Loyalist Petitions Online at FamilySearch.org
(by Nancy Cutway)

September 2020

I recently listened to a webinar by Jane MacNamara, a Toronto-based genealogist. She pointed out that the images for the Upper Canada Land Petitions are now on familysearch.org as well as at Library and Archives Canada (LAC), and that the familysearch version has a better viewer and makes it easier to manipulate the images.

I decided to test this out. First I went to the LAC index at https://www.baclac.gc.ca/eng/discover/land/land-petitions-upper-canada-1763-1865/Pages/land-petitions-uppercanada.aspx. I searched for Platt Wood, my 4-gts-grandfather, who I have not really explored.

I know Platt settled in Charlotteville, but I was particularly curious to see what he did in York; perhaps it was just a stopping point when he first arrived in Upper Canada after moving up from New Brunswick in company with other members of the former Queen’s Rangers. (John Graves Simcoe had been their Colonel during the American Revolution, and once he was appointed as Lt. Governor of Upper Canada in 1791, numerous men from his former regiment moved to Upper Canada to live under his administration. He must have been an impressive leader.)

I made note of the year and details for the York reference. I then could have viewed the digitized microfilm on the LAC site using the link “How to Obtain Copies” from the results page. But following Jane MacNamara’s suggestion, I went instead to familysearch.org, signed in to my free account, and then clicked on Search > Catalog. I typed in “Upper Canada” and the catalog told me to look in “Canada, Ontario” so I clicked on that. I scrolled down the resulting list until I came to “Land and Property” and then, from the 31 items on that page, I selected

The LAC reel number is at the beginning of each entry. There are four pages – I had to go to page 3 in order to see

I clicked on the camera icon at the right-hand end of the line and that took me to the film images. (If I had not already signed in to my account, I would only see an icon of a microfilm reel, telling me to go to a Family History Centre or library.)

Yes, you still need to work your way to the exact page you want – but unlike the LAC site, you still start at the beginning of the film but you get to see 30 thumbnails at once. I picked one near the bottom right of the first screen, to see what bundle I was at. Enlarging it to readability (clicking on the + symbol at the top left corner of the page) told me I was at bundle W3 ref 74. I jumped ahead 100 pages (typing 130 in the image number box) and found I was still in Bundle W3. Another 200 pages landed on Bundle W4 #9. Platt’s petition was on page 478. I could enlarge the pages and move around much more easily than on the LAC version.

Reading this 1799 petition made me realize that Platt Wood is only applying for land as a Son of a Loyalist. It’s his father Israel Wood who was the Loyalist; I had not paid attention to the fact that Platt was only born on 25 January 1776 on Long Island, New York, so obviously not carrying a musket at age seven when the war ended! I was fooled by generational slip: all my other Loyalist ancestors are 4th-great-grandfathers, so I thought Platt would be as well.

That’s why it is important to obtain every document you possibly can, for each Loyalist and descendant.

At least the FamilySearch site has made it a little easier to obtain the Upper Canada Land Petitions and download a copy of each page to your computer. (Remember that there are a number of pages to each petition. In this case there were 3 pages in total, but many are much longer.)