PRESS RELEASE written by The Family History Show organisers:
The Family History Show events in England and Online were a huge success this year with bigger crowds and lots of compliments from happy attendees.
“What an amazing day, not just for me but also all the hundreds of visitors who enjoyed and learnt so much from a series of talks all day and the great variety of helpful stalls. Many thanks to the organisers, the stallholders and of course all you lovely visitors – thank you for buying a few maps too!!” – Joss from This Way Books
We are therefore delighted to announce that in 2024 we will be adding a new event in the Midlands alongside our ever popular York, London and Online shows.
The Family History Show, Midlands will be debuting at the Severn Hall, Three Counties Showground, Worcestershire on Saturday 16th March 2024. We look forward to welcoming everyone to this fantastic centrally placed exhibition hall with plenty of free parking.
“We’ve been very busy, we’ve had lots of questions to answer and sold lots of our publications – so a very good day!” – West Surrey Family History Society
Dates for your 2024 diary!
Come and be part of a fantastic day dedicated to exploring your genealogy. We look forward to seeing you at our 2024 shows:
Online – Saturday 10th February 2024
Midlands – Saturday 16th March 2024 at Three Counties Showground
York – Saturday 22nd June 2024 at York Racecourse
London – Saturday 5th October 2024 at Kempton Park Racecourse
Be inspired by our captivating free talks, interact with experts who can help you find answers to your questions, and explore a diverse range of exhibitors, family history societies and genealogy companies from all over the country in the exhibition hall.
These events are an absolute must for all family history enthusiasts. Come along and discover fascinating insights into your heritage or your past family. Join us and experience a great day out with lots of friendly exhibitors, complimentary talks, convenient parking at our physical shows, regular trains to York, Kempton and Great Malvern, and refreshments available all day at York, London and the Midlands show. Even if you can’t make it to our physical shows then our Online event is a must. Secure your tickets now to take advantage of our amazing advanced offers!
Make a Day of it
Book an expert session and watch a talk in the morning, then have lunch in our restaurant before finishing the day with a bit of retail therapy, chat with societies and catch another talk before you go.
The Family History Show – features:
Free Talks held throughout the day
Ask the Experts – Book a free personal 1-2-1 session with an expert
Free Goody Bag on entry worth over £10.
Free Parking
All Day Refreshments
Wheelchair Friendly Venue
Early-bird Ticket Offer
Get your tickets now and save, Two tickets for £12 (£12 each on the day) and you’ll also get a goody bag on entry worth over £8.
Disclosure: Please note this post contains affiliate links.*
NEWS: Press Release from TheGenealogist
TheGenealogist has added to its expanding International HeadstoneCollection with some interesting and useful new searchable images of gravestones.
These enable family historians to see details that have been recorded about their ancestors by the monumental masons in various churches and cemeteries. All the records are fully searchable with transcripts of the inscriptions that help to decipher some of the more weathered memorials.
The headstone records released cover 174 new churchyards or cemeteries and include submissions from their many prolific volunteers. The International Headstone Collection is an ongoing project where every headstone photographed or transcribed earns credits for volunteers.
The credits are used by volunteers to help support their hobby spending them on subscriptions at TheGenealogist.co.uk or products from GenealogySupplies.com. If you would like to join them, you can find out more about the scheme at: https://ukindexer.co.uk/headstone/
These new records are all available as part of the Diamond Subscription at 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:
I’m getting my bags packed for a visit to this great family history event in the south of London run by Discover Your Ancestors Magazine. Not long to go now as the countdown is well and truly on!
Here is what the organisers have to say:
The Family History Show – London Saturday 22nd September
Headline sponsor: The UK’s Biggest Family History Show of 2018 is almost upon us. After last year’s hugely successful event we are back and twice the size! With even more free talks, societies and exhibitors. Come along to discover ways to delve deeper into your family tree and add more detail to your research. Dick Eastman will be giving the keynote speech on ‘The Future of Genealogy’ and there is a full programme of free talks to help you on your way back to the past. With free car parking and a free minibus from the train station, you won’t want to miss this!
Saturday 22nd September 2018 10am to 4.30pm
Sandown Park Racecourse, Esher
You will find plenty to explore on the day:
Double the talks – Two Large Lecture Theatres with Free Talks all day
New This Year – Free Ask the Experts Area
Announcing The National Archives as a new exhibitor this year
Local Archives and Ministry of Defence stands
Gain knowledge from the societies and organisations attending
Advanced tickets are just 2 for £7.50
Announcing our DNA Sponsor – MyHeritage DNA
We’re pleased that MyHeritage will be joining us as our DNA sponsor! They will be available throughout the day and will also be giving a talk in one of our free lecture theatres.
Free Talks throughout the day
There will be free talks throughout the day in our two large lecture theatres.
Keynote – The Future of Genealogy with Dick Eastman
Breaking down brick walls in your family history research with Mark Bayley, Online Expert
Mark describes how to resolve stumbling blocks in your family history research using innovative search strategies and unique record sets to find those missing relatives.
Tips & Tricks for Online Research with Keith Gregson, Professional Researcher & Social Historian
Keith shares top tips & techniques for finding elusive ancestors, illustrated by some fascinating case studies.
Tracing Your Military Ancestors with Chris 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.
Photo Dating with Jayne Shrimpton, Photo Expert and Fashion Historian
Using DNA to Trace Your Ancestry with MyHeritage
5 Killer Apps for Mobile Genealogy with Graham Walter
Many of us have a smart phone with us when we are out doing our genealogy research. What are the apps that will best aid us in our pursuit?
Ask the Experts
New this year will be the Free ‘Ask the Experts’ section, with Jayne Shrimpton on hand to date photographs, Chris Baker to answer questions regarding Medals and Military Research and Social and Sporting Historian Keith Gregson to help break down your brick walls.
Bring along copies of your photographs and have them dated by our expert
Have those military queries answered
Learn more about the social history of your family
Two Tickets for £7.50!
Buy One Get One Half Price on Tickets! Buy your tickets in advance for £5 a person or buy two for £7.50 (Price on the door will be £7 each). HURRY, this offer ends Midday 19th September!
‘Discover Your Ancestors is both a critically acclaimed annual high quality print magazine and a monthly digital periodical. Launched in 2011 and well received by readers it is aimed at both those starting out in family history research as well as those more experienced family historians. Featuring case studies, social history articles and research advice, it is an informative and educational guide to help break down brick walls.
In 2017 it created the ‘Discover Your Ancestors’ Family History Show at York and London, these events have grown rapidly in size and a third show for the South West is planned for 2019.’
Disclosure: Please note this post contains affiliate links.*
This week I was taking a look around the newly released Change of Name Database on TheGenealogist so that I could put together an article for their website when I came across one of my own collateral ancestors in the database. My maternal line includes a number of fascinating Scots that would seem to have had a bit of money and land. This is stark contrast to others in my tree that had very little in the way of property.
I was thrilled, when using this new resource, to discover the official change of name where my 3x great grandmother’s elder brother was being made a baronet and officially registering a change of name from having a double-barrelled surname to a triple-barrelled one of 26 characters long!
The reason for my article was to compliment TheGenealogist releasing the new resource for family historians wanting to find ancestors who had officially changed their forename or surname in Britain. Their Change of Name Database covers information gathered from a number of sources including Private Acts of Parliament; Royal Licences published in the London and Dublin Gazettes; notices of changes of name published in The Times after 1861 with a few notices from other newspapers; registers of the Lord Lyon [King of Arms] where Scottish changes of name were commonly recorded; records in the office of the Ulster King at Arms and also some private information.
You can use this database to:
Discover ancestors that recorded a change of name
Find what name had been adopted and the name discarded
Their second release this month is to coincide with the return of TheFamily History Show, York to the racecourse on Saturday 23rd June, which I am attending.
TheGenealogist has now added the Colour Tithe Maps for the North Riding and the East Riding of Yorkshire. Complimenting the already released schedule books and greyscale maps, these colour maps add an attractive visual aid to find where your ancestor lived in the mid 1800s.
The fully searchable tithe records released online allow researchers to:
Find plots of land owned or occupied by ancestors in early Victorian North Riding and East Riding of Yorkshire on colour maps
See where your forebears lived, farmed or perhaps occupied a small cottage or a massive estate.
*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:
Next weekend on Saturday 23rd of June 2018 there is one of the largest gathering of family historians in England taking place at The Knavesmire Exhibition Centre, The Racecourse, York, YO23 1RX.
If you are in the area then I urge you to pop along between 10am and 4.30pm and see what you may learn. I’ve been a couple of times now and found that its not just aimed at people with Yorkshire ancestors – so it is worth a visit where ever your ancestors came from.
I am already checking my tickets and planning my trip as I love attending these events for all the useful information that you can pick up from the likes of the family history society stands, genealogical suppliers and from the talks in the lecture area.
With even more exhibitors attending this year, the York Family History Fair is probably the largest event of its kind in England with many family history societies and companies attending each year. There is also lots of local history from the York area too.
Facilities include:
Free Talks from Expert Speakers
Exhibitors from all over the UK
Free Parking
Cafe with refreshments available all day
Fully accessible with lifts and ramps throughout
The show is organised by Discover Your Ancestors Magazine and is sponsored by TheGenealogist and S&N Genealogy Supplies.
Saturday 23rd June 2018 – 10am to 4.30pm
The Knavesmire Exhibition Centre, The Racecourse, York, YO23 1EX
This week I managed to knock down a couple of family history brick walls by keeping an open mind while doing the research.
The successful outcome that I want to write about here was with a General Register Office index. I had been at a loss as to why I couldn’t find the relevant entry for a birth. Very often by using more than just the one website, the difference in transcriptions between them can often allow you a breakthrough. Having used a number of the main subscription websites, however, I had still not found a likely candidate for the elusive person that I was researching.
I metaphorically took a step back and defocused from the narrow search that I was doing for the correct spelling of the person. I looked at the surname and thought: How could this be misspelled by a busy official?
For example Whitman could have been recorded as Witman, Wetman or a host of other spellings. Or the surname Perkin may have been entered with the more common name of Perkins – as I found out while researching someone for an up and coming article of mine. In the case I was looking for to trace a client’s family tree back a further generation, I had a surname which should have ended with a last letter of an ‘n’ but had been recorded with an ‘m’ at the end.
In both cases the transcription on the relevant websites could be said to have been correct as it faithfully reproduced what was to be found on the GRO Index page. In both cases the page from the index had been in handwriting, but I have also seen typographical errors in those that have been typed.
The errors that had momentarily thrown me had been made in the registration process, either when the name had been mistakenly taken down by the local registrar at the time, or when it had been copied at the General Register Office into the official quarterly list.
By thinking about how a spelling mistake could be hiding our lost ancestors, sometimes the answer jumps out at us!
Example of a GRO Index. Crown copyright
The lesson is to think laterally and not get hung up on a narrow thought process that says that this is how it should be written!
***
If you’d like to find out more about how to tease out your elusive English or Welsh ancestors then CLICK this link: www.FamilyHistoryResearcher.com/course
When you first start doing Family history research for British ancestors, It may appear to you to be a quite daunting task. There will be probably be frustration and elation often mixed in equal parts as you find a forebear and then lose trace of them again. There are so many avenues for you to go down and so many records to look at in Britain which means that, given time, you can probably get back on track and those ancestors that disappear may reappear later. Not being able to find a person can be the result of many things. The ancestor may just be hidden within the database because somebody has lost the record, or it has been damaged, or simply your ancestor’s details were mis-entered in the first place.
The best bit of advice that I can pass on is some that was given to me a number of years back. It is a recommendation that can be applied to any task, really.
“Tackle the subject of researching for your British ancestry by taking it in small bites at a time.”
Perhaps the first tools to use are:
Birth Certificates – these can provide you with parent’s names of an ancestor
Marriage Certificates that give you the father’s names for both parties
Census records which, as well as other information, furnish you with the birth places of ancestors and their ages
Parish Registers which will, with luck, supply a track for you to follow of baptisms, marriages and burials for your family.
In truth, all of the above records should be used together so that you can corroborate the details. A census may give you a place of birth different from the actual place found on the Birth Certificate because your ancestor, for some reason best known to themselves, wanted to claim a different place of birth from the actual town where they were born. Ages in census may have been given wrongly for a variety of reasons – not the least of which is that some did not really know!
It is vital to start your family tree research from the latest provable fact. This could be your parent’s details, your grandparent’s or perhaps your own birth certificate.
Now I realise that people that have been adopted, or for some other reason are not aware of their biological parent’s names or details will struggle with this. There is an article republished in the resources section of my website that can help you if you are in this position. Take a look at: Finding biological parents
Are you confused by what DNA testing can offer the family history researcher? I know that I have been!
Do you wonder how DNA test results can help you to break down your brick walls in your ancestor research? Or perhaps you are not sure what or who to believe?
I read an excellent article this week that I really think is worth drawing attention to. If you don’t already belong to Peter Calver’s LostCousins then you may not have seen this week’s LostCousins Newsletter
The article explains why we can’t afford to ignore DNA evidence in doing our research; what test you should consider taking; who should do the test and an independent opinion on which company to test with.
You will also learn what the DNA test can’t tell you; what you will find using DNA and how it could help you break down your brick walls.
I can’t recommend this piece more highly as it well written and easy to understand. This is not the first article that Peter Calver has written on this subject, so if you want some answers to the questions that many of us have about DNA and how it can be used in family history research then why not join his LostCousins membership? Standard membership (which includes the newsletter), is FREE.
If you join the LostCousins website and share your ancestors it can help you to find living relatives and so help you to discover more about your family tree. LostCousins say on their website that it ‘is all about bringing people together, not just people who share an interest in family history, but people with a shared interest in the same families, people who share the same DNA.’
If you want to find more cousins and get Peter Calver’s interesting newsletters read more at: https://www.lostcousins.com/
Many researchers ask “how do I find my ancestors in the records?” and then they may want to know “how can I use these records to build a picture of my ancestor’s story?”
A point to remember is that ancestors didn’t exist in isolation and a good strategy is to build up their life story by looking at the events and people that had an effect on their lives.
Families can be complicated entities with step fathers/step mothers and sometimes unmarried parties in the equation. You may find people that married then separate and even sometimes get back together. In my own family I have an ancestor who remarried his first wife, after a period of divorce, but I hadn’t appreciated all of the story until recently. The strands came together by reviewing various records that I had gathered at different times.
Over a period we may collect various diverse search results for an ancestor, but we may not see how they fit together to build a bigger picture. It is important, for this reason, that every now and again we go back and review what we have. Sometimes this can suggest places for us to continue our research to find the story of our forebears’ life.
While doing some research this week I noticed a fact appeared in three completely different records. It was a town name that I had not paid much attention to having previously assumed that it was of little relevance to my ancestor’s life.
Beaumaris, in Anglesey, was where a First World War Royal Engineer officer in my family tree had been posted as he awaited being demobbed. Kingsbridge camp was on the Welsh island and I had first seen it on his service record. From the pages of this document I had gathered that my R.E. officer was suffering from shell-shock and attending medical boards in Bangor. I overlooked the importance of the town as it seemed to me that it was simply a posting where he had been sent by the Army at the end of the war.
At a completely different research session, I had been looking at the time my ancestor spent living in Singapore and I had come across a Singapore newspaper website to aid me. Using the portal I had been able to find a snippet that gave the details of his marriage at the Presbyterian church in Singapore. In July 1921 he was reported to have wed Monica Mary.
The first thing that had struck me was I had not known that he had married this lady. In the WWI service record he had been married to a Mary Ellen, in Surrey, and family lore told me that he had been divorced from his first wife, then re-married her a few years later and they had then lived together in Singapore. No mention of this intervening marriage had been drawn to my attention.
The family stories also said that his first wife, Mary had been lost at sea while escaping from the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in the Second World War. None of this explained me finding a marriage in Singapore to a completely different woman!
Skip forward to another period of research and I was using the Outbound Passenger Lists in order to write an article for publication. While I had the online search page open, on a whim, I typed in the first wife’s name and found Mary’s passage out to Singapore with their young daughter in February 1926.
Then turning to the second wife, whom I wrongly assumed my subject had met in Singapore, I did a search for Monica to see if I could find her going out to Singapore in the first place. I discovered her leaving London in May 1921 bound for the Straits Settlements.
Another entry had Monica and her husband visiting the U.K. in 1925, the year before his first wife and child emigrated to the colony. While I was pondering all of this I noted the entry given on the passenger list for their last address in the United Kingdom. It was a street in Beaumaris, Anglesey!
Then the penny dropped. Monica was probably from Beaumaris in Wales. The R.E. camp where my ancestor had recuperated was also in Beaumaris.
I next turned to some research that I had done at The National Archives. While looking into something completely different I had taken the opportunity to order up the 1919 divorce papers for the first marriage to Mary. These revealed that he had still been a serving Royal Engineer at the time of the petition by his wife and that his address was given as… Kingsbridge Camp, Beaumaris.
So now, by drawing together various records obtained at different times, I had him posted to Beaumaris in the Service Records; Beaumaris in his divorce papers; Beaumaris as the address in the BT27 Passenger Lists where he and his second wife were visiting from Singapore in 1925.
A simple search of the 1911 census records for Monica (with her surname) in Beaumaris and I quickly found her family and could then research them back. With the review of my previous research and by now paying attention to the town that had popped up in several records, I am in a position to speculate some details to add to my ancestor’s family story.
I assume that while suffering from shell-shock and recovering from his war experiences in Anglesey he met Monica and fell in love. He first wife Mary filed for divorce, though not for adultery, but for the reason that he refused to return home to her in Surrey.
Demobbed my ancestor decided to try his luck in another part of the world and went out to Singapore. Within a year Monica followed and they married within months. In 1925 Monica and her husband visited her family in Beaumaris, but by the next year my ancestor’s first wife and child were on their way out to Singapore.
What happened to Monica? That is the next direction for this research to go. An article published in Singapore seems to point to her dying in 1925 but this, naturally, needs corroboration. Was she sick when they made their last visit to Wales? Perhaps a Singapore death records will reveal what she died of.
Family history research has a habit of opening up more questions just as you resolve some of the others. In answer to the question “how do I find my ancestors in the records?” and “how can I use these records to build a picture of my ancestor’s story?” my response is review what you already know. Check facts that you may have overlooked or discounted because you thought them irrelevant and see where they take you. Keep your eyes open as well as your mind.
Searching for clues to your ancestors’ lives?
Discover tips for breaking down your brick walls; learn techniques and tricks that good genealogists use to work their way around stumbling blocks and find records and resources to use in your research.
Here is your chance to take a one month trial of this online English/Welsh family history course! You’ll get 52 weekly modules delivered on your computer, so that you can follow them at your own speed and at the time that you want. And you are not locked in as you can cancel at any time!
Those that have already completed the course said:
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I was looking for some clues this week about which branch of a family to pursue, while researching someone’s family tree for them.
I did a quick trawl of the online offerings, to see if I could get some pointers as to which direction my research should go and which of two cousins to concentrate on.
We all get taught that we should NEVER take someone else’s research and add it into our own tree without verifying the information in the records.
I may, however, look to see what others may have found before me as a clue to which people I need to research in the primary records. But I always scan to see what sources they have added to their tree, to back up their research. If there are few records cited – or worse still, none at all – then my in built BS meter tends to go off in my brain.
Unfortunately, too many people don’t seem to approach ancestor research with a healthy dose of scepticism for what they have found online and so the web based family trees can be a great example of people’s fantasy being passed off as truth.
I was once bombarded by messages from someone who thought that doing genealogy was simple. They willy nilly grabbed people with the same names as their ancestors and completed their tree in no time at all. When I raised with them the subject of proof they became very annoyed with me. To them “it stands to reason” that X was the father of Y and that there was no need to waste our time proving it.
Sorry, that is so wrong!
I do think that it is acceptable to take a look and see if we can get some clues for our own research from what others have done, but sometimes I am speechless at what I find published in an online tree.
This week I found that someone had made public their family tree with a line going back to the eighteenth century. Supposedly, if you believed their tree, one of their female ancestors had been born in 1779, got married 8 years before she was born, had a son when she was 3 years old and then died in two different places!
Perhaps this was a work in progress and they were entering possible candidates into the tree before checking the records to verify if they had the right person. In this case it must, surely, have been obvious they were barking up the wrong tree. I just wonder how they were not embarrassed to have this nonsense publicly available for all to see?
Lesson from all this, for those new to family history research, don’t make your tree public if it contains daft speculation!
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My own English/Welsh family history course includes a module examining genealogical proof.
Compensated Affiliate Link to Amazon.co.uk used above.