St George's--Here I Come

I thought a blog was going to be in order when I finished transcribing St John's two weeks ago, but I wanted to get on with the finishing touches, so I put off the "literary" exercise. This morning I completed comparing the three eastern wards with the contents of two city directories of the same time period, and again thought it was time I wrote a blog.

Then, half an hour ago, while I was taking a break and doing the ironing, the organizer of our local FHC phoned to say that the film of St George's Ward is in, so it's back to work again as soon as my camera battery charges up.

St John's Ward had a population of over 8000. I thought it would be more, but that was the number at the bottom of the spreadsheet. It covers 3 microfilms and by some error I managed to transcribe the first and the last, and then had to order the second separately. So, originally I assumed there were 6 divisions, but it has turned out to have 7. There must have been an error in estimating the size of the first four because Division 3-1/2 has been invented. Now why could the census organizers not have called it 7? Because it is not north of Division 6? But it is not really adjacent to Division 3 either. Go figure.

St George's is the ward along the Bay and north to King Street, west of Yonge Street. It is the smallest of the wards in terms of population. There will probably be a lot of businesses with and without people staying in them over a Sunday night. Ooh, wouldn't we have hated to do that in January in 1861! Not like staying in The Harbourfront Condo!