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 some of what you will find in the Members Library:
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:
Bill Miller compiled genealogies of over 1200 families who lived in Leeds County, Ontario (1898-1983). The collection contains charts, correspondence, certificates, announcements, invitations, greeting cards, newspaper clippings, photographs, wills, land records, and family trees.
The ENHANCED Finding Aid 1470 for this collection provides direct hyperlinks to each surname listed in the original finding aid written by Alan Reed of Ottawa, and published by the National Archives of Canada in 1984. The ENHANCED Finding Aid 1470 can be found in the W.J.B. Miller Collection.
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 travelled 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. We have also created the ENHANCED Finding Aid 1470, which provides faster and more efficient access to the files, which are now also available to the general public on the Heritage Canadiana website (https://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.lac_mikan_105923 ).
Bill was a meticulous researcher so his work can be counted on as being exactly as found at source.
Branch Meeting Presentations
Recordings of our monthly meetings and feature presentations are available in the Members Library.