Progress: April 11, 2011

In a previous blog posting, I had thought that the 1916 Canada Census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta had not yet been digitized by Library and Archives Canada. I was mistaken. The 1916 census is indeed in digital format as an image; it is the data itself that has not yet been transcribed.

I was therefore not able to use the database to search for a particular family name, though I was able to search by District Name (Winnipeg Centre) and Number (13). I looked at over 560 individual pages before finding the Angerbaur family in Sub-District Number 17, pages 42 and 43.

 

I actually enjoyed the long, meditative process. A database can sometime reveal impersonal data, all regulated to the same value or importance. I think back to the beginning of this project:

In an attempt to play with the tension between personal information and what I perceived as potentially ‘cold’ impersonal technologies, I inserted personal identifiers into on-line mapping and database software. In this manner, I found topographical markers throughout Quebec and Sweden, which bear my interwoven family names: my adoptive and birth names. More

These handwritten ledgers on the other hand, are intriguing for their very differences: each set of Sub-District pages reveal unique handwriting styles and the matter itself allows for traces of human activity. Paper and pencil is a forgiving medium and allows for those last minute edits — crossed out words and hastily written notes in the margins. You could also read the formal elements, the patterns created by the various names. That is, you could easily tell if workers populated an area by the telltale grouping of, more often than not, single men, with family names that reveal their widespread origins. In contrast, the listing of large extended families tended to create negative space in the ledgers as the transcriber would not re-transcribe the family name for each member.

From these two censuses, I learned that John Angerbaur (b. 1866) was a Floorwalker, also known as a Floor manager, of a Department store in Winnipeg. He immigrated to Canada via the United States and was the only German-speaking member of his Canadian family. His wife Mary was of Scotch descent and born in Ontario. She bore him five daughters in this province and a son in Winnipeg.

I could see why the transcriber had thought one of the youngest daughters (Kennena) to be “Kerrena” as the handwriting is hard to decipher. If the transcriber had not seen the 1911 Ontario census, they would not have made the connection with Kenennena. Perhaps Kennena’s family shortened her name in the second census to facilitate the pronunciation or spelling?

Will the 1921 Canadian Census shed more light on the Angerbauer/Anberbaur family? Another blogger makes note that the release date might be in two years – 2013. I didn’t know that Statistics Canada cannot open the records for public use through Library and Archives Canada until 92 calendar years have elapsed …