Ontario’s Township Papers Available on FamilySearch for Free

March 2021

Through an agreement with the Archives of Ontario, FamilySearch.org is making Ontario’s Township Papers available on their website for free. They are filed alphabetically, and can be found at the following links:

(Townships Abinger to Haldimand) https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/185567?availability=Family%20History%20Library

(Townships Hallowell to Zorra) https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/2759321?availability=Family%20History%20Library

In order to access them, you must sign into or create a free account with FamilySearch. Please note that these records have not yet been indexed or transcribed, but hold a wealth of information, so is worth it for any researcher to check them out! They were previously only available at Family History Centres or affiliate libraries.

What do these papers have to do with Loyalists? The Archives of Ontario Research Guide 215, From Grant to Patent: A Guide to Early Land Settlement records, ca. 1790 – ca. 1850 says:

“The series of Crown land records called “the Township Papers” (RG 1-58) are a miscellaneous collection of documents about land. The staff of the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests brought these records together as a way to sort and arrange otherwise unrelated land records. The records date from ca.1783 to ca.1870. If an individual document dealt specifically with a particular piece of property and did not appear to fit within another records series, it was placed within the Township Papers. After the department transferred the series to the Archives, our archivists continued to file miscellaneous material within the series.”

“The Township Papers include copies of orders-in-council, location certificates and tickets, assignments, certificates of settlement duties, correspondence and some wills. The records are arranged by township, town, or village and, within each township, by concession and then lot number. Once you know the particular lot of land the settler was granted, it is worth looking at the Township Papers since there may be records on the lot in question that will provide information about the settler.”

Naturally, not every person had correspondence with the township clerk or other authorities, so there are gaps and variability. For example, the farmer on Lot 3 Con 3 may have protested his taxes often, but his neighbours on Lots 4 and 5 did not contribute any documents to this record set. At least you can now browse them from the comfort of home.