Cornwall Public Library

The Cornwall Room

The Cornwall Room provides archival services for books, photographs and paper having local or regional content and requiring special care. It is located in Cornwall Public Library, 45 Second Street East in Cornwall Ontario.
web: The Cornwall Public Library

The library does not have a professional genealogist on site, so the patrons are responsible for their own research. If a personal visit is not possible, requests for information must be made in writing. The library will endeavor to answer direct queries and will indicate the type of source materials available. A photocopy fee will apply for copies of materials requested.

Local History Archives
The Cornwall Room is intended to provide archival storage for books, photographs and papers which have a local or regional content and require special protection. It holds reference material of the Cornwall Public Library, the collection of the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Historical Society, and part of the collection of the Local Architectural Conservation Authority of Cornwall "LACAC".

Materials in the Library's collection housed in this section include:
• Works of fiction, poetry, etc. by local authors
• Histories, documents, statistical reports from Cornwall City Departments, special projects, businesses etc.
• Published and/or compiled genealogies with local content and focus
• Histories of the area
• Telephone books, city directories, voters lists etc.
• Biographies of local personalities
• Parish registers, cemetery transcriptions etc.

Access to the materials of Cornwall Public Library is limited, but staff can retrieve specifically requested items at any time the library is open. Access to the room for browsing purposes, or for access to the collections of either of the partners is limited to posted hours. Ask for details.

General Reference Materials
Histories, passenger lists, Canadian historical biographies, indexed source information, etc., usually not specific to our geographic area but rather on a national or international level, are available. Also within the collection are guidelines on how to do a family tree, research techniques, internet resource guides etc. Also of note, if there are extra copies of some of the materials found in the Cornwall Room Archives, copies are kept either in the general reference collection, or when possible, provided for circulation to provide easier access for the public.

Microfilm
Available on microfilm within the library collection are archived copies of the local newspapers "The Cornwall Standard" and "The Freeholder", which later amalgamated to form the current "Cornwall Standard-Freeholder" dating from 1883 to present. Census returns for the three united counties from 1851 to 1901 (every 10 years), land grant indexing and various parish registers.

Vertical Files
The library maintains a vertical file collection containing newspaper and magazine articles, locally published documents etc. concerning various aspects of the history of the city of Cornwall, with a few files devoted to outlying areas.

Miscellaneous Holdings
The library has available several historical maps of the area from the late 1700's into the late 1800's, many of which show land owners and/or occupants. A partially completed name index to the un-indexed holdings in the collection also exists. As this is an ongoing project, it is ever increasing as time and staffing will allow. The index relates to the Local History and Cornwall Room collections, and cites the call number and page references to family names which appear in the various books in this collection. The library also keeps on hand referral listings of local genealogists, genealogical societies and Historical societies which may be helpful to researchers.

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Stormont County GenWeb Coordinator - Wendy Anctil | updated May 2019