Disclosure: Please note this post contains affiliate links.
At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month 1918 the guns fell silent.
In time for Armistice day TheGenealogist has added to their War Memorial records on the website so that there are now over 383,000 fully searchable records.
This latest release includes war memorials from Worcestershire and South Yorkshire as well as some further monuments from Australia,Canada, London and various other British counties. A more unusual one added in this release is from Olds, in Alberta, Canada – the memorial is a Sherman tank!
War Memorial at Olds, Alberta in Canada newly added to TheGenealogist
Fully searchable by name, researchers can read transcriptions and see images of the dedications that commemorate soldiers who have fallen in the Boer War, WW1 and various other conflicts.
These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist.
Read the fascinating article on War Memorials: The neglected Sheffield soldier finally recognised, at:
This post is going to be mainly of interest to beginners, or those who are just starting to investigate their ancestral line that has taken them back to England or Wales from elsewhere.
Many British people emigrated to start new lives in North America, Australia, New Zealand and other parts of the world.
Perhaps you have discovered that your ancestral trail has now led you to this particular part of Britain and you are now wondering how to find your English or Welsh records?
Some of you may have had ancestors who sailed away from England and Wales to start a new life beyond the seas, or indeed, even in Scotland or Ireland.
Perhaps you have traced your family tree back in your own, or another country, until you have found an English or Welsh immigrant who left before 1837, the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign.
If this is the case then you will not be able to make a great deal of use of the English/Welsh census collections, or of the civil registration indexes to order birth marriage or death certificates for your ancestors. These records begin in Victorian times.
But that does not mean that all is lost, as before this time the Established church (Church of England) acted as an arm of local government and was charged with keeping records of the populace.
Before 1837, baptisms, marriages and burials were kept in local registers maintained by the local parish church and also by some of the nonconformist churches.
Baptismal font St. Saviours, Dartmouth, Devon, UK.
Many researchers, looking for their ancestors from the British Isles, find that there is a whole lot of information out there on the web for the years back until they reach 1837. Then it just seems to get harder for us with English and Welsh ancestors.
1837 is the year when civil registration started in England & Wales, with the state taking over from the established church the registering of vital records.
You may have been amazed at the ease with which you had found later records of your ancestors on the subscription websites. But then, as you go back before the census records and the government run data for Births, Deaths and Marriages, you will have found that not all of the genealogical records that there actually are have made it on to the internet. Now this situation is getting better all the time with new Parish Record data sets being uploaded to the various big genealogical subscription sites.
As a rule, most original Parish Records can be found in the relevant County Record office for your ancestor’s parish, or in a few cases the incumbent minister may still have retained them at the parish church (if the books are not yet full).
You need to firstly establish where in the country your ancestor came from. A family bible or some other document may point you to a particular part of England or Wales. Look for town and the county that they were born or lived in, as you will need this information in your research. If you can narrow it down to a parish then you are off and running!
Assuming that you have found out which county your forebears lived in, how do you decide which parish your ancestors may have been in?
Well this is the value of getting hold of Parish maps for the relevant counties that you are researching. These maps will not only show the boundaries of each parish, but also those of the adjacent parishes, which can be extremely useful for tracking those ancestors who tended to move about!
Phillimore’s Atlas (The Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers) is the go to resource. Many libraries will have a copy of this or you can find it online at amazon.
Parish Registers.
These records are fantastic for family historians to use as recorded in the ancient pages of church registers are millions of people who we would simply never have been able to find where it not for the existence of these parish documents.
We all need to say thanks to the many clergy and parish clerks who had dutifully but, perhaps grudgingly, spent time writing up these entries and recording the precious information on their parishioners as they came to church to baptise their young, marry each other and bury their dead. Yes it was set down in law that they should so do, but we still should thank them for it!
Apparently, until the late 15th century only a small number of people were even remotely interested in the recording of births, baptisms, marriages and deaths.
Those that were would have been mostly from the landed classes of the gentry and the aristocracy for whom knowledge of family descent and line was important. Their interest stemming from having information to do with the inheritance of and the passing on of their land. Who should inherit property meant that the matter of legitimacy needed to be considered by the great and the good!
For the rest of society there was little need for this information, in light of church teaching that people were individually insignificant in God’s Creation. But come the end of the Middle ages, things changed.
The Church became occupied with the blood relationships between parties at a marriage. Marriage between relatives (even those related to you spiritually – such as your godparents) was forbidden by the Church. Certainly it had become most useful to know who you were related to and it was evidently most important for the Church to be able to have this information.
We can thank King Henry VIII’s Chief Minister Thomas Cromwell for requiring English parishes to keep a register from 1538, though many of these early records have been lost to us.
Most of those later ones that have survived are now housed in local diocesan archives, very often at a local County Record Office. Some diocesan archives may be in a neighbouring repository when the dioceses spans more than one county – so watch out for that in your searches!
As is always the case in family history research, you are advised to check the originals, or at least try to look at the microfiche or film copies of originals if you can.
We are lucky in that some of the parish records are being released online, but there are still areas that require a trip to the local County Record Office as not everything is digitised yet – as I found out recently when looking for one of my ancestors from Berkshire!
The Family History Researcher Academy has just added a FREE video mini-course for those searching for English or Welsh ancestors to FamilyHistoryResearcher.com
The short video tutorials deal with some of the mistakes that researchers sometimes make when they are looking for their English or Welsh ancestors in census and birth records. The mini-course also sets out some of the places that you could research for your elusive ancestors in and also sets out how to best begin the search of these British records. While the videos encourage viewers to go on to the more detailed written course, the mini-course stands alone in offering some very useful information.
These concise videos and the more in-depth downloadable pdf Family History Researcher Academy English/Welsh family history coursewere complied by Nick Thorne from his experience of researching ancestors for private clients and working with one of the leading British genealogical research websites for whom he writes case study articles for publication in several of the U.K. family history magazines. He is also the author of this blog “Help Me With My Family Tree” under the pen name of The Nosey Genealogist.
Disclosure: Please note this post contains affiliate links.
TheGenealogist has made available some new records this week for those of us that are researching ancestors in the parish records. The following is their press release that gives you more information on the new release that is joining an already huge number of other counties whose parish records are searchable on this website.
TheGenealogist has added over 140,000 individuals to their Parish Records for Worcestershire and Warwickshire to increase the coverage of these midland counties.
Released in association with Malvern Family History Society and the Nuneaton & North Warwickshire Family History Society, this is an ongoing project to make available high quality transcripts to family history researchers.
97,841 individuals have been added to the Worcestershire baptism records
44,250 individuals join the Warwickshire baptism records
These new records can be used to find your ancestors’ baptisms, in fully searchable records that cover parishes from this area of England. With records that reach back to the mid 16th century, this release allows family historians to find the names of ancestors, their parents’ forenames, the father’s occupation (where noted), and the parish that the event took place at.
This is an ongoing project where family history societies transcribe records for their areas to be released on both TheGenealogist and FHS-Online, the website that brings together data from various Family History Societies across the UK while providing a much needed extra source of funds for societies.
These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist.
If your society is interested in publishing records online, please contact Mark Bayley on 01722 717002 or see fhs-online.co.uk/about.php
The most satisfying part of family history for me is when I can take some facts, that I have learnt from examining primary records, and then go and see where they took place.
This is often simplest for a baptism, wedding or funeral where the church remains standing to this day. Finding that my ancestor married and then had their child christened in a particular place may cause me to seek it out and lightly touch the font in a salute to my forebears who had gathered around it to watch the clergyman pour water over my ancestor’s head.
Baptismal font St. Saviours, Dartmouth, Devon, UK.
When I find out what an ancestor did for a living can equally have me making a trip to the place where they worked. This can be successful where, as in the case of a man who worked in the Royal Naval dockyards at Portsmouth, the buildings are still there and can be visited as a tourist attraction.
But it can also be disappointing when all trace of the former landscape has been obliterated by modern development on the site, as in the case of others of my ancestors’ places of employment – not to mention some of their homes.
What I like to do in this case is to see if I can make a visit to a museum that reflects the life of such an ancestor.
A visit to properties owned by The National Trust can reveal how your ancestors lived
Another excursion that I find useful is to visit several of The National Trust properties.
Hold on! I can hear people saying.
Surely the stately homes are only of interest to those who have aristocratic ancestors?
Well what about those of us that have identified ancestors that worked as staff for the ‘big house’? Some houses allow you to see ‘below stairs’, as well as the fine rooms up above.
For those of us that have found ancestors that had to enter the workhouse then a visit to The National Trust’s fine example at Southwell, that I have written about before in a post about workhouse ancestors.
On a recent visit to Birmingham I was able to take a tour around The National Trust’s Back to Back houses. These guided tours take you around the carefully restored, atmospheric 19th-century courtyard of working people’s houses.
These homes had windows only on one side as they were built, as the name implies, back to back with each other. To the rear was a courtyard that also housed the laundry and the outside toilets for up to 60 people to use!
What is fascinating, for family historians, is that the first house is dressed to reflect the 1840s. With tallow candles for light, no running water – requiring the teenage daughter to walk ten minutes to the nearest well pump carrying heavy wooden buckets. In this the house of a jeweller and his family we can get an idea of what life was like at the time of the 1841 census for working people that had moved to the cities to find a living.
Another of the houses reflected the 1870s and although they now used oil lamps and had a communal tap in the courtyard, and the outside privy now flushed rather than being an earth closet relying on the night soil men to carry away the human waste, times were still hard.
Upstairs the four sons slept ‘top and tail’ in a bed. A rough curtain slung across a rope divided the room so that another bed could be rented out to a lodger.
As if this lack of privacy was not enough, in the 1871 census it seems to identify that the house had a second lodger. The suggestion is that the male and female lodgers may well have been ‘hot bedding’ where one person has the use of the bed for the day, while the other for the night!
Theses types of windows into our past can really make us think about how our ancestors lived. It also brings home how rich we are now in the Western world that we are fascinated by the hardships of everyday life that our forebears simply took as normal. By using the records that are available to us and then relating them to conditions, that we can learn from studying the social history, enables us to build a better family story.
You can learn where to find the records that reveal your ancestors’ lives by taking the English/Welsh family history course. Read more here:
Disclosure: Please note this post contains affiliate links.
TheGenealogist has released some useful records this week for those of us that are researching our military ancestors. The following is their press release that gives you more information and a link to a fascinating article about the British Army:
TheGenealogistis pleased to announce it has added two new record sets that will be useful for researching the First World War and Victorian soldiers.
Part one of this release is The Worldwide Army Index for 1851, 1861 and 1871 which adds another name rich resource to the already vast Military record collections at TheGenealogist with over 600,000 records
Also released at the same time is another 3,368 pages from TheIllustrated War News covering 6 September 1916 to 10 April 1918 and adding to those previously made available for this First World War paper from 1914 to 1916
The Worldwide Army Index for 1851, 1861 and 1871
If you have not found your ancestor in the various British census returns, and you know that they may have been serving at the time in the British Army, then this new release from TheGenealogist may help you to find these elusive subjects.
Many thousands of men of the British Army were serving overseas in far flung parts of the British Empire over the 1800s. This index of names is compiled from the musters contained in the WO 10-11-12 Series of War Office Paylists, held at the National Archives, Kew. The 1851, 1861 and 1871 Worldwide Army Index lists all officers* and other ranks serving in the first quarter of 1851 and second quarter of 1861 and 1871,together with their regimental HQ location. The index is, therefore, effectively a military surrogate for the relevant census.
Over 70,000 records have extra notes that can indicate whether a soldier was a recruit awaiting transfer to a regiment, detached from his regiment or attached to another, possibly discharged, on leave, had deserted or retired. Men identified as using aliases are also included. Many notes include a place of birth and former occupation.
Also included within the records are recruits, boy soldiers, bandsmen and civilians working in the armed forces as clerks, pension recruiters, teachers and suchlike. Colonial regiments which invariably had numbers of British subjects are also featured.
The Illustrated War News was a weekly magazine during the First World War, published by The Illustrated London News and Sketch Ltd. of London. The IWN publication contained illustrated reports related entirely to the war and comprised articles, photographs, diagrams and maps. From 1916 it was issued as a 40-page publication in portrait format, having been landscape prior to this. It claimed to have the largest number of artist-correspondents reporting on the progress of the war until it ceased publication in 1918.
TheGenealogist has released Baptism records for Somerset covering the years 1538 – 1996, along with Burial and Crematorium records for Somerset & Dorset covering 1563 – 2003. In association with Somerset & Dorset FHS, these new records cover hundreds of parishes for the counties.
Somerset and Dorset Family History Society worked with TheGenealogist to publish their records online, making over 2.2 million individuals from baptism and burial records fully searchable. Ann-Marie Wilkinson, the Chair of Somerset and Dorset FHS said:
“The Somerset & Dorset Family History Society are very pleased to be working with TheGenealogist to bring these records into the online community. Also we will be able to provide access for members to TheGenealogist from our Research Centre.”
Mark Bayley, Head of Online Development at TheGenealogist, welcomed Somerset and Dorset FHS to the growing number of family history societies on both TheGenealogist and FHS-Online, saying:
“We’re delighted that Somerset and Dorset FHS chose to publish their records through TheGenealogist and FHS-Online. This release adds to the ever expanding collection of parish records on both websites. These partnerships help societies boost their funds whilst bringing their records to a much wider audience, through online publication.”
This release joins TheGenealogist’s Somerset and Dorset collection including Bishop’s Transcripts and parish records for many areas and years to form a major resource for the county.
If your society is interested in publishing records online, please contact Mark Bayley on 01722 717002 or see fhs-online.co.uk/about.php
I’m just back from a flying visit to The National Archives at Kew.
Every time I visit TNA I get something out of it and today was no exception! I discovered the delights of records that are not available anywhere else to search.
I went along to research several different lines of enquiries, one of which was for an ancestor of mine who had given his profession on his son’s baptism as ‘tide waiter’. This is a type of customs officer who waits for the ships that come in on the tide and then checks them for contraband or goods that are subject to duty. He was in one of the census as a Customs Officer and has appeared as this in some family notes I received from a distant cousin.
My initial research using the Discovery search engine on www.nationalarchives.gov.uk had me confused. A few minutes with the help desk staff on the first floor reading room, however, pointed me towards the microfilms of the CUST 39/3 that are the records for the establishment at the different ports – basically the Staff Lists with details of staff employed by the Board of Customs.
I was able to spool forward to Plymouth, where my man was based and where in the 1851 census he was recorded as a Customs house officer. So if he had been a tidewater then his name would have been entered into the list of the Plymouth establishment. Alas, he was nowhere to be found which backs up my developing theory that he was an ‘Extra Gent’ (not on the establishment) customs officer and that he, or someone else, may have exaggerated a bit on his son’s baptismal record!
Ordering up the Customs Books at TNA
I then ordered up some Customs minutes books (CUST 28/199) and looked at any mention of Plymouth and names of Customs officers there. What I came away with was a much better understanding of the records and how, if you are lucky enough to find your ancestor mentioned you can build a fair bit of colour to your family story. This would especially be true if your Customs Officer got himself into trouble. One of the original 1850s ledgers that I was able to thumb through was the Outport Records: Charges against Officers (CUST 66/217).
Charge Book
I didn’t find my ancestor mentioned in the book, but for those researchers who are able to find a forebear then it will be of great interest to them. The thick leather bound books with heavy bluish paper provide a fascinating insight into the discipline proceedings. The various cases are often recorded on the page verbatim. You can thus read the question asked by the Surveyor of the man before him and the answers given by the accused Tide Waiter. At the end you will find the verdict of whether the Customs Officer was to loose his job or not. All of which is written in the neat handwriting of a clerk from 167 years ago.
None of these records are digitized and so it is another example of why a visit to TNA can allow you to get to see records that just aren’t available elsewhere. So while I do a lot of my research online I always enjoy getting out to The National Archives, or a County Record Office, every now and again to delve into those records that are in their safekeeping but not digitized.
This Sunday, 24th September 2017 sees the first Family History Show – London and I am off to see what it is like!
Organised by Discover Your Ancestors Magazine (to whom I am a regular contributor of articles to) it should be great as they are the same people behind the ever successful event up in York. Based on the format of TheFamily History Show, York it is being held at Sandown Park Racecourse between 10 am and 4:30 and is very affordable to get in to. There is plenty of free parking on site with allocated disabled spaces as well.
Unfortunately for those coming by train, due to engineering work, Esher Train Station will be closed on the day of the show. Surbiton Train Station, however, is just a 15 minute taxi ride from Sandown Racecourse. Alternatively, the K3 bus from Surbiton Train Station will take you to Esher High Street, the race course is just a few minutes’ walk up the High Street.
I went to the York event back in June. Watch this video of this year’s York event to get a taster of what is to come down South!
Free Talks throughout the day
10:00 Show Openingwith Caliban’s Dream, Medieval Musicians
11:00 Breaking Down Brick Walls In Your Family History ResearchMark Bayley, Online Expert Resolve stumbling blocks in your family history research using innovative search strategies and unique record sets to find those missing relatives.
12:00 Tracing Your Military AncestorsChris Baker, Military Expert & Professional Researcher Chris draws on his experience from researching thousands of soldiers to explore what can be found when looking for a military ancestor.
13:00 Breaking Down Brick Walls In Your Family History ResearchMark Bayley, Online Expert
14:00 Tips & Tricks for Online ResearchKeith Gregson, Professional Researcher & Social Historian Keith shares top tips & techniques for finding elusive ancestors, illustrated by some fascinating case studies.
15:00 Breaking Down Brick Walls In Your Family History ResearchMark Bayley, Online Expert
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 a useful article which I wrote for them about what you can find in these new records.
TheGenealogist has added over 1.1 million individuals to its parish record collection covering the county of Sussex. Published In association with The Parish Record Transcription Society, this first tranche of records will be followed by more releases in the near future.
This New release covers individual records of:
717,000 Baptisms
213,000 Marriages
208,000 Burials
The Parish Record Transcription Society (PRTSoc) have worked with TheGenealogist and S&N to publish their records online, making over 1.1 million individuals from baptism, marriage and burial records fully searchable:
“We are very pleased to be working with TheGenealogist on this major project, previously undertaken to transcribe the parish registers of West Sussex by the staff and dedicated volunteers of the PRTSoc. This will preserve these records for future generations and brings them into the online community.” Peter Steward, Chairman of PRTSoc
Mark Bayley, Head of Online Development at TheGenealogist, welcomed PRTSoc to the growing number family history societies on both TheGenealogist and FHS-Online saying: “We’re delighted that PRTSoc chose to publish their records through TheGenealogist and FHS-Online. This release adds to the ever expanding collection of parish records on both websites. These partnerships help fund societies whilst bringing their records to a much wider audience, through online publication.”
This release joins TheGenealogist’s Sussex collection including parish records to form a major resource for the county.
![By Philip Stevens (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://www.noseygenealogist.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/517px-Royal_British_Legions_Paper_Poppy_-_white_background-150x150.jpg)
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