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Researching family in Jersey, part 9: photos, newspapers and books

To wrap up the series, there’s a miscellany of other potential avenues that are worth exploring.

First of all, there are photographs. If you have family photos you will almost certainly have cursed the elderly relatives who put them in an album and then never got round to labelling who, what and where they were. But… there are some useful tricks to use.

First of all, scan the photograph at the highest resolution you can. If you can be sure the photo was taken and developed in Jersey, you may be able to identify the firm who developed it. A gentleman by the name of Richard Hemery has put years of work into this, and for some of the better known photographers his efforts will allow you to pin the photograph’s date down quite well.

Halkett Place, St Helier, JerseyThis particular photo is a neat example. Richard’s work tells us there were only two firms who put reference numbers on the front of prints, both operating in the 1930s. But there’s more: a high-res scan picks up the name Le Riche over the shop awning behind and left of the lady, and also makes the colonnade on the right clearer. That pins the location down to Halkett Place by the Central Market, and the date has to be after 1932, when Le Riche’s (a long-established island grocer) opened their shop there.

 

“Ah,” you say, “but I don’t have that depth of local knowledge”. But other people do. The Société Jersiaise run an online photographic archive: two of their members are currently going through the massive task of cataloguing every Jersey picture postcard in existence. Talk to them: they could have the information to fill in some gaps. Or use the libraries (see below)

In addition, there’s what the newspapers may have said. The first newspaper on Jersey was published in the late 18th Century, and there have been a number of different publications since, right down to the Jersey Evening Post (usually referred to just as the JEP) of today. The JEP has always been a very parochial paper in the better sense of the word: it reports everything and anything that goes on. If your relative was a prominent member of a local church or a schoolmaster or a farmer, it’s quite possible that they’d get a respectable tribute from the JEP when they passed away.

The central Library in Halkett Place has a very comprehensive collection of microfilmed newspapers – they’re up on the first floor. You need to book a reader – it is worth doing this in advance, particularly if you want the one that will print to paper. E-mail je.library@gov.je and they will sort things out.

While we are talking about libraries, there are collections of reference books at the Coutanche Library (the NoseyGenealogist will be releasing a film guide to what they have shortly) and smaller collections at both the Archive and the Central Library to supplement your knowledge of Jersey’s history and culture.

This is of necessity a scratch at the surface of family history research. I hope you’ve found it helpful. Happy hunting, and – À bétôt!

 

Guest blog by James McLaren from the Channel Islands Family History Society

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ConnectedHistories.org, a Usefull Tool For Research.

Here is a new resource that would seem to be quite a useful tool for doing historical research.

www.conectedhistories.org on screenwww.connectedhistories.org brings together several important resources to search from one place. I can see how it could be used to track down records and to also fill in some background knowledge for people researching their ancestors, even though some of the records are not specifically aimed at family historians.

Including more than two billion words that have been recorded in documents ranging from the 1500s and the start of the 20th century, it has been created by the universities of Hertfordshire, London and Sheffield, taking them 18 months to complete.

While it doesn’t provide online access to any new records, it does allow a researcher to make connections
between multiple data sets that were previously only available separately. One of its good points is that it
makes it easier to track down the names and locations of people who are in records and who, previously,
would have needed to search for using keywords on the websites that it now accesses.

Connectedhistories intends to grow with a major update scheduled for later in the year when the British
Library will upload 65,000 books and thousands of 19th century pamphlets. Currently, with a single search, you gain access to… British History Online, British Museum Images, British Newspapers 1600-1900, Charles Booth Archive, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, John Strype’s Survey of London Online, London Lives 1690-1800, the Origins.net and The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online 1674-1913.

While some of the providers are subscription sites, you do get access to brief extracts from them without
needing a subscription and so this is a useful feature. I shall be looking forward to the update later in the year from Connectedhistories.org.

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Researching family in Jersey, part 8: Military Records

Being rather close to the continent as it is, Jersey has had more than its fair share of unwelcome visitors. The French invaded in 1781 and the brave Major Pierson beat them back but died before the end of the battle: the artist John Singleton Copley painted the scene (some years after the event) and the resulting picture is one of Jersey’s iconic images.

 

The years that followed this were uncertain ones, and the uncertainty became worse after the French Revolution. There was a real concern that the French would try again. But at the start of the 1800s, General George Don was appointed as Jersey’s Governor-General.

 

General Don put in place a massive programme of fortification works and new roads, and alongside that he carried out two censuses in 1806 and 1815 to track where the able bodied fighting men were. In addition to this, the censuses recorded the sizes of the households and the number of women, girls and under-aged boys.

 

Transcripts of both censuses are kept at the Archive. They were originally transcribed in the original format, names by parish and vingtaine, but there is also a single combined list of names for the 1815 Census. It gives an indication of the position of the listed man of the household and whether he was an ordinary soldier, or a drummer, or providing a horse.

 

Alongside the local militia forces, the British army maintained a significant garrison in Jersey right up to the Second World War. Its main sites were at Elizabeth Castle and Fort Regent, and regiments rotated in and out regularly. The Army doesn’t maintain a single definitive list of which regiments served when in the Jersey garrison, but there are partial lists compiled by CIFHS members in the Archive. There are also a small number of baptism, marriage and burial records which were kept specifically by the garrison rather than the parish of St Helier – and these may be worth a look.

 

Nearly at the end. The next post looks at what you can get from books, newspapers and photographs – until then,  à bientôt!

 

Guest blog by James McLaren from the Channel Islands Family History Society

 

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More Data Released by TheGenealogist.co.uk

I like to keep you informed about new releases in the British Isles family history niche and so today I was looking to see what was new at TheGenealogist.co.uk.

Of interest to me was the fact that they have added over 3,000 individuals to their Parish Transcripts for Devon, expanding their coverage and bringing the total to over 66,000 individuals. The date ranges are different for baptisms, marriages and burials and are:

Baptisms: 1594 – 1944
Marriages: 1538 – 2009
Burials: 1593 – 2009

For those of you researching other parts of the UK, I also noticed that they have recently released hundreds of thousands of other parish record transcripts, for several counties of England, which has got to be good for those of us trying to get back before 1837 in England & Wales.

While for family historians, who are looking to do some research in the opposite direction and trying to find ancestors later than the 1901 census, TheGenealogist.co.uk has now launched the first county of the 1911 Census on their site. They say that their colour images are of a higher quality and higher resolution than those that have been available online before, so this could be interesting when looking at the handwriting of our actual ancestors.

In a recent news update, that I had from them, I see that they are now also making available pre-1841 census records and various Scottish Census records for 1851. The pre-1841 census in question is for Marylebone in London for both 1821 & 1831. The details only include the surname of the head of household and street name, unlike the later census. None the less, this could be of great help to some researchers trying to find their ancestors. To search these new records, simply go to TheGenealogist.co.uk, log in and select the London census from the research view and then change the year to 1821 or 1831. (Disclosure: I am a Compensated Affiliate of The Genealogist.co.uk)

Yet another data set, announced by the site, is the release of the Australian transportation records. These records take the form of transcripts, but with access to images of The Convict Transportation Registers 1787-1867. Covering details of over 123,000 of the estimated 160,000 convicts who were transported to Australia during the 18th and 19th centuries, the records mainly include those convicted in England, Wales and Scotland, but also include a small number of Irish convicts.

The database also includes soldiers who had been court-martialed and sentenced to transportation. These ‘soldier convicts’ may have been convicted in various British colonies, including the West Indies, Canada, India, and Pakistan. You’ll find these records in the British & International section of The Genealogist.co.uk’s research view.

The Genealogist - UK census, BMDs and more online

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Tracing Living Relatives

I have had two requests this week, from different people, asking me how do they trace a “lost” relative.

I am making an assumption that they are both reasonably certain that the person is still alive. They have probably checked the index to death registers to make sure that this is the case and that the person in question hasn’t passed away.

If you are in this position, but haven’t ascertained if your relative has died then the first thing to do is to take a look at the U.K. Death Record Indexes. These can be found online, up to 2005, on sites such as Ancestry.co.uk, TheGenealogist.co.uk and GenesReunited.co.uk ,while FindMyPast.co.uk has them up to 2006.

If you don’t find them in these databases then next you need to search between 2006 and the present. The bad news is that these records are not online. Here is some information published on the direct.gov.uk website that I have copied below for its usefulness if you are not confining yourself to web based research:

“Copies of the indexes can no longer be purchased but a complete set, including ‘Births, Deaths and Marriages from 1837 – 2008’, ‘Overseas from 1761 – 2008’, ‘Civil Partnerships from 2005 – 2009’, ‘Adoptions from 1927 – 2009’, and the provisional indexes for ‘Births and Deaths from 2009 to June 2010′, are available at:

  • Manchester City Library
  • Birmingham Central Library
  • Bridgend Reference and Information Library
  • Plymouth Central Library
  • City of Westminster Archives Centre
  • London Metropolitan Archives
  • The British Library*

These locations get updates for you to view in person. This is expected to continue until free, online access can be provided.

* Please be aware that customers will need to undertake a pre-registration process. Two forms of identification showing a signature and proof of address will be needed to gain entry into this location.”

So, assuming that you have not found a death, then the next thing I would do is to look at using 192.com. It can be a useful start in tracking down someone still living.

A cousin of mine was able to trace another of our cousins using this site with just the lost person’s names and the fact we knew they had lived in Southampton. It does involve you having to contact several people with the same name to try and rule them out.

Finally, a good guide to tracing living people is this one from the British Library.

http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/offpubs/electreg/traceliv/tracing.html

Hope you have luck with your search,

Nick

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Average London Property in 1910 Valued at Just £14,000, Compared to £430,500 Today

Recently I have seen that Ancestry.co.uk has launched on-line the Land Tax Valuations from 1910 London. Now we all know that property goes up and down, with most home owners expecting that the long term trend is up. Well this data collection reveals that the historic values of some of the capital’s most famous streets and landmarks from just over a century ago and no surprises that they were lower then than they are today.

Originally the records were compiled in 1910, from across the UK as part of David Lloyd George’s 1910 Finance Act and later refereed to as the ‘Domesday Survey’. The reason behind the government gathering this information was as a means to redistribute wealth through the assessment of land value.

What do the records contain for family historians? There is a listing of the owners and occupiers of the properties and it includes the address, value and annual rental yield for the properties in London in the early 20th century.

The average 1910 property could be purchased for a price tag of just £14,000, it would seem – almost 3,000 per cent less than today.

Of particular interest are the values of famous landmarks included in the collection. The Bank of England; worth a mere £110,000 in 1910, the Old Bailey; worth just £6,600, and Mansion House; which contrastingly was valued at an impressive £992,000. St Paul’s Cathedral also features, but without a valuation as it is listed as ‘exempt’ from tax.

Perhaps more surprising is that the media-hub Fleet Street, was then home to numerous newspapers from outside of London including the Liverpool Courier, Yorkshire Evening News and the Newcastle Chronicle! A property on Fleet Street cost an average of £25,000 in 1910, compared to £1.2 million today.
The records provide us with a valuable snapshot of the ownership of land at the beginning of the 20th century. It may help those with ancestors who appear in the collection to find out more about their forebears respective financial situations and the lives they led a hundred years ago.

Ancestry.co.uk International Content Director Dan Jones, whom I interviewed recently at Who Do You Think You Are? Live about their website, comments: “These records are especially useful as a census substitute for people tracing their London ancestors who may not have been captured in the England and Wales 1911 Census.

“The collection offers a fascinating insight into our capital at the beginning of the 20th century – a time when Britain was on the verge of major social, political and economic change.”

The collection complements the extensive census records, ranging from 1841 to 1901, already online at Ancestry.co.uk.

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Family Tree Researchers See More Online Parish Records

I have noticed recently that there seems to be more Parish Records coming online for those of us researching our English Family Tree. Welcome news indeed for family historians that find it difficult to travel to the areas where their ancestors came from.

Websites such as Freereg.org.uk are aiming at putting more than a million transcripts on the web thanks to a programme of digitisation by the Parish Register Transcription Society (PRTSoc). Until recently this society has only ever made its transcripts available on CD, so this is good news.

In partnership with a technology firm called Frontis Archive Publishing, the first batch of transcripts have been uploaded from more than 300 parishes across 17 English counties.

To search the indexes cost you nothing. To view an entry is one credit and 10 credits can be bought for £2 with a sliding scale if you want to purchase more. The proceeds are going towards funding further transcription and should they end up with a surplus, then this will be given to the mental health charity Rethink.

While I am glad to see better access to transcript from the parish records there are some questions in my mind. We all know that transcriptions are no substitute for the original. Good family historians are taught to always go and look at the source material to make sure that no errors have crept into the transcribed record.

Other things to be wary of is who made the transcription that the index is based upon? Is the record a complete one without any significant gaps? Has the information been checked against Bishop’s transcripts and Licence records?

But, in spite of this, the fact that more Parish Records are finding their way online is wonderful news for those of us researching our English Family Tree.

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Starting Your Family Tree – Collecting Personal Data

The favored rule of genealogy is to begin with yourself.  Work from the known to the unknown, gathering evidence each step of the way.

Next, gather information from your immediate family . The elders do not live indefinitely regardless of health or age and it is important to record everything that they can remember.

Whenever possible, conduct a one-on-one interview.  Let people know that you are coming , as well as the type of information in which you are interested .  With permission, use recording equipment.  Take accurate and clear notes .  Prepare for your interview by making a checklist of questions to remind you to ask the three key  questions:  who, where, and when . These questions will increase your genealogy know how and family tree research .

However, be prepared to follow leads from the person you are interviewing .  There are sure to be challenges in the process ; beflexible with your interview style and be open to the discussion and the stories that follow . When it is inconvenient to interview a relative personally , write a letter that is personal and conversational in nature .  If the communication goes unanswered, a telephone call may be necessary .  Writing may be difficult for an elderly person who might be interested in sharing information.  If this is the reason , a phone call might be more productive.

It is important to recognize that not everyone will be as interested or excited about family history and genealogy .
Use photos as a aid .  Often pictures refresh the memory, and unlock bits and pieces of family information long forgotten.  

Assure your relatives that you will be careful of the material loaned to you .  Respect the information they give to you.  Often relatives are reluctant to lend a family heirloom , so be prepared to photograph items whenever they cannot be removed from the premises .

Offer to share your research .  Keep your word .  After entering compiling data on  a family history sheet and pedigree chart , send  a copy to the person who has kindly given you   the facts .

Be  certain to ask if there is bible in the family and find out where it is situated .  Family bibles may contain facts  about   marriages, births and deaths carefully recorded on pages within.

enquire if others in your family has researched genealogy . If so, determine how you can obtain a copy

Family heirlooms often contains useful information :

  • Names and places are printed on the backs of old pictures .
  • Written messages on the inside of a book commemorating a birthday or a vacation .
  • Family scrapbooks that contain historic newspaper obituaries and articles , concert programs , plays,  and graduations .
  • Engraved silver.

There are an endless variety of family artifacts :

  • Certificates and other family records – birth baptism, confirmation , marriage record ,  death and burial , wills, lawsuits . 
  • Adoption records
  • Diaries
  • Funeral cards
  • School Report  

Develop a method to organize your research . Organizing all of this material is difficult if you don’t have a method .  You will want to create a filing system using both electronic and traditional techniques.  Use binders or folders with the surname as the label, keeping items relating to that surname together. When you have time , peruse each folder or binder carefuly, extracting relevant information.

Make sure to compare your electronic files to your paper files .

Don’t forget to backup your material in another location .  Many priceless family memorabilia have been destroyed by natural disasters , as well as by the apathy of others who did not know they were handling did not know the value of the irreplacable family artifacts . 

 

 

 

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Bankrupt Ancestors in Your Family Tree!

We all know that in today’s new economy people are getting themselves into debt. Worse still, for some, is the prospect of going bankrupt. It may seem that bankruptcy is a modern phenomena, well it isn’t. Getting into debt was also a common problem for our ancestors as well. As we all love a skeleton in the cupboard, just how can we find out if one of our family has had the problem to face back  in the Britain of the past? It would seem that we may be able to find out more online.

In my research into my family tree I remember chancing on some family notes that, on face value, seemed to identify one of my ancestors as having been a partner in a business enterprise that had failed. To start with I had had no inkling that my forebear, in question, had even been a merchant, so to learn that his enterprise had eventually hit the rocks was an interesting nugget of information in itself. As a bookseller, myself, and having read the Charles Dickins novel called Little Dorrit, which you will no doubt know is set in within a debtor’s prison, I wanted to find out if my own ancestor had faced being declared bankrupt.

In England, Bankruptcy goes all the way back to a statute of Henry VIII in 1542. The 1571 Bankruptcy Act brought about the idea that a bankrupt person would be able to settle their debts, by distributing what remaining assets they had, through independent commissioners. Up until 1705  the unfortunate debtor could never be discharged from bankruptcy and so the stigma would remain with them for ever!

Legally, Bankruptcy is a process in which a court official assumes charge of a qualifying debtor’s property so that a distribution can be made to the creditors of the debtor in a proportion to the sum that they are owed.

Only in the year 1869 was it that individuals who were not undertaking a business  of some sorts were able to become bankrupt. Before this date, ordinary people were known as being insolvent instead. These souls faced being sent to debtor’s prison and were not released until they had found a way to pay off their creditors. Bankruptcy, as such, applied strictly to people who were traders, that is those who bought and sold goods, or who worked some materials into things that they then sold.

District bankruptcy courts were first established outside of London from 1842. Then their jurisdiction passed on in 1869 to the County Courts. In the capital city the London Court of Bankruptcy was set up in 1869, before being absorbed into the High Court of Justice in 1883. Should you wish to find details of what’s available for you to search then I recommend taking a look at Access to Archives at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/

Independent assessors, known as Commissioners, would determine if a debtor was eligible for bankruptcy or not. If they were satisfied that bankruptcy could take place, then they would publish a notice in the London Gazette declaring the debtor bankrupt. Also posted would be a list of potential creditors along with the dates set for meetings. The London Gazette’s archives are easily searched today on-line at www.london-gazette.co.uk. This is a fantastic resource  for any family historian hot on the trail of a bankruptcy. You are able to search the archives by date and name, then view a pdf image of the pages that your results have found. The London Gazette has been published since 1665 with a regular publication of bankruptcies stretching back to 1684 and also 1712 for insolvent debtors. Scottish notices can be found in the Edinburgh Gazette at : www.edinburgh-gazzette.co.uk

Family historians can locate case files for English bankruptcies at The National Archives in Kew, while Scottish sequestrations are to be found at The National Archives of Scotland. Unfortunately, for us, the majority of case files for England have not survived, but those that have are indexed on TNA’s online catalogue.

Other resources to consider are journals that published similar notices to the gazettes. These will include The Times; The Gentleman’s Magazine; Perry’s Bankrupt & Insolvent Gazette (1828-1861) and Perry’s Bankrupt Weekly Gazette (1862-1881). If you are looking for notices of bankruptcies in the County Court, then you will probably need to turn to local newspapers for the area in question. The British Library would be the place to look for these. Now we are also able to search contents of newspapers at http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs.

Insolvent ancestors can be an interesting topic of research. Remember, however, that their hardship carried much more stigma than it does today. In modern times we can go into debt, declare ourselves bankrupt, or wipe out a huge chunk of our debt with the alternative Individual Voluntary Arrangement IVA. And yet none of us lives in the fear of being incarcerated in the debtor’s prison in the 21st century.

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Military Records in Family Tree Research

With Remembrance Sunday just passed yesterday, I guess many of you may have turned your minds, like I did, to where can we find our ancestors who fought in the wars and conflicts that have taken place.

It seems, rather sadly, that it is easier to find records for British service personnel that died in action than the survivors. There is the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, local war memorials and rolls of honour, local newspaper archives amongst other places to find “The Glorious Dead”.

If, like me, you had a father who served in the Merchant Navy in the Second World War, then you can find the details of merchant seamen’s medal cards at the National Archives documents online.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/seamens-medals.asp

The official journals of the the British Government, the London, Edinburgh and Belfast Gazettes are great places to start looking for promotions, awards of gallantry medals and honours and the details of the commissioning and promotions of officers in the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.

Service Records are more difficult to find. A large number of WWI records have been lost to bombing in the Second World War, but as officer’s records were not stored in the same place, you have a better chance of uncovering these. To find a soldier requires the researcher to know the regiment and service number of their ancestor. A tip I read in the Your Family Tree Magazine last month  (Issue 96 November 2010) was that as most service men were awarded at least one medal then the name indexes to the medal rolls are a good place to start researching.


Disclosure: Compensated Affiliate.

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