Place:Pickering (township), Ontario, Ontario, Canada

The following article is based on several in Wikipedia with additional data from Ontario GenWeb

Pickering Township was settled very early in the 19th century. At that time it was located in York County in the Home District of Upper Canada. Ontario County was established as a separate county in 1852. Pickering faces Lake Ontario and on its west it is adjacent to Scarborough Township, the easternmost part of the City of Toronto.

Until 1940 it was a rural township which included a number of communities of varying size: Dunbarton, Pickering Beach, Whitevale, Claremont, Brougham, Altona, as well as the village of Pickering itself. As part of the WW2 war effort, a large ammunition factory was built to the east of the centre of the township. This obliged the construction of a town that was named Ajax. At the end of the war the factory site was used first as an engineering school within the University of Toronto, and then as the home of various industies, some of which continue to this day.

In 1974, in a major municipal reorganization, the County of Ontario, in which Pickering Township was situated, ceased to exist. A new "regional municipality" was established, comprising of most of the former townships of Ontario County and some from Durham County, the county to the east. The new administration is called the Regional Municipality of Durham, or more often, Durham Region.

In the reorganization Pickering Township became the Town of Pickering, and in 2000 the City of Pickering. Its population at the 2011 census was more than 88,000. The original Pickering Village, however, is now located within the neighbouring Town of Ajax.

This drawing from Wikipedia shows the City of Pickering adjacent to the other municipalities of Durham Region. It can be compared with a similar map from Ontario GenWeb illustrating Ontario County prior to 1974.

The Archives of Ontario provide a map of the original Durham County, Ontario, and also a map of the Regional Municipality of Durham illustrating the county post-1974.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Pickering, Ontario.

Research Tips

The primary source for basic documents (vital statistics, land records, wills) for people who lived in the Province of Ontario is the Archives of Ontario, 134 Ian Macdonald Blvd, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M7A 2C5.

Early Records

Civil registration did not begin in the province until 1869. Before then there may be church records of baptisms and burials. For the most part these are still held by the denomination who recorded them. Copies of marriage records made pre-1869 had to be sent by individual clergymen to the registrar of the county in which the marriage took place. These marriage records are available through Ontario Archives, on micorfilm through LDS libraries, and on paid and unpaid websites, but because they were copied at the registrars' offices, they cannot be considered a primary source.

Vital Records after 1869

Birth, marriage and death registrations are not open to the public until a specific number of years after the event occurred. Births to 1915 are now available [October 2014]; dates for marriages and deaths are later. Birth and death registration was not universally carried out in the early years after its adoption. Deaths were more apt to be reported than births for several years. The more rural the area, the less likely it would be that these happenings were reported to the authorities.
Images and indexes of civil registrations for the "viewable" years can be found on paid websites, and indexes only on FamilySearch. The FamilySearch Wiki on Ontario Vital Records explains how these records are organized and their availability.
In September 2014 Ancestry.ca announced that its paid website has been subjected to a "houseclean" of its Ontario BMD database, adding data that had been omitted and making many corrections. Its provision now includes

• Births, with 2,172,124 records covering 1869-1913.
• Marriages, with 3,393,369 records for 1801-1928 including Ontario county, district and Roman Catholic origins as well as province-wide civil registration.
• Deaths, with 2,190,030 records comprising Ontario civil registrations of deaths, 1869-1938 and registrations of Ontario overseas deaths for 1939-1947.

Land Records and Wills

Information on how to access land records and wills is best sought on the Archives of Ontario website. An ancestor's land holding might be found on Canadian County Atlas Digital Project if he was in occupancy circa 1878.

Association for the Preservation of Ontario Land Registry Office Documents (APOLROD). A list of Land Registry Offices for all Counties of Ontario.

Censuses

The original censuses are in the hands of Library and Archives Canada, known to Canadians as "LAC". Copies of original microfilms are online at the LAC website for all censuses up to 1921. Each census database is preceded with an explanation of the geographical area covered, the amount of material retained (some census division material has been lost), the questions on the census form, and whether there is a name index. Census divisions were redrawn as the population increased and more land was inhabited.
Other websites, some paid and some free, also provide Canadian census originals and/or indexes online. One can also view censuses on microfilm at the LAC, at the Archives of Ontario (see address above), or at large libraries throughout Canada.

Hard-to-Find Places

• National Resources Canada's Index of Geographical Names: Query by Name. This database includes even the smallest places all over Canada and provides geographical co-ordinates and maps which extend out from the "found place". Correct spelling of a place is essential.
• Archives of Ontario have a web page titled "The Changing Face of Ontario" (which is very hard to find without this link). This provides maps of Ontario and its divisions in the 19th century (pre Confederation in 1867) and also includes links to series of historical maps of the individual counties as they were between 1867 and the 1970s when a huge reorganization of municipalities began. The Districts of Northern Ontario and Maps of Southern and Central Ontario circa 1951 show the townships of each county.

E-books, Books and Newspapers

• The Internet Archive, particularly texts from Canadian universities, can contain interesting material
• Our Roots is a Canadian website similar to The Internet Archive
• Global Genealogy is an online bookshop specializing in Ontario material who will ship anywhere in the world.
• The Ancestor Hunt is a blog listing old Ontario newspapers that are available online, both free and pay websites. This is a very extensive list.
  
  

Some websites with more local information on Ontario County

• Ontario GenWeb provides a general introduction
• Durham GenWeb is hosted by a family historian who lives in Durham Region and may be able to give guidance to those searching in the old Ontario County as well.
• Durham Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society. Their website includes tabs titled Publications and Resources which may contain useful references.
• Ontario County Genealogy and History is a large website with a lot of historical data on the area. There are no fees for the "subscription" parts of the website.
• The Pickering/Ajax digital archive contains a host of useful material for people searching in that area.
• Similarly, The Whitby Online Historic Photographs Collection holds a great deal of local material (biographies as well as pictures) of people and localities within the town and township of Whitby.
• Whitby Public Library have digitized an index of vital statistics and have linked them to page images from 140 years of various newspaper titles from the Whitby area; OCR full text searching will be available before the end of the year (2012).
• The Port Perry/Scugog Heritage Gallery is a website produced by "Observer Publishing of Port Perry" which contains articles by Rev R Monteith written in 1859 describing different parts of Reach Township from the time of the earliest settler in 1821 to his own day. Observer Publishing appears to have more offline material as well.
• Ontario County, a short sketch of its settlement, physical features and resource with brief historical notes written by J E Farewell, county clerk, and published 1907 is a .pdf file provided by Oshawa Public Library
• Some of the other cities and towns (Oshawa, Uxbridge) and even some of the northern rural townships may have websites with interesting local material.