I was lucky enough to be asked by a client to research his grandfather, Frederick George Leader. There was quite a bit of family lore about his past, but very little was actually known for sure. The various stories told about him included him being born in England as an orphan, working as a lumberjack in the Canadian forests, having a twin brother, and dying as a missionary in the Congo on the African continent. The question of his parents’ identity is still an unsolved mystery, but who he was as a person has begun to emerge from the records and research. While researching Frederick Leader something unique happened, a first for me. Turns out that in one year he was enumerated in two different censuses on two different continents AND we can track him from one to the other.

Here’s a brief rundown on Frederick George Leader: he was born on April 7th, 1895 in Kingston Upon Thames, England ¹. He married Lulu Belle Townsend in Cook County, Illinois on May 4th, 1921 ², they became Pentecostal missionaries and headed to the Congo in 1922. They returned to the US after a few years and then returned to the Congo once again in 1927. Frederick contracted typhus and died there in 1930. Working backward from his marriage, we find him crossing the US/Canada border several times in the late 1910s at the Buffalo, New York border crossings. He was a student at the Elim Faith Home and Bible Institute in Rochester, New York. Not surprisingly, he resided around Caledonia, Haldimand County, Ontario, Canada close the border crossing. I plan to go into more detail on the various records of Frederick, so for now, let’s get into the real reason you’re reading this post.

In the 1911 Canadian census, ³ we find Frederick on line 28. Here are some pertinent facts we can glean from the census:

• He’s 16 years, born April 1895 in England
• He’s working as a farm hand for Herbert & Edna Elliott in the Seneca township of Haldimand County, Ontario
• He arrived in Canada in 1911 (column 12), the same year this census was taken
• He’s only been working on the farm for 3 weeks (column 23), as indicated by the three tick marks
• This census sheet was enumerated on June 3rd & 4th of 1911

The census indicates that Frederick arrived in Canada the same year the census was taken, which suggest that he may be found in the Canadian Passengers List records. Lo and behold we find him on the ship’s manifest for the S.S. Dominion.⁴ His record is the last line of the sheet and we learn some interesting facts which mesh well with what we already know:

• He landed in Quebec on May 3rd, 1911
• He was in 3rd Class (steerage)
• He’s 16 years old, born in England
• He’s headed to Hamilton, Ontario
• He belongs to the Church of England
• His previous occupation was as a houseboy(?)
• His intended occupation upon arriving in Hamilton is farming

Next to his age, there is an interesting notation in light pencil which reads “Party of Boys”. The manifest is listed first by traveling class and then alphabetically by surname, so while it makes it easy to find Frederick Leader, we can’t easily determine who he is traveling with and we’re left wondering what that notation means.

The Canadian Archive’s website shows that the S.S. Dominion left Liverpool, England on April 20th, but if the site hadn’t provided that information, it can found on the very first page of the ship’s manifest. We have a ship name, the port it sailed from and the date it left port, all of which can be used to narrow down the search parameters as we begin to search through the English records in Part 2!