Municipal Records in Ontario: History and Guide

Fraser Dunford

Municipal records can be a gold mine of genealogical information. Municipalities provided an astonishing variety of records, all of them local (by definition!) and many just loaded with names. This source is not well-known because you must know the municipality your ancestor was in, you have to know where that municipality's records are now and the records will almost certainly be completely, totally, absolutely un-indexed.

Although searching municipal records will never be simple, this book attempts to make the process somewhat easier. Here you will find a basic history that will show you what to look for, depending on the time period you are interested in. There is a description of the many different documents municipalities produced, so you will know which to search first. There are six appendices listing every municipality in Ontario that could have produced records. Two more appendices give details on Assessment Rolls and Collector Rolls, showing what information can be found in them for different time periods.

2005 184p bibliography