INTRODUCTION TO THE GENEALOGY DATA BASE

The reader is strongly advised to read this Introduction and its cautionary and explanatory notes, before making use of the data.

Where others have contacted me re particular surnames, their email address is available. In the data base itself, a note which reads “Contact info available” has been added at the end of such surnames. To get those email addresses, you may contact me via the ‘Contact’ toggle on this website. Some of the email addresses are as much as 20 years old, and may no longer be valid, so I cannot vouch for their accuracy. Where no such note has been added in the data base, no one researching that surname has ever contacted me. I am no longer collecting data, with the exception of place of origin, such as England, Scotland, Ireland etc., and the specific parish, and/or townland, if available. I will also correct major errors, such as someone placed in the wrong family. If you want to send that type of info to me, I will add it to/correct it in the data base.

Users are advised to consult primary records to verify the data. The data was collected between 1975 and 2010. The exercise of compiling ‘some’ genealogy on so many English-Canadian families (both Protestant and Catholic) was a monumental task, and the results are not without their limitations. The data was collected for studies in history, such as A History of Megantic County: Downhomers of Quebec’s Eastern Townships, and Ulster Protestant Emigration to Lower Canada: Megantic County and St-Sylvestre, and various journal articles. While the data is also of benefit for genealogy, it was not designed for that purpose. Literally hundreds of primary and secondary resources were used to compile these family genealogies. They are as listed under ‘Reference Sources re the Megantic County Area’ on this website. However, those sources have NOT been noted in this genealogy compilation, except in a few rare cases. This would have been an onerous task and was not done. This is perhaps the greatest limitation of the compilation. In some cases there are a number of records in the data base organized by a single person. This was necessary, where it was not obvious from the data, as to which family grouping they belonged to, if any, for that particular surname.