I noticed this week that The British Newspaper Archive has expanded the number of pages that we family historians can view on their site. I do like old newspapers as a family history resource!
It seems that you can now explore 8 million newspaper pages at The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk) after the website reached a major milestone this week.
While adding editions of the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, Cheshire Observer and The Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, the counter on the homepage ticked over to display 8,000,000 pages.
The amount online has doubled since the website launched with 4 million pages in November 2011. The time period covered now stretches from 1710 – 1954 too, much broader than at launch.
If you tried searching for a person, event or place before without success, its well worth trying again now. Visit www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk to try a search for free.
Thousands of pages are added every week, so your chance of finding something amazing increases all the time. 825,000 new pages have already been added so far this year.
I’d like to welcome any new members of my online course The Family History Researcher Academy that may be reading this blog for the first time today. I aim to post articles and advice here that will help those of you researching your British Isles ancestors. Sometimes the post will be about my own experience of using an online data set, an offline resource at a record office or some other archive, and sometimes it is to draw your attention to a new resource that has been launched by one of the main genealogy look-up sites.
Today I’d like to feature a new resource for those with sea going ancestors published by my friends over at TheGenealogist. It gives details of over 439,000 Royal Navy and Merchant Seamen records which are searchable by name, rank, age and ship. The full crew list can be displayed for any of the ships.
Covering the years 1851-1911, these include lists and agreements for those involved in merchant shipping and ship crews for those at home ports, sea and abroad.
Details given may include age, place of birth, rank and ticket number, previous and current ships with ports of registration, dates, place and reason for joining and leaving.
The records are from a variety of sources which include BT98 and specialist county and non-county census records. Read more here.
Disclosure: The above link is a compensated affiliate link. Should you click on it and buy a subscription from TheGenealogist then I may be compensated for sending you over to them.
When conducting family tree research, obviously the more information you have, the better; that’s why millions of family history search terms are typed into google every single day. In fact, it has never been easier to find all kinds of ancestry data online including birth, marriage and death records, maps, old photographs, news archives, military records and much more.
By starting with what you know about your immediate ancestors, those at the beginning of their search can start using googling their family tree right away. Here are some tips that will help you get the most out of google when it comes to investigating your ancestry online.
Google Search Tips
When googling your family history, there are a few things to remember in order for you to narrow down the results to those most relevant to you. These include:
1. Always put the most important information at the start of your search term as this will help order the results into those that are most relevant.
2. Use quotation marks on proper names and exact match phrases. For example, searching “Louis Matherson†will come up with page results that show that exact combination. If you type in Louis Matherson without quotation marks, then you may get results for Joe Matherson or Louis Simon.
3. Exclude unwanted results using a minus sign. For example, if you know that there are two towns in the country called ‘Gillingham’ then you could type in “Gillingham –Kent†in order to tell google that you meant the other Gillingham in Dorset. However, adding a minus sign can in some instances also minus pages that refer to both Gillingham in Dorset and Gillingham in Kent, so make sure you careful about what you eliminate.
4. Google’s search algorithms do take into account synonyms, but you can search for additional synonyms by typing the tilde symbol (~) before certain words such as ‘~graveyard’ which will display results for ‘cemetery’,’ churchyard’, and ‘memorial’.
5. If you have found a page with a long list of names and you want to find the relevant information quickly, you can type ctrl + alt and ‘f’ and it will bring up a search box in the corner of that page. Simply type in the name you are looking for and the webpage will highlight the matching text within the document instantly.
6. If you want to search a surname, but you’re not sure on the correct spelling then you can use the wildcard symbol (*) which will tell google to accept any consecutive string of characters that appears after the asterisk symbol.
7. If your search takes you to a ‘file not found’ error message, this could mean that the page you are looking for is no longer updated (amongst other reasons). But never fear, you can still search for that information by looking for search results that have the word ‘cached’ at the end of the description and URL.
Finding Free Genealogy Resources Online
Historical documents are being digitized and added to the internet regularly, so it is always wise to do a quick scan of the latest genealogy news websites. That way you can see if anything has been added that might prove useful to your own investigation.
You may also want to seek out genealogy forums and message boards to see if a distant family member has previously conducted family history research that may be of some relevance to you. However, be wary of using other people’s research in your studies because they may have got some of their information wrong. Always double check anything you do decide to include.
Many popular genealogy subscription sites such as ancestry.com allow users a free-trial of their resources, so it may be a good idea to sign up and see what you can find even if you can’t afford the subscription fee.
Offline Sources
Historical records will make up the bulk of your investigation, however, you may also want to include interviews with relatives (some maybe more distant than others) in order to add ‘colour’ to your report. Use social media and people finding services to track these family members down and send them a draft copy. You never know, it might prompt them to start an investigation of their own and you may be able to share your efforts.
So there you have some tips that will help you search effectively online when conducting family tree research. If you have any other relevant tips, please leave a comment below.
Elise Leveque is a freelance translator and blogger from Bristol. She is currently in the throes of putting her own family tree together.
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Disclosure: The Links in the above are Compensated Affiliate links. If you click on them then I may be rewarded by Findmypast.co.uk or The Genealogist.co.uk should you sign up for their subscriptions.
Hope you have had a Merry Christmas and are looking forward to the new year.
I took advantage of the holiday time to take a look at the Plymouth and West Devon Parish Records on the Find My Past website. Here you can view the actual scanned documents from the archive in Plymouth if you have a subscription or buy some pay as you go credits.
Although I already have copies of the GRO certificates it is interesting to also look at the church registers and glean some extra information. I got several pieces of extra information on one set of ancestors that I had not got before, from carrying out this exercise. I’ll keep these for further article posts!
One of the interesting finds from looking at the scanned church register was that they were married according to the Rites and Ceremonies of the Established Church “by Superintendent Registrar’s Certificate.
A while back, in my family history research, I came across a marriage “by certificate” in my family tree in Portsmouth.
In the year 1859 my 2x great grandfather, Henry Thorne married Ellen Malser in Portsea, Hampshire. By all accounts it was in a church of the Church of England and according to their rites, but I was mystified by the fact it was not either by banns or by licence.
My investigation at the time indicted that “by certificate†usually meant that the ceremony was conducted by a Registrar. This being common in nonconformist church weddings and at registry offices.
I sought out what Mark Herber had to say in his book, Ancestral Trails, and found the line: “From 1837 marriages could also take place before civil registrars, or in chapels licensed under the Civil Registrations Acts. The law permitted the superintendent registrar to issue a certificate (similar to an Anglican licence) authorising marriages (without banns) in licensed places of worshipâ€.
So here it was again in the 1866 marriage of another branch of my family and this time in Plymouth.
I have now found out that a Superintendent Registrar of a civil Register Office may issue a Certificate to permit a marriage to take place in an Anglican church on the following conditions.
One of the parties must have the required seven days residence within the registration district and within the parish where the marriage is to take place before applying for the Certificate.
Or the church where they wish to marry must be the usual place of worship of one or both of the parties.
The Registrar enters the details of the parties in a book which is open to public inspection and also displays a notice at the Register Office for 15 days. If no impediments are shown within the period of 15 days, a Superintendent Registrar’s Certificate can be issued and so it is similar to reading banns.
A clergyman, however, is under no obligation to marry people who have chosen this preliminary, and in practice clergy will recommend banns or a Common Licence.
I have found on Barbara Dixon’s site, a tutorial regarding marriages and she indicates that a marriage “by superintendent registrars certificate” is comparatively rare. http://home.clara.net/dixons/Certificates/marriages.htm
It’s used for a Church of England marriage but instead of the banns being read in the church, notice of marriage would have been given to the superintendent registrar.
A reason for so doing could be necessitated where services were held so infrequently such as in the case of a small chapel, that it was not possible to call the banns on three successive Sundays and get married all within the three months time limit.
In later periods it was sometimes used as an expedient if for some reason the vicar did not want to make the forthcoming marriage in the church public knowledge. Banns would have required the entry in the banns book, which was open for anyone to look at.
The types of problem that could have caused this course to be taken could have been where a bride and groom were of different faiths and the vicar either didn’t want the congregation in general to know, or even the bride/grooms family to be aware especially where he feared they might try to disrupt the ceremony!
Today it is sometimes used when one of the couple is divorced and the vicar does not want it generally known that he is marrying a divorcee in his church.
So, comparatively rare or not I find I have two sets of ancestors who took advantage of the Superintendent Registrar’s Certificate.
So this week, in the British Isles, saw Waterstones Booksellers launch the Kindle readers in their shops across the country. In my branch in St Helier, Jersey there is a great new display point and I was drawn immediately towards the Kindle Fire HD. I love the way it looks and the way it works! So much so that I got my debit card out and bought one there and then.
With these devices making more of an inroad into the way that people shop for books and read them I thought that it was timely for me to take a look at what family history titles are available from the Amazon Kindle store.
First off I found that Peter Christian’s The Genealogist’s Internet is available. I’d seen it reviewed in Your Family Tree magazine in only the last month with a recommend that every family historian should have a copy either in Kindle form or in physical book.
It is a practical guide which that is great for both beginners and more experienced researchers to use as it explores the most useful online sources and aids its readers to navigate each one. The Genealogist’s Internet features fully updated URLs and all of the recent developments in online genealogy.
This is the fully updated fifth edition and it carries the endorsed by the National Archives. Covering
·Online census records and wills, including the 1911 Census
·Civil registration indexes
·Information on occupations and professions
·DNA matching
·New genealogy websites and search engines
·Surname studies
·Passenger lists and migration records
·Information on digitised historical maps and photographs
Peter Christian’s book also includes the impact of blogging, podcasting and social networking on family history research, that allows the family historian to seek out others with similar research interests and so to share their results. Whether you want to put your family tree online, find distant relatives or access the numerous online genealogical forums, discussion groups and mailing lists, this book is a must-have.
For a selection of other Kindle books, including my own, head over to amazon.co.uk and take a look at these: Must Have Family History Books for your Kindle.
I’ve been away for the last three weeks, some of which was spent on tracking down my ancestors and some of which was spent talking to living relatives and gathering more family history stories together.
While I was away my scheduled updates of this blog seemed to have gone awry. Here is one that should have gone out last weekend!
One of subscription sites that I use personally is TheGenealogist.co.uk and I see it has launched a brand new all-in-one search feature. This allows users to do a single search across the entire website, which is a valuable extra dimension in my opinion.
The all-in-one interface now also incorporates their keyword search, and they are pretty excited about this being the first time that these two features have been brought together to aid family history research.
With this great feature you are now able to instantly display all the records for a particular ancestor, whilst filtering out all the other irrelevant results from the search.
The press release tells us that.. No other genealogical website currently produces such quick and relevant results for your ancestor search and has the flexibility to produce results for a number of different generations saving an enormous amount of time for researchers. Instead of offering search results that cast the net wide, like most genealogy websites, TheGenealogist segments the data down offering more accurate and relevant results – no more wasted time sifting through lots of irrelevant records to find the person you need.
The Genealogist claims Accurate and reliable results in a fraction of the time explaining that for the first time you are able to enter an ancestor’s name into a search along with an approximate year for their birth and the option of keywords that can then trace an ancestors life through the records, from birth to census, marriage and more.
What is more is that Address Lists are also included, thus allowing the family history researcher to view other residents and view any other potential family links.
Mark Bayley, Head of the Online Division at TheGenealogist, feels the new search facility is an exciting new development in the world of online research:
‘Customers will get a much deeper insight into their ancestors in a fraction of the time. They’ll be able to find everything we know about someone almost instantly with a single linked master search.
‘This is a powerful tool not currently available elsewhere. TheGenealogist is all about user-friendly searches, not just records and this new feature further enhances what we offer. We aim to make searches as useful as possible, we have our unique keywords searches that can scan our records quickly and it is now quicker and easier than ever with our new All-In-One Search.’
With its new search tool and using just the basic information, TheGenealogist, can narrow searches down to the specific and allow the researcher the ability to generate successful accurate results. Ideal for all professional and amateur family historians. To take a look go to TheGenealogist.co.uk
Disclosure: The Links in the above are Compensated Affiliate links. If you click on them then I may be rewarded by The Genealogist.co.uk should you sign up for one of their subscriptions.
Many of us, researching our family trees, come up against the inevitable brick wall of forebears that don’t appear in the documents in the places where we expect to find them. Sometimes this can be because they have been recorded, but the spelling of the name differs each time an official makes an attempt to write it down.
Brick Wall buster tip 1. Can’t find anyone of that name? Try searching for variants as in the past spelling was not an exact science.
This week I was revisiting my ancestors who married in Gloucester and then went on to have a daughter baptised in Devon that eventually married a Thorn and so perpetuated the Thorn/Thorne line that leads down the tree to me.
One of the problems that I have with this branch is that they were not literate and had no idea of how to spell their surname. The evidence is in the parish register for Dartmouth, where I first pick up the female line. Both parties, to the marriage between the Thorns and the Sissells made their mark and did not sign. The register gives me the name of the father of the bride as James Sissell as he makes his mark as a witness.
Elizabeth Gardiner Thorn, as she becomes on her marriage, is eventually buried in Dartmouth and I can trace her in the census records and on her death certificate as having been my 2x great-grandmother, from the names of her family in these records. This is how I know that I am investigating the correct person.
Researching the christening of Elizabeth backwards, in the IGI on familysearch.org, I find that she was given the name of Elizabeth Gardiner Sissill and I also find the marriage of a James Sysal to a Sarah Gardiner in 1780 in St Nicholas’ church Gloucester.
So now I have three versions of the spelling of their surname, Sissell, Sissill and Sysal, but it is only the beginning!
I found that Elizabeth had a brother, Thomas, though at his christening the vicar entered his surname as Sizzall in the parish registers.
Turning my attention to the deaths of Elizabeth’s parents – as any good family historian always will try to kill off their ancestors – I have only just had some luck after my visit to the Devon Family History Society’s Tree House in Exeter and to the County Record Office to look at the microfiche copies of parish records.
I had no idea if James and Sarah had remained in Dartmouth of whether they had moved on, or even back to Gloucester.
With the aid of the various printed booklets of transcripts, from the DFHS, I was able to identify a Sarah Sisell (the fifth version of the surname) buried on March the 17th 1831 in the St Saviour’s burials transcripts and a James Saissell (sixth version of the spelling) buried on the 5th January 1835 in St. Saviour’s Dartmouth. Then I could look at the relevant microfiche copy of the register, in the County Record Office, to confirm the transcript was correct.
Spelling was so much more fluid in our ancestor’s day. Indeed the words “Burials” “Marriages” and “Baptisms”, at the top of the pages in the very same register, changed form throughout the different years!
I can only assume that all the variants of the surname, as recorded above and said with a West Country accent, could have sounded much alike to the hapless vicar whose registers display the fact that spelling was not fixed, as it has become today.
For more tips to get your family tree back before 1837 in England & Wales I would recommend that you buy my CD How To Get Back Before 1837 in England & Wales.
I recently got this Press Release from TheGenealogist.co.uk. It seems they have made their TreeView even better..
TreeView Gets Radical New Features:
The highly respected TreeView, a favorite of reviewers has launched unique new features and “viewsâ€.
TreeView is free to all. You can access it at TheGenealogist.co.uk and TreeView.co.uk
Five Brand New Views
CustomTree
For the first time ever online, TreeView has made it possible to draw your own custom family tree. The custom family tree option lets you pick between pedigree, hourglass or full tree view, you can pick the number of generations you want and then the fun begins. Drag and drop anyone you wish around the tree, remove people from the tree by simply clicking the X on them. If you make a mistake, no problem, just click “undoâ€. You can also upload a picture to include as a background to your tree. This quickly and easily gives you a fully custom layout of your family tree. When you’re happy with the result, you can save your design for later or print it out.
(You can select a person within custom tree and easily move them around the chart)
Relationship Tree
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Using the Relationship Tree you can select any two members from your tree and generate a chart to show the relationship links between those two ancestors. The chart will appear on screen and from here you can choose to a print a copy.
Ancestor Chart
The ancestor chart shows you the direct line ancestors of a selected individual, with the option to display as many generations as you wish.
Descendant Chart
Alternatively, the descendant chart shows you the direct descendants of an individual.
Hourglass Tree
An alternative design for your tree is an Hourglass Tree. This chart is a combination of ancestor and descendant charts, including both direct ancestors and descendants of a person for as many generations as you wish.
Brand New Features
Printing Trees – You can now print any tree. When clicking on the Print icon you will be asked to select one of the following print options;
All in One: This option emails you a PDF of the entire tree on one page, enabling you to send the PDF to your local printer, so you can have your family tree printed on one large sheet of paper.
Or
Several Pages: This option will divide your tree over several A4 sheets of paper allowing you to print from a standard printer at home. The A4 sheets are discreetly numbered and come with a guide, making it easier for you to piece them together once they have printed.
Tree Backgrounds
Now all trees come with the option to customise your background, from a variety of different colours, patterns or even use one of your own images.
Backup/Restore – Routinely save your tree and restore from previous backups or imported GEDCOM files. So now you can tweak your tree without the worry of making a mistake.
Relationship Calculator – You can calculate the relationship between any two ancestors in your tree. Type the name of the two individuals into the calculator and the relationship between them will be shown in the results box.
If you are looking at your Full Tree or Pedigree view, click any individual and their relationship to the default person will be displayed in the dialog box.
Friends New Features
The ability to invite friends and family to view your tree is now free to everyone.
Friends Options – In addition to the access level you can now set a Role for your friends.
Select either ‘Guest’ or ‘Proposer’. A ‘Guest’ can view a limited or an extended view of your family tree. A ‘Proposer’ makes proposals for changes or additions to your tree without changing the data. This provides a safe way for your friends and family to help you fill in the blanks to your tree.
Hope you find this useful for recording your family history.
I noticed this week that The British Newspaper Archive has expanded the number of pages that we family historians can view on their site. I do like old newspapers as a family history resource!
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