New Video Tutorial for English & Welsh family history course

I’ve added some new videos into my online course. You may be interested to read about it here:

 

familyhistoryresearcher.com

 

The Family History Researcher Academy has added another bonus video tutorial into its online English & Welsh family history course.

Now included is a video module that joins with several other short videos to compliment the printed pdf lessons of the course.

The theme of the latest addition to the study material is tracing back to the English or Welsh ancestor from a forebear that emigrated before Victorian times. With so many people sailing away from England and Wales to start new lives in places like North America, Australia, New Zealand and other parts of the world, the tutorial identifies some of the records that you could use to find them in the mother country, pre-1837.

 

Not just for researchers with ancestors who left the country as the new content is also of great use to people whose ancestors stayed. It reviews some of the resources to use when you are researching back further than the 1847 census, or the introduction of civil registration in England and Wales and that is the majority of us!

 

Meanwhile, the weekly downloadable pdf modules continue to be delivered in an online release within a private membership area. These lessons are focused on revealing the resources and records to use when researching your ancestors from England and Wales so that you can break down brick walls more easily.

 

Online English & Welsh family history course

Family History Researcher Academy Online English & Welsh family history course

 

This family history course, having been written from a practical point of view, includes contributions from professional genealogists, online data experts and by its compiler Nick Thorne. Nick has experience of researching ancestors for private clients and of working on various projects for one of the leading British genealogical research websites, including compiling case studies that are published in a number of the U.K. family history magazines.

 

 

What others are saying about the English/Welsh family history course:

“Thank you for your detailed study of English/Welsh research. I have done a lot of English research, yet much of what you have sent is stuff that people don’t know, so thank you very much for your diligence in putting this together.” S. Johnston

 

And this the most recent testimonial:

“Great series. Will be reading them again as I work on my English ancestors.” J. Gill

 

 

The Family History Researcher Academy is available now as a monthly, or as a one off payment.

https://www.familyhistoryresearcher.com/course

 

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Tracing An English Family Tree Before 1837

When you are tracing your ancestors in the British Isles there is a rich seam of information on the internet until we get back to 1837. This is the year when civil registration began and the state took over the registration of its citizens vital records.

Online-Old-Parish-Records

Many newcomers to English and Welsh family history are amazed at how easy it is to go to one of several websites, pay a subscription (or buy some credits) and begin finding records of ancestors with relative ease. Lulled into a false sense of security, we begin to think that all the information that we will ever need to find, for our family tree research, is going to be accessible online. But soon you find that quite a small percentage of all the genealogical records, that there are, actually make it on to the net.

So what are the other records that family historian with English or Welsh ancestry need to go hunting for? How about wills; manorial records; the many types of occupational records; various military service records; or, if like me you had a merchant seaman in the family, then the merchant navy’s records? This is just a short list, there are more!

What About Research Before 1837.

Once you have been able to get back as far as you are able to do, using the census entries and Birth Marriages and Death records, you will now need to turn your attention to Parish records – these date back to 1538 and a time when Thomas Cromwell, Chief Minster to Henry VIII, ordered that every wedding, baptism and burial should be recorded. Historically, England and Wales was divided into about 11,000 parishes. Your research will need to be in the Parish Registers relating to the place where your ancestor lived, in order to find out as much information on your forebears line in that parish.

Where should you look for parish registers? The answer is that the original will normally have been microfilmed and stored in the local County Record office. True that there are a few parishes where the registers are still with the incumbent minster; but the majority are now in the safe keeping of the relevant record office. An alternative, to looking at images of the original record is, if you have access to the web to go and look at the websites that offer transcripts of Parish Register for you to search. Remember, however, that a good genealogist will always understand that a transcription is secondary data only. It is an indication of information for you to follow up and so you do need to then go and confirm the details by looking for the original source. The reason is that errors may possibly have been made by the person making the transcription and you don’t want to allow those errors to get into your own family tree, now do you?

While English and Welsh parish records stretch back as far as 1538, not all will have survived the ravages of fire and flood, so don’t expect to be able to sail back as far as this date! The earlier records were recorded on paper, but from 1558 onwards the more durable parchment (made from sheepskin) was used in preference. Even so, very few parish record survive before the 1600s.

From 1598, annual copies were made and sent to the local bishop. Called Bishops’ Transcripts (or Register Bills in East Anglia), these make a good substitute for lost original records, and occasionally contain information omitted from the registers themselves. These Bishop’s Transcripts will often be in a better condition and also more legible than the original parish register and they can be found in the county record offices. While the older records were, in theory, supposed to have had copies made, it is believed that some never managed to be copied and others have been lost over time.

Family tree researchers need to be aware that there can be gaps in Parish Registers between 1553 and 1558 when Henry VII’s daughter Mary Tudor, a Catholic, was on the throne. Also there is the so called “Commonwealth gap” between 1642 and 1660 in the English Civil War and under Oliver Cromwell’s protectorate.

There is so much to learn in this area that I’ll be posting a second article on tracing your English and Welsh family tree before 1837 shortly.

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