Free Discover Your Ancestors Magazine Trial!

 

Discover Your Ancestors
Discover Your Ancestors Magazine

 

 

Today I have a very special offer for you.

Would you like a Family History magazine for free?
Are you looking for a fresh approach to researching your family history? Or are you keen to promote your family history services?

Whether you are long-standing or just starting out, whether you are advanced in your research, have reached early brick walls or work in this industry, Discover Your Ancestors magazine may help you along.

Discover Your Ancestors is packed full of family histories, case studies, UK and overseas features and advice on identifying those hard to find forebears.

Discover Your Ancestors magazine is now on its third annual edition in print, and is available at WHSmith stores around the UK or selected overseas premium newsagents or direct from the publisher here.

The magazine has also been running a monthly digital edition, to rave reviews. Priced at just £12 per annum, many loyal and engaged subscribers enjoy this digital magazine which is archived by issue in their very own members section of the magazine’s website.

But you don’t have to just take their word for it, or even take notice of those testimonials that are found on their website, you can try if for FREE!
I met these guys when they were on the next stand to me at Who Do You Think You Are? Live and I did this little video there.

So its a great pleasure that they are willing to offer my readers a free trial.  As they say in this email that I recently received recently:

We are inviting each and every one of your contacts to enjoy a FREE OF CHARGE 3 ISSUE TRIAL so they can find out for themselves what a good read it is.

Please ask your contacts and customers to write to us at: subs@discoveryourancestors.co.uk with  NOSEY01  in the subject line

and we will set them up with a free 3 issue subscription.

Fantastic!

.

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How To Break Down Brick Walls in Family History

Nick Thorne, The Nosey Genealogist, Interviews:

8 Professionals And Their Brick Wall Busting Tips For Researching English/Welsh Ancestors.

 

Break Down Your Family History Brick Walls
Family History Brick Wall

 

How do you break down a brick wall and find those elusive ancestors?

A problem that most of us have had; so I lined up eight experts and asked them to give you their top tips for carrying out English/Welsh family history research! The result is a  FREE download audio file that I am making available to you here.

Audio file
MP3 Audio File

These knowledgeable interviewees include practising professional genealogists, with years and years of experience to offer.

Yet others are from the very highest levels of the online data provider companies, like Ancestry and TheGenealogist.

Listen to the download and learn some plain tips that will simplify the often confusing business of researching English/Welsh ancestors. I am going to give you access to these eight professionals so that you can use their advice to break down several brick walls that you may have.

So who are these experts?

 

1. Anthony Adolph – Professional Genealogist, Author and Broadcaster starts of the recording with three tips that he thinks anybody researching their family tree should do. His advice will take you back to basics, but sometimes that’s what we all need to hear. So often we are far too keen to make leap forwards and forget the tried and trusted route.

 

Anthony Adolph, Professional Genealogist, Author and Broadcaster
Anthony Adolph, Professional Genealogist, Author and Broadcaster

 

2. The Family History Society Expert. I recorded these interviews at the Who Do You Think You Are? Live show 2014 where many top family historians gather together once a year.

Its here that the Society of Genealogists set aside a special space where family history experts sit at tables and offer an advice-surgery for members of the public who have brick walls. This next lady was one of those very experienced individuals chosen to give others her help. I managed to get her to give a quick couple of tips about listening to relatives and what use to make of photographs.

 

3. The Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives (AGRA) Member. What would the advice be from a professional genealogist practitioner?

Well as many serious professional genealogists belong to this association, I headed over to the AGRA stand and asked a member for his research tips. Points he brought up included the information on documents being only as good as that given by the informant and what to do about conflicting data. There is more to hear in the full interview that you can download here .

 

AGRA Member
Member of the Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives

 

4. Families in British India Society (FIBIS) Expert. In family history we often have to think a bit outside the box. Well have you considered that your missing ancestor had moved abroad? With 3 million Brits having gone out to India then if we have a missing forbear it could certainly pay us to take a look at the records from this part of the British Empire. Its not just soldiers, the list of people who went out to work there is long as we hear from this FIBIS expert.

 

5. Celia Heritage – Professional Genealogist, Author and Family History Teacher introduces us to an often under used set of resources in her piece: Death Records. She explains how to use these records to flesh out the bones of our ancestors lives.

Celia is an excellent and knowledgeable speaker and you can just hear the passion that she has for her subject as she dispenses some gems of advice in the free downloadable audio presentation. Its not just death certificates that Celia brings to our attention in this part of the recording!

 

Celia Heritage
Celia Heritage. Professional Genealogist, Author and Family History Teacher

 

 

6. Dr Ian Galbraith – The National Wills Index explains about one of the best single major sources for family historians when I asked him to talk about Wills and Administrations for this audio.

Ian  explains why wills can be an important resource with an average of 10 names per will and with half of them being different from that of the testator. Many people are surprised by the fact that all sorts of people left wills, but you won’t be when you have heard the full  interview.

 

Dr Ian Galbraith
Dr Ian Galbraith from The National Wills Index

 

 

7. Brad Argent – Content Director for Ancestry advises family historians to drill down for the information in the online databases in his contribution to the recording. Brad suggests we use the card catalogue to seek out data sets and then use the advance search facility of “exact”, “soundex” and “wildcards” when we are on this large data provider’s site. His advice is compelling.

 

Ancestry's BradArgent

 

8. Mark Bayley – Head of Online Content at TheGenealogist, a site that gives really fantastic value and a very wide range of data, introduces us to a great name-rich resource recently published by TheGenealogist, in association with The National Archives.

What is this important resource for England and Wales?

It is, of course, the Tithe collection.

Mark Bayley, Head of Content at TheGenealogist
Mark Bayley, Head of Content at TheGenealogist

I have been using this set recently to great effect with my own rural ancestors and so I have included a module in my Family History Researcher Guides about the tithes.

The beauty of this data is that it includes both sides of society, with landowners and tenants being recorded and giving names and addresses. As a pre-census data set it is hugely valuable to us! Listen to Mark explain about these exciting records in the  free recording you can download now by clicking the link below.

 

 

The advice given by my 8 expert interviewees can be listen to by downloading a FREE audio file to your computer here.

Now you may be asking why I am doing this for free?

Its because I want to introduce you to a set of guides that I have put together. A series of pdf modules that takes the information I gleaned at Who Do You Think You Are? Live and incorporated it, along with much more content into a year’s worth of weekly written guides.

There are extra contributions from various other professional experts who have penned some of the reports, as well as those modules written from my own extensive experience.

I am guessing that, if you have read this far, you are interested in English/Welsh family history and that you have hit at least one of the inevitable brick walls. The solution is to understand more ways to find your ancestors.

So if you would like to dramatically increase your knowledge then I think you will enjoy being a member of my Family History Researcher Guides. This is a 52 weekly series of guides written in an easily accessible form and you can take a two week trial for just £1 by going here:

www.FamilyHistoryResearcher.com/trialoffer.

But STOP! First go and download you free audio of the:

8 Professionals And Their Brick Wall Busting Tips For Researching English/Welsh Ancestors

I’ll include a link to my Family History Researcher Guides on the thank you page!

Nick Thorne
Join FamilyHistoryresearcher

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Findmypast’s customers uproar at new site

Findmypast’s customers seem to be telling them that they want to go back to the past website.

 

Findmypast logo

It is difficult to ignore perhaps the biggest story in the British isles family history world this week of a customer backlash being played out on social media and on the review websites such as http://www.reviewcentre.com and http://www.trustpilot.co.uk about  Findmypast.co.uk’s new website.

It even spilled over on to my Nosey Genealogist YouTube channel where an interview I did with Debra Chatfield at Who Do You Think You Are? Live got comments posted about, what Findmypast’s customers think of the new site.

While it may not be all of their subscribers, venting this anger, it would be fair to say that many of their customers are not impressed with the new site’s functionality and these are demanding a return to the old site.

 

Comments indicate that customers do not like the “new and improved platform”, some find it very slow to use and difficult to search for records. It would seem that these customers of DC Thompson Family History’s Findmypast do not like it, preferring the previous interface.

 

The facility to search for an address was not working properly this week, as I found out myself, though Findmypast promised to fix that.

It would seem, from the head of steam being built up, that many of the subscribers are threatening to walk away from Findmypast to other genealogical providers.

As someone who uses more than one website for my searches my immediate solution was to look up my census address query on the rival website of TheGenealogist, which also offers an address search not to mention carries a very substantial suite of data sets including all the census records, parish records and the recently released and very interesting Tithe Apportionments that I find fascinating in my ancestor research.

I was also interested to see in an email that I received on Friday from the Society of Genealogists that they are running a training session for Members, staff and volunteers of the SoG.

They say that As the changes are quite significant the Society has arranged some special training in using the new style search functions etc. Paul Nixon, UK Data Strategy with DC Thompson Family History has agreed to come to the Society to make a training presentation and explain how it all works now.

I don’t really understand why Findmypast has let the situation get to this point.

As a fresher on a Business Studies course, way back in the 1980s, I remember being taught in the first few weeks of my undergraduate course that companies that are Customer led are the only ones that will survive. Those businesses that are product led or led by technology often try to push their customers to accept what they think is best for them, and that this is a recipe for disaster.

Surely a company such as DC Thompson Family History will have people within it that understand this customer focus? Lets hope so.

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Tips for Researching Family History

 

At the largest Family history show in the world, Who Do You Think You Are? Live in London, I decided to ask the expert on the Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives for his tips on researching your family tree. I was looking for some material to include in a module of my courses on English/Welsh family history in which several experts advice will be collated for students.

As I’m feeling generous I’m going to share this piece with you for free here in this blog post today.

 

For those people who are starting to do family history, then one of the most important things is to take notice of anything that you are told by your relatives. Because, although the information may not be 100 percent true, there is always something that somebody will know that can help give you an idea as to where to go on and find other records.

It’s important that you afford the information in official documents with a certain level of importance. Although that information recorded is only as good as that given by the informant at the time. So beware that any information on a birth certificate, or a census record, can be wrong from day one because the person supplying it didn’t want the officials to know the real truth.

This can confuse people doing their family tree research. The best way of proceeding is to make sure that you look at every type of document available to you. So look at a civil registration certificate. Look at a parish register. Look at a census; try and get a will and look at anything else that will give you the full details relevant to that particular individual.

Doing your family history research that way you’re able to build up a fuller picture.

As you progress you will find that it becomes more complex and you’ll find that you may hit brick walls. You may find that you have conflicting information on an ancestor and that in some instances it’s going to be necessary for you to actually go along and work different lines of the family, investigate different individuals.

What you have got to do is make sure that you eliminate those people that aren’t part of your family. Its ever so easy to go down a wrong line because you haven’t been clear enough in making sure the family or the individual that you have is the right person. And sometimes that’s beyond the experience and the expertise of the average family historian and that’s where you need to talk to the professionals.

That’s where members of ARGA, The Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives can help because they are accredited researchers. They have proven their ability to do this type of family research and while they might not be able to find all the answers, they are better placed than many of us to do so.

The reason why even a professional may draw a blank is that if an ancestor didn’t want to be found in officialdom, then they wont be! Irrespective of how good you are and how through you are, this may sadly be the case. Having said that, however, you stand a better chance with using a professional because they perhaps know a little bit more of the overall number documents that they can use to do just that.

 

If you want to brush up your own skills in English/Welsh family research then give a thought to taking my English family history course by visiting www.FamilyHistoryResearcher.com

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Your Family Tree Magazine goes back to 1066 and beyond!

 

Your Family Tree Magazine issue141 Cover

I’ve been taking a look through my copy of Your Family Tree Magazine for this month.

Seems Adam Rees, the editor, and his team wanted to take their readers out of their comfort zone a little, by trying to help us take our family tree as far back as we can.

From page 20 they have a feature on Earliest Roots showing us how to extend our family tree to 1066 and beyond! For those of you who want to learn more about how to explore this fascinating facet of our pass time then I can highly recommend you take a look.

As YFT magazine says, it can be daunting searching for your family among early records, but as you’ll discover there are so many lines you can pursue, that you’ll soon find yourself engrossed in the detailed information they give on your medieval ancestors and beyond.

 

Also in this issue they continue their look at our families who were involved in WWI, showing us how to learn about their day-to-day actions, and discovering the bitter fighting that raged away from the Western Front, from Africa to Arabia, Greece to Gallipoli.

Then in their How-to-section they also reveal the best tips for using FamilySearch; why hiring a professional might be just what your research needs; how your ancestors used their leisure time; and where to find forebears in Dundee.

April 2014 Issue 141 is quite an edition to help find the ancestors in your family tree.



 

I had a quick chat with Adam at Who Do You Think You Are? Live and he told me what we can expect in the next few months from his magazine.

Check out the interview here and spot the moment at the beginning where I couldn’t quite remember what the magazine is called even though I read it each month!

It’s “Your Family Tree Magazine”, I do know that. Really I do…

 

 


Disclosure: Compensated affiliate links used in this post.

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Don’t neglect those Death Records in you Family Tree research

Here is the very knowledgeable Celia Heritage from Heritage Family History giving me an interview at Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2014.

I asked her about the often over looked Death Records as I knew she had written a very readable book on the subject: Tracing Your Ancestors Through Death Records.

Tracing Your Ancestors Through Death Records

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Ancestry tips and tricks for family history research

 

Many of us have used the Ancestry.co.uk site but how many of us know how to drill down deeper and find our ancestors in one of the 30,000 databases this website has?

At this year’s Who Do You Think You Are? Live I got some great tips from Ancestry’s Brad Argent about using the Card Catalogue and Advance Search for a more powerful hunt within the records.


 
Millions of Records, Millions of Answers. Ancestry.co.uk – Click here!
 
 


Disclosure: This is a compensated affiliate link.

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New Search Engine on Findmypast

 

More News from Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2014

Debra Chatfield, Brand Manager at Findmypast tells me about the new more powerful search engine on their website.

 

 Check out the records at Findmypast.co.uk . Click the banner below.


Disclosure: Compensated affiliate link above.

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News from Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2014. Tithe Records

Disclosure: Please note this post contains affiliate links.

 

NEWS from Who Do You Think You Are? Live

 

A great new resource has been launched by TheGenealogist at this year’s Who Do You Think You Are? Live show which I am really excited about. I’m talking about the Tithe records. Below is the information released by the team at TheGenealogist.

 

For the first time you will be able to search over 11,000,000 records and view the original documents online. The Tithe Records provide a unique view into our ancestral heritage by providing details of ownership and occupancy of land throughout England and Wales, revealing a wealth of information about people, places and landmarks in the Victorian era.

These pre-census records can allow you to further your research at the click of a button.

The Tithe Records are the perfect accompaniment to Census and BMD records and offer an extra piece in the genealogical jigsaw to give a valuable social and geographical insight into the lives of our Victorian ancestors.

The introduction of the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 meant records were taken, as with the Domesday Book, of the land ownership and occupancy, land use and sizes, and the rents to be paid. This affected everyone – from aristocracy to peasantry, from politicians to labourers all levels of the social hierarchy found their way into the Tithe Records to give us a fascinating snapshot of a period in English history.

This first phase at launch will reveal all tenants and landowners across England and Wales from over 11,000 parishes. This will provide the opportunity to discover whether your ancestors were landowners and how their land was put to use, or if tenants or occupiers, which plots of land they were living or working on.

The second phase of the project will link images of microfilm maps with the plot references. Launch due Spring 2014.

The third phase will digitise the large original maps in colour for each county at high resolution to enhance this unique resource. Launch due 2015.

Mark Bayley, Head of Online Content at TheGenealogist concludes: ‘This has been an exciting, major project for us. The records touch upon the lives of every family so they really are a must have for every family historian!’

 

 

The Genealogist - UK census, BMDs and more online

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WDYTYA?LIVE over for another year.

 

I’ve just completed three enjoyable days at the largest family history show that there is.

Met many like minded people, including so many of you lovely readers of this blog and several students of the FamilyHistoryResearcher course that I provide. The course is great for beginners and for people who have started and now want to know what other records and resources to use to find their ancestors. The feedback that I got at the show was that it was not just the beginner who benefited from my course, but those who were also further along the line in their research. Thanks for those who told me so.

It was so heart-warming that so many of you made the time to come to my stall to say hello. To the students of the course who told me how much they enjoyed receiving their weekly lessons, I thank you for the kind words.

 

Turning to my ad hoc poll to see whether I should keep the name The Nosey Genealogist, or change to something more descriptive and perhaps less informal, the straw poll was overwhelming stacked in favour of sticking with The Nosey Genealogist!

 

Shortly I’ll start uploading some of the videos that I took at the show, so watch this space.

 

WDYTYA

 

WDYTYA High shot down.MOV_000002035

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