r/citizenshipgenealogy

Hi all, I have located the Michigan birth record from 1881 for 2nd great-grandfather - but there is no image available on Ancestry or Family Search. Does anyone know where else I can search for the image online? From what I can tell, the record has been digitized, but is not available online. I know I can order it from vital records, but wanted to try and find it online first.
Here is the information for the record I am looking for:

Name	John Baptist Sharon
Sex	Male
Birth Date	22 Mar 1881
Birthplace	Bay City
Race	W
Father's Name	Charles Sharon
Father's Sex	Male
Mother's Name	Weltry Major
Mother's Sex	Female
Event Type	Christening
Event Place	Bay, Michigan, United States
Note	Bay, Michigan

Hello again, helpful people.

I am struggling to find naturalization papers for my relative David T Wall.

some information about him:

Born in 1883, Richibucto, Kent County, New Brunswich, Canada

His father was Daniel Wall, his mother was Anna Wall

When they immigrated to the US it appears they lived in Marinette Ward 3, Marinette, Wisconsin, USA

if there is any further information I can provide that would help, please let me know!

Thank you all for your help, you've already been incredible, and helped so much!

TLDR: I can’t find Patrick Dawson and wife Mary Murphy’s marriage or other records showing that they existed in 1820-1840 Quebec.

Its long, but intriguing, so buckle up.

Published 1891, Portrait and Biographical History of Lake County IL.

**Patrick Dawson, deceased, is a pioneer settler of the town of Deerfield, where he located in 1846. He was born in County Sligo, Ireland, in 1809, and was a son of Daniel Dawson. When nineteen years of age, he emigrated to America, landing in Canada and in Quebec, in 1833, was united in marriage with Miss Mary Murphv, a daughter of Peter and Mary Murphy, She was also a native of County Sligo, Ireland, born about 1809, and with her family crossed the broad Atlantic to Canada, when sixteen years of age.

It was in 1838, when Mr. Dawson, accompanied by his family, crossed the line into the United States, and located in Albany, N. Y., where he made his home for two years, settling in Illinois in 1840. He located in the town of Lake, where he was engaged in farming and in raising and shipping hay for the Chicago market. In December. 1846, he moved to Deerfield Township, Lake County, arrived at his destination on the 22nd of that month.**

He died there in Sept 1875 and Mary died in 1876.

Other information: From Find a Grave, and Illinois censuses, their first son James Dawson was born in NY in either 1834 (gravestone says 42 years old, died 1876) or ca. 1838 (1850 census reports James as 12). I don’t place much confidence in either age or date. Patrick and Mary themselves changed relative ages between censuses, and they were illiterate like many Irish immigrants and perhaps cared little about such trivial things.

Now the problem. I can find no records of this particular Patrick Dawson in Quebec, and without records of him, it’s tough to know which record of Mary Murphy is the correct one. Young people from Ireland with the names Patrick Dawson and Mary Murphy and of roughly appropriate ages both came over in 1825 on The Fortitude in the Peter Robinson migration and settled in Ontario, and that Mary also had a mother Mary, but I don’t think that is them. That Patrick seems to stay in Ontario.

The Illinois part of their lives is well established, he (and family) appears in 3 and she appears in 4 censuses, but their lives in Quebec (and even NY) is a black hole. There are no naturalization papers for Albany County NY, and if there were any from their early years in Lake, IL they were destroyed in the Chicago fire. Patrick was listed as a US Citizen in the 1870 census but I’m not sure that has any real meaning.

Its pretty clear (to me) that their biography is what was passed down orally to children and or friends and neighbors, rather than having been extracted from document research. Its also clear that dates and ages in 200 year old oral biographies can’t be taken at face value. Maybe other things can get smudged too, like Irish county of origin?

Did they fabricate the story? That seems highly unlikely, if not absurd.

So if they were landed and living and married in Quebec, as I feel confident they were, did they change surname when moving to the US?

Using wildcard searches for every Mary Murphy who married a Patrick D in 1830’s Quebec I found a Patrick Drean and Mary Murphy, he from County Sligo (match) and she from County Monaghan (not a perfect match, but geographically close). They were married in Quebec (match) in 1836 (not a match, but close, and makes more sense given when their first son was reportedly born—getting married 5 years before a first born makes no sense) and had a first son named James (match) born in Quebec (not a match to census) later in 1836 (splits the difference between reported 1834 and 1838 birth years on Find a Grave and census). The spelling also changed from Drean to Derrin at James’s birth. He is listed as James DREAN DERRIN in church records. I don’t know if that’s a change that they stuck with, but either way I can’t find them again.

More: Patrick Drean’s father’s name was Daniel (match) and Mary’s parents names were Mary and Peter (match and match). Also, the published biography says that Patrick crossed the line into NY “accompanied by his family” which suggests (to me) that they came with a child that was born in Canada.

And More: The biography mentions nothing about Patrick’s birth family aside from his father’s name, and indeed there are no relatives attached to Patrick Drean in prdh/Quebec church records. Meanwhile the biography mentions that Mary came over from Ireland with family, and indeed Mary Murphy Drean Derrin’s parents and siblings are all linked to her in prdh records and most including her mother seem to have remained and died in Canada. Not only that, Mary and Patrick’s and James’s Quebec church record history ends with the birth of James. I don’t find them again. They must have either died anonymously, changed their name spelling again, or left.

Did they move somewhere else and I just haven’t found them or did they move to NY and start calling themselves Dawson? There is zero proof of that happening. But I also have nothing better to explain why I can’t find Patrick Dawson and a wife Mary Murphy in Quebec. The mismatched years and mismatches aren’t insurmountable for me, but the last name difference can’t be ignored and requires some proof.

Their will be no birth certificates for the Dawson children born in the US because they were all born prior to such things. I found a death certificate for one of the Dawson children that states both parents were born in Ireland (no county given), so that doesn’t really help. I can get birth certs for later generations but they won’t help prove their grandparent’s connection to Canada.

There is what I believe to be an erroneous Frances attached to Daniel Dawson as his spouse on a tree in Ancestry.com, but I’m sure that’s a mistaken transcription from a scribbled census record. Daniel Drean’s wife was Margaret McAnessen in church records, but there is no further info on either of them and no indication either were ever in Canada.

I’ve reached out to 2 distant relatives who have posted some stuff on the family but they have not responded. I don’t think they know anything. Not sure where to go from here. Although this Patrick Drean may or may not qualify to pass down citizenship if he is my ancestor, Mary through her mother, who remained and died in Canada in 1849, very well might. I am not convinced these are my ancestors, but I don’t have any better theories as to where Patrick suddenly appeared from.

I am stumped, for the moment anyway. I don’t intend to give up but maybe someone else can dig up a new clue or suggest something I haven’t thought of. I'm still pretty new at this.

Hello! I'm having a bit of an unexpected issue getting a christening record that was performed on a US Naval base.

My father was baptized at St. Andrew's chapel at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD in 1952. I sent a request to the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA. They replied via email that they only have Catholic records. My dad's christening was Episcopal and the reply said they didn't know who kept those records for the military.

The priest who performed the ceremony was Rev. Dr. J. Luther Neff. He's from Baltimore. I've been recommended to reach out to his parish to see if they have the records. I'm going to do that. I'd like to cast a wider net, if possible. Are there any other resources I should be reaching out to? I'm not sure if there are additional Military archives I should be looking into or any public christening/baptism records.

E: I don't have my dad's birth cert. I'm currently NC, but I'll reach out if I can't make progress on my own. I was hoping to use the baptism record in place of his birth cert. I have a certified copy of my parents' marriage cert that lists my grandparents as my dad's parents. I'm not sure if that's "enough."

My grandmother was born on April 24,1914 in Montreal. Her family arrived in Montreal in January of that year, and left in September. Her father was often gone, and the family moved around alot until they settled in Ohio in the 1920s. The family was not Catholic (even tho her father was born in France, it was to a protestant family). I've searched (I think) all the protestant registries for Montreal in 1914 (via the BANQ site), and I haven't found anything. I'm wondering if it's possible that she just wasn't baptized, and there isn't a record of her birth. If anyone has any ideas of what my next steps are, I would love to hear. For the record, her name was Marjorie Ventre, and her parents were Lucien Jean Ventre and Kate (Thompson) Ventre.

I am seeking help from the good people of Reddit. I’ve looked everywhere I know how and just cannot find the document I need.

My wife and I are in search of her grandmothers birth or baptism record. We’ve been able to locate many of her grandmother’s siblings’ baptism records, but not hers.

Her name: Marie Jeanne Lajoie
DOB: Dec 15, 1891
Place of birth: Saint-Liboire, Quebec, Canada

Mothers name: Amanda Quintal
Fathers name: Alexandre Lajoie

Census records from 1891 and 1901 put the family in Bagot, Quebec
Many of her siblings were baptized in Saint-Liboire church.

She, however, was married in 1921 in Coaticook Quebec in St-Jean Evangeliste church and became Marie Jeanne Lafosse.

If anyone can help me, I’d be so grateful .

Canadian census records (beginning in the 1800s) show a family living, working, and dying in BC, Canada, with the eldest male British...

--how many years did one need to live/work in Canada in the 1800s to be eligible for citizenship?

--were British automatically given Canadian citizenship in the 1800s?

--would that pass down to his children?

Thank you for your guidance!

Hello, I am trying to find the Birth Certificate/record/anything for a Canadian ancestor (Great Grandfather)

What I'm looking for: 
Birth certificate for David Turner Wall

Born in 1883, Richibucto, Kent County, New Brunswich, Canada

His father was Daniel Wall, his mother was Anna Wall

He ended up getting married to Alice Marguerite Stephens in Silver Bow, Montana in 1909

If anyone can help, I would be incredibly grateful!

I am just stating my journey but am curious, has anyone been approved yet? I believe some people applied before the bill passed in July 2025. Just looking for stories and next steps after approval (to get passport).

Hello - I’m looking for research suggestions on finding the baptismal record for 2x g-grandparent born in 1834 in Quebec, Megantic, Leeds. Parents’ marriage record shows Church of England in Canada (Leeds Township, Quebec), so I’m hoping their child was baptized at the same church but struggling to find anything. Any recommendations for my search are appreciated. Thank you!

I am dealing with a couple of name change situations, and I am trying to figure out if these snags can likely be overcome.

Tl;dr at the bottom.

Before Gen 0 

French Canadian Anne Doucette and Irish-born Thomas Doyle marry in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1869.  This event is recorded in the local Catholic parish register and the civil register, with their named parents and respective birthplaces (Anne has a ridiculously long Acadian pedigree).

Gen 0 - 3x Great Grandma Marie Doyle/Dowell 

- Born in Halifax, N.S. Baptism recorded in the Catholic parish register in 1870 as “three weeks old” under “Marie Doyle” with married parents “Anne Doucette and Thomas Doyle.” The birth of Marie Doyle is not recorded in the civil records.   

- Anne and Thomas shift their surname from Irish “Doyle” to marginally more Britishly acceptable “Dowell” by the 1871 Canadian Census.  The 1871 and 1881 Censuses have Anne, Thomas, and some of their several children.  Most of these children have a mix of Catholic baptism records and civil birth and eventually marriage and death records at Halifax.  

- Thomas Dowell died in the period where (of course) deaths weren’t recorded in civil registers. Anne died under the “Dowell” name in 1921 and a death certificate was issued with the names of her parents.

- Marie moves to the U.S. before 1888 and marries Phillip Humphrey Andrews, an American, in 1889.  No marriage return filed with the relevant clerk, however.  The 1900 U.S. Census says that they are married, and they have at least five children together.  

- Marie Dowell’s and Phillip Andrews’ children’s death records and delayed birth certificates all say their mother was “Mary Dowell of Halifax, N.S.” and their father was “Phillip Andrews.”

- Marie Dowell’s death certificate says that her current name is Marie Andrews and her parents were Thomas Dowell of Ireland and Anne Doucette of Halifax, N.S.

- Marie Dowell Andrews’ death certificate just says that her husband’s name is “Humphrey;” no last or first name written in.

Gen 1 - 2x Great Grandma Helen Andrews 

- US born in 1890, mixed religious marriage (Phillip was Protestant) so no baptism records and no civil birth records. 

- US Census records with both parents in 1900 and 1910, aged 10 and aged 19. 

- Death certificate with both parents/ Anglicized maiden name “Dowell” in 1915.

The Easy Part: 

Gen 2 - Great-Grandpa Jack - All docs

Gen 3 - Grandmother - All docs

Gen 4 - Mom - All docs

Gen 5 - Me - All docs

Tl;dr –
Snag #1 Pre-Gen 0 changed their surnames when my Gen 0 was a child. 

Snag #2 Gen 0 did not file a marriage return that would prove her married name by itself.  

Regarding snag #1, my initial thought would be to gather up enough vital documents from Anne’s other children, showing their existence as an intact family unit and living at the same household addresses (where documented), in spite of the surname change.  Any other suggestions?

Regarding snag #2, would Marie’s death certificate be sufficient to prove the name change from Dowell to Andrews?

I've asked this before in this sub but I wanted to take another temperature check about the timelines of requests to the Archives of Ontario. I sent in an online request 3/18 and haven't heard anything back aside from the automated email.

If people have had recent success getting certified documentation from them how long did it take? What should be the expectation?

Hi all! I posted the following in the mega thread on the Canadian citizenship sub, and was recommended by one of the moderators to ask this sub for possible sources of archives or historical records. So far I’ve gotten ahold of census records, ship records, border records, gazette, a voter roll, and death registry.

This is my situation, if anyone has any ideas for where to dig for more information, I’d really appreciate it! Also, if anyone is a Japanese Canadian descendent, I’d love to hear your experiences.

Hello

I recently found out about the citizenship by descent changes in bill C-3 and I’m wondering if through my lineage, I would be successful at an attempt. I’ve only been deep diving for about a week so this is all fairly new to me and I’d really appreciate the insight of those that are knowledgeable in this space. Reading through the experiences of those that have posted theirs has been immensely helpful.

Gen 0:

- born in Japan

- moved to Canada (age 21) in 1907 and remained for 15 years until 1922

- became a British subject in 1913 (records found on Canada’s archival website state he naturalised as a British subject in 1913)

- went back to Japan in 1922 for a period of 3 years

- returned to Canada in 1925

- remained there until he died in 1971

Gen 1:

- born in Japan in 1923 and was left behind in Japan when gen 0 returned to Canada in 1925

- raised by another family and remained in Japan until his death in 2012 (His birth was never registered in Canada, although his birth certificate states gen 0 as the father)

Gen 2: born in Japan in 1963

Gen 3 (me): born in Japan in 1994

Gen 0 became a Canadian citizen in 1947, when Canadian citizenship laws were established. I saw on another thread that an applicant was rejected because their anchor relative became a Canadian citizen after the next generation was born, but there was no way my anchor relative could have become a Canadian citizen before 1923 when gen 1 was born, as Canadian citizenship didn’t exist then. The most he could have been was a British subject, which he was.

Also, as for records found from the Canadian archives, do they need to be apostilled or notarised in some way? Or is it deemed legitimate as it comes from the Canadian archives? Will ship records, dispossession records (he was Japanese and many of us were interned in the 1940s in the wake of pearl harbour), naturalisation (to Canadian in 1947) and a record of his death suffice for proof of his connection to and time spent in Canada?

Thank you! I appreciate the help <3

Hi all,

I have a copy of the Niagara Conference Methodist Episcopal Church Baptismal Register which covers 1849 to 1886 for London (1849-1886), Niagara (1849-1886), Toronto (1849-1863), Oxford (1858-1863), Chatham (1884-1886), and Hamilton (1884-1886) districts for the next week or two. It is not the baptismal records, but would help the United Church of Canada Archives locate your record.

This is just me paying it forward, so if this post is still up feel free to send me a DM or chat (or you can reply with their name and birth year) if you want me to check if your ancestor is covered in the index. I'll need their name, parents, and approximate birth year to look it up.

The index only has name, birthdate, baptismal date, parents names and location -- that's all. Similar to the Wesleyan index that's available online. So it's not documentation in and of itself, just points to the existence of documentation.

I’m trying to locate my Canadian ancestors birth certificate and overwhelmed dissecting each image on family search in the archives. Is there anyone out there with more experience with these searches that could help me? I'm trying to find the birth certificate or registration number to lead me to locate the birth certificate, or even baptism record. Gertrude Rankin (female) was born in Windsor, Essex County, Ontario, Canada, on January 19, 1885. Her mother was Sarah Elizabeth Stamp (born around 1858 in Paris, Ontario, Canada) and her father was Robert Rankin (born around 1833 in Ayrshire, Scotland). Gertrude Rankin married Eugene Aloysius Schumacher in El Paso, Texas, on January 17, 1908, when she was 22 years old. Any tips or guidance would be very much appreciated. Thank you to anyone who’s taken the time to read this.

I've spent over a month looking to no avail. I can't seem to narrow down a church. Pretty sure they were Methodist. I've gone through every slide of the Bower database. I have lots of census records and

William Daniel Vansickle - 15 Aug 1867 Langford, Brantford Township, Brant, Ontario, Canada

Rhoda Mae Flora Whittington - 16 April 1863 Lynden, Hamilton, Hamilton-Wentworth, Ontario, Canada

Or maybe even her parents, Austin Whittington and Millason (spelled many ways) Book

I have their birth dates and places as well.

Heyo might be a long one I apologize,

A few questions regarding the C-3 Bill Canadian By Descent. 1. Does anybody have any tips or advice with successful applications that were for ancestry greater than grandparents? 2. Did you consult lawyers or genealogists? 3. If I cannot find birth certificates or baptismal records in the church archives would census records work instead and a certified death record? And lastly do non certified records for some of my USA descendants hurt my application chances?

My scenario, is my great x4 grandfather emigrated to USA from Canada (Ontario) born there and his parents were born and married there.I have requested birth and death records. I have a detailed family tree showing the unbroken lineage.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I appreciate any tips advice or feedback. :) Been to Canada a few times and enjoyed every time I was there.

This is a bit of a rant so thank you for indulging me if you choose to read this. My ancestor William Reed Smith (1826-1894) was a Mormon pioneer who had been born in Yonge, Upper Canada. His (first) wife, Emeline Leavitt (1832-1888) from whom I am also descended, was apparently born in Hatley, Quebec. (I found an Emeline Leavitt baptized in Hatley, Quebec on Familysearch, but no parents' names were listed; I will probably have to revisit her later.)

Perhaps if I am lucky this man having had thirty children means that some distant cousin of mine will come across this and will have already found Canadian documentation, but for now, I just want to vent and marvel at how ridiculously difficult finding documentation can get. It feels like it should be easy: in today's meticulously recorded Western civilization, even household pets have documentation that lists a date of birth. Yet much of the world still does not issue birth certificates as we know them, and many people from some countries have no idea what their date of birth is: dates of birth are often issued arbitrarily (usually January 1st) to refugees who fit this description.

Anyway, back to William Reed Smith. His case is infuriating. First, I can find no record of his baptism in spite of him having been born in Upper Canada, as was his father. All my documentation listing his birthplace as Canada is, so far, from the US government or the LDS church. But nary a Canadian baptismal record can be found (so far).

It gets worse with the second discovery. In his forties, he leaves newly-settled Utah to serve as a missionary in the United Kingdom and mentions in correspondence that he stopped to visit his older sisters who were still in Canada on the way there, but ship records apparently do not list birthplaces: I was hoping that that would count as a Canadian government document recognizing him as having been born there, but no luck.

Third and finally, and most infuriating of all, LDS President John Taylor asks him and a guy named Charles Ora Card to go to what is now Alberta and to set up Mormon settlements there. They found Cardston, Alberta, which is named after Card, and William Reed Smith apparently purchased land that later became Spring Coulee. Yet as I look through Alberta's land records, I am unable to find his name in the index, and archive.org's enormous stash of microfilm is unindexed and an absolute mess of tens of thousands of pages. Even if there were a record of him owning land there, would it list his birthplace as Canada? Would he just have been considered an American who happened to buy a bit of land there by that point, and so homestead record would have been issued? If I had found a land grant with his name and birthplace, issued by the Canadian government, that would in theory have been the key piece of the puzzle: a later document, from the Canadian government instead of a church, recognizing his birthplace as Canada, even if decades after the fact. Yet even in the 1880s, things as big as a town being founded seem to go largely undocumented, at least by the standards of our time.

Anyways, I hope this serves as an illustration of how frustrating searching for documentation pre-20th century (that's a very ballpark estimate) can be for some of us. And if anyone happens to be able to point me in the right direction, I would be most thankful.

tl;dr: My ancestor founded an entire village (Spring Coulee, Alberta) and even with that, I can't find Canadian government documentation (so far).