As someone that has used their website to good effect with my Scottish ancestors, I am really pleased to see that ScotlandsPeople service is now up, revamped and running. I have had no problem in recommending it to those who have Scots roots because of the value of its content. Now it includes some new search features that are designed to make it easier and quicker for people to use and discover their Scottish family roots.
For example, the site now has a way of plotting search results on maps. This should enable all those who are unfamiliar with Scottish geography – such as the many users of Scottish descent living overseas – to better understand about Scotland and their ancestors and how the terrain may have affected them.
Other changes made are to the advanced search functions, that should provide quicker results and the additional information from Catholic Parish Registers.
As a family historian, one of the highlights of my year is to try and get to London’s Olympia for the Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE exhibition in February and mix with like minded people all “doing†their family tree and seeing what is new in our field. In 2010 I signed up early and bought my tickets on-line. This enabled me to also reserve some passes to one or two of the Society of Genealogist’s lectures in the hall. And a good thing I did, as some of them sold out before the day!
I particularly enjoyed the talk given by John Hanson FSG, who has been researching his family tree for about 25 years.
His workshop, called “My Ancestors Were in the Parish Records? Well They Should Have Been!â€, gave his audience a really good overview of Births Marriages and Burials as we would expect to find in the church records of England & Wales. As I sat, taking notes and thinking to myself smugly that I already know quite a bit about this area, I found that pretty soon I was listening to some really useful nuggets of information that I just didn’t know, or had forgotten about along the way.
For example: Baptisms
Most people, John Hanson pointed out, think that baptisms tend to peter out with the start of civil registration on the 1st of July 1873, but this is not entirely true. Yes, they have declined in modern times. Hanson’s wife is a verger in their local church and the number of baptisms that their vicar performs these days could be counted on the fingers of one hand. But go back to the eighteenth, nineteenth & early twentieth century, he said, and you would find that the number of children being baptised per week then, would be similar to the numbers that gets baptised in a year today! Up to 1900, however, we will still find our ancestors being baptised in church and it is only as we get closer to today that the numbers drop off. So although we often think of parish records as predominately those to use to get back before 1837, this is a wake up call that these records can still be interesting to look at after that date.
If you are having problems researching your family tree then maybe you can learn something from my experience here. I had got nowhere with this ancestor’s birth, marriage or death – on or off-line – then a chance visit to a Family History Website and an hour or two looking at the transcripts and a brick wall in my family history research came tumbling down! This, together with thinking of spelling variations of names, opened up a new line to me.
My paternal line in Dartmouth, Devon, UK has always been a bit frustrating once the census records ran out in 1841. This being the earliest English census on-line after which I had to start looking at parish records. I had worked out that my three times great-grandfather was called John Thorn and from the information given in the census collections I knew that he had been born in about 1795 and his wife, Elizabeth, in about 1798.
As a member of The Society of Genealogists in Goswell Road, London EC1. I knew that they’ve the largest collection of Parish Records in the country on microfiche. They’ve also got some transcripts of parish registers in the library.
Unfortunately Dartmouth parish records were not microfilmed, but a selection of Devon Family History Society booklets of the marriages of some of the churches in the town, including St. Saviour’s, were available. Scanning one book for any likely ancestors I noted down that on 13 April 1817 a John Thorn married an Elizabeth Sissell. With this tentative lead, I hit the Internet. I was looking for any evidence that this was the marriage of my ancestors. I opened the Dartmouth-history.org.uk website of The Dartmouth Archives and found that this voluntary organisation had a very comprehensive family history section with transcribed baptisms, burials, marriages and census records. I could read the very same details, as I had seen in London, on this niche site. The information began in 1586 and ran to 1850! There was the marriage of John to Elizabeth and this time I noticed that the witness were given as John Adams and Sunass (sic) Sissell. I assumed that this last person was a member of the bride’s family and perhaps was her father, but the name Sunass caused me concern as it didn’t seem very likely and I guessed it couldn’t be read properly by the transcriber.
After doing family history for a few years now, I’m aware that names can be transcribed incorrectly. Perhaps written down as the transcriber had seen them (as best practice dictates) and not changed to conveniently fit in with what is consider to be correct. I wondered if both the first name and the second had not been written down by the person in question, as they may well have been illiterate. When you come to do your own research you should bear in mind this point. The minister may have interpreted the name as he had heard it spoken to him and so in this case “Sissell” could possibly been “Cecil” or something entirely different. As for Sunass – at this point I hadn’t got a clue what that could have been!
There were no early enough christening records for John and Elizabeth on the Dartmouth Archives website, but I opened another browser and navigated to the Latter Day Saints (LDS) website or FamilySearch.org and here I did a search for Elizabeth’s christening and was lead to a baptism in one of the other churches in Dartmouth, St Petrox, on the 16 September 1878. The daughter of James and Sarah Sissill was one Elizabeth Gardener Sissill – and here I noted that the spelling had changed to Sissill with an “i” and not an “e”. This record made me wonder if the witness to Elizabeth’s marriage could have been her father “James” and this has been interpreted as “Sunnas” because a flowing “J” for James had looked like an “S” and the other letters had been misread as a “u” for an “a” and the double “n” as an “m”.
So what I am emphasising here is to be wary of names and the way they were spelt. Before more general levels of literacy among the public became the norm, our ancestors relied heavily on a clergyman writing down their names as they sounded.
This breakthrough is down to finding that Dartmouth has an active family history website and then using their indexes in conjunction with other Internet resources, such as the LDS site. I could then take the names and details further by looking for death certificates for John Branton Thorn and his wife Elizabeth Gardener Thorn, as they had died after civil registration of deaths took place in 1837. From here a physical visit to the Devon Record Office to see the parish records may be the next step.
The first lesson is that you should always look to see what other research may have been done, for the area your ancestors came from, and that is published on the Internet. If you find a family history society, or local interest group with a website, can any of their publications or website pages help you with your quest? Secondly, be aware of the misspelling of names and keep your mind open to possibilities. In my case I need to think of other spellings for the Sissells or names that may have sounded like Sissell in order that I may trace this line back further and break down the brick wall.
Some advice that I have found useful, over the years, is to listen to the more senior members of your family if you want to get leads for your family history research. The stories that they have to tell can sometimes be coloured by the passing of time and not be a hundred percent accurate. They can sometimes reflect the “received wisdom” that has been passed down in the family to them, that is stories that have been adjusted to blur over anything that was thought embarrassing to previous generations. Nonetheless listening to our elders is an important place to start and on occasions go back to as a source.
Recently I had the opportunity to learn a bit more from my father about his youth, his parents and trips he made on business. The catalyst was a day out with him on the Great Central Railway. Now getting our parents to sit down and talk about the old days can sometimes be difficult and so the opportunity that a birthday treat of Sunday Lunch in a First Class dinner carriage on a steam train on the Great Central Railway, provided a useful way of learning some new stories from the past.
My advice is to record what is said, using a Dictaphone if you have one, or by writing up your notes before you yourself forget them and store them away. The stories can then be used as leads to follow up in your family history research. Remember, however, to check any facts such as vital records details given with primary sources such as birth marriages and death records if you are going to enter them into your family tree! Mistakes are made, maybe not intentionally, but they do happen.
In 1837 the General Register Office (GRO) was founded in England and Wales and civil registration took over from the church in this part of the UK. Two acts of Parliament were brought into law by the Whig Government of the time as they wanted to centralise data on the population…
1. The Marriage Act – which amended existing legislation for marriage procedures and brought in the addition of the registry office marriage that now allowed non conformist to marry in a civil ceremony instead of in the Church of England as previously required of all but Quakers and Jews. It is for this reason that sometimes you will see it referred to as the “Dissenters Marriage Billâ€
2. An Act for Registering Births Marriages & Deaths in England – which repealed previous legislation that regulated parish and other registers.
The new laws brought with them a change whereby 619 registration districts came into force across the land. Based on old poor law unions that existed they divided up England & Wales into these various districts. A superintendent registrar was appointed for each district, with sub-districts created within the larger unit. And so from the 1 July 1837 all births, civil marriages and deaths had to be reported to local registrars, who in turn then sent the details on to their superintendent. Every three months the superintendent-registrars then sent their returns to the Registrar General at the General Register Office.
In a similar manner for church marriages, the minister was charged with sending his own lists to the GRO where the index of vital events were complied. This system means that many of us are able to simply find our ancestors in indexes and order copies of certificates back as far as the third quarter of 1837.
But if you want to get back before 1837 without the benefits of the centralised government records, then here are some pointers for you.
From the 16th century up until 1837 the parish church carried the responsibility of collecting records of its parishioners. While baptism was more important to the church than actual birth dates and burials were noted as opposed to deaths, the church was essentially an arm of local government collecting information.
Baptismal registers will normally give you the name of the child and that of its father, plus the date of the christening. Occasionally you may also see the mother’s name, most particularly if the child was illegitimate. In this case you could see the terms “base born†“bastard†or “natural born†on the record. Sometimes the godparents or witnesses also appear. This all goes to show how there was no standard format to baptismal registers until in 1812 Rose’s Act became law in England and Wales and standardised the information to be recorded on specially printed registers.
It should be noted, however, that Rose’s Act did not apply to Scotland or Ireland. These new standardised registers asked for more details than before and so now the clergy had to obtain the mother’s Christian name, the father’s occupation and his abode.
Churches kept parish registers locally. They were not collated or sent to any central depository but were retained by the churches themselves. In some cases, now, the registers have now been left to the county record offices and so you would be well advised to take a visit to the relevant record office to further your research and see the records most probably on microfilm or fiche.
The churches had a strong lockable box, known as the parish chest and into which it deposited its records. It was not just the registers that were kept in the parish chests, however, as the church was responsible for other types local government  and so various other interesting documents that may contain your ancestors’ names could have been locked away in these chests.
If you a beginning to trace your family tree before this then prepare your self for some brick walls. I found it frustrating that the Parish Records listed one of my ancestors marrying in Plymouth as a Mariner and gave no Parish from where he came. Presumably he sailed into Plymouth and married the girl, but where did he come form?
Anyone who does research will testify to how frustrating it is to follow leads up blind alleys. In terms of genealogy, this could mean following wrong family lines. Anyone who has had a go at genealogy will undoubtedly be familiar with this scenario. It could be that you have been given a bad lead or perhaps misread some information that you have found. Either way, it mounts up to a lot of wasted time.
So how can this pitfall be avoided? Far from giving you a clever answer, I don’t believe that there are any, there are some general tips that I can give that might help you with your genealogy research. In fact the general principles could be applied to any type of research.
The first thing you should always do is keep a track of all of your resources, every book, every article and every web site. And get detailed information too. If your source was a book for example, get all the detail down to the ISBN number. If your research is by word of mouth, write down names, times and dates. Genealogy is all about information, so backing up your facts is critical.
Following a similar theme, you need to organise yourself and your research. File everything and file things where you know how to locate them. You will find yourself back tracking continuously, so make that side of genealogy as painless as possible.
Check your facts. Not just the literal snippets of information that you pick up, but also the logical order of things. Do the facts that you have collected make sense? Apply common sense to all of your findings and question them.
Do not accept carte blanche research from sources you don’t know. What I mean by this is really the types of research that one often sees advertised, offering to write up your family tree for a fee. Beware of these types of offers. The type of research upon which these tress are founded are often questionable. Save your money and do the research yourself. That is after all, part of the fun of genealogy!
If your family has spread it’s wings across borders, be very careful when collecting facts. As one example, dates can be written differently depending on where in the world you are at the time. Easy mistakes can be made under these circumstances. The date 05/04/75 means something different to people in the USA than it does to people in the UK.
Do not make assumptions about any piece of information that you might come across. Stick with the facts that you yourself have collected. One small assumption can lead you in all sorts of directions that you didn’t really want to go down. Remember that we refer to things differently now than we did in years gone by, so when something is taken from letters 100 years ago, it might not mean the same thing to you as it did to your forefathers.
Join up with web sites that have expertise in genealogy. Talk with like minded people and get the benefit of their experience. Not only will they have tips of their own to share to help you, they will have access to sources you might never have thought of. It is well worth your time talking to other genealogists.
Get an extensive look at one of the most remarkable Genealogy Reference Books there is available on the market today. Discover what going on in genealogy today!
DISCLOSURE: Compensated Affiliate of Ancestry.co.uk
Ancestry.co.uk has published online the UK, Casualties of the Boer War, 1899-1902, detailing 55,000 British and colonial soldiers who were killed, wounded, captured, or who died of disease during the Second Boer War.
Highlighting for us the horror of the conflict by detailing over 20,000 deaths of British soldiers along with the injury of a further 23,000. Typically each record details the soldier’s name, rank, force, regiment, battalion and date and place of death, injury or capture.
Most of the other records are of capture or disease, which was rife in South Africa during the early 20th century. Dysentery, typhoid fever and intestine infections were among the most common contagions and account for around 12,000 deaths in the collection.
As well as death through sickness and battlefield injuries, the collection reveals some unusual ‘fates’ met by soldiers. These include records of 86 British troops who were killed or injured by lightning, including a mysterious case of two soldiers struck dead within moments of each other when a lightning storm swept their base in Stormberg near Cape Town. One soldier is even listed as having been eaten by a crocodile at the Usutu River.
As the number of deaths recorded in this collection correspond with the fatalities noted in other historical sources, this archive can be considered one of the most comprehensive resources of British soldiers in the Second Boer War available.
Anyone trying to find out more about an ancestor who fought in the Second Boer War will find these records invaluable, particularly as most British soldiers who fought in the conflict won’t appear in the 1901 Census of England and Wales because they were fighting in South Africa.
These include a number of famous men who were awarded with the Victoria Cross, the highest honour for bravery, upon their return from Africa:
Sir Walter Norris Congreve – Congreve was a hero in both the Boer War and WWI, attaining the rank of general by the end of his 30-year military career. He was awarded his Victoria Cross for defending an abandoned gun emplacement during the Battle of Colenso, where he rescued a fallen comrade under heavy fire despite suffering from gunshot wounds
Charles Fitzclarence – Fitzclarence was decorated for three separate actions of gallantry and became known as one of the fiercest soldiers of the Boer conflict. Major-General Baden-Powell himself even remarked on Fitzclarence’s bravery and importance to the cause. During several sorties Fitzclarence showed ‘coolness and courage’, defying insurmountable odds to defeat the enemy
Henry William Engleheart – After completing a mission to destroy Boer railways behind enemy lines, Engleheart led the extrication through the Boer defences – even stopping to rescue a fallen comrade despite being outnumbered by more than four to one
Following on from the First Boer War, the Second Boer War was a dispute over territory in South Africa, fought between the British Empire and Dutch settlers (known as ‘Boers’ – the Dutch word for ‘farmer’). The catalyst for this secondary conflict was the discovery of gold in the Boer-controlled South African Republic, also known as the Transvaal.
The resulting gold rush encouraged thousands of British settlers (known as uitlanders) to migrate to the republic. Before long the British numbers exceeded those of the Boer, prompting tension around ‘uitlander rights’ and which nation should control the gold mining industry. When the British refused to evacuate their forces in 1899, the Boer declared war.
The so-called ‘Boers’ were farmers who were used to riding and hunting for survival and were therefore considerable opponents for the British Army and claimed the lives of around 8,000 British soldiers. The Boer themselves lost 7,000 troops.
In an attempt to cut off supplies to the Boers, a ‘scorched earth policy’ was introduced. This resulted in the destruction of Boer farms and crops, and subsequent introduction of concentration camps where the Boer and African women, children and workers were interned. Thousands of Boers lost their lives here, primarily through malnutrition and disease.
Ancestry.co.uk International Content Director Dan Jones comments: “These records are a stark reminder of the atrocities of a conflict that is often eclipsed by wars that took place closer to home. They detail a dark and regrettable period of history, but one that should never be forgotten.
If, like me, you have searched for hours and hours trying to find an ancestor’s birth, marriage or death with no luck and you begun to wonder if it is something that you have been doing wrong; then just consider the following list. It was one that I was introduced to when I did a genealogy course with the on-line specialist Pharos Tutors and I commend you to take its suggestions to heart.
Is It The Wrong District – are you looking in the one that you assume your ancestor should have been registered in? Think about looking in neighbouring districts as your forebears may be found there instead. You may not know, as I didn’t, that the early registrars for districts were paid by results and that it was they who were responsible for gathering the information! Later on the responsibility was transferred to the public to register their births, marriages and deaths for their relatives.
Looking in the Wrong Year. You may have been given the ‘received wisdom’ that your great-great grandfather was born in a particular year. Did you know that professional probate researchers, these are people that give evidence in court cases, will look for a person up to 100 years of age when searching for a death. Â Also they will normally look for a woman’s marriage right they way up to the age of 100! When looking for a birth they will search for up to 25years after the marriage for the birth of a child. We need to also keep in mind that some people may marry several years after a child was born.
Wrong Name – Could you be looking for the middle name instead of the first? Many people are known by a second name rather than their first so a John Alan Smith may have been called Alan Smith all his life. His name may have been spelt Allan, or Alun so keep a watch out for spelling variations. Be aware that people may have been mis- indexed or their names spelt differently. Also they may have reverted to a previous name after the collapse of a marriage.
Family Stories – that send you off on a wild goose chase like looking for the handsome Irishman in one branch of my family when all the ancestors seem to be from Devon, with the exception of a small bit of Cornish that crept into my bloodline.
Inconsistent Searching. Not recording what you have already done. Now I know that many of us may hold our hands up to this!
Simply your ancestor was not registered. This may occur especially in the early years after the introduction of civil registration in 1875 but should be more rare after 1875. In between 1837 and 1875 some districts were under registered.
I hope this helps some of you, it certainly has for me as I have some elusive forebears whom I am still trying to locate using Ancestry and the excellent FreeBMD on the Internet. I had lost my way until I did the course and realised that I should think around the problem more than homing in on what and where I thought these ancestors should be.
Pioneer Transcription Services is now offering oral history transcription services to people who wish to conserve the stories of their family members. The business has been transcribing oral histories for historians, authors and professional companies for almost 20 years. The emphasis on providing this service directly to people who want to preserve their families’ stories came about when one of the company’s owners, Deborah Devitt, inherited a cassette tape her parents had made many years previously with her paternal grandmother. Unfortunately , the cassette tape had deteriorated over the years and there was never a transcript created. While the company created a digital audio file and transcribed the interview before more deterioration could occur, “I don’t want others to lose the stories that are important to their families,” Ms. Devitt states.
Individuals are conducting interviews with all kinds of different relatives from grandparents, to great aunts and uncles, to cousins, to brothers and sisters, et cetera.
Digital recorders are now very sensibly priced, which allows more individuals to record their families’ stories. These digital audio files can be easily shared with other family members and won’t deteriorate over time. Many people are setting up interviews with their relatives, using questions they’ve found on the internet or that they come up with on their own.
Pioneer Transcription Services realized there is a growing desire to have written transcripts of these interviews. “Our service is easy to utilize and accessible to everyone,” states Ms. Devitt. “A direct link for upload is right on our website.” Once uploaded clients just wait for their transcript to be returned to them. They are then able to share the transcript with other family members and friends or to use it in any way they deem proper. “Plus, these are our favorite things in the world to transcribe, ” added Ms. Devitt.
I really recommend that you read Mark Herber’s book Ancestral Trails, if you haven’t already. I was looking again at the first chapter in what is one of the best books on United Kingdom Ancestry and Genealogy there is.
This really is a wonderful book with much help for genealogical researchers and includes a brilliant section on understanding family relationships.
What? Is Nick telling us about some sort of self-help publication aimed at men and women going through a bad patch in their relationships? No, this tome has some useful things to say about the different phrases such as: stepfather/mother; half-brother/sister and so on.  Herber tells us, in simple terms, that the term “step†denotes that there is simply no blood connection connecting the parties and so the only sort of connection is going to be through marriage. “Half†is actually something different again. This is where the actual people share but one mother or father in common.
Now, because I have a stepmother, a half-sister and I also once had a step-grandfather, until he passed away, on my mother’s side, I am acutely aware of these terms. So, while all these relationships are inescapable fact, I shudder to myself as soon as I see these somewhat cold terms used to identify people whom I love dearly. It seems to me that, in using these prefixes, that I may be accused of trying to distance myself from these members of my family for some reason. Well I’d like to say here and now that this is far from the truth when it comes to my close family step, half or what ever they may be. When we are noting down our Family history, however, we sometimes have to be very precise in explaining a relationship to someone and so detail exactly how and where a person fits into our family tree. None more difficult than when we are confronted with illegitimacy in our lines.
Maybe in the twentieth century, to be born to parents who are unmarried carries little stigma, in the past it was a very different story; thus it ought to be handled sensitively whenever addressing loved ones of a different generation.
Returning to this chapter, provided by Mark Herber’s handbook, I was amused to realise that I had forgotten about defining cousins relationships. Whilst attending a family marriage, a few years back, I was introduced by Jenny, my first-cousin-once-removed to one of her friends of her own age group. Jenny said that I was her “Mum’s cousin†and in this she turned out to be wholly correct in this explanation of how we were related. As Herber pronounces: “Relationships involving cousins are more complex. Cousins are usually people who share an actual common ancestor… The offspring of a pair of siblings happen to be “first†cousins of each other. All the offspring of two first cousins are “second†cousins of each other and so on.â€
Okay so far, but then we move on to deal with completely different generations. The word we utilise to be able to denote this is “removed†hence my first cousin’s daughter is my cousin once removed. As soon as she had a child it became my first cousin twice removed. We need to determine the number of intervening generations between ourselves and the particular common ancestor and utilize that number prior to the word “removedâ€. Now at this point comes the bit that I had forgotten!
“The concept “removed†is generally only used to express relationships down a family tree.†Therefore this had been precisely why Jenny, my first cousin once removed, as a child of my first cousin Julie is accurate as soon as she referred to me as her “mum’s cousinâ€
At this point closes the pedant’s lesson for today! 🙂
Mark Herber’s book Ancestral Trails obtainable from most good bookstores.
As someone that has used their website to good effect with my Scottish ancestors, I am really pleased to see that ScotlandsPeople service is now up, revamped and running. I have had no problem in recommending it to those who have Scots roots because of the value of its content. Now it includes some new search features that are designed to make it easier and quicker for people to use and discover their Scottish family roots.
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