Canada, Ontario Births - FamilySearch Historical Records

Collection Time Period
This collection covers from 1869 through 1912.

Record Description
These records consist of birth records from Ontario, Canada. The linked search engine allows you to search for ancestors by first and last name, place, and year. Registrations were kept on printed forms and then bound into volumes. The entries are arranged chronologically by date of registration.

A provincial act to register births, marriages, and deaths went into effect on July 1, 1869. This act created the Office of the Registrar General, and in each county or incorporated city or town, a clerk of the peace acted as the district registrar. Each municipality (city, village, town, township, or district) had a division registrar who sent all their books to a district registrar. This district registrar then transmitted the records to the registrar general at the provincial level. In 1875, the office of district registrar was eliminated and the division registrars began sending their registrations directly to the registrar general.

In 1896, the process was altered. Division registrars received a copy of the registration forms from the person who reported the event. These forms were then indexed and entered into new registers. The division registrar made a copy of the form and every six months sent them to the Office of the Registrar General. After 1908, the division registrar made two copies of the original forms, who then kept one locally and sent the other quarterly to the registrar general. Later, the registrar general began indexing the registers.

Citation for this Collection
The following citation refers to the original source of the data and images published on FamilySearch.org Historical Records. It may include the author, custodian, publisher, and archive for the original records.

Information about creating source citations for FamilySearch Historical Collections is listed in the wiki article Help:How to Create Source Citations For FamilySearch Historical Records Collections.

Record Content
Important biographical information found in these birth records:


 * When the child was born
 * Child’s name
 * Sex (M. for male or F. for female)
 * Name and surname of the father
 * Name and maiden surname of the mother
 * Signature description and residence of the informant
 * Where the birth was registered
 * Name of accoucheur (doctor or midwife attending the birth)
 * County where the record was created

How to Use the Record
Begin your search by finding your ancestors in the index. Use the locator information in the index (such as page, entry, or certificate number) to locate your ancestors in the birth records. Compare the information in the birth record to what you already know about your ancestors to determine if this is the correct person. You may need to compare the information of more than one person to make this determination. Be aware that as with any index, transcription errors may occur. When you have located your ancestor’s birth record, carefully evaluate each piece of information about them. These pieces of information may give you new biographical details that can lead you to other records about your ancestors.

For example:


 * Use the birth date along with the place of birth to find the family in census records.


 * Use the residence and names of the parents to locate church and land records.


 * The father’s occupation can lead you to employment records or other types of records such as military records.


 * The parents’ birthplaces can indicate former residences and can help to establish a migration pattern for the family.

If you want to find more information about the family, it is often helpful to extract the information from the records of all the children with the same parents. If the surname is unusual, you may want to compile birth entries for every person of the same surname and sort them into families based on the names of the parents. Continue to search the birth records to identify siblings, parents, and other relatives in the same or other generations who were born in the same county or nearby.

Keep in mind:


 * The information in birth records is usually reliable, but depends upon the reliability of the informant.
 * Earlier records may not contain as much information as the records created after the late 1800s.
 * There is also some variation in the information given from record to record.

Why this Record Was Created
Births were recorded in Ontario to better serve public health needs and to provide demographic and personal identification.

Record Reliability
Civil registrations of births were official records and are some of the most reliable sources of information available for those who were born in Ontario.

Known Issues with This Collection
For a full list of all known issues associated with this collection see the attached Wiki article. If you encounter additional problems, please email them to [mailto:support@familysearch.org support@familysearch.org]. Please include the full path to the link and a description of the problem in your e-mail. Your assistance will help ensure that future reworks will be considered.

Related Web Sites
Ontario Birth Registrations

This section of the article is incomplete. You can help FamilySearch Wiki by supplying links to related websites here.

Related Wiki Articles

 * Ontario
 * Ontario Civil Registration- Vital Records

Citing FamilySearch Historical Collections
When you copy information from a record, you should also list where you found the information. This will help you or others to find the record again. It is also good to keep track of records where you did not find information, including the names of the people you looked for in the records.

Citation Example for a Record Found in This Collection
"Ontario Births, 1869-1912." database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org: accessed 1 April 2011). r Harry Graham Kritzer, 6 March 1912; citing Birth Records, FHL microfilm 2,435,796; Archives of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.

A suggested format for keeping track of records that you have researched is found in the wiki article Help:How to Cite FamilySearch Collections.