Local Resources

Here are some useful tools and resources to help with your research about ancestors from our area, plus a short history to help place their lives in context.

To submit a link for inclusion here, please contact our webmaster at the address on our Contact page. Include the complete web page URL and a short description of the page, and describe why you wish the link made. If the Council of Kingston Branch decides that the link request is appropriate to our purposes and goals the link will be made active at the next page update scheduled after the decision is made.

outline map of Frontenac and L&A Counties

Outline map of Frontenac and Lennox & Addington Counties

RESEARCH LINKS AND TOOLS

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Kingston Branch is principally concerned with encouraging, supporting and promoting genealogical research and assistance in the contemporary counties of Frontenac and Lennox & Addington — Ontario’s old Mecklenberg and Midland districts — and in the City of Kingston.

The first township surveys for this area were completed after the United Empire Loyalists arrived in the summer of 1784. For a brief period in the early 1840s, Kingston was the capital of the united Province of Upper and Lower Canada. Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John Alexander Macdonald, was raised in Napanee and reached prominence in Kingston. This area is also noted as the jumping-off point for many other politically and commercially prominent Canadians.

Between 1784 and today, hundreds of thousands of less prominent people have also passed through this area. Perhaps the majority were aboard steamers going up the St. Lawrence River or on trains of the Grand Trunk/Canadian National Railway. However they travelled, they were on their way from Europe to their destination somewhere in the wide expanse of North America.

But many of the people who arrived here stayed — some only temporarily, some more permanently. An extensive array of records has been created that name many of these people and illuminate small instances in their lives. Kingston Branch aims to discover these records and family experiences and make them available to its members and the public.

To that end, we invite your participation in our work. We also offer to help as much as we can — in our capacity as volunteers.

The Kingston region enjoys a solid agricultural, industrial, military, educational, service and recreational base. Kingston was until recently the seat of government for Frontenac County (although it was an entity separate from the county). Napanee is the seat of Lennox & Addington County administration. The current population of the Kingston area is just under 200,000.