Your guide to Automated Genealogy

An on-line website named Automated Genealogy is an important resource for any genealogist who is researching their ancestors in Canadian census records.

Before this great website appeared on my research horizon, I had to trudge off to Library and Archives Canada, crank through reels of microfilm and hope I would find an ancestor or two in the Canadian census records. It was fun, but at times it seemed daunting.

Then, one day I discovered that Library and Archives Canada had digitized Canadian census records and placed them on-line. "Wow!", I thought. "This is going to save me a lot of time." My excitement quickly turned to dismay. The records were not indexed. Instead of cranking through reels of microfilm, I now had to "click" through them instead. Sigh.

I knew that Ancestry had indexed Canada census records, but I was slightly miffed that I had to pay to access my own heritage! Then one day I stumbled upon the ugliest website I had ever seen - Automated Genealogy. The name piqued my curiosity. I had visions of typing in my research needs and having some clever robot return my family history properly formatted with citations and all.

It turns out that this website isn't quite that clever. However, volunteers have been diligently creating an index to every name found in the 1901 Canadian Census, the 1911 Canadian Census and the 1851 Census which included present-day Ontario and Quebec.

Searching Canadian Census Records

Searching for a surname is easy. Just type it in the box provided and you're off! My search of the 1901 Canadian census for the name Lytle brought back several hits. The following image is an example of the transcript page that you will first see -

The specfic name I searched for is highlighted in yellow. Now the really clever part of Automated Genealogy is that I can click on the Family/Household number next to my ancestor and the screen will split in two showing me both the transcript and the orignal census record.

Soundex Searches

Automated Genealogy also offers users the chance to search using soundex Results appear at the top of the page and accessing them is simply a matter of clicking a hyper-link of your choice.

Linking Ancestors

A nifty feature recently added to their website is called Linking Projects. The basic idea is that an ancestor's records (i.e. 1901 Canada Census and 1991 Canada census) are grouped together. When you click on Jack Smith's name all records associated with him are displayed. Its an ambitious goal and one that just got underway, so not all ancestors are linked to their particular groups of records.