What is OCFA
Why are there no dates in the OCFA data?
What do I do once I have found a name of interest to me?
Why are these listings of people who are still alive?
I know of burials in a particular cemetery, but they are not in OCFA.
Why are there no ---- County Cemeteries included?
Why are there so few ---- County Cemeteries included?
What is an IRC?
When will the next version be available?
Why can't I download the data files?

OCFA is a "pointer" database. It consists of the surnames, cemetery name and location of over 2 Million interments in Ontario and one county in the province of Quebec. The file does not contain transcriptions or dates, but it does tell the reader which county, township and cemetery contains a given surname.

OCFA is a "pointer" database or "finding aid". It's purpose is to "point" you to, or help you "find" the location of more information.

Your first step would be to obtain the complete transcript for that particular cemetery. The Contributing Organizations / Addresses page contains information on where to purchase the transcripts.

Most of the information in OCFA comes from the Indexes of Cemetery Transcriptions. Many people have a tombstone carved with both the husband's and wife's name after one of them has passed on. If the Cemetery Transcript contains both these names, OCFA will contain them as well.

There are a couple of possibilities...

• The Cemetery Transcript provided to the OCFA volunteers may be incomplete or may have been compiled before the person was buried.
• Many of the Indexes in Cemetery Transcriptions are not complete and do not contain 100% of the names in the Transcript. The owners of the transcriptions do not always provide us with the complete transcript, just the index. If the index contains errors or omissions, this will be reflected in the OCFA data.

The OCFA coordinator has requested support from all areas of Ontario but unfortunately the genealogical societies and organizations of some areas do not wish to have their data in OCFA.

Reasons given for not joining OCFA include...

• "The Ontario Genealogical Society does not support OCFA so we will not support OCFA."
• "OCFA is on the Internet and the Internet contains smut. We do not wish to be associated with smut. "

International Reply Coupon. When writing to a non-profit organization you should include a self addressed stamped envelope, or money to cover postage, in order to receive a reply. If a letter is sent to another continent, you should include an IRC to cover the postage. These are usually available from your local postal outlet.

An IRC would not usually be required when writing to Ontario from within North or South America.

We are always working on OCFA and the next version will be released "when it's ready". :-)

Up until August 2001 the OCFA data files were available for download from the ftp site. These files have been removed for a number of reasons - 1) Some of the larger commercial and non-commercial genealogy search sites have downloaded the OCFA data and added it to their online search engines. 2). The entire database is searchable on the OCFA website so there is no longer a need to download the files.