an email to me from Canada:-

Hello Hugh

I was going to post more the other day, and got called away on business.

Although I now live almost a thousand miles closer to St. John's (than I
did last year), I still have never made it there (only province that I have
never been in). I hope to rectify this next spring. Meanwhile I drive back
& forth to Ontario regularly on business.

Since I often find that people in the UK don't really comprehend the size
of Canada, I'll present a small example:

A return trip from my former residence in Ontario to St. John's, would have
involved:

3, 538 miles driving (approx. 44.5 hours & $713.00 gas).
$312.00 in ferry costs, plus a minimum of 12 hours on the boat. There is
another, more expensive ferry running in summer that goes closer to St.
John's, but!
that's just getting there and back!

from my current residence:

1,674 miles driving (approx. 21 hours & $338.00 gas)
$312.00 in ferry costs, plus a minimum of 12 hours on the boat.

I hope to see what Pier 21, and the marine museum (Halifax) has to offer
over the coming winter, although I don't personally have any known family
who came to Canada before me in 1960... other than one that only stayed
here for a few years and returned to Wales.

And since some of the responses I get (or usually don't get!) from the
various lists give me the impression that many feel that I am just a
"free-loader" ....

Although much of my family history involves Monmouthshire, Glamorgan,
Somerset, Hampshire, Dorset, Middlesex, & London, with many wandering
elsewhere, I admittedly have done little to help out with transciptions
etc. in these areas. I have often had help from many on these lists however
(yourself included).

How I have tried to help, is to do what I can for others here.. and from
here...

Without any connection to my families:

1. I have visited graveyards in 4 provinces, providing photos or tombstone
transcriptions for many individuals, and have a short list of "requests"
already for my trip starting next week.

2. I have been known to visit museums and acquire photcopies of family
bible pages (Hampton N.B. Middleville and Almonte in Ontario).

3. I am in the process of doing headstone or memorial transcriptions at
various (older) cemeteries and churches in Bath & Bristol (Both in N.B.),
Bridgewater & Wolfeville (both in N.S.), the Cathedral in Quebec City, and
several cemeteries in Ontario... generally looking for those that migrated
from the south of England & Wales.

4. As an organbuilder (working for many churches) I have also occasionally
been allowed access to original registers to check for a missing or
confusing records of baptism, marriage, death, etc. I am always checking
any memorials for those born in the U.K.

5. I monitor the various Rootsweb lists even when travel necessitates that
I am unsubscribed, and often change my travel plans to try to include a
town or village where U.K. families migrated to.

6. In monitoring the lists, I often help people that are struggling in
sorting their families out, and have been known to spend many hours on some
cases. Many that I have helped have names that you would recognize. In
helping some that don't know how to really search the Internet, I have been
asked (several times!) if I am "Google Hugh" ... but have always conceded
the title to you.

7. Any costs that I have incurred on behalf of others (travel, photocopy,
museum donations, "lost time", etc.) have all come out of my pocket.

So where as I am not often able to answer many questions on the lists, and
am seen to be only asking for help .... I figure that you (and others on
the lists) have helped me many times ... therefore I help as many people as
I am able to ... hopefully they are helping where they can also...

Please don't feel that the frustration expressed in this missive is solely
directed toward you. It is not! But there have been occasions, when I have
seen someone provide parish records to someone else, so I make a request to
the list ... and get a terse message (OFF=LIST) telling me to buy the
certificate. I order those that that I can (4 marriages & 1 death this last
month alone). If I was to order every certificate that could help me piece
together all my families, I would soon be bankrupt.

Anyway Hugh, I hope you don't mind that I got a few of my frustrations
typed out!

Regards

from one SKS to another in reply to:-

so please post the details of say two of your brick walls

SKS may be able to help - but none of us are mind readers :-)

in exchange you might becone very popular if you can do look ups in
the mariners archives over there

Maritime History Archive,
Memorial University of Newfoundland,
St John's,
Newfoundland,
Canada A1C 5S7

http://www.mun.ca/mha/

hold 70% of the Crew Agreements from 1863-1938, and 80% of the
Agreements from 1951-1976. But they hold no agreements for 1875, 1885,
1895, or 1905.

which came form http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk

They hold all the surviving documents from 1747-1860, a 10% sample of
each year from 1861-1938, all official logs from 1902-1919, all papers
from 1939-1950, a 10% sample of each year from 1951-1976, and all
records pertaining to famous ships (e.g. the Titanic) from 1861-1938.
where weeding the archives created more space for newer stuff

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/
They hold 90% of the Crew Agreements for the years 1861-1862, 90% of
the Crew Agreements for the years ending in '5' from 1865-1935, and
90% of the years ending in '5' from 1955-1975, as well as many Mates
and Masters Certificates of Competency and their applications.

from
http://brew.clients.ch/crewagmt.htm

or more local stuff http://www.novanet.ns.ca/

tell us more about your own MON needs on the list

Hugh W


as I wrote the above I realised my Canadian geography was dodgy, my provionces all mixed up,
but having researched it I would post it anyway in order to disseminate knowledge about those archives and their three way split.