Join us for the first-ever Family Tree Family History Week
This spring Family Tree is launching Family History Week – a free online genealogy event of seven days jam-packed with genealogy advice to help family historians of all levels discover new things about the hobby they love.
Where will it take place?
Family History Week will be an online event based at www.family-tree.co.uk where each day, 16-22 April 2018, there will be family history tutorials, useful downloads, essential guides, prizes, quizzes and much more for family historians to enjoy.
Who can join in?
Family Tree would like to welcome family historians and genealogy businesses from all sectors of the heritage community to get involved during the week across social media platforms.
Helen Tovey, Editor of Family Tree, said: “We’re really excited to be launching our first online Family History Week, and we’d like to welcome family historians from all over the world to join in. Our genealogy jamboree will include downloads, guides and discussions to help you trace your tree. From getting starting to getting organised, from dusty old documents to DNA, we’re going to be covering genealogy gems like this during the week. And our goal is that by the end of the seven days we’ll all know a whole lot more about our family histories and would have had a lot of fun learning too!”
Disclosure: Please note this post contains affiliate links.*
This week I have been truly absorbed by what I could find in the 1940s decade of BT27 passenger lists.
Until I was asked to write an article for TheGenealogist’s website to showcase the new records that they were making available from their site, I had no idea that the war time passenger lists would be so interesting! I had assumed that it would be a time when only troops were being transported. While they obviously made up the bulk of the travellers, there are still some very interesting tales to find.
The Press Release from TheGenealogist is reproduced below.
RMS Mauretania; from TheGenealogist’s Image Archive
TheGenealogist has just released 1.4 million Passenger Records covering the 1940s. This expands our Outbound Passenger Lists to over 25 million and form part of our larger immigration and emigration collection on TheGenealogist. The new records feature passengers who sailed out of United Kingdom in the years between 1940 and 1949 these newly transcribed BT27 images are from The National Archives. The passenger lists released today will allow researchers to:
Discoverpotential family members travelling together using TheGenealogist’s SmartSearch
Find ancestors sailing to Africa, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and other destinations
View images of the original passenger list documents
See the ages, last addressand intendedpermanent residence
Fully indexed records allow family historians to search by name, year, country of departure, country of arrival, port of embarkation and port of destination
Researchers who had ancestors that travelled abroad from Britain in the 1940’s will find these records a fascinating addition to the vast collection of records on TheGenealogist.
*Disclosure: Please note this post contains affiliate links. This does notmean that you pay more just that I make a percentage on the sales from my links. The payments help me pay for the cost of running the site. You may like to read this explanation here:
Disclosure: Please note this post contains affiliate links.*
I saw this press release from the Living DNA team this week. I for one can’t wait for it to be rolled out!
Family Networks – Taking the guesswork out of DNA relationships
Family Networks – Tree View
Living DNA, the global consumer genetics company, announced this week it will preview “Family Networks”—a new DNA-driven matching system and family tree reconstruction method—at RootsTech 2018, the world’s largest family-history technology conference taking place Feb. 28 – March 3 2018 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Requiring no prior user-generated family research, Living DNA’s family reconstruction tree method is based solely on users’ DNA, gender, and age. Unlike competing organisations, Living DNA’s Family Networks will provide the most precise matching service on the market by analysing a user’s unique motherline and fatherline DNA data (mtDNA and YDNA), on top of the family ancestry line (autosomal).
With Family Networks, we not only predict how users are related to direct matches, but we can also infer through DNA up to 13 generations back to connect matches with whom they share no DNA with today,” said Living DNA co-founder and Managing Director David Nicholson. “The technology behind Family Networks runs through millions of ways in which users in the network are related and automatically works out which genetic trees are possible. This new capability offers distinct benefits to a range of users, from avid genealogists to family history hobbyists, to adoptees and others searching for their family members. It will reduce the risk of human error and support the task of figuring out how each person in a user’s list are related to one another. We’re truly taking the guesswork out of DNA relationships.
Family Networks will go into private beta in Q2 and open beta in Q3 2018 where it will be available to all existing and new Living DNA users. The unique computation this feature provides gives customers- even those who upload from other DNA testing sites- a level of relationship prediction and specificity beyond anything currently on the market. Where competing offerings rely solely on time-consuming and often error-prone user research, Living DNA’s amazing power tools process users’ DNA to identify relatives and define relationships deeper back in time. Through this extremely rich experience, users can even learn how they’re related to people with whom they share no DNA today.
Users need to only provide their gender and birthdate for Living DNA to build a family tree that shows where their matches fit into their family tree, with no need of Gedcom files or any other user input. This can be especially useful for adoptees and family searchers who are trying to locate long-lost family members but who don’t have any information on their biological family, Living DNA can translate their matches into a potential family tree, giving them a clearer place to start from.
Living DNA, which launched in the U.S. in 2017, owes its existence to advances in genomic science and technology. The company makes it easier for users to discover more about their roots in greater detail than ever before by comparing users’ DNA to the DNA of individuals from 80 worldwide regions—more than any other company. That means mainstream consumers who are curious to know where they come from get a regional percentage breakdown that’s ground-breaking in its detail. For example, instead of telling a user that their ancestors may have hailed from Great Britain, Living DNA can express the percentage of their DNA matching Yorkshire, Devon and Cornwall. Living DNA currently has the ability to detect up to 21 regions in the UK, four in Italy and four in China—and the company is adding more all the time.
Living DNA’s 3-in-1 DNA test offers three tests for roughly the same price that most competing companies charge for only one test. From a simple saliva swab, Living DNA not only covers a user’s family line ancestry, but—unlike most other tests—it also includes the user’s motherline and (if male) fatherline ancestry. The company uses the newest DNA chip technology and innovative software technology developed with top universities including University College London, Bristol University and Oxford University. Living DNA also worked with experts to create the ground-breaking Orion DNA chip to help select the widest range of DNA markers that and beneficial for users with ethnicities from all parts of the world.
*Disclosure: Please note this post contains affiliate links. This does notmean that you pay more just that I make a percentage on the sales from my links. The payments help me pay for the cost of running the site. You may like to read this explanation here:
Disclosure: Please note this post contains affiliate links.
I learnt quite a bit about black sheep ancestors this week while researching a convict who had served some time on a prison hulk anchored off Bermuda. My findings helped me to write the article for TheGenealogist at the end of this post.
The prisoner, that the story is about, had been convicted of his offence in England and then, being fit and healthy, was shipped out to the British territory to do back breaking quarrying and building work. He was housed on a convict-hulk and put to work in the construction of the Royal Navy’s dockyard on the island. After completing his sentence he was then allowed back to England. But he got into trouble again and was sentenced to a further period of Transportation for seven years. (To find out where he ended up you will have to read the article – it is probably not where you may expect him to be sent.)
I learnt from my research that many of our convict ancestors, who were sent to Australia, were never permitted to return – while those sent to the hulks at Bermuda were able to come home as long as they served the full sentence. The convicts on the hulks at Bermuda could, however, opt for a reduced sentence if they chose to go to Australia or South Africa. What they could not do is stay in Bermuda after their sentence and the option for South Africa, it seems, was not really available as when they got there they were refused entry and had to go on to Australia!
Here is the Press Release from TheGenealogist and the article link: TheGenealogist has added 651,369 quarterly returns of convicts from The National Archives’ HO 8 documents to their Court & Criminal Records collection. Withthis release researchers can find the details of ancestors that broke the law and were incarcerated in convict hulks and prisons in the 19th century.
Prisoners on the hulks from The Illustrated London News on TheGenealogist
The new data includes:
651,369 Records covering the years 1824 to 1854
Quarterly returns from Convict Hulks, Convict Prisons and Criminal Lunatic Asylums
These fully searchable records are from the The Home Office: Sworn lists of convicts on board the convict hulks and in the convict prisons (HO 8).They give the family history researcher fascinating facts that include the particulars of age, convictions, sentences, health and behaviour of the convict, as well as which court sentenced them and where they were serving their sentence.
Read TheGenealogist’s article “Criminal records of convicts on the Hulks” at:
Disclosure: Please note this post contains affiliate links.
The following is a Press Release from TheGenealogist at the end of which you will find a link to an article that I wrote for them on the 1890s decade of newspapers.
TheGenealogist has added over 5 Million passenger records to their US records, featuring people that migrated to the USA between 1834 to 1900. The mass movement of people from one country to another isn’t a new thing. The motivation can be economic, political upheaval or religious persecution.
The data covers:
3,956,780 Germans emigrating to the United States between 1850 and 1897
836,122 Italians emigrating to the United States between 1855 and 1900
522,638 Russians emigrating to the United States between 1834 and 1897
Most were drawn to the U.S.A by the attractions of land and religious freedom, after being forced to leave Europe by shortages of land and religious or political oppression.
“From the Old to the New World” shows German emigrants boarding a steamer in Hamburg, Germany, to come to America. Image published in Harper’s Weekly, (New York) November 7, 1874 (Public Domain).
This release joins the millions of US census, death records, trade directories, wills and poll books already available on TheGenealogist.
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TheGenealogist has also added over 500 further editions of the weekly publication The Illustrated London News to their Newspaper and Magazine collection. The latest collection is of newspapers that were published in the 1890s and offer a fascinating insight into your ancestors lives.
The Illustrated London News is one of a number of newspapers and magazines that are fully searchable by name or keywords by Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist. Not only can this extensive resource add context to your ancestors’ lives and times, these newspapers can be used to find out more about people who were mentioned in reports from the time.As well as notices for baptisms, marriages and deaths, there are also wills, crimes and court cases, plus thepolitical stories of the time.
Read the article that I put together for TheGenealogist which looks at the news of 1890s and the world in which your ancestors lived:
The National Archives, London, England have announced that they are opening up their prisoner of war (WW II) archives. These documents were transferred to The National Archives in December 2014. There are approximately 190,000 records of persons captured in German-occupied territory during World War II, primarily Allied service men (including Canadians, South Africans, Australians, New Zealanders, British and Allied civilians and some nurses. There are also cards for American, Norwegian, Chinese, Arab and Cypriot origins.
The new collection (WO 416) also includes several thousand records of deceased allied airmen whose bodies were found near their downed aircrafts. While these airmen were never prisoners of war, these records act as records of death.
The records are cards—some persons have up to 15 cards, but most have only one or two. It is not catalogued by name of individual for privacy reasons as some may still be living. The National Archives has started to catalogue the entire series and they have opened the records for those who were born more than 100 years ago or if they have proof of death.
For those records that have not yet been digitized you can order the records in advance for when you visit the Kew ( The National Archives) or you can request a quotation for a copy to be sent to you. The price will vary depending on the amount of copying. When you click on the name of the person you are researching , click on details. There you will get a transcription of information they have plus the option to order in advance or request a copy.
Not all service personnel have cards as they were removed from the collection to be used as evidence to support claims by Prisoners of War after World War II. These cards, for the most part, were not returned but may form part of the personnel’s service record which may be held by Veteran’s agency See: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/requests-for-personal-data-and-service-records
Disclosure: Please note this post contains affiliate links.
The following is a Press Release from TheGenealogist at the end of which you will find a link to an article that I wrote for them about a murderous lord of the manor whose burial can be found in these new records.
TheGenealogist has added over 366,000 individuals to their Parish Records for Warwickshire to increase the coverage of this county in the heart of England.
Released in association with Warwickshire County Record Office this brings high quality transcripts as well as images to family historians researching for ancestors in this area.
With 366,260 individuals included in this Warwickshire release, these new records will help family historians to find their ancestors’ baptisms, marriages and burials, in fully searchable records that cover various parishes from this part of England. With records that reach back to the mid 16th century, this release allows family historians to find the names of ancestors in baptisms, marriages and burials.
These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist, bringing the total to 934,495 searchable individuals for the county of Warwickshire.
Read the article that I wrote for them that reveals the last resting place of a murderous lord of the manor:
62 Falkner Street. Image by Rodhullandemu (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsThis week on BBC television, here in Britain, there has been the first episode in a fascinating series following the history of the occupiers of one particular house in Liverpool.
A House Through Time is a 2018 four-part BBC documentary about the history of a house at 62 Falkner Street, Edge Hill, Liverpool, England, presented by David Olusoga
Using some of the tools that are familiar to family historians Olusoga is able to discover the story of the first three occupants of the house built on green fields in around 1840.
Watching him use some of my favourite resources – historic newspapers, street and trade directories from the time and the staple records of the census collections – proved to be a case study in doing family history research. It was also good to see contributions from the TV genealogist Laura Berry, whom I once interviewed for my YouTube Channel and who, apart form working on Who Do You Think You Are? series, is also a house historian.
The characters that this episode uncovered were fascinating subjects. From the young customs clerk, living beyond his means with the help of a wealthy father, to the striving servant who managed to climb into middle-class and leave his wife a substantial sum on hisdeath. Perhaps the most interesting, however, was the Cotton Dealer whose life at the house gave way to a spell in debtors prison, before he then acquired a wife and two step-daughters – only to abandon them to the workhouse as he set forth for a new life in the United States.
This former occupier of the house, David Olusoga was able to deduce from the records, was an unsympathetic character. Having lived as a Cotton Dealer in Liverpool and making a living from cotton, picked by slaves, he then became a Coton Dealer again, in America, before joining as a mercenary fighting for the Union Army against the Confederates. Olusoga was seen to be very surprised by this turn of events as he had assumed that a cotton dealer would have had more sympathy with the Southern States and their ownership of slaves.
This TV series promises to be compulsive viewing and I am already looking forward to the next episode. I can’t wait to see how it will use more of the records, that we also work with when looking for our own family stories, to deduce the life tales of the next set of owners of the house in Liverpool.
The most recent episode is available for a short time to viewers in the U.K. here:
Now included is a video module that joins with several other short videos to compliment the printed pdf lessons of the course.
The theme of the latest addition to the study material is tracing back to the English or Welsh ancestor from a forebear that emigrated before Victorian times. With so many people sailing away from England and Wales to start new lives in places like North America, Australia, New Zealand and other parts of the world, the tutorial identifies some of the records that you could use to find them in the mother country, pre-1837.
Not just for researchers with ancestors who left the country as the new content is also of great use to people whose ancestors stayed. It reviews some of the resources to use when you are researching back further than the 1847 census, or the introduction of civil registration in England and Wales and that is the majority of us!
Meanwhile, the weekly downloadable pdf modules continue to be delivered in an online release within a private membership area. These lessons are focused on revealing the resources and records to use when researching your ancestors from England and Wales so that you can break down brick walls more easily.
Family History Researcher Academy Online English & Welsh family history course
This family history course, having been written from a practical point of view, includes contributions from professional genealogists, online data experts and by its compiler Nick Thorne. Nick has experience of researching ancestors for private clients and of working on various projects for one of the leading British genealogical research websites, including compiling case studies that are published in a number of the U.K. family history magazines.
What others are saying about the English/Welsh family history course:
“Thank you for your detailed study of English/Welsh research. I have done a lot of English research, yet much of what you have sent is stuff that people don’t know, so thank you very much for your diligence in putting this together.” S. Johnston
And this the most recent testimonial: “Great series. Will be reading them again as I work on my English ancestors.” J. Gill
The Family History Researcher Academy is available now as a monthly, or as a one off payment.
Disclosure: Please note this post contains affiliate links.
The latest release from TheGenealogist team this week:
Queen Mary 1936 from TheGenealogist’s Image Archive
TheGenealogist has just released over 2.7 million BT27 records for the 1930s. These Outbound Passenger Lists are part of an expanding immigration and emigration record set on TheGenealogist that feature the historical records of passengers who sailed out of United Kingdom ports in the years between 1930 and 1939. With the release of this decade of records, the already strong Immigration,Emigration, Naturalisation and passenger list resources on TheGenealogist have been expanded again.
The fully searchable BT27 records from The National Archives released today will allow researchers to:
Discoverpotential family members travelling together using TheGenealogist’s SmartSearch. This unique system is able to recognise family members together on the same voyage. In this situation it will display a family icon which allows you to view the entire family with one click.
Find people travelling to America, Canada, India, New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere in the Passenger lists of people departing by sea from the United Kingdom.
View images of the original passenger list documents that had been kept by the Board of Trade’s Commercial and Statistical Department and its successors.
Discover the ages, last address and where the passenger intended to make their permanent residence.
These fully indexed records allow family historians to search by name, year, country of departure, country of arrival, port of embarkation and port of destination.
Those with ancestors who sailed from Britain in the 1930’s will welcome this fascinating new release from TheGenealogist, which adds to their current Emigration records, now totalling over 19 million and dating back to 1896.
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