Thank you for visiting! This Members Library section is available only to Leeds & Grenville Branch, Ontario Ancestors members. Please log in with your Ontario Ancestors login credentials to accessing these resources. A quick link to the login is provided on your right.
If you are not yet a member of the Leeds & Grenville Branch, please join us! Details can be found on our Membership page.
Please note that all items in the Members Library are for the use of members for personal family research purposes only. Items, information or data are not to be sold or shared online.
Where applicable, the Leeds & Grenville Branch of Ontario Ancestors holds all copyrights.
Here is what you will find in the Members Library:
This includes the following indexes:
Leeds & Grenville Branch Full Names Index
(A less detailed version of the Leeds & Grenville Branch’s names index is available in the right sidebar.)
The Brockville Cemeteries: Oakland Cemetery Register of Internments; Old Brockville Cemetery; St. Peter’s.
Newsletters: Our Branch newsletter is called Leeds & Grenville News & Views. We currently have the years 1974-1999, 2004 and 2010-2021 digitized. An article index is available here: News & Views – Index 1974-2021.
Newspapers: The following newspapers are available:
Athens Reporter 1892-1971, with some gaps.
Brockville Evening Recorder 1873-1893, with some gaps.
Brockville Recorder 1824-1841.
Brockville Weekly Recorder 1830-1901, with some gaps.
Cornwall – Multiple Newspapers 1835-1885, with some gaps. Includes the Cornwall Observer 1835-1848, Cornwall Chronicle 1845, Cornwall Constitutional 1850-1857, Cornwall Economist 1861, Cornwall Advertiser 1865-1866, Cornwall Freeholder 1850-1868, Cornwall Gazette 1875, Cornwall Reporter 1875, 1885.
Farmersville Reporter 1888-1891, with some gaps.
Gananoque Reporter 1860-1929, with some gaps. Includes Gananoque Journal 1883, 1886, 1892 and The Index 1883.
Prescott Journal 1890-1946, with some gaps.
These newspapers are being indexed in TONI – The Ontario Names Index.
W. J. (Bill) Miller Collection – Genealogy Records of Leeds County:
William J. (Bill) Miller was born on Wolfe Island in Frontenac County in 1908. He began working at Phillips Electrical Works in Brockville in 1935. After serving in WWII, Bill returned to his job at Phillips Cables in Brockville, where he was very involved in Union activities.
Bill was not a native of Leeds County but his wife, Nora (Halladay) had family roots that went back to her Loyalist ancestor, Major William Reed who settled in Kitley.
Together Bill and Nora traveled to trace Major Reed and his family from South Carolina to the Maritimes and then to Kitley township.
Bill acquired all the back issues of the Athens “Reporter” newspaper. With information from those papers, and several other sources, Bill made family files on a vast number of area families. One room in their home in Athens was lined with shelves holding binders of family sheets. In the center of the room was his work table and Gestetner!
He made arrangements with the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa that his work would be microfilmed and that a copy would go to the Leeds & Grenville Branch OGS. His wishes were carried out and countless researchers have benefitted from his records when visiting our Archives or from receiving copies of his files. These microfilms have now been digitized and are on the branch website in the Members Library.
Bill was a meticulous researcher so his work can be counted on as being exactly as found at source.
The individual reels are labelled as follows:
Reel 01: Abbott – Bracken
Reel 02: Bracken – Coon Family
Reel 03: Coon Family – Denny
Reel 04: Derbyshire – Freeman
Reel 05: Freeman – Halladay (Anson)
Reel 06: Halladay (Anson Miller) – Halladay Family
Reel 07: Haskin – Imerson
Reel 08: Jackson – Knapp
Reel 09: Knapp – McCann
Reel 10: McCann – Marks
Reel 11: Marshall – Pennock
Reel 12: Pennock – Reed
Reel 13: Reed – Sheffield
Reel 14: Sheffield – Stanton
Reel 15: Stanton – Warren
Reel 16: Warren – Wing
Reel 17: Wing – Young.
WWI: Names in this collection have been indexed in the WWI Names Index.
WWII: Names in this collection have been indexed in the WWII Names Index.
Recordings of our monthly meetings and feature presentations are available in the Media Centre. Some past feature presentations are listed below.
February 2022: The Rural Diary Archive: Transcribing Daily Life in Eastern Ontario – With Catharine Wilson
December 2021: Ontario Records at FamilySearch – With Stephen Young
November 2021: Getting the Most Out of Researching on Ancestry – With Lesley Anderson
October 2021: Athens Museum and Athens and Area Heritage Society – With Sally Smid
September 2021: Genetic Genealogy: DNA Testing Tools & Tips – With Ben Dawson
June 2021: The People Before Us – With David Shanahan
May 2021: Canadian Copyright & Images – With Elise Cole
April 2021: The Sweeney Diary – With Susan Warren
March 2021: Our Military Ancestors – Glenn Wright
February 2021: The GEDCOM Toolkit – With Bob Dawes
December 2020: Virtual Genealogy Show & Tell
November 2020: On the Homefront: Brockville During the Years of World War 2 – With Peggy Hause
October 2020: The Irish and the Rideau Canal – With Susan Warren
October 2020 (Kingston Branch): Using Ontario Land Records for Historical Property Research – With Patti Mordasewicz of Leeds & Grenville Branch
September 2020: The Old Red House, 55 Craig Street, Perth, Ontario, Constructed by the Royal Corps of Sappers & Miners in 1816 – With James Forrester
June 2020: What’s IN the Leeds & Grenville Branch Archives – With Patti Mordasewicz
May 2020: Tales from the General Store: The Untold History of Bishop’s Mills – With Tom Graham