Members' Interests 3043

Philo or Prismall

Serendipity

I joined the lists of two Canadian provinces as I was trying to find out more about a PHILO (my mother's maiden name) who went to Canada before WW1 and quickly joined the Canadian Expeditionary Forces when the war started (so I got his army papers from the Canadian National Archives) but these were of little help in discovering what he did in Canada.

Then I found that when his father (in England all his life) made his will in the late thirties he left bequests to a lady in Canada & her three daughters whom he described as his grand-daughters. I also knew that his son had married in the late-thirties back here in the UK (in fact I am in contact with one of the children of this marriage who knew less than me (until I put him in the picture) of his father's life etc. in Canada).

Much earlier on the web, I had found the Obituaries web-site and decided one entry on it referred to one of the Canadian grandchildren and now I have two different newspaper notices of her death in Winnipeg in 1997. But I could gain little more solid information from the Canadian lists other than the second more extensive obit.

Then idly on the National Archives of Canada I entered PHILO on the screens concerned with Barnado children 'exported'to Canada from England and it produced two entries - a girl aged 1 year & a boy of 2 months. That enabled me to find their names were referenced to Immigration Records (1925-1935) and so I knew the salient facts of their arrival - ship, place & date of arrival and the Volume, page & microfilm reel number! But the film is in Ottawa Canada and I am in Wallington Surrey. No problem if you have a friendly Librarian / Archivist as Canada will send a film over to them on loan.

So now I have seen 'my' film T-14805 and discovered a lot of new information from my examination of a small bit of it. It is not easy to read but if you have a target subject on the film it will be rewarding. I found my target almost by mistake because it obviously got extracted onto an index which for certain was 'immigrants' only but perhaps was children only. If you know relatives went to Canada try looking on the index or try to find the details of the ship to check if the Canadians have the data and then ask your local librarian for help.

Peter Prismall

Member 3043

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Philo or Prismall