The Ontario Name Index

TONI currently has 13,660,926 records indexed.

Before you start, here is a quick guide to understanding TONI, performing searches effectively, and making sense of your results. If you would like to volunteer to work on TONI, please contact the Society TONI Coordinator at [email protected]. If you need help with your research, use https://ogs.on.ca/research-help/.

TONI (The Ontario Name Index) shows where information about a particular name can be found. TONI is an index, it does NOT contain the information, just tells you where to find the information. The TONI Project Team does not do research; if you need research help, please go to the Research page at https://ogs.on.ca/research-help/

TONI contains references to the source resources. These resources are reference documents held by Ontario Ancestors itself, its branches or other institutions, such as the Independent Order of Oddfellows Insurance Applications, FamilySearch (Ontario BMDs), etc. Ontario Ancestors is grateful to the Canadian County Atlas Digital Project, Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill University for allowing us to share their index of the Digital Atlas Project with us.

Some books and similar items are available to purchase from the Ontario Ancestors Marketplace or other sites. Some are small snippets of information available from the Ontario Ancestors as Pay per View items (PPV) and can only be ordered via the TONI system.

Using TONI is free and open to all. Some of the sources that TONI refers to are also free and open to all. But some of the items may have to be purchased from our Marketplace or other organizations. These items are clearly identified before any costs will be incurred.

Pay per View: PPV allows you, at low cost, to view only the pertinent information about a TONI-indexed name. Some PPV items are one or more pages from a larger book, a scan of a newspaper or similar item, or the digitized transcript of a tombstone inscription.

How to use TONI

If you have added items to your shopping cart, either by selecting PPV items or selecting other items from the Marketplace you need to complete your order to receive the items. If you have added items to your cart, the number of items and their net value will show in the top of the webpage.

Click on it at anytime to review your selections and to complete your order.

The Order Process

  • When you add a PPV item to your cart, the item includes a Reference notation. This is the name of the specific item you will be receiving. An example of a reference is PPV:ARN1a-Vh58.pdf:
  • Once your order is complete you will receive an email with the requested PPV item(s)attached.

If you would like to volunteer to work on TONI, please contact the Society TONI Coordinator at [email protected]. 

If you need help with your research, use https://ogs.on.ca/research-help/.

To find specific records, enter a search term in one or more of the Search Boxes at the top of each column. The default search will find all entries which contain the search term; you can change the Filter Mode by clicking on the triangle in the Filter Box (i.e. Starts With, Not Equals, Empty, etc.)

You can search by Record Type or Repository by clicking in the respective Filter Box and selecting one of the choices.

Dates are supposed to be only 4 digit years, but many records are either missing date information or the date does not conform to expected 4 digit pattern. Enter only a four digit year in the Year column. Wild cards can also be applied. See below.

All searches are case-insensitive so that searching for John is the same as john or JOHN.

The wildcard symbol % will work for searches within a name but only if the Filter Mode is Contains, Starts With or Ends With, i.e. Sm%th will find Smith, Smyth or Smooth.

A single character wild card is the underscore character ‘_‘.

There are currently 13,660,926 records available.

If you have a problem with accessing TONI or a problem with purchasing PPV items, please send an email to [email protected]

TONI is an index and finding aid that shows where information about a particular name can be found. TONI does NOT contain the information, it just tells you where to find the information. These resources are reference documents held by Ontario Ancestors itself, its branches or other institutions, such as the Independent Order of Oddfellows Insurance Applications, FamilySearch (Ontario BMDs), etc.

You can Sort the results by any of the columns by clicking on the arrows beside each Title. If you hold Shift and click on a second column you can sort on both columns.

You can view more information about the Results by clicking on the `More info’ to the left of each line, which will open a new page; then:

  • If the item is available in the Marketplace, you can select the full publication with `Buy Now’ in the Marketplace, and/or
  • If the item is available as a PPV item, you can add it to your shopping cart with Add to Cart.
  • ‘Click Here’ beside ‘Info’ will give you more information on the specific source.
  • You may be taken to an External Website; we have no control over these sites and cannot make changes. If the link does not work initially, please wait a few minutes and try again. If the link still does not work, please contact [email protected] with details of the person searched.
  • Many of the sources are NOT digitized and linked to TONI. Researchers may have to visit the owning facility or arrange to obtain the information on their own.

At the top left of the search results. This expands the information window on all results on the current page of the index.

Located at the far left of each search result line. This expands the details window for that individual result.