****Please excuse cross-postings****

Dear colleagues,

I have been asked by a researcher to connect him with institutions that hold
records of church missions overseas.  Specifically, this researcher is
interested in reports sent to Canada from overseas missions during the late
19th century and early 20th century.  This researcher is attempting to
establish the following remarkable fact:

"While southern Ontario saw many Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries,
they were mostly fur traders and explorers.  It was not until after the UEL
influx and after the War of 1812 that the land was actually turned to
agricultural production and the European population grew to any significant
size.  From vast tracts of land assessed as "wild land", the pioneers
cleared forests, built roads, paid for railroads, established hamlets and
villages, and churches and schools.  Not three generations after the first
major influx of the pioneers, their descendants supported highly educated
persons and had the economic means, through their churches, in missions in
India and China.  I hope to demonstrate that this was indeed a widepsread
social phenonenon in late Victorian Ontario.  What strikes me as so
remarkable is that, just decades out of the wilderness, and prior even to
rural electrification, our ancestors sought such an extraordinary outlet for
their energies and economic surplus, albeit that these missions were
organized, financed and supervised by the head offices of the churches, not
local congregations directly."

If you can assist this researcher, please contact him directly at:

Doug Rozell, M.A., M.L.I.S.
Records Management Coordinator,
County of Oxford
[log in to unmask]

Thank you for your kind assistance.

Most sincerely,

Cheryl Brown

St. Joseph Province Archives
Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph
16 Manitou Crescent East
Kingston, Ontario, Canada     K7N 1B2
(613) 389-0275  (tel)
(613) 384-6978  (fax)
[log in to unmask]  (e-mail)