ESSEX County

Named after the English county by Governor Simcoe in 1792, became a self-governing municipality in 1850. First settlers in 1750 were French, Detroit at that time being a French fort and colony. The first white child born in the county was Jean Dufour, 1752. Hurons and other Indians had villages on the River front from the earliest times. The first English speaking settlers came from Pennsylvania in 1788. After American Independence, Detroit remained in British hands until 1796.


Historical Maps

All Townships available

See County Maps!


Historical Directories

All Townships available

See County Directories!


Transcribed Names

Database for each Township, or

Province-Wide Search


An excerpt from The Province of Ontario: A History, 1615-1927, by Middleton, J.E. & Langdon, F., 1927, Dominion Publishing Co., Toronto




heritagePIN PROJECT DATABASES | Project Goals and Progress




HeritagePIN has a number of Name Transcription Projects on the go since 2008. The time period of study is Pre-Confederation (1867). Since Ontario's civil records program took some years to fully implement, this time period has been extended to include Ontario's documented inhabitants prior to the mid-1870's.

Transcribed surnames are searchable at each Township's page




Beta





 
MAPS | project

I had been able to photograph several of the (brittle) Pre-Confederation maps at various universities and archives, and by 2016 the University of Toronto has made images available ONLINE for many more!

The names in these databases have been transcribed by me personally, and include names from the inset town maps, and indexes of subscribers, located in the margins of each map.

 
DIRECTORIES & GAZETTEERS | project


Likewise, with historical directories, names have been transcribed by eye, not by OCR (conversion to text). They include those entries for individuals living in towns and cities.

 
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES


Where maps and directories are sparse for a township, or for an early time period, the Databases are supplemented with record-sets * that show names and Concession/Lot locations *. These include early Land Grant/Patents, and Agricultural Census returns.