The Niagara Branch Ontario Ancestors Library has over 2400 publications and documents.
These are housed on the second floor of the St. Catharines Public Library Central Branch at
54 Church Street,
St. Catharines, ON L2R 7K2
The Niagara Branch Ontario Ancestors library holdings are available as non-circulating reference materials that can be consulted whenever the Central Branch is open.
Search Niagara Branch Library Collection
Our holdings include a broad selection of genealogical and historical materials produced by Ontario genealogy organizations, heritage and lineage societies, and private researchers. The collection includes primary and secondary sources, published and unpublished works, full runs of key publications, and cemetery transcriptions.
Our collection supports family history and local history research across the Niagara Peninsula, including the historic counties of Lincoln and Welland and communities such as St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Thorold, Welland, Fort Erie, Port Colborne, Grimsby, Beamsville, Vineland, Jordan, Smithville, Fonthill, Fenwick, Wainfleet, Ridgeway, Crystal Beach, Chippawa, Queenston, Virgil, Stevensville, Pelham, West Lincoln, and surrounding villages and rural townships.
Because Niagara sits directly across the border from western New York, our collection includes important resources for tracing families who moved back and forth across the Niagara River, Lake Ontario, and the early Upper Canada/New York frontier. Researchers will find New York material covering immigration, settlement, church records, cemetery records, marriages, local history, Palatine families, and the Revolutionary War period.
Collection Highlights
The collection includes local histories, church records, cemetery transcriptions, census material, voters’ lists, directories, land and township records, and published family histories for communities throughout Niagara, including St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Grimsby, Lincoln, Pelham, Thorold, Wainfleet, Welland, Port Colborne, Fort Erie, and West Lincoln.
For early Niagara research, the library also includes resources on United Empire Loyalists, Butler’s Rangers, the War of 1812, early settlers, militia service, land claims, and Upper Canada records. Many of these materials help connect Niagara families to earlier communities in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New England, the British Isles, and Europe.
Cross-border resources include titles related to Niagara and Erie Counties, Buffalo, Ogdensburg, Schoharie, Stone Arabia, German Flats, Kinderhook, Caughnawaga/Fonda, Albany, Rensselaer, and Saratoga County, along with titles such as New York Marriages Previous to 1784, The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, New York History, and guides to immigration through the Port of New York.
For those researching German or Palatine ancestors, the library includes the well-known works of Henry Z. Jones, including The Palatine Families of New York, 1710, More Palatine Families, and The Palatine Families of Ireland. These are especially useful for families whose migration routes passed through New York, Pennsylvania, Ireland, or early Upper Canada before settling in Niagara.
The collection also includes a valuable group of New Jersey resources, including marriage records, church records, Revolutionary-era census and muster roll material, Monmouth County marriages, New Jersey gazetteers, and multiple volumes of The Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey. These titles can be helpful for tracing colonial families, Loyalist connections, and families who moved north into Upper Canada after the American Revolution.
Some holdings are older, specialized, or difficult to replace, including gazetteers, historical society publications, cemetery inscriptions, local church histories, periodicals, and family history compilations. These materials help researchers move beyond names and dates to understand the places, migrations, communities, churches, cemeteries, and events that shaped Niagara’s families.
More St. Catharines Public Library Genealogy Resources
Researchers visiting the St. Catharines Public Library also have access to the library’s Special Collections room, located on the second floor of the Central Library. These Local History and Norval Johnson Heritage Centre collections are reference-only, but are open to the public during regular library hours.
The St. Catharines Public Library’s Local History collection focuses primarily on St. Catharines and, more broadly, the Niagara Peninsula, with resources on local people, architecture, businesses, industries, churches, schools, hospitals, homes, sports, tourism, the Welland Canal, the War of 1812, the Underground Railroad, Black history, and more.
Additional SCPL genealogy and local history resources include the Local Names Index, which contains notices for births, marriages, deaths, adoptions, anniversaries, and more, with records entered up to April 1930 and from July 2005 to the present. A search also produces results from the Historic Images of St. Catharines & Niagara database.
SCPL also provides access to Ancestry Library for birth, marriage, death, immigration, military, census, and voter records while in the library, and is a FamilySearch Affiliate Library, providing access to additional FamilySearch images from within SCPL locations.
The library also houses the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta Database, developed to celebrate 100 years of rowing in St. Catharines. The database includes three components: trophies, race results, and historical programs, making it a useful resource for researching rowing history, local athletes, sporting events, and St. Catharines community life.
The Norval Johnson Heritage Centre Collection is another important local resource, documenting primarily local, Canadian, and U.S. Black history through books, vertical files, and other reference materials.