The following news release was written by ancestry.ca staff:
TORONTO, March 31 /CNW/ – Is there a Fool in your family tree? How abouta Prank or Jester or Joke? From the hilarious to the bizarre, Ancestry.ca, Canada’s leading online family history website, has dug deep into its vast collection of Canadian historical records to find some comical April Fool’s inspired-names.
These names reveal that Canada has a long history of being a country of people with a good sense of humour. Though, it is entirely likely that Jester MacNut, found living in Colchester, Nova Scotia in the 1891 Canadian Census, would not have necessarily shared that opinion of his parents. Nor perhaps would have Lidwine Prank, who must have been thrilled to take a new last name after her marriage in 1906 in St. Jacques, Ontario to Rene Charbonneau, the record of which can be found in the Drouin Collection.
Searching through the 1916 Canadian Census, John must have been a perfectly common first name. But for one Finnish immigrant that had settled in Kindersley, Saskatchewan, changing his last name may have prevented years of ridicule. Alas, for John Joke it seems as the joke really was on him.
Teenage years can be the most difficult in a man’s life. More so, one would imagine, if your last name is Clown. More still if your parents decide to saddle you with the handle Burn Clown. Sadly that was the reality for a teenaged farm labourer in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, found in the 1916 Canadian Census.
Other names from our collective past that would have fit right in on April Fool’s Day include:
George H Trick – This father of three was found in the 1906 Canadian Census living with his wife and family in Lisgar, Manitoba. We understand he was very good at card tricks!
A Ruse – Found in the 1911 Census living in Vancouver, British Columbia. Claims to have been a lodger from England, living in a household with 12 other people. But with that name there’s no reason to trust anything he says really.
Francis Fool – Found in the Drouin Collection in 1893 in Notre Dame, Quebec.
Ruby F. Hoax – Found in the 1911 Census in Colchester, Nova Scotia. Claims that she was related to Colchester’s own Jester MacNut are currently being investigated…
Karen Peterson, Marketing Director for Ancestry.ca comments: “Searching through historical records has never been more fun or easier, thanks to the online preservation and indexing of censuses, birth and marriage records, passenger lists, immigration records, and so on. “Canadians have long been known for their distinct sense of humour and if you search far back, you just might find that there really is a Fool in your family tree.”
To find out if a sense of humour runs in your family, visit Ancestry.ca and let the journey begin.
ABOUT ANCESTRY.CA
Ancestry.ca was launched in January 2006 and has 410 million Canadian names in such collections as the 1851, 1891, 1901, 1906, 1911 and 1916 Censuses of Canada, Ontario and British Columbia vital records from as early as 1813, Quebec Vital Records (The Drouin Collection), 1621-1957, Canadian Passenger Lists, 1865 to 1935, and U.S. / Canada Border Crossings from 1895 to 1956.Ancestry.ca is part of the global network of Ancestry websites (wholly owned by The Generations Network, Inc.), which contains seven billion names in 27,000 historical record collections. To date more than 9.3 million family trees have been created and 915 million names and 16 million photographs uploaded. 7 million unique visitors logged on to an Ancestry website in January 2009.(*)
The Ancestry global network of family history websites: www.ancestry.ca in Canada, www.ancestry.com in the US, www.ancestry.co.uk in the UK, www.ancestry.com.au in Australia, www.ancestry.de in Germany, www.ancestry.it in Italy, www.ancestry.fr in France, www.ancestry.se in Sweden and www.jiapu.com in China.
(*)comScore, Unique Visitors, January 2009
