Welcome!

This family history site is a work in progress. The internet is a perfect location for this study - accessible to far-flung cousins and easy to update with newly discovered material.  You can contribute by contacting me with stories, photos, documents, or anything that applies to these folks. As well, please let me know of errors or typos on these pages.

 

Who's included?

Descendants of John Inkster and Abigail Marion, as well as lines they married into, particulary Fidlar and O'Donnell. There are no details about living people on this site but their name may appear as a child in the family section of their parents or on a chart. I look forward to being contacted by present-day people who link into this tree so that we can complete more of the picture.

My ancestors are marked with a green tree icon by their names.

People for whom there is a portrait have this icon by their names.

People whose parents have not been identified have this icon by their names.

Those who immigrated are denoted with the flag of their new country, e.g. Canada , England , United States

Finding a person on the site

Navigate via the surname index, the charts, or the search tab, all accessible from the top menu.

There is an individual page for each person for whom I have a reasonable amount of information, which is arranged as follows:

  • Name and birth/death dates
  • Parents' names
  • Person's relationship, if any, to William Inkster who immigrated to Canada in 1820
  • An "Extended Family" button which opens up a diagram of the subject's siblings, children, parents, grandparents, and great grandparents
  • Links to charts on which they appear
  • Family section, listing spouse(s) and known children
  • The main section - a chronology of life events
  • Source citations
  • A link to contact me with information, photos, corrections, or just to let me know you are interested! 

 

Other areas to Explore

From the top menu you can also connect to

  • Surname Index - which lists everyone who has their own information page
  • Charts - which illustrate ancestors and descendants of key people
  • Calendars - just for fun...birthdays and marriages of everyone on this site
  • Images - thumbnails linking to larger images and individual's pages
  • What's New? - major additions and changes to the site
  • Search this site by name or place

 

Dates & Places & Names

When a person's precise birthdate is unknown but can be approximated from census or other records, it is given as a circa date, which is plus or minus a year or two. Where the birth or baptism or census records have not yet been found, an approximated or "say" date (which may be off by as much as a decade or two) is assigned to provide a general sense of where they belong in time, particularly useful for the index. 

It is often impossible to determine an exact birthdate for folks. Birth registration began in Ontario in 1869 and compliance was spotty for many years. Church records may or may not survive for a specific locale. Ages reported in census records are erratic. Even precise dates are often incorrect. Names are spelled inconsistently in historical documents...Inkster can be found as Ingster, Inksetter, Inxter, Inksatter, and so on. In the list of life events, I have used the name as recorded for that item.

Some families adhered to the traditional Scottish naming pattern for their children, e.g. 1st son named after paternal grandfather, 2nd son after maternal grandfather, 3rd son after father, 1st daughter after maternal grandmother, 2nd daughter after paternal grandmother, 3rd daughter after mother.  Following the pattern helps in confirming the correct line of ancestry/descent but it also results in many cousins of the same names.

The most important consideration in constructing family trees is to confirm the links from generation to generation, e.g. is the John Inkster who married in this town the same John Inkster who was a child over in this other town? By gathering and evaluating a wide variety of evidence, I am reasonably confident that the links in our tree are correct.

 

Odds & ends

Anything in [square brackets] is an explanatory note that I have added.

The information displayed on these pages will necessarily change as the research continues and this site is updated. Although great care has been taken, I do not guarantee the accuracy of all information on this website.

By checking the citations, you can see where a particular piece of information was found and evaluate how likely it is to be correct. For instance, a date of birth from a birth certificate is more reliable than one from a census or a published book. I have not cited every source that supports a fact...there might be 3 census records that say a person was born in Ontario but I typically don't cite them all.

If you are using any of the information presented on this site for your own genealogical research, please remember to cite accordingly.  Something along the lines of "Inkster Genealogy, online, http://genealogy.kolthammer.org/Inkster-o/, accessed date" would be suitable.

If you would like to hear about updates to this site, please contact me.

 

Acknowledgements

  • Numerous correspondents over the past twenty years, as noted in the citations and "What's New" section
  • The developers and supportive user community of The Master Genealogist and Second Site, programs which were used to produce this site.