BRANT County

Formed in 1852 of townships formerly belonging to Wentworth and Oxford and centered about the City of Brantford and the Six Nations territory. On October 25th, 1784, Governor Sir Frederick Haldimand formally granted to the Mohawks and their allies under Joseph Brant, six miles on either side of the Grand River from its mouth to its source. That limit of Indian lands can be traced on the map today, and accounts for some of the curious geometry in the boundaries of townships and counties. The Indians without Governmental authority sold off large tracts to speculators and settlement entrepreneurs, and action which caused much inquiry and heart-burning. Finally special treaties were made for land alienation. The site of Brantford was surrendered on April 19th, 1830, but squatters had been long in the neighbourhood.


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.