Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Kemp and Sovereen Lands in Norfolk County, Ontario

In my post Canadian County Atlas Project - Wonderful! yesterday, I used the project (at http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/countyatlas/) to find land maps of townships of the counties in Ontario Province in the 1874 to 1881 time frame.

Now, I want to find the specific land locations for my ancestors - James Abram Kemp (1831-1902) and Alexander Sovereen (1814-1907). In my earlier post, there was a choice of "Maps" or "People" on the third screen shown. I went back to that page, and clicked on the "People" button:



I entered "Kemp" into the "Last Name" field and "Norfolk" into the "County" field and clicked on "Search:"



There were three matches for my query - and there is James A. Kemp (Middleton township, occupation of farmer, joiner, carpenter, and nativity of Canada) and his son Peter E. Kemp is listed also in Windham township. I clicked on the "Go" button next to James A. Kemp's line:

There is some useful information here. In addition to Name, County, Township, Occupation and Nativity, there is information about Year Settled (1855), Post Office (Delhi), Concession and Lot (1 NTR, 42) and Lot Size (100 acres). I clicked on the "Locate on Map" button and was rewarded with:



On the right of the page above, there is a small map of Middleton township with a square box highlighting the location of James A. Kemp's land. The small map on the left shows James A. Kemp's land. I can use my saved map of Middleton to see the entire township to see how James Kemp's land relates to the roads, terrain and other landowners.

Now, Alexander Sovereen was located in Windham township in Norfolk County, and here is the Windham township map:


I went back to the "People" page and put in Alexander Sovereen into the search box and found:


The information for Alexander Sovereen includes Nativity (Canada), Business (Farmer), Year Settled (1836), Post Office (Delhi), Concession and Lot (XI, 21 and XI, 22) and Lot Size (100 acres and 85 acres):

Three lots are listed (20, 21 and 22) so I clicked on each of them. Here is the map for Lots 21 and 22:


Lots 21 and 22 were across the road from each other, and it appears that the home was on the north side of the road.

Lot 20 was not far away:


In my earlier post, Brenda Merriman and Lynn Palermo offered more advice on finding information about people and land records in Norfolk County. I will follow up on those! Thank you, ladies!

2 comments:

Lynn Palermo said...

Hi Randy
The Eva Brook Donly Museum is the home of our local history in Norfolk County more specifically Simcoe. Windham is part of Simcoe and Delhi a stones throw away. They have a website. I live only a few blocks from the museum and the local library if you ever need anyone in the area to look something up for you or if you need information on the area. Lynn

Heather Wilkinson Rojo said...

Very cool website! I had fun perusing the maps while my Thanksgiving pies were baking in the oven...