Curriepedia:Data sources to ingest/Pre-1900 plan

This is the pre-1900 priority write-up moved on 2026-11-02 from Curriepedia:Data sources to ingest. Status of each source is kept in the status table on that page; details of other sources are on Curriepedia:Data sources to ingest/Notes.

Priority: everyone at the Lakehead before 1900

Added by WikiBotBoss, 2 Nov 2026, at Michael's request. This section is the first-priority queue: everybody who lived at, worked at or passed through the Thunder Bay (Lakehead) area up to and including 1900. Everything here was born before 1940, so the living-persons gate does not apply to the people, but Indigenous and Métis records are handled with care (see the note under Indigenous and fur-trade records). The older rows for the same sources are in that table, in the fur-trade row of the employers table, and in the census row; they now point back here. Facts below are in our own words, with links to the finding aids. Nothing in this section has been ingested yet unless a count says so.

Quick answers

• When did the North West Company (NWC) have a post at Fort William? The NWC's inland headquarters had been at Grand Portage, but the Jay Treaty border made it likely to fall on the American side, so the Company decided to move. The new post at the mouth of the Kaministiquia River was probably under construction by 1801, was in use in 1803 (as "New Fort" or Fort Kaministiquia), and was renamed Fort William in 1807. It was the NWC's main inland depot until the NWC and Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) merged in 1821, so about 1801/03 to 1821 (in 1816 Lord Selkirk seized the post and held it through the winter of 1816–17). After 1821 the HBC kept the site as a smaller supply and fishing post (Table I of the same study lists the men in charge from 1821 to 1883), and it was closed in the early 1880s as the railway and the new towns grew up. See also Fort William, Old Fort William, North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company.
• Was who was present comprehensively recorded? No. The Fort William post journals that would list daily residents are missing for the whole NWC period; journals survive only for the HBC years, and even those have gaps of several years. At the annual summer rendezvous (mid-July onwards, with the partners' council lasting about two weeks) the population rose to at least 2,000 employees, freemen and Indigenous people, but no complete roll of who was there is known. The year-round winter staff was small (in 1813 a proprietor, a clerk and 22 men; in 1814 a proprietor, a clerk and 15 men). Names have to be rebuilt from scattered records: Montreal engagement contracts, NWC account books, the 1816–17 Selkirk-era inventories and ration issues, HBC servants' lists, and the Jesuit and treaty records that begin after 1848.
• Is it digitized? Partly. The HBC records that matter (pre-1870 post journals, correspondence, servants' records) are in the HBCA's 1,052-reel digitization, viewable through Keystone (details in the table below). The NWC account books have an online name index at the Archives of Manitoba, but the index only points to the volume and folio. The Robinson-Superior annuity paylists, 1850–1916, are digitized page by page on Canadiana Héritage. The Jesuit baptism, marriage and burial compilation and the Métis registry are not online.

Source table

Source	What it holds and date range	Where it is kept	Digitized?	How a bot could ingest it	Access note / progress
NWC engagés' contracts (Voyageur Contracts Database)	About 36,000 hiring contracts for fur-trade canoemen and other employees made before Montreal notaries, 1714–1830; each gives the man's name, home parish, destination, job and wage. Covers the men who paddled to Fort William and beyond, not Fort William residents as such	Database: Société historique de Saint-Boniface; originals: Montreal notarial archives (BAnQ)	Index online and searchable; contract images are not in the database.	Ask the Société for a data export; otherwise query by destination (Grand Portage, Kaministiquia, Fort William) and year 1798–1821. Create one stub per man, citing the contract	☐ Progress: 0 of about 36,000 contracts (0%); the share that names a Fort William destination is not known
NWC account books (ledgers, servants' accounts, equipment books)	Accounts of NWC employees at many posts, including Michipicoten, Lac La Pluie, Red River and Athabasca departments, 1795–1827 (HBCA series F.4; the main ledger is F.4/32). Shows who was employed and what they owed	Hudson's Bay Company Archives (Archives of Manitoba)	The name index is online (about 3,790 lines, about 2,960 different spellings when counted on 2 Nov 2026). Whether the page images are in the digitized microfilm set has not been confirmed.	Scrape the public name index (name, year, item, location code), then create stubs for men tied to Fort William or the Lake Superior posts. Spellings are inconsistent, so match cautiously	☐ Progress: 0 of about 3,790 index lines (0%). The index covers the whole NWC, not only Fort William
NWC partners' minutes and letterbooks (LAC, fonds MG19-B1)	Reported to be a small fonds: a letterbook for 1798–1802 and a minute book for 1801–1811. Partners' council decisions on staffing and the renaming of the post in 1807 are quoted from the minutes	Library and Archives Canada	Finding aid online; digitized status not checked.	Read and summarise by hand; mainly useful for partners and clerks, not labourers	☐ Progress: 0 (not started); size small
Selkirk Papers, 1816–17 inventories and depositions (LAC)	Thousands of pages of inventories, ration issues and sworn statements from the period when Lord Selkirk held Fort William; they name post staff, their families and the Indigenous workers who were fed at the post.	Library and Archives Canada	Not checked	Pilot on the ration lists first; they give names for the people actually living at the post	☐ Progress: 0; total pages unknown
HBC Fort William post journals and district reports	Daily journals kept by the officer in charge, plus Fort William and Lake Superior District reports and correspondence, 1820s–1880s with gaps. Names staff, freemen, Indigenous hunters and visitors	HBCA (Archives of Manitoba). A microfilm copy is at LAC. The Thunder Bay Museum also holds journals for 1823–24, 1835–37 and 1875–76 (see its HBC fonds)	Yes for pre-1870 records. The HBCA digitized 1,052 reels of its pre-1870 microfilmed records, as PDFs linked from Keystone. Records after 1870 (such as the 1875–76 journal) are not part of that set. The exact Keystone entry for each Fort William journal still has to be looked up	Download the PDFs for each journal year from Keystone, transcribe with vision OCR, and extract names with date and role. The existing page Selections from the HBC Post Journals of Fort William in the 1820s and 1830s (Papers and Records, 1997) already covers selected extracts	◐ Progress: selected extracts only (one printed article done). 0 of the journal years transcribed; the number of surviving journal years is not yet counted
HBCA servants' contracts and engagement registers; Biographical Sheets	Name indexes of HBC servants' contracts (1776 to about 1926), Northern Department engagement registers (1823–1895) and Indigenous names from HBC records (about 1790–1917); the Biographical Sheets give a career summary for individual HBC employees	HBCA (Archives of Manitoba)	Indexes and Biographical Sheets are online; the underlying records are searchable through Keystone.	Pull sheets for people already on the wiki first (31 pages in Category:Hudson's Bay Company people), then for every man found in the Fort William journals. Check that Fort William's Lake Superior District falls inside the Northern Department registers before relying on that index	◐ Progress: 31 HBC people, 66 fur traders and 24 NWC people pages exist; the number of sheets that apply to Fort William is not known
Robinson-Superior Treaty annuity paylists (1850 treaty; LAC RG10)	Annual payments to the Lake Superior bands, including the Fort William band, 1850–1916 and later. Before about 1940 mostly the head of each household is named, with the number of people in the family	LAC (RG10 paylists); the 1895–1901 Fort William Indian Agency paylists are also on microfilm at the Archives of Ontario	Yes: Canadiana Héritage reels C-7167 (1850–1893) and C-7169 (1893–1916, including the Port Arthur Agency), page images with no name index; roughly 3,000 page images across the two.	Download the page images, read the handwriting with vision OCR, and have a person check a sample. Create one stub per head of household (Indigenous people named with care), with the family count	☐ Progress: 0 of roughly 3,000 page images (0%). Access note: the Archives of Ontario copy needs a request; later paylists need the Privacy Act check, and the community's wishes come first (see the page note below). Related existing row: Treaty annuity paylists, and Joan Holmes native lists
Métis records (Métis Nation of Ontario, Red River and Sault Métis research, the Robinson Treaty Métis claim)	The MNO's research identifies a Northern Lake Superior Métis community, and the MNO keeps a citizenship registry and historic research files. A 1998 research report on the Métis of the Robinson Treaty area (Gale) covers the Lake Superior shore and the 1850 treaty. Métis scrip (LAC RG15) was issued for Manitoba and the North-West, so it matters here only for families who moved west	MNO (Ottawa); LAC (scrip); the Gail Morin and Charles Denney collections (Glenbow) are listed in the existing Métis row	The Gale report and MNO fact sheets are online; the registry is not a public database as far as could be found	Read the Gale report for family names and cross-check them against the paylists and the HBC journals. Do not bulk-load registry data; ask the MNO first	☐ Progress: 0 (not started). Access note: Michael or a human should contact the MNO registry and historic research office before any use of its data
Jesuit mission records, baptisms, marriages and burials from 1848 (Father William Maurice, S.J. collection)	A compilation of baptisms, marriages and burials by Jesuit missionaries in north-western Ontario from 1848, covering thousands of Indigenous people over a century; about 15 linear metres of papers in all	Archive of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Thunder Bay (on permanent loan from the Jesuits in Canada). Certificates come from the parishes, with a $15 fee in some cases	No: the compilation is on paper and in a private search system; there is no online scan.	Needs a person to visit or an agreement with the archivist for a scanned extract, then vision OCR	☐ Progress: 0. Access note: Michael or a human must contact the diocesan archivist; the records name Indigenous families, so ask about conditions of use
Censuses 1871, 1881, 1891 (and the 1851 and 1861 question)	Whole households: names, ages, birthplace, religion, origin and occupation. Lakehead towns by population: Port Arthur 1,275 and Fort William 690 in 1881; 2,698 and 2,176 in 1891 (these town totals leave out the rural area)	LAC; districts: 1871 West Algoma (Kaministiquia sub-district), 1881 Algoma District 182 (sub-districts for Prince Arthur's Landing and Fort William, to confirm), 1891 District 46 Algoma (with Neebing and Port Arthur sub-districts)	1881 is indexed in the free IPUMS full-count data; 1901 and 1911 are in the AutomatedGenealogy transcriptions (already named on this page); FamilySearch has indexes for the 1871 and 1891 returns, but coverage of this district has not been checked. No enumeration of the Lakehead was found for 1851 or 1861 (not verified)	For 1881, filter the IPUMS file to the Algoma sub-districts and load as household stubs. For 1871 and 1891, download images from LAC, or use FamilySearch indexes if licensing allows	☐ Progress: 0 of about 1,965 people in the two 1881 towns and about 4,874 in 1891 (0%), plus the rural population. See also the census row below
Other pre-1900 people sources	(a) Silver Islet Mining Company records, 1870–1884: invoices, ledgers, issue books and contract books; payrolls are not confirmed. (b) Lakehead University Archives, Silver Islet collection, 1870–1910, with ledgers and an 1880 Employees' Benefit Society constitution. (c) Dawson Road and Canadian Pacific Railway survey and construction crews. (d) Assessment rolls and early directories for Prince Arthur's Landing and Fort William. (e) Thunder Bay Sentinel birth, marriage and death notices, 1875–79 and 1891–95. (f) Ontario deaths to 1937	(a) Thunder Bay Museum; (b) Lakehead University Archives; (c) no named crew list located, so check the Museum's Government of Canada fonds, LAC and the Archives of Ontario; (d) City of Thunder Bay Archives, row below; (e) Thunder Bay Public Library; (f) FamilySearch / Archives of Ontario	(a) and (b): finding aids online, contents not digitized. (c) not located. (d) not located online. (e) index online. (f) partly ingested	Directory stubs already exist from 1884 and 1894. Use them as the backbone, and attach census, ledger and paylist facts to the same people	◐ Progress: Henderson's 1884 (1,692 pages) and Case's 1894 (2,238 pages) are ingested; 903 pages come from the Ontario death index; the other items are at 0

Geography and coordinates (proposal only)

No templates have been changed. The {{Person}} template currently has birth_place and death_place fields but no coordinate field, so any plan has to use place pages. A workable plan, for Michael to approve or change:

1. Place pages first. Create or fill a page for each pre-1900 location that people are tied to: the NWC and HBC Fort William sites (see Fort William and Old Fort William), Pointe de Meuron, the Fort William mission and reserve (Fort William First Nation), Prince Arthur's Landing, Silver Islet, Dawson Road stations, early farms and townsites. Each page gets decimal coordinates with a citation to a gazetteer, a plaque, or a survey map, never a guess.
2. Link people to places. Link a person's birth_place, death_place and the "places lived" part of the biography to those place pages, so the map can be generated from place pages without a new person field.
3. Census geography. For 1871, the sub-district shapes already published by HGIS Canada can be cited for the Kaministiquia sub-district; for 1881 and 1891, record the sub-district name and number on each household stub and place it at the matching town or reserve.
4. Treaty land. The Fort William reserve boundaries come from the treaty schedule; add them to the reserve page once checked.
5. If Michael later wants a field, a single optional coordinates field in {{Person}} would be the smallest change, but it is a template change and has not been made.

Rough size of the task (estimate)

• Pre-1900 named people already on the wiki: about 3,900 directory entries (1,692 pages from Henderson's 1884 and 2,238 from Case's 1894, which overlap), plus 66 fur traders, 31 HBC people and 24 NWC people.
• People who lived at the Lakehead before 1900 (estimate): about 8,000 to 15,000 distinct people. Basis: the two town populations in 1891 total about 4,900 and in 1881 about 2,000, and people moved in and out between censuses; the 1850s–1870s Indigenous, Métis and HBC community was a few hundred. This figure is a planning estimate, not a count.
• Fur-trade people: the engagés' database holds about 36,000 contracts for the whole trade and the NWC account-book index about 2,960 spellings; only a fraction of either concerns Fort William, and many men appear in both. A realistic target is a few thousand named fur-trade people who can be tied to Fort William or the Lake Superior posts.
• Indigenous people before 1900 (estimate): about 1,240 people were counted in the Lake Superior treaty area in 1850, and about 256 in the Fort William band in 1858 (research figures, to be confirmed against the paylists). The paylists would add heads of household for each year, so a few hundred distinct names rather than thousands.
• Order of work suggested: (1) 1881 census, because the data are free and bulk; (2) the 1850–1916 paylists, which are already digitized; (3) the NWC account-book index and the engagés' database; (4) the HBC journals and Biographical Sheets; (5) the Jesuit and MNO material once Michael or a human has made contact.