FInding out if your ancestor was a Home Child

Jean asked

I would like to know whether my Grandfather christened John William Handford but also known as William Handford (Handord) went to Canada from England around 1900 as a Home child born in 1880.

Hello Jean - Between 1869 and the early 1930s, over 100,000 children were sent to Canada from Great Britain during the child emigration movement. You can search the online database for Home Children (1869-1930) to see if your grandfather is on any of the lists that have been transcribed.

You can also search Ancestry.com database of Ships Passenger Lists to Canada 1865-1935 to see if he appears on those lists.

You might also want to visit the website The British Home Children

Also you can search the 1901 and 1911 census records for Canada to see if your grandfather's name is found. These are indexed at Ancestry.com and AutomatedGenealogy.com with images of the actual pages held at Library & Archives Canada (LAC).