership records, and records relating to land and its uses.

 A study of local history informs us about how our ancestors lived as part of a community as well as where they lived. This course first examines the records that can identify those locations, and then proceeds to the regional sources that allow us to see ancestors in the context of where they lived and who lived near them and what that can tell us about their lives. Some of these sources include lists of names, while others provide background information about places as well as the lives of the people who lived and worked there.

Course Length: 7 weeks

Optional Course Reading Material: Australian: Military Records

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

This course discusses available documents and the information included about those who served in British regiments in Australia as well as Australians who served in military forces in Australia and overseas. Military records from the earliest days of the colonies through various twentieth century conflicts are included.

 Various types of records created by the military are discussed, including service records, muster rolls, campaign documents, pension records and draft registration. The content of the records and their usefulness for genealogy is described. The course includes historical background as well as some background to the changing social perceptions towards the military.

Course Length: 7 weeks

Optional Course Print Material: Australian: Occupational Records

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

Genealogy and the study of family history are more than just collecting names, dates and places. This course focuses on occupations and how someone’s occupation could change over time, have a significant role in a community and even impact on a family’s lifestyle. Miners, for example, often moved around following the gold or other minerals and their families moved too. Tracing them can be difficult but occupation records may provide clues.

 To determine someone’s occupation usually means that we need to use more than one kind of record to build a complete picture of their working life. As we gather the pieces of information we can then analyse what it is telling us about the person, their family and community life. There are lots of ways to discover someone’s occupation including BDM certificates, directories and almanacs, electoral rolls and newspapers.

Occupational records can provide additional information on our ancestors. By knowing an occupation, we can then look for supporting information in staff records of businesses and governments and if they work as farmers and graziers then land records may be useful.

 Knowing where to look is the key issue and this course will help you to discover a person’s occupation and then to follow up where there might be additional information in government archives, libraries and other resources. Where applicable, guides and other finding aids are listed together with any indexes, databases and digitised records.

Optional Course Reading Material: Australian: Education Records

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

Education records can be a fascinating resource to add more detail and interest to our ancestor’s lives. The records may not always give us biographical information to take our family lines further back in time, but the records will tell us more about the lives they lived. Today’s education arrangements are quite different from those in the 18th and 19th centuries.

 For the purposes of this course, we will mostly be looking at educational records from 1788 through to 1950. We will explore education records which can include archival records, memorabilia, photographs, building plans, newspaper reports, published school histories and local histories. Archival records are those created by the school such as administrative files, correspondence files, building files, pupil admission registers, corporal punishment registers of teachers, photographs of buildings and pupils, building plans, sporting memorabilia and other records. Records explored will span primary school to adult education and will include students as well as staff.

Course Length: 7 weeks

Optional Print Course Material: Australian: Health Records

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

This course looks at how health records can help with family history research. Records for general hospitals, maternity hospitals, asylums, sanatoriums and other health institutions will be looked at together with staff records. In addition it looks at selected epidemics and medical treatments that our ancestors might have been familiar with.

Optional Print Course Material: Research: British India Ancestors

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

This course gives an introduction to researching ancestors in India, during the time of British involvement and rule. The course focuses mainly on British ancestors, but includes records that are relevant to other Europeans in India, as well as Anglo-Indians. 

In this course, the author will use primary and secondary material to demonstrate how to research ancestors in British India in depth. 

Optional Print Course Material: Research: Child Migration from Britain

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

This course provides an overview of the history of child migration from Britain and an introduction to the records that can be accessed to research them. Britain has a very long history of exporting children. Child migration from Britain occurred over a period of nearly 350 years through various private and government sponsored emigration schemes. 

This course is a good starting point for anyone who knows, or even suspects, that they have a British child migrant ancestor in their family tree. Children were sent to the American Colonies, the West Indies, Australia, Canada, Southern Rhodesia, South Africa and New Zealand. The major recipients of children, based upon numbers, were Canada and Australia. 

The course is structured to address research in each of the receiving countries, in Britain and from the sending agencies themselves. The course concludes with a case study which uses a child who migrated to Canada during a time period when child migration to Canada was near its peak. 

Optional Print Course Material: Research: English and Welsh Ancestors

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

This course gives an introduction to the first two centuries of family history research in England, Wales, Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man. The course will concentrate on the major sources. It will also offer a sound strategy for using these sources to gain a firm foundation for subsequent research.

Optional Print Course Material: Research: The National Archives of England

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

Many of us can trace our ancestry back to England and the British Isles and for this reason, The National Archives is one of the most important, if not the most important, source of information on our family history. 

The old children’s rhyme about tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, really does apply here. If your ancestor was English, it is essential to know what records are available here and how to access them, whether in person or from a distance. 

The foundation stone of this archive is the Doomsday Book, the record of the whole country, a census if you will, instigated by William I in 1086. Records of British monarchs and governments through the ages are here from Henry VII’s Court of Star Chamber to the 1911 census. 

The records may have been created by Kings or Queens or their governments but in the end, they are about people, our people, the ordinary man in street, who appealed to the Court of Star Chamber for justice or fought for his country in battles overseas. 

This course is designed to help you learn how to explore this great archive, its holdings and how you can access them to help your research. It covers records about our ancestor’s occupations, criminals, military men and emigration as well as records of divorce and dispute. 

Course Length: 6 weeks

Optional Print Course Material: Canadian: Census Records - Part 1

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

Census records are a pivotal source in trying to document our ancestry. They are among the most useful and commonly utilized records available to genealogists. By documenting the individuals and families in each census year, they provide a snapshot of what was happening at that time. This course will instruct the student in how to access Canadian census records and how to analyze the information provided. Differences between rural and urban censuses will be examined. Suggestions for using census substitutes, census finding aids, and resources will also be provided. A short history of census records in Canada is included.

Course Length: 7 weeks

Optional Print Course Material: Canadian: Vital Statistics Records - Part 1

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

The recording of an individual’s vital statistics was most often done at the time the event occurred. This usually means that the information is considered accurate. Unfortunately, vital statistics records can often be very difficult to find. This course will concentrate on the vital statistics gathered by the provincial governments and the various churches. Birth, marriages, and deaths records will be examined to determine how much information is actually available and helpful for the genealogist. How and why the information was gathered as well as when it began will be discussed.

Suggestions for using the Internet for researching many vital statistics records will also be provided. A short lesson in the history and geography of each province is included.

Optional Print Course Material: Canadian: Wills and Estate Records - Part 1

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

It’s exciting finding an ancestor’s Last Will and Testament and a great deal of valuable genealogical information is available in these documents. These records are often overlooked.

 Whether the deceased was testate or intestate, this course will show where to search for wills and estates keeping in mind the historical era and the geographical location in Canada. We will also show you what kind of genealogical information you will find.

We will examine how these documents will reveal not only the distribution of the property and possessions of your ancestors but also what other relevant historical information is sometimes available.

Wills & Estates records can lead to new clues in your research.

Optional Print Course Material: Canadian: Land Records - Part 1

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

This course provides an overview of both early Crown land records and private property registrations in Canada. Major record groups, such as Land Petitions, the Ontario Land Record Index, and the Abstract Index to Deeds will be examined with particular attention to their genealogical significance.

Optional Print Course Material: Canadian: Census Records - Part 2

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

This course is a continuation of Canadian: Census Records-Part 1. Both courses are required for the Certificate Program in Genealogy. 

This Intermediate Level course will build on the basic skills developed in Canadian: Census Records-Part 1, with emphasis on interpreting the information found in census records, analyzing the information and formulating a research plan to prove or disprove the hypothesis formed in your analysis.

 As the Intermediate Level course is a compulsory portion of the Certificate Program in Genealogy, skills required by professional researchers will be developed. Students should bear in mind that assignments submitted should be clearly written, with appropriate explanations and suggestions. Not all students will have the same timely access to actual census records. In order to provide each student with the necessary information for every Case Study, the information will be based on a hypothetical family and census records, and all pertinent information will be supplied to the student with their Course Notes and Assignments. The census information will follow the format of an actual census for the year indicated, and all data that might be found in an actual census record for that year will be included. The names of family members and their personal information will be hypothetical, as will the documentation of the census page. However, it is expected that by now the student has consulted some actual census records in order to familiarize themselves with the process of locating and using these records.

Optional Print Course Material: Canadian: Vital Statistics Records - Part 2

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

You were probably surprised by the amount of information included in the Canadian: Vital Statistics Records - Part 1 Course. You will recognize that some material in Part 2 was included in the basic course. It is being repeated in order for the student to focus on this particular facet of present day documents. The Canadian: Vital Statistics Records - Part 2 course will continue to describe the whereabouts of the records that are available at government archives as well as government offices and court houses records, i.e.: government present day registrations for births, marriages and deaths; adoption records from government offices and divorce records from both. The other area we will cover is that of adoption records and their accessibility. An adoption search is quite different from any other search you will ever undertake and should be done with great care. It affects the lives of the living more profoundly than you would ever imagine. We will also be examining the procedure for finding and using divorce records in genealogy.

Optional Course Print Material: Canadian: Religious Records

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

For many regions of the world, the records associated with the ancestral place of worship are the backbone of genealogical research. Registers of baptism, marriage and burial are of great use prior to vital statistic registrations in Canada. In the early years of settlement, the Government passed laws which forbade certain groups from performing various services.

This course will cover where to look for these registers and other religious records in Canada, what type of data you should expect to find, and how to evaluate what you have found. Information found can also provide stories that can be added to the family history.

Optional Print Course Material: Canadian: Wills and Estate Records - Part 2

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

The course Researching Canadian Wills & Estate Records builds on the introductory level as it delves deeper into the intricacies of research when dealing with wills and estate records. Numerous examples, including their transcriptions for easier reading, will illustrate the various types of documents. Less emphasis has been focused on the course material and much more into the case studies in order to allow you to become much more familiar with working with the documentation. Several case studies will give you the opportunity to examine the documents yourself and become more accustomed to their wording, their look, their feel, and, importantly, the wealth of information they hold. Lastly, the course should reinforce that there are a variety of sources which should not be overlooked when researching for wills and estate records.

Optional Print Course Material: Canadian: Land Records - Part 2

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

When land was “granted” from the Crown to individuals or companies specific records were created to document the change in ownership. Record groups such as Military Grants, Township Papers, the Canada Company Papers, the Peter Robinson Papers, Correspondence to the Surveyor General and Commissions as well as various other land companies will be reviewed with the goal of determining where these records are today and how they may be of benefit to a genealogist.

It is vital that you become comfortable with the documentation and writing style so that you will be able to glean the correct information from the material. You will find the examples and assignments to be of interest and useful in this regard.

By following the family of John Newell through several examples and with his Case Study we can follow various transactions as they occurred for one family over a period of time.

Note: This course requires compulsory materials to be ordered. These are available at GenealogyStore.com

Douglas, Althea, Genealogy, Geography, and Maps: Using Atlases and Gazetteers to Find Your Family (Toronto: Ontario Genealogical Society, 2006).

Optional Print Course Material: Canadian: Geography and Maps

Genealogy, geography and maps are inextricably entwined, particularly in a country like Canada where almost everyone has ancestors who came here from somewhere else. If you are looking for their records you must travel across geographic boundaries as well as across time. Wherever you travel, maps are essential.

Can you read a map? Did you hate geography in school? You know what road maps tell you, but are you aware that topographical maps tell you much more or that geographers and cartographers now use maps to show us all sorts of information both about the here and now and the worlds our ancestors once inhabited.

 While many Canadians look back to Europe or the British Isles, in the multi-cultural society we have become some of us will need maps of every continent except Antarctica. Not just maps of the place as it is today, but older maps that show former political divisions and place names, where old roads, canals or railways once ran, perhaps ownership of land, or city plans that show every building, including the one where the emigrant ancestor was born.

If you plan to be a successful family historian you must learn to look at maps and extract the basic, secondary, and even the third level of information they offer, and then evaluate that information. Is what it shows accurate, up to date or obsolete, misleading or intended to deceive? Maps can be many things and the more you know the fewer traps will catch you.

 The International Institute for Genealogical Studies is extremely pleased to be able to use, as the primary text for this course, an outstanding book on this subject, authored by Althea Douglas, Genealogy, Geography, and Maps: Using Atlases and Gazetteers to Find Your Family (Ontario Genealogical Society: Toronto, 2006).

 Because the course reading material is not proprietary to the International Institute’s course, access to the electronic text of mandatory course reading material will NOT be available online. The course syllabus will  primarily serve as a guide to the content of Douglas’ book. In addition it will present some brief supplemental material, as well as the assignments.

Optional Print Course Material: Canadian: Archival Centres

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

The purpose of this course is to provide an introduction to using archives in genealogical research, to examine the kinds of records which you will encounter, and to see what kinds of archives there are in Canada which can provide venues for genealogical researchers. 

This is a gigantic topic, so some thought was given to a point of view which might help us enter it. As this course is given via the Internet and as websites may be the first and easiest contact which a genealogical researcher will have with an archive, we have used archival websites as a principal point of discussion regarding specific archives and kinds of archives, and as a way of getting to know the institutions involved. The website can be seen as a summary of the personality of the place, and this is how we have used it. We continue to stress that archive websites should not be ignored in research. 

Examples of archives of various categories will be mentioned. It should be emphasized that the examples given are just that, examples. They are not meant to indicate ‘best’ (although they may be) and they cannot be exhaustive in any category, because there are simply too many archives in the country. Take the example given and then use the idea to search for similar archives which will help you. 

Comparing this course to the others in the Canadian series, students may notice a certain amount of overlap. The Saskatchewan Homestead records, for example, may well also show up in a course on Saskatchewan research as well as a land records course. There are useful things to say on such a topic in each course and we can only hope a second or third encounter with a topic will help to imprint it on the student’s memory! 

Many of the archives under discussion in the text have very long names, which may include people after whom the institution is named, the name of the larger institution of which the archives is part, or a government department. Although the full name will be given in the first instance, a shorter or familiar version of the archives’ name will be used for convenience later in the text. 

Course Length: 7 weeks