Family History Matters

Masonic Records for Family Historians

2009-05-07T17:59:00.022+01:00

The annual returns, membership registers and other information at the Library and Museum of Freemasonry in London are organised by Lodge or Chapter name and number.
If you have the Lodge name and number you will be able to take advantage of the genealogical research service, which provides a brief summary of a Mason's career at no charge.

However if you do not know the name and number of a lodge, the excellent staff there will still help you but make a charge of £30.00 per name.

Once you obtain the Masonic career report, you can visit the Library and Museum to see the documents and associated information. You will need a readers ticket (usual identification required) and be sure to make an appointment beforehand. For data protection reasons, documents from the 1930's onwards are not available for public access.

Tour Times - Monday to Friday

When the Grand Temple is not in use there are up to 5 tours per day at 11am, 12noon, 2pm, 3pm and 4pm. Each tour starts in the Library and Museum. Visitors are asked to note that photographic ID may be required to be shown before the tour commences.

The United Grand Lodge of England
http://www.ugle.org.uk/

The Library and Museum of Freemasonry ( Family History Page)
http://www.freemasonry.london.museum/family-history.php

The Grand Lodge of Scotland
http://www.grandlodgescotland.com/

Grand Lodge of Ireland
http://www.irish-freemasons.org/

Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland
http://www.grandorangelodge.co.uk/

Family historians with an interest in Freemasonry in Buckinghamshire and in particular Amersham are very lucky! The Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies in Aylesbury has a wealth of material from Carrington Lodge No. 2421 of Amersham and later Marlow deposited under Reference D188

Centre for Buckingham Studies,
County Hall, Walton Street, Aylesbury, Bucks. HP20 1UU
Archives: 01296 382587 archives@buckscc.gov.uk
Local Studies: 01296 382250 localstudies@buckscc.gov.uk
http://tinyurl.com/rykpym

Archives: Tues-Fri 9am-5.15pm; Sat 9am-3.45pm; Sunday and Monday closed
Local Studies: Tues, Wed, Fri 9am-5.15pm; Thurs 9am-8pm; Sat 9am-4pm; Sunday and Monday closed
On Saturdays no documents produced in the Archives search room 12pm-2pm

We recommend telephoning the Centre in advance of any visit to check specific opening hours, as there may be times when emergency closures are required.

Returns of Members of Freemasons Lodges 1939 – 1968
Found in Quarter Sessions Records Ref: Q/RSM 1-11

The Records of Carrington Lodge No. 2421 of Amersham later of Marlow
Ref. D188/ 1 - 17

Minute Books 1892 – 1983 D188/ 1-8
Summonses to Meetings 1952 – 1968 D188/2
Committee Minute Book 1961 -1968 D188/3
Lodge of Instruction Minute Book 1934 – 1966 D188/4/1-7
Declaration Books 1892 -1940 D188/5/1-2
Record Book 1892 – 1940 D188/6
Signature Books 1892 – 1984 D188/7/1-5
Miscellaneous Items

Documents may not be reproduced without the written permission of the Lodge Secretary.

New Military Cemetery at Fromelles

2009-05-05T08:49:00.003+01:00

In May 2008, after several years of painstaking research and investigation, five burial pits dating from the First World War were identified at Pheasant Wood, near Fromelles in northern France. The pits, which have lain undisturbed for more than 90 years, are believed to contain the remains of between 250 and 400 British and Australian soldiers, buried behind German lines after the Battle of Fromelles in July 1916.

The British and Australian governments have asked the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to oversee the operation to recover the remains and to create a new military cemetery at Fromelles for their reburial. The work begins in May 2009 and will be completed by July 2010.

http://www.cwgc.org/fromelles/

Convict Transportation to Australia

2009-05-02T18:46:00.003+01:00

The State Library of Queensland has just re-released the British Convict Transportation Registers Database (over 123,000 convicts sent to Australia between 1787 and 1867).

We have changed the underlying software as the original software did not cope adequately with the amount of traffic we experienced - our new system is much better equipped to cope with demand.

A new feature of the database is the ability for researchers to post comments on a chosen convict's record. This comment field is a great way for researchers to share their notes on a convict's life.

To write a comment simply find your convict on the database, click on the link under "Don't have a login?" and then signup for a "One Search Guest" account.

http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/info/fh/convicts

Missouri Death Certificates, 1910 – 1958

2009-04-30T16:11:00.004+01:00

The Missouri Death Certificate Database, containing death records created after 1910 and over 50 years old, makes that information available online through a searchable index that links to a digitized image of the original death certificate.

The index can be searched by first name and last name, county, and by year and month. Once a name is selected, a digitized image of the original certificate can be retrieved.

This is an ongoing project and additional records will be added as they are transcribed and imaged. If the image of the certificate is not yet available researchers can request a photocopy of the certificate by contacting the Archives Reference Desk . For death certificates less than 50 years old please contact the Missouri Bureau of Vital Records.

If you have questions or comments about these records, please contact the Missouri State Archives at archref@sos.mo.gov.

http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/deathcertificates/

More British Newspapers Digitised for later this year

2009-04-30T16:03:00.004+01:00

1.1 million pages are being digitised from 18^th and 19^th century news, building on previous projects to enable access to a virtual library containing some 4 million digitised pages of important national, regional and local newspapers. It will open up to diverse communities the first three centuries of newspapers throughout the British Isles.

The project's 1.1 million pages will be taken from:

regional and local newspapers from the 19th (and some from the 18th) century
19th century continuations of 18th century London newspapers in the Burney collection
specialist newspapers on themes of Reform and Politics, Religion, and Satire

The primary focus, some 75% of the project, will be on regional and local titles predominantly from the 19th century but also including some 18th century titles. This will complete the geographic coverage of areas that were under-represented in the earlier projects.

http://tinyurl.com/NewsDigitProject

Catholic Order/Association of Foresters - Massachusetts

2009-04-24T08:59:00.008+01:00

The Irish Ancestral Research Association

Who Were the Foresters?
In 1879, a group of Irish immigrants founded the Massachusetts Catholic Order of Foresters to provide life insurance benefits for its members. The organization grew from one small group in Boston to branches in cities and towns throughout the state. By 1893, the ninety-five Forester Courts spread throughout Massachusetts included several German Courts. Women were admitted to the Foresters in 1894. By 1930, there were 60,000 members of the Foresters in Massachusetts. There was also at least one Court in Rhode Island. The Massachusetts Catholic Order of Foresters was renamed the Catholic Association of Foresters in 1960. The Foresters still exists as a fraternal life insurance society. TIARA has been granted ownership of Massachusetts Catholic Order of Foresters (MCOF) records for the purpose of preserving the history of this organization and making it available to researchers.
What Do the Foresters Records Contain?
Each prospective Forester applying for coverage completed an application. The application included personal data, family information and a physical examination. Subsequent death benefit disbursements named beneficiaries. Any additional correspondence regarding beneficiaries was also included in the Foresters Mortuary Record. This material reveals a wealth of information about family structure, health, mortality, mobility, and occupations of predominantly Irish immigrants and their descendants who settled in Massachusetts.
Index to members death claims:
http://tiara.ie/forestersA.php

*You must be a member of TIARA to obtain the original documents

Grove Street Cemetery - New Haven - Connecticut

2009-04-24T08:40:00.005+01:00

14,000 Burial Records Online. You will need to register before you search

Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven Connecticut A National Historic Landmark

In 1997 the Department of the Interior added the Grove Street Cemetery to the National Register of Historic Places.

Three years later the Department declared the cemetery a National Historic Landmark, the first cemetery so designated in New England, because "this site possesses national significance in commemorating the history of the United States of America."

http://www.grovestreetcemetery.org/

Jewish Ancestry Database Expanded

2009-04-21T08:47:00.005+01:00

Popular British Jewish Database Grows to 40,000 Records

SALT LAKE CITY—FamilySearch expanded its Knowles Collection—a free popular database of Jewish records hailing from the British Isles. The collection builds upon work commenced by the late Isobel Mordy—a well-known historian of the Jews of the British Isles.

Mordy was a retired mathematician and used a complex code to link Jewish United Kingdom families in her research. Her work yielded 8,000 names and has been very popular for Jewish family history researchers with British ancestry.

“The complexity of the code Mordy used to index her research is daunting even to the most experienced researcher,” said Todd Knowles, author and manager of the Knowles Collection and a British Reference consultant for the famous Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. It took Knowles a few years, but he ultimately managed to transcribe the records from Mordy’s work into a more easily searchable genealogy database.

The great advantage of the Knowles Collection is that it links together electronically tens of thousands of individual Jews into family groups. Knowles has since expanded Mordy’s collection of 8,000 names to a collection of over 40,000.

“The records come from over 100 individual sources,” noted Knowles. “That saves the researcher a lot of time and travel.”

Some of the record sources were actively maintained until the mid 1980s, so many people living today will be able to find their relatives from recent memory in the collection. The newly added names come from many types of records—censuses; probate records; synagogue birth, marriage, and death records; biographies; and more.

Perhaps the most interesting records added recently include over 200 Jewish Welsh marriages from a community in the city of Cardiff, original synagogue records, and patron-submitted records. Some of the families tie into the work of Malcolm Stern’s The First American Jewish Families, which includes families who had English ancestry.

The collection can be accessed at FamilySearch.org on the Jewish Family History Resources page. It is available to download for free as either a GEDCOM or PAF file. Individuals can add their own records to the collection by contacting the collection’s author, Todd Knowles, directly at knowleswt@familysearch.org.

FamilySearch manages the largest collection of genealogical records worldwide. A significant portion of its collections come from the United Kingdom.

http://www.familysearch.org/

BMD Registers add 100,000 records to website

2009-04-16T12:11:00.002+01:00

The National Archives has just announced that BMD Registers.co.uk have added to their website more than 100,000 records of births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials of British subjects overseas and on board ships.

This information is from the TNA's RG33 series.

http://www.bmdregisters.co.uk/

Manchester (U.K.) Ancestors?

2009-03-25T15:21:00.003Z

"This is not your ordinary run of the mill family history or genealogy site, this is different. Stop what you are doing and settle down for a good read, you might even want to put the kettle on and make yourself a drink before exploring these pages. If you have an interest in Manchester in particular, and its surrounding area then this is the site for you. Bookmark this page, because you will want to come back and revisit this site. There is too much information to take in at one go, you will need to come back, again and again. The information on these pages, although Manchester based, can apply to many areas of family research. In these pages you can see many examples of my work, so read on, enjoy and let me extend a very warm welcome to my web site".

http://tinyurl.com/c68zcu

St Georges Cathedral - Cape Town - Marriage and Baptism Records Online

2009-03-25T15:12:00.003Z

Ancestry24.co.za, South Africa's premier genealogy and ancestral website, has partnered with the Anglican Church in making the marriage and baptism records of St George's Cathedral in Cape Town accessible online. St George's is the oldest cathedral in southern Africa and is the mother church of the Anglican diocese of Cape Town.

A total of 3,633 marriage records, dating from the first available St Georges records in 1825 and over 6,000 baptism records dating 1921-1969, have been captured and made available online, free to the public. Earlier marriage records, dating from 1812 at the Colonial Chapel at the Castle have yet to be transcribed. This is part of an agreement between Ancestry24 and the Anglican Church Archives at Wits University where marriage and baptism records of some of South Africa's oldest churches are being accurately captured and published at www.ancestry24.co.za.

Ancestry.co.uk now has births indexed 1916-2005

2009-03-25T15:06:00.003Z

Ancestry now has the GRO births indexed from 1916 to 2005 - i.e. they have carried on from where FreeBMD mostly stops at the moment. You can search by surname, mother's maiden name etc, just as you can on FreeBMD.

http://tinyurl.com/BMD1915-2005

Top Ten British Surnames

2009-03-24T08:53:00.002Z

Top 10 surnames in Britain:

1. Smith

2. Jones

3. Williams

4. Brown

5. Taylor

6. Davies

http://tinyurl.com/Top10Surnames

7. Wilson

8. Evans

9. Thomas

10. Johnson

Ancestors - Members of St John Ambulance

2009-03-24T08:23:00.003Z

Key records and journals.

Annual reports of Chapter General and Council (1868 - )
Brigade Orders (1895 - )
Ambulance department committee minutes
First aid magazine (1894 - 1957 but not 1901 - 1904, 1907 - 8 and 1939)
St John Gazette (1929 - 1949)
St John Review (1950 - 1988)
St John World (1988 - 1998)
St John Life (2000 - )

Family history and medal enquiries.

Order rolls and membership forms (access only for museum staff)
London District St John Ambulance Brigade personnel index (1920s - 1960s) and BF1s (divisional membership lists 1890s - 1980s)
register of re-examination medallion recipients up to 1885
Order of St John Lifesaving medal roll
Listings of recipients of the service medal in the annual reports up to 1939
Obituaries in First Aid magazine, St John Ambulance Gazette, St John Review, St. John World and St John Life.

The Boer War

South African war medal roll.
Histories, autobiographies and diaries.
Ephemera & pamphlets.

The First World War

Personnel lists of Joint War Committee employees sent overseas during WW1.
The Sir Richard Temple papers.
Rolls of auxiliary hospitals and hospital registration forms.
Weekly reports of the St John Ambulance Brigade Hospital Etaples.
Final report of the Joint War Committee of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St John 1919.
Histories, autobiographies and diaries.

Please note that the WW1 VAD personnel index for both St John and the Red Cross is held by the British Red Cross Archives, 9 Grosvenor Crescent, London SW1X 7EJ.

The Second World War

Personnel files on St John welfare workers sent overseas during WW2.
Personnel files on WW2 St John VADs.
Personnel files on St John welfare officers sent overseas in WW2.
Overseas and domestic tour reports by Lady Mountbatten.
Prisoner of War magazine and Far East magazine.
Official History of the Joint War Organisation of the British Red Cross Committee and the Order of St John.
Histories, autobiographies, diaries and oral histories.
If you have an enquiry about an individual PoW, you should contact the International Red Cross Committee in Geneva.

Divisional histories

Annual reports (divisional reports were submitted until 1911, then from 1912 to 1938, divisions are listed with the names of the surgeon and officers-in-charge. After 1938 no more divisional information is given)

BF1s (divisional membership lists 1890s to 1980s).
Some divisional minutes books, scrapbooks and oral histories
St John Ambulance equipment and uniform.
Catalogues and dress patterns.
Dress regulations.
Brigade orders.
The Brigade Committee minutes and the Brigade Women’s Committee minutes.
Oral histories.

http://tinyurl.com/SJA-FamHist

New registration procedure at London Metropolitan Archives

2009-03-23T14:53:00.004Z

London Metropolitan Archives contains over 80 kilometres of archives detailing the history of London and Londoners for the last 1000 years. To use these collections, you will need to register for a City of London History Card. The registration process should take little more than five minutes to complete, and a card can be issued to you straight away by one of our staff

Who can register for a History Card?

Anyone over the age of 14 can apply for a History Card.

Why do I need one?

On 2nd April we will be introducing a new printing management system and you will require a History Card to make use of the full suite of printing facilities after this date. In the future you will need a History Card to gain access to original documents in the Archive Study Area. You will not need a History Card to look at copies of documents in the Information Area, or to access online or microfiche/film resources. However as the History Card also works as a printer credit card, if you wish to use the full set of microfilm printers or print from the computer terminals you will need to register.

How do I get one?

You can complete the registration form using the computer terminals at London Metropolitan Archives or start your registration up to a month before your visit to London Metropolitan Archives by clicking the button below.

Registration must be completed in person at LMA. Your details will be held on our system for 30 days before being deleted. During this time you can complete your registration process by bringing proof of identity and address to the Information Point at London Metropolitan Archives. The registration process includes us taking your photograph for the photocard which is valid for three years. The card is free (subject to terms and conditions)

Proof of Identity and Address

To obtain a reader's ticket you must bring two documents with you – one to prove your identity and one to prove your address, or school if you are a student.

The registration process includes us taking your photograph for the photocard. The photograph must show your full head without any head or face covering. If such an item is worn for religious or medical reasons, please notify a member of staff.

Acceptable documents for registration are:
Proof of your identity (must include a valid signature):

Passport
Driving licence
Bank card
Credit card
National ID card
Police/Customs/Home Office/warrant card
Forces ID card
Sea/Air Masters licence
NUJ pass
Government/ local council staff ID

Proof of your address (internet printouts or online statements are not accepted):

Utility bill (issued within the last three months)
Bank/building society statement (issued within the last three months)
Credit card statement (issued within the last three months)
Council tax bill
HM Revenue and Customs statement
Passports with address (where the address has been officially entered by the issuing authority)
National ID card with address
Driving licence with address
Home Office permit to stay
University certificate for hall of residence (stamped and signed by institution)
TV licence
Firearms licence
Home insurance policy
International student photo card

http://search.lma.gov.uk/opac_lma/Registration.htm

London Census 1896

2009-03-22T17:13:00.005Z

Extracted from a long article in The Times 28 March 1896.
It is provided by section 3 of the London (Equalisation of Rates) Act, 1894
that "A Census shall be taken for the purpose of ascertaining the number of
persons present within each parish of the Administrative County of London on
the night of Sunday, March 29, 1896, and the provisions of the Census (England
and Wales) Act, 1890, including the penal provisions, shall, subject to such
modifications as may be prescribed for the purposes of this Act, apply in the
case of the census so taken as if it were taken in pursuance of that
Act".....During the present week the enumerators have been delivering the
householders' schedules. Compared with previous censuses the inquiry will be of a
relatively simple character, the object being to ascertain the number of the
resident population of each of the London parishes. Every house, inhabited or
empty, and every separate occupier in a district will be counted......There are
also special schedules for public institutions, barracks, and vessels on any
canal or navigable river outside the limits of the Port of London.......
The schedule itself simply requires that every person alive at midnight
dwelling in a house or tenement on the night of March 29 should be named, and the
relationship to the head of the family and the sex recorded....
On Monday, March 30, the enumerators will collect the schedules.

Census of London 1896
The National Archives Catalogue Piece details RG 19/42
http://tinyurl.com/TNA-RG19-42

Exeter (U.K.) Cemetery Records

2009-03-21T12:11:00.004Z

Over 100,000 individuals are interred in the three cemeteries managed by Exeter City Council. We have scanned all of the alphabetical index cards and can now make these available to you.

Exwick Cemetery
Higher Cemetery
Topsham Cemetery

http://pub.exeter.gov.uk/asp/bereavement/

Michigan Death Records 1897-1920

2009-03-21T11:57:00.005Z

This Library of Michigan collection of Michigan death certificates features nearly 1 million records. This statewide collection offers researchers critical information in tracking Michigan ancestors during this time period. Information includes the decedent's birth date and place, parents' names and birthplace, cemetery name and location, and much more.

http://tinyurl.com/Michigan-Death-Records

Wyoming Newspapers Digitalisation Project

2009-03-19T16:58:00.003Z

The Wyoming Newspaper Project: 900,000 Newspaper Pages Online

Newspapers are the single most important printed record of human activity. Historians, genealogists, and other scholars rely on them to provide a first-hand and sometimes the only account of local news. The Wyoming Newspaper Project will make all the newspapers printed in Wyoming between 1849 and 1922 accessible in an easily searchable format, over the internet, for free.

The Wyoming Newspaper Project is a "work in progress." That is, 900,000 pages will go online eventually but the project has not yet been completed. As of February 2009, the site contains about 407,000, or approximately half, of the full page newspaper images loaded. In the coming weeks and months, the remaining full pages will be added. A list of the newspapers and dates loaded is now available and will be updated as more pages are added.

You can browse the entire collection or search for newspapers from specified towns or counties, on certain dates, or by a specific title. The text is searchable, including news articles, news briefs, obituaries and other items of interest.

Funding for the project was made possible by the Wyoming Legislature, the support of Governor Dave Freudenthal, and the Library Services Technology Act federal program. All of the metadata (what makes the newspapers' text searchable) was created by residents of Wyoming.

The Wyoming Newspaper Project is available at http://www.wyonewspapers.org.

Ancestry.Com Adds New Content

2009-03-19T16:50:00.003Z

Ancestry.com Adds Huge New Content Addition for More Recent Years

The following was written by Gary Gibb and published on the Ancestry.com Blog:

We are launching huge new content additions over the next few weeks. We are excited because it helps provide records from 1935 to today. We have great census and vital records from 1930 and before but more recent records are difficult to acquire. These new records are being provided in 4 major releases.

First, we launched a 1940 census substitute. This is a project that we have been working on for years. Since we can’t get the real 1940 census until 2012 we have pulled together a huge collection of city directories from about 1935 to 1945. This collection has over 100 million names and covers most of the US.

Second, we will launch in the next week (or two) the first ever collection of U.S. Public Records (USPRI) database with more than 525 million names, addresses, ages, and possible family relationships of people who lived in the United States between roughly 1950 and 1990. This will be an invaluable tool in piecing together family stories and histories. This new addition will replace the current USPRI database on Ancestry which is mainly profiles of living people. This database is built from a variety of city directories and other public records.

Third, we launched search results and links to living people records on MyLife.com. We are excited about this partnership because MyLife has a much better collection of records about living people and continues to update this collection. MyLife.com includes current public information and more than 700 million profiles of living people. They are much better equipped to offer these services than we are. If you want to find a living cousin or second cousin or other living relative we believe these links to MyLife will be the best service to help you contact your family.

Finally, we launched a new obituary collection. We have had several very popular obituary collections for several years. We have now upgraded our collection that we extract from obituaries posted in newspapers around the world with much better fielding and from more papers. This should help you more easily identify the right obituary and find family relationships.

In the coming months look for additional significant improvements to all the US Federal Census from 1800 to 1890. We will also continue to release millions of vital records every month. We are also excited about the upcoming large addition to our newspaper and military collections over the next few months.

We hope these additions help you discover more of your family story.

http://tinyurl.com/Ancestry-com

Merchant Vessel Records

2009-03-15T22:45:00.003Z

Merchant vessel records now online

The movements of Allied merchant ships during the Second World War were a closely guarded secret. Now you can search for these ships online.

If your ancestor was a wartime merchant seaman, and you know the name of his ship, you can discover where he sailed. You will also find out if the ship was torpedoed, mined or sunk.

http://tinyurl.com/c7cwjo

Royal Marine Service Registers

2009-03-15T22:37:00.004Z

We've put more than 110,000 Royal Marine service registers online for you to search and download. If your relative joined the Marines between 1842 and 1936 you may be able to find them here. You can search by surname, first name and date of enlistment.

The registers can tell you the ships that your Marine served on, medals they were awarded, details of their conduct - or misconduct - and more. We also have some handy search tips, advice on understanding the registers and suggestions on where to look for more information. Searching the index is free, so start looking now.

http://tinyurl.com/atsurm

Find A Grave

2009-03-15T22:22:00.002Z

Thousands of contributors submit new listings, updates, corrections, photographs and virtual flowers every hour. The site simply wouldn't exist without the 500,000+ contributors. When it comes to administrating, building and maintaining the site, Find A Grave is largely operated by its founder, Jim Tipton. In addition to Jim, there are a handful of folks who work behind the scenes, helping out with Find A Grave on a daily basis:

http://www.findagrave.com/

Commonwealth War Cemeteries, Communal Cemeteries & Churchyards in Belgium & France

2009-03-15T22:10:00.006Z

Here is an interesting web site for WW1 graves.It was created by Pierre Vandervelden from Belgium.
It doesn't have a surname search though but the graves are alphabetical once the cemetery is selected. However saying that there is a soldier or cemetery search in memory with google.

http://www.inmemories.com/cemeteries.htm

Ancestry.ca Adds Irish Emigration Records

2009-03-14T14:05:00.003Z

Ancestry.ca, Canada’s leading family history website, has launched online the records contained in the book Irish Emigration to New England, Through the Port of Saint John, New Brunswick, 1841-1849 by Daniel F. Johnson, which includes 7,000 names, fully indexed with original images, making it easier for the 4.3 million Canadians with Irish heritage to discover their family history.

The Irish Potato Famine of the late 1840s saw droves of Irish fleeing to North America in search of a better life. The Canadian Port of Saint John, New Brunswick became a stopping point for those en route to the United States.

Many, however, arrived destitute or in ill health and so took what they thought would only be temporary refuge before making their way on to New England to be reunited with their families.

During this time, the government in Saint John built a quarantine station and a hospital to protect residents from the sick new arrivals, many of whom actually stayed in Canada, with their strong Irish-Catholic presence changing the dynamic in Saint John, which until then had a strong Loyalist-Protestant heritage.

Prior to 1865, there were no comprehensive nominal lists of immigrants to Canada so the records kept by the hospital, work houses and asylums are the sole evidence of their arrival to North America. These records help to piece together the mass movement of the Irish to North America during this time.

Family and social history enthusiasts can search the collection by first and last name, year, country, state and key word.

The Irish Emigration to New England, Through the Port of Saint John, New Brunswick 1841-1849 is available through a 14-day Free Trial at http://www.ancestry.ca/

Red Cross Burial Records from WW1

2009-03-14T13:38:00.005Z

British historian Peter Barton unearthed the archive, virtually untouched since 1918, in the basement of the Red Cross headquarters in Geneva. The organization knew it had a vast amount of information there, but Mr Barton is the first to study it in detail. It documents information about the death, burial or capture of more than 20million soldiers from 30 countries who took part in the Great War.

Carefully entered on card indexes or written into ledgers, the details include name, rank, unit, time of death, exact burial location, home addresses and next of kin.

The information has the potential to pinpoint unmarked graves along the Western Front and other battlefields, and could mean headstones which currently mark the grave of an unknown soldier will finally bear a name.

It also paves the way for families to complete the history of relatives who died in the bitter trench fighting.

The Red Cross is already working to bring the archive into the computer age.

The organisation has set aside £2.4million to conserve and digitise the paper records. The project will begin in the autumn and will involve experts from around Europe.

The Red Cross hopes to have the archive online by 2014, the centenary of the Great War.

'We want to archive these records because it will be far easier for families to access the information they require,' said a Red Cross spokesman.

' They hold an incredible amount of detail.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7940540.stm

Waitakeri Cemetery - New Zealand

2009-03-11T15:03:00.004Z

Waitakeri Cemetery - Online search

Waitakere City is New Zealand's fifth largest city, with an annual growth of about 2%. It is part of the Auckland region, and is incorporated in the Auckland metropolitan area. Most residents live near the city's eastern borders with the Waitemata Harbour and neighbouring Auckland City. The forest-covered Waitakere Ranges dominate the city's western skyline, rising from the rugged surf beaches of the Tasman Sea to an altitude of over 400 metres.

http://www.waitakere.govt.nz/cnlser/cm/index.asp#genealogy

Society of Genealogists - Events Calendar - April 2009

2009-03-11T11:18:00.004Z

April Events at the Society of genealogists. Scroll down the page for future months.

http://www.sog.org.uk/events/calendar.shtml#apr09

Australian Newspapers - Digitisation Project

2009-03-11T11:08:00.008Z

The National Library of Australia, in collaboration the Australian State and Territory libraries, has commenced a program to digitise out of copyright newspapers.

This will be a free online service that will enable full-text searching of newspaper articles. This will include newspapers published in each state and territory from the 1800s to the mid-1950s, when copyright applies. The first Australian newspaper, published in Sydney in 1803, is included in the Program.

Try the BETA site now!

http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp/index.html

BMD registers website adds overseas BMD's

2009-03-10T20:10:00.004Z

The BMD Registers website (the online home of TNA's collection of non-parochial registers - RG4, RG5, RG6, RG7, & RG8) has just added the first series of registers of overseas births, marriages and deaths.

http://www.bmdregisters.co.uk/

Old Documents, Manuscripts

2009-03-10T18:21:00.013Z

Websites of interest relating to old documents and manuscripts:

Mike Durtnell has been extracting details from auction catalogues of old documents - well worth a look.
http://www.durtnall.org.uk/

Lesley Aitchison
http://www.localhistory.co.uk/la/index.htm

John Townsend
http://www.johntownsend.demon.co.uk/index.htm

The Saleroom.com (Occasionally free offers to search archive)
http://www.the-saleroom.com/default.aspx?bhcp=1

Invaluable Auction Search
http://www.invaluable.com/

Dominic Winter Book Auctions
http://www.dominic-winter.co.uk/

Kens Paper Collectables (best to make a visit)
http://www.kens.co.uk/

Sylvan Manuscripts
http://www.sylvan-manuscripts.co.uk/

Ancestral Atlas

2009-03-10T09:05:00.003Z

Over recent years genealogy has seen a rapid growth in the use of maps to illustrate the location of ancestors. All these applications, whether directly through the use of Google Maps or proprietary software products, provide an exciting and instructive way of showing genealogical data. However, none of these applications offer an opportunity to store, search and share family history information in a secure environment with fellow genealogists worldwide.

http://www.ancestralatlas.com/ancestral-atlas-genealogy-mapping-network.php

World Burial Index

2009-03-10T09:00:00.004Z

This brand new website gives you the opportunity to search through a unique survey of thousands of Memorial Inscriptions (MIs) taken from: graveyard headstones from memorials in churchyards and cemeteries; inscriptions recorded from within churches and cathedrals; details of church incumbents; war graves and war memorials.

http://www.worldburialindex.com/

Texas, U.S.A. Land Grants

2009-03-08T13:50:00.005Z

The General Land Office offers a searchable database of our land grant collection. The Land Grants of Texas tell the story of the settlement and early history of Texas.

http://www.glo.state.tx.us/archives/landgrant.html

The Cathedral Libraries and Archives Association

2009-03-06T21:53:00.003Z

The Cathedral Libraries and Archives Association

Aims:

To advance education by the promotion, preservation and protection of cathedral libraries and archives in the United Kingdom and Ireland
The provision of appropriate access thereto

Welcome to the libraries and archives of the Church of England. The links on these pages are the gateway to the many treasures of the documentary heritage of the Church of England:

Lambeth Palace Library and Archive - the historic Library of the Archbishops of Canterbury and the library and record office for the history of the Church of England including many downloadable research guides to material held in the Library and Church of England Record Centre
The Church of England Record Centre - holding the archives of the central institutions of the Church of England including the Church Commissioners and the General Synod
The Library of the Church Buildings Council and the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England (The CCB Library) - a specialist collection focusing on ecclesiastical architecture
Ecclesiastical Libraries and Archives throughout England including details of the Cathedral Libraries and Archives Association (CLAA)
Anglican Sources for Tracing your Family History
Records Management Guides - Care of Parish and Diocesan Records

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/about/librariesandarchives/

New Australian Records Online

2009-03-06T12:09:00.004Z

World Vital Records - Australia

New records online - subscription required - Free Trial Period

History of West Australia

New Zealand PO Directory

South Australian Directory 1924

Victorian Government Gazette 1891

http://www.worldvitalrecords.com.au/

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

2009-03-06T11:54:00.005Z

The Oxford DNB: the people who shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond.

You can subscribe free to the daily biographies by email - and the Oxford DNB always has on offer the last 7 biographies as the Lives of the Week.

http://www.oxforddnb.com/public/lotw/

Deaceased Online Has Arrived!

2009-03-06T11:40:00.003Z

Deceased Online is the first central database of statutory burial and cremation registers for the UK and Republic of Ireland -- a unique resource for family history researchers and professional genealogists

Until now, to search these records you had to approach about 3,000 burial authorities and nearly 250 crematoria in the UK alone, each independently holding their own registers, mostly as old fragile books. No official central repository exists.

Deceased Online is changing this. We are making it possible for burial and cremation authorities around the country to convert their register records, maps and photographs into digital form and bring them together into a central searchable collection.

Our growing database, holding records from 1837 onwards, can provide invaluable information for researching family trees, and can reveal previously unknown family links from other interments recorded in the same grave.

https://www.deceasedonline.com/servlet/GSDOSearch

British Library - India Office - Research

2009-03-06T11:30:00.004Z

300,000 births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials in the India Office Records
biographical notes from a variety of sources
for mainly British and European people in India c.1600-1949
for people in other countries connected with the history of the British in India

The information included in the India Office Family History Search website is taken from a card index hitherto available only at the British Library. The card index was compiled by members of staff at the India Office Records from the mid-1970s onwards to meet the growing interest in genealogy. Users should note that probably less than 10% of the biographical sources available in the India Office Records was incorporated into the index, although future additions to this website are planned. As the biographical information included in this website is only a small part of the total available in the archives, users may need to search elsewhere in the records.

http://indiafamily.bl.uk/UI/

New Zealand BMD Records

2009-03-06T11:23:00.003Z

The Birth, Death and Marriage Historical Records website, where you can search New Zealand Government records for births, deaths and marriages.

The historic data available for you to search is limited so that information relating to people who might still be alive, can be protected. Information available includes:

Births that occurred at least 100 years ago
Stillbirths that occurred at least 50 years ago
Marriages and eventually Civil Unions that occurred 80 years ago
Deaths that occurred at least 50 years ago or the deceased's date of birth was at least 80 years ago.

http://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.identityservices.govt.nz/Home/

Convict transportation registers database - Queensland

2008-06-27T22:20:00.003+01:00

This database has been compiled from British Home Office (HO) records which
are available on microfilm as part of the Australian Joint Copying Project
(AJCP). The HO 11 Criminal - Convict Transportation Registers series has
been indexed by the State Library of Queensland and the index contains the
following information:

- Name of convict, including any known aliases
- Place of trial *
- Term of years
- Name of ship and date of departure
- Place of arrival
- Miscellaneous notes e.g. Died at sea; Ticket of Leave, etc.
* The date of trial is recorded on the original registers and will be
gradually added to this database

Over 123,000 out of the estimated 160,000 convicts transported to Australia
are recorded in this database. These include prisoners sent to New South
Wales, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), Moreton Bay (Brisbane), Western
Australia and Norfolk Island. Also recorded are some ships which were bound
for Gibraltar. The records cover the period of 1787 to 1867.

These records mainly include those convicted in England and Scotland. Only
a small number of Irish convicts appear in this series of the Home Office
records. 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, India,
Pakistan and Canada.

http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/info/fh/convicts

Deceased Online - Arriving Shortly

2008-06-24T13:59:00.003+01:00

Using the Internet to find Census records and entries in the Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages is fairly simple, but until now there has been no central facility for searching UK burial and cremation register records. Anyone wishing to find a grave, or details of a burial or cremation, has to approach each burial authority or crematorium individually, and in the UK there are over 10,000 cemeteries and nearly 250 crematoria! With genealogy becoming ever more popular, this is a very unsatisfactory situation.

Deceased Online is about to change all this. A central web server will store regularly updated copies of computerised register data from all participating cemeteries and crematoria, providing the first ever national database of its kind. Powerful web-based searching facilities will then allow enquirers to find burial and cremation records by name, date and locality, with the option to retrieve further related information, such as digitised images of the original register pages, photographs of headstones and other memorials, scans of book of remembrance pages, and maps to locate graves in cemeteries. One feature that will excite family researchers, and which is missing from other types of genealogy web site, is the ability to list all other interments in a located grave, enabling key family connections to be made.

As with other genealogy websites, an initial search on name and date will be free, and credits can be purchased on-line to access further information.

This national service will be invaluable to amateur and professional genealogists, who will no longer have to make hundreds of individual searches, as well as to cemetery and crematorium managers, who are being encouraged by the Government to open their register data to public Internet access.

http://deceasedonline.com/

3-Minute Book Printing at Your Local Retail Store

2008-06-24T10:20:00.002+01:00

What Gutenberg’s press did for Europe in the 15th century digitization and the Espresso Book Machine will do for the world tomorrow.

Library quality paperbacks at low cost, identical to factory made books, printed direct from digital files for the reader in minutes, serving a radically decentralized world-wide multilingual marketplace. In essence, an ATM for books.

Tens of thousands of genealogy and local history books have been printed over the years. Wouldn't you like to walk into a local bookstore and purchase the book(s) of your choice within minutes? That may not be as crazy as it sounds.

Blackwell bookshops in the U.K. are testing new, super-fast in-store printers, called Espresso Book Machines. Similar machines are already used in the World Bank in Washington and at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. The best part about these printers is speed: the standard unit can produce a 200-page book, printed and bound, in just 7 minutes. The higher-priced “double-printer” cuts that time down to just 3 minutes.

Blackwell is only installing a few printers at first. If successful, the company hopes to add the printing on-demand facilities to 60 retail outlets. If it works for Blackwell, you can expect to see other stores install similar systems.

The business plan of Blackwell is simple: local retailers have been losing a lot of business to online bookstores such as Amazon.com. Until now, the local retailers had no means of matching the online bookstores' immense inventory. Anyone can order almost any book online. Local bookstores, the so-called "bricks and mortar" stores, have inventories that are limited by physical space. Local stores can only carry a small percentage of the books out there. They also have higher prices because of the rent they pay, the staff they need, and the cost of shipping the books to the stores.

Amazon's much larger inventory is available by overnight delivery, if required. Amazon.com's warehouse space is presumably cheaper than retail space, and the labor expenses are also cheaper. As a result, Amazon's prices are often much lower than those of retail stores, even after shipping charges are added.

Super-fast printing on-demand solves most of the retail stores' problems. The content of thousands of books could be stored on a local disk drive or on remote file servers connected to each store's Espresso Book Machine via the Internet. The customer could walk into the store, order a particular book, and then receive the physical book within three minutes. Even Amazon.com cannot match that speed. Blackwell expects the "print on demand" pricing to be very competitive when compared to Amazon.com's prices.

In today's announcement of the new Espresso Book Machines, Blackwell representatives never mentioned the word "genealogy." However, more than 25,000 genealogy and local history books have already been scanned by others and are now available as digital files. I would think it would be simple for Blackwell or some other bookstore chain to enter into an agreement with one or more of the companies who already have digitized thousands of out-of-copyright genealogy and local history books.

Retailers do have one big advantage over online – there is no delivery time wait. You can walk into the store, purchase the book, and walk out with it. Amazon.com cannot compete with that business model.

http://www.ondemandbooks.com/home.htm

You can watch an interesting video of the book machines in operation at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMFh5axDKWU.

Who Do You Think You Are Live 2009

2008-06-24T09:08:00.002+01:00

Due to the Olympia Exhibition Hall being booked for the first weekend in May in 2009 the organisers of WDYTYA Live have brought the dates of the exhibition forward to the end of February.

Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE will take place next year at Olympia from 27th Feb - 1st March 2009

http://www.whodoyouthinkyouarelive.co.uk/

Who Do You Think You Are Live - 2009

2008-06-24T09:02:00.000+01:00

Due to the Olympia Exhibition Hall being booked for the first weekend in May in 2009 the organisers of WDYTYA Live have brought the dates of the exhibition forward to the end of February.

Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE will take place next year at Olympia from 27th Feb - 1st March 2009

http://www.whodoyouthinkyouarelive.co.uk/

Colorado State Penitentiary Prisoner Index 1871 - 1973

2008-06-23T15:55:00.002+01:00

The Colorado State Archives is a primary repository for Colorado State Penitentiary and Reformatory records. Researchers can find biographical information about particular inmates, as well as information about their crime, sentence and parole or pardon. Mug shots exist for most penitentiary inmates. Since the Colorado State Archives is also the repository for governors' records, researchers may also be able to find Executive Pardons and governors' correspondence concerning corrections matters.

General research may also be done using the various Annual Reports, Studies, Investigations and other publications available at the Archives.

Address all inquiries to the Colorado State Archives. We have search, handling, and copy fees. Please contact us in order to find out the charges for your request.

http://www.colorado.gov/dpa/doit/archives/pen/index.htm

Western USA Marriages - Brigham Young University

2008-06-23T09:20:00.003+01:00

Twenty years and 370,987 marriages later, Blaine Bake’s work reaches a culmination.

Bake, a religion faculty member at Brigham Young University-Idaho, has spent thousands of hours visiting county courthouses and viewing microfilms. With the help of several volunteers, he has compiled the most comprehensive index of marriage records for the western United States. This month, BYU-Idaho’s Western States Historical Marriage Records Index received national recognition from Family Tree Magazine, which recognized the site as an all-time favorite.

The Western States Historical Marriage Records Index was one of 25 family history web sites recognized by the magazine for their consistency and availability of useful information. Also among the favorites list were several big names, such as FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.com and Cyndi’s List.

“It’s the content and information that people are interested in,” Bake said. “There are no other indexes as comprehensive as we are.” Bake began visiting county courthouses and viewing microfilm more than 20 years ago to create the marriage records index.

“It’s tedious work,” Bake said. Records must be transcribed from the original documents and then entered into the index. But his work has accumulated 370,987 marriages recorded from Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. They have indexed 130,000 marriages for the state of Idaho alone. And each month Bake and three student employees enter an average of 1,500 to 2,000 new marriages.

“A marriage is the genesis of a family. You have to get a marriage date and place and then you can build your family,” Bake said. In the future, he hopes to expand the collection to include more states and counties.

The marriage records index is the most visited library web site by off campus users, averaging as many as 5,000 hits a day.

“So much information is compiled by people who do it out of the goodness of their hearts. We are happy to participate and reciprocate for all those nice people who work so hard,” said Martin Raish, David O. McKay Library Director.

To visit the Western States Historical Marriage Records Index or another BYU-Idaho family history sites, please visit http://abish.byui.edu/specialCollections/famhist/index.cfm.

Encyclopedia of Genealogy - Genealogy Wikipedia

2008-06-22T19:14:00.001+01:00

Encyclopedia of Genealogy Updated

The Encyclopedia of Genealogy now has an all-new "look and feel" as well as an updated set of menus. The result should be a bit easier to use. The basic functionality of the Encyclopedia remains unchanged.

The Encyclopedia of Genealogy is a free-content encyclopedia created by its readers, people like you. It is loosely modeled on the Wikipedia example. I created the "shell" of the Encyclopedia and I then "seeded" it by creating a few pages of information myself. However, most of the pages are the contributions of people like yourself: someone with a bit of expertise on a particular subject who would like to share that knowledge with others.

The Encyclopedia of Genealogy serves as a compendium of genealogical tools and techniques. It provides reference information about everything in genealogy except people. Look to the Encyclopedia of Genealogy to provide explanations on how to look up your family tree and definitions of terms found in genealogy research, including obsolete medical and legal terms. It describes locations where records may be found. It also will describe how to research Italian, German, Polish, French-Canadian, Jewish, Afro-American, Indian, and other ancestors. In short, the Encyclopedia of Genealogy will serve as your standard genealogy reference manual.

If you see anything in this encyclopedia that is incorrect, YOU can change it! If you see anything that is incomplete, YOU can add to it! If you note anything that is missing, YOU can add it! This encyclopedia will succeed because people like you contribute nuggets of information. When enough "nuggets" are added, the Encyclopedia of Genealogy will become a gold mine.

NOTE: This encyclopedia is not a place to find all the ancestors of John Doe or all the descendants of John and Mary Smith. The World Wide Web already has many online message boards and databases that perform that function well. Instead, the Encyclopedia of Genealogy serves as a clearinghouse of genealogy techniques: where to find records, how to organize the data found, what the terminology means and how to plan your next research effort.

The Encyclopedia of Genealogy is available to everyone, free of charge. Everyone can also contribute information, again free of charge.

The Encyclopedia of Genealogy is available at http://www.eogen.com.

U.K. Historical Occupational Trade Directories Now Online

2008-06-22T18:58:00.001+01:00

Familyrelatives.com is pleased to announce the first of several new and important records to be put online - part of a program to add more than 10 million new records.

Starting with the most recent records to go online are the Pigot's Trade directories, these are a unique collection and cover 27 counties and provide invaluable information for the 1830's going back as far as the time of William IV.

The Pigot's Directories currently cover the period from 1830 to 1839 before the official Civil Registration began and are a valuable source of additional information when researching your ancestors. All major professions, nobility, gentry, clergy, trades and occupations including taverns and public houses and much more are listed. There are even timetables of the coaches and carriers that served a town.

Parishes are listed for each area with useful information including the number of inhabitants, a geographical description and the main trades and industries of the area or town.

Search for those long forgotten trades from Cowkeepers to Woolstaplers.

The collection is fully searchable and can be searched by name or occupation or each county may be easily browsed by page. This is a useful resource for anyone wanting to know more about the area where their ancestors lived and worked and is available to members with a subscription. (See table for counties available).

An extract from the Warwickshire Directory 1835

Birmingham, one of the most celebrated manufacturing towns in the United Kingdom. The earliest authentic notice of this place occurs in Domesday-book, in which it is called Bermengeham…

Birmingham is not attractive for venerable ruins or grand cathedrals; but the traveller who delights in seeing the human race profitably employed, to their own and their country's advantage, will disregard the smoke which sometimes envelopes the town.

Soon after the revolution in 1688 the manufacture of fire-arms was introduced and continued to flourish until the close of the late war, the government contracts for muskets alone generally averaged 30,000 thousand per month… the gun makers were authorised to erect a proof-house, in which under a heavy penalty all gun and pistol barrels are subjected to a powerful proof.

Prior to the year 1715 Birmingham comprised only one parish and for civil registration purposes it is still so considered but at that period a portion of the original parish of St. Martin, consisting of a district in the centre of town, was formed into the parish of St. Philip and in 1829 two other districts were formed into the parishes of St. George and St. Thomas.

Birmingham which must be taken to include the parishes of Aston and Edgbaston, contained 73,670 inhabitants and in 1831, 146,986.

A typical entry then lists the following;

British Wine Makers

Hill, Evans & Williams, 7 Foregate St.

Williams James, North parade

Brush Makers & Dealers

Malvern John (dealer) College St.

Martin Benjamin (dealer) Sidbury

Pemberton Isaac, 15 Broad St

Smith John, 41 High St.

Pigot's Directories online

Bedfordshire 1839

Cambridgeshire 1830

Derbyshire 1835

Durham 1834

Essex 1839

Herefordshire 1835

Hertfordshire 1839

Huntingdonshire 1830

Kent 1839

Leicestershire 1835

Lincolnshire 1835

London 1839

Middlesex 1839

Monmouthshire 1835

Norfolk 1839

North Wales 1835

Northumberland 1828

Nottinghamshire 1835

Rutlandshire 1835

Shropshire 1835

South Wales 1835

Staffordshire 1835

Suffolk 1830

Surrey 1839

Sussex 1839

Warwickshire 1835

Worcestershire 1835

The records databases are included in the annual Subscription package of £37.50.

Familyrelatives.com is unique as the first website to provide the complete birth, marriage and death indexes for England & Wales for the period 1837-2005 to have fully transcribed over 150 million records between 1866 and 1920.

Subsequently Familyrelatives.com have developed and added many new useful tools and free social features including the facility to add comments to records and provide unique insights into individuals. Familyrelatives.com has been instrumental in helping family historians to search and find their ancestors with ease.

Since our launch Familyrelatives.com continues to add new records and now have over 600 million records available online for England, Wales, Ireland and the USA. Our focus this year will be to build on our rapidly growing presence ensuring that records are available to as wide an audience as possible in the United Kingdom and abroad.

For a full list of records online please visit www.familyrelatives.com.

Family Search - Pilot Site - Excellent!

2008-06-22T18:54:00.001+01:00

Record Search is still under development. This release is considered a PILOT. This means that at times Record Search will not be available while we add additional records and improve some features. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. We look forward to receiving your feedback.

http://search.labs.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#p=0

Sunderland Burials at Durham Records Online

2008-06-21T10:35:00.002+01:00

Durham Records Online is pleased to offer online a treasure trove of over 130,000 burials from the historic shipping and shipbuilding port of Sunderland in northeast England. The following burial records from the Sunderland area are now fully transcribed, indexed, and searchable:

* Sunderland Holy Trinity burials 1719-1812

* Monkwearmouth St. Peter burials 1683 - 1919 and its successor burial ground, Mere Knolls Cemetery at Fulwell from 1856 to 1904.

* Southwick Holy Trinity burials 1844 - 1988 and its successor burial ground, Marley Pots Cemetery 1884 - 1901.

* Bishopwearmouth St. Michael & All Angels burials 1569 - 1856. Most burials 1839-1856 were at Rector's Gill (aka Galley's Gill) cemetery.

* Bishopwearmouth Cemetery from its opening in May 1856 to the end of 1876. This was the successor burial ground to Bishopwearmouth Saint Michael's and Rector's Gill Cemetery, and was the largest burial ground in the historic county of Durham. These burial records state the religion of Roman Catholics (until 1864, when the RC notations ceased due to sheer numbers) and Quakers and Jews, who all had their own separate sections in the cemetery. This cemetery also contains people from all over County Durham because this was the first burial ground in the county with a separate Jewish section. Folk from the tiny and long forgotten Jewish congregations in Stockton, Darlington and Hartlepool were all brought to Bishopwearmouth. This information is likely to help researchers with Jewish ancestors whose graves cannot be found near their homes. We will continue transcribing this cemetery over the next several months.

The cemetery registers are far more informative than a church burial register because they provide the address of the deceased, the names and professions of the fathers and sometimes mothers (in the case of children) or the spouse (in the case of a married woman). Sometimes the cause of death is given, and some cemetery registers also mention if a person died at the Union Workhouse or the Union Infirmary. On the other hand, church burial registers between 1798 and 1812 are exceptional because they typically provide, for a deceased child, the father's name and occupation and mother's maiden name, and they often provide the maiden name of a deceased married woman.

If your ancestor died in the Sunderland area, you may well find their burial listed here. Searching at Durham Records Online is free, and a small fee is charged to view the transcribed results. Site credits can be purchased in quantity at a very affordable price. Durham Records Online is known for their accuracy because the transcribing is done by people with extensive local knowledge of the personal names and place names. Check it out at: http://www.durhamrecordsonline.com.

Halsted Trust - Seminar on Family History Research

2008-06-20T10:49:00.003+01:00

The Halsted Trust will this year be holding its annual seminar on 19th July at Eastergate Village Hall, West Sussex The seminar is open to anyone and this year will be aimed at those who are past the first flush of their research into one-name studies. There will be six lectures and a buffet lunch is included at a cost of £7.50 Lectures in include Researching Abroad, Searching for Surnames at the SoG, Worship Weird & Wonderful and Memorials Monuments & Gravestones. Speakers include the Guild President Derek Palgrave FSG, Else Churchill Genealogy Officer at the SoG and Guild former committee members John Hanson FSG, Jeanne Bunting FSG, Geoff Riggs & Alec Tritton Both Sussex Family History Group & Society of Genealogists bookstalls will be in attendance For further information & a booking form please see www.halsted.org.uk

Oxfordshire ~ Marriage Bond Index 1634-1849

2008-06-18T11:37:00.005+01:00

When someone wanted to get married without having to post the banns for three weeks at the church, they could pay to get a marriage license. The ordinary laborers tended to be married by banns, while those who had a little more money would get a license. Oxford people could get a license from the Archdeacon or the Bishop at Oxford, or from the Archbishop at London. (All from the Church of England) They were given the license to give to the minister who married them. Just the bond was left at the Archdeacon's office. Many of those were probably lost and this index was made of what was left. Some of the bonds were lost after the index was made. The Archdeaconry and Diocesean Courts had the same boundaries so it was probably a toss up which court the couple went to to get their licence.

Compiled by Donnette Stringham Smith

http://whipple.org/oxford/marriagebonds.html

How To Make A Family Tree Quilt Pattern

2008-06-17T11:16:00.003+01:00

There are many different and wonderful designs that can be used to make a geneology tree quilt pattern and there are also many people who specialize in developing quilt patterns that can be used to make family tree quilts. The size of the quilt can be from 32" x 39" to larger or smaller depending on the individual tastes and needs. There is sure to be a date on either side of the tree which may indicate the present up to the past and pictures of people on either side would correspond to the dates shown on that particular side.

Welsh Ancestry - OGRE

2008-06-17T10:51:00.002+01:00

The Online Genealogical Research Engine (OGRE) for free genealogy in Wales is a great resource for anyone wishing to trace their Welsh roots.

With an extensive and ever-expanding catalogue of transcripts from parish records, 19th-century censuses and land ownership returns, it's rich in official data for births, marriages, deaths and settlements. South Wales is especially strongly represented, particularly Monmouthshire (Gwent) and Glamorgan, but records for other parts of Wales are there too if your Welsh family history lies in, say, Flintshire or Merioneth. (The 1873 Returns for Owners of Land are also available for Scotland and Ireland.)

As if that wasn't enough, there are even sections recording the inscriptions on war memorials, monuments and gravestones.

All of the data is freely available online, although some of the data sets are also available for purchase to help pay the site's running costs.

And if all that wasn't enough, there are several links to other useful online resources.

To find out more, visit:

http://www.cefnpennar.com/

American Genealogical Research

2008-06-17T10:47:00.002+01:00

Genealogy: New program could open access to wealth of records

On May 15, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced the creation of a new fee-for-service genealogy program. The new program will take effect on Aug. 13, and will streamline requests for historical records important to genealogical researchers. Files of deceased persons are defined by USCIS as historical records.

Currently, genealogists must use a Freedom of Information/Privacy Act request to obtain the records, waiting many months for the processing of requests. The FOIA/PA program will continue for files of living persons. The biggest advantage of this new program will be the establishment of a knowledgeable staff dedicated to filling genealogy and historical requests. This will greatly improve turnaround time and will provide researchers with contact persons in case of problems.

The records under the new genealogy program are:

Naturalization Certificate Files (C-Files) from Sept. 27, 1906 to April 1, 1956.

Visa Files from July 1, 1924 to March 31, 1944 and Visa Records from March 31, 1944 to May 1, 1951 in A-files.

A-files numbers below 8 million and documents therein dated prior to May 1, 1951.

Registry Files from March 2, 1929 to March 31, 1944 and registry records from April 1, 1944 to April 30, 1951in A-files.

AR-2 Files (Alien Registrations) from Aug. 1, 1940 to March 31, 1944 and Alien Registration Forms from March 31, 1944 to April 30, 1951 in A-Files.

Will this new program affect your genealogy research? Before you answer "no" too quickly, take a closer look at your research. Some of the records impacted by the new program can be obtained elsewhere. For instance, copies of naturalization records also can be found at local courthouses and archives. But other records in the program, such as alien registrations, would be difficult to find anywhere else.

On June 28, 1940, the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (Smith Act) was passed. This act required registration of all aliens in the United States, 14 and older. This included those who filed first papers for naturalization but had not completed the process. Five million aliens registered in the initial registration that took four months. This was about 1.5 million more than expected because there were many aliens who had immigrated as early as 1880, but who had never naturalized. There are several situations that suggest that an alien registration record might exist for an individual. First, if a naturalization has not been found for an ancestor who was alive in 1940, they might never have naturalized. Therefore, there will be an alien registration for that ancestor.

Second, when an ancestor's naturalization record is dated in the 1940s. After the Smith Act went into effect in 1940, there was a flood of immigrants filing for naturalization. Many of these naturalizations were for people who had lived in the United States for 30 or more years. If they were not naturalized by Dec. 26, 1940, there should be an alien registration.

Alien registrations are most often listed as a substitute for naturalization records, but in reality they contain a lot more information than an average naturalization record.Alien registrations from 1940 to 1944 are on microfilm at USCIS. The registrations from 1944 and later are in each alien's A-File. A-Files, which begin in 1944, are the consolidation of all documents for an alien into a single file.

Additional information is available on the USCIS Website Per government regulations, USCIS must cover expenses when providing services. Having timely access to these records far outweighs the minimal cost.

http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis

Click Education and Resources, then Genealogy

Isle of Man Ancestors

2008-06-15T19:52:00.002+01:00

Plenty of research information here on the Genuki website

http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/iom/

Ancestry - Free access to Historical Newspapers

2008-06-15T19:50:00.002+01:00

Access the entire Ancestry.com newspaper collection

FREE through June 19th.

http://landing.ancestry.com/newspapers/default.aspx?sssdmh=dm13.169622&o_iid=36067&o_lid=36067

Surname Atlas

2008-06-09T15:22:00.002+01:00

The British 19th Century Surname Atlas is a fully interactive CD-Rom product that allows you to plot floodfill-style distribution maps for all of the surnames and forenames found in the 1881 census of England, Scotland and Wales. Using the program is simplicity itself: just insert the CD in your drive and wait for it to load. Then enter a surname in the data entry box and hit enter.

These are some of its features:

* Plot any of the 400,000+ surnames & variants that appear in the 1881 census. In many cases the maps will indicate the probable geographical origin of a surname.

* Similarly plot any of the 160,000+ forenames, and view their popularity through time.

* Aggregate data by county or poor law union.

* Plot data as actual numbers, or a density (per 100,000 of the population).

* Include any collection of name variants on each map.

* Investigate surname elements using wildcards (e.g. *thorpe)

* Show one or four surname maps at any one time.

* Zoom and pan the maps to frame exactly the area you want to see.

* Configure colours schemes, boundaries & numeric ranges.

* Print maps, or export to the Windows clipboard.

http://www.archersoftware.co.uk/satlas01.htm

FreeReg Database now holds over 5 million records

2008-06-09T15:11:00.002+01:00

Welcome to the home of U.K. Parish Register Information.

Our objective is to provide free Internet searches of baptism, marriage, and burial records, that have been transcribed from parish and non-conformist registers of the U.K. FreeREG is a companion project to FreeBMD (a

database of the GRO birth, marriage and death indexes from 1837) and FreeCEN (a database of census information).

The FreeREG database contains 815,003 Marriages, 2,799,697 Baptisms, 1,410,321 Burials, and was last updated on Thu 5 Jun 2008

http://www.freereg.org.uk/

Family Tree Magazine launches Podcast

2008-06-06T13:00:00.003+01:00

Family Tree Magazine Podcast Offers Genealogy News and Tips

Now you can hear about the best genealogy tools and tips by tuning into the free, monthly Family Tree Magazine Podcast.

In this online radio show, host Lisa Louise Cooke—creator of the popular Genealogy Gems podcast—takes you behind the scenes to learn more about the topics covered in Family Tree Magazine. Each 30-minute episode features interviews with genealogy experts and Family Tree Magazine editors on using genealogy Web sites, records and resources. Plus, editor Allison Stacy gives you sneak previews on upcoming issues and managing editor Diane Haddad delivers the scoop on the latest genealogy news.

You can listen whenever it's convenient to you by visiting the FamilyTreeMagazine.com podcast page at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/podcast.

My ancestor was a Royal Marine - Book

2008-06-05T21:56:00.002+01:00

Written by Ken Divall, this new book fills a gap in the genealogical market and provides guidance in tracing ancestors who served in the Royal Marines. The book outlines the records available and where to find them and includes a chapter on the history of the service.

Readers of this book will be able not only to research their Royal Marine ancestors, but also learn a little of the history of one of the most illustrious British military units. Royal Marines have served in more wars and campaigns all over the world, than any other branch of the three services. Add to that the number of far flung places that marines have visited whilst serving aboard Royal Navy warships, and it makes any Royal Marines ancestor a very interesting proposition to research.

Contents:

About the Author

List of Illustrations

Foreword

Introduction and Acknowledgements

1. A Brief History of the Royal Marines and its Forerunner, the Admirals Regiment

2. Royal Marines Genealogy and how the Corps was, and is, Divided by Division and Unit

3. Where to Find the Records of Royal Marines

4. Royal Marine Records at The National Archives, Kew

5. Royal Marine Records and Books at the Society of Genealogists

6. The Royal Marines Museum Library and Archives, Southsea

7. The Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton

8. The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and the Imperial War Museum, Lambeth

9. The Newspaper Library, Colindale, North London

10. Other Repositories with Royal Marine Research Facilities, Including the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC)

11. Records of Miscellaneous Units Including the RM Bands and Other Specialists Within the Royal Marines

12. Case Studies of Royal Marine Other Ranks and Officers

13. Medals Including VC Winners, Traditions and Customs

14. Royal Marine Research on the Internet

Glossary

Bibliography

Useful Addresses, Telephone Numbers, Websites and Email Addresses

Index

ISBN: 9781903462966

The Times Online Archive - Free, for a limited period

2008-06-05T21:43:00.003+01:00

The Times Archive invites you to explore 200 years of history as it appeared in the original pages of The Times newspaper from 1785-1985

Every issue of The Times published between 1785-1985, digitally scanned and fully searchable

Click and drag navigation

Save, print, e-mail favourite articles

150 topic pages, plus magnificent archive photo galleries

During our free introductory period access all articles in the Times Archive by registering with Times Online. Look for this symbol Times Archive

* Take our Interactive Tour

* Read our FAQs

http://archive.timesonline.co.uk/tol/archive/

Times Archive is a new section of Times Online. There may be some hitches but we're working to fix them. Thanks for your patience.

Australian "Free Settlers" Database 1826 - 1922

2008-06-04T14:38:00.003+01:00

Online Database Lists "Free Settlers"

Details of millions of Britons who traveled to Australia in the late 19th and early 20th century in search of economic success were released online Wednesday. Ancestry.co.uk has compiled the details of 8.9 million so-called "free settlers", or economic migrants to Australia, which the website says gives the average Briton a 25 percent chance of having a free settler ancestor.

"Australia's free settler heritage is often overlooked in favour of its more colourful convict past," the website's managing director Simon Harper said.

"However, it should be remembered that free settlers were brave and ambitious, making the choice to leave their homes and travel by ship for many months to the other side of the world for the chance of a new life."

Australia's population rose more than 100 times between 1826 and 1922, largely due to immigration, as well as a rapidly-growing economy.

http://landing.ancestry.co.uk/intl/au/settlers/default.aspx

Atlanta - Georgia - Cemeteries pre 1930

2008-05-26T16:12:00.002+01:00

The Franklin Garrett Atlanta Necrology Database

http://garrett.atlantahistorycenter.com/glist.php

Selby - Yorkshire Ancestors

2008-05-26T16:03:00.003+01:00

FINDMYPAST.COM Adds More National Burial Index Records

Parish records from Yorkshire online now

Leading UK family history website findmypast.com has today announced that it has added to its online collection of over 10 million National Burial Index records, which go back to 1538.

Working in partnership with the Federation of Family History Societies (FFHS), findmypast.com has published online burial index records from the parish of Selby. These comprise over 10,000 records from Selby cemetery in the West Riding of Yorkshire, as well as over 800 records from Bubwith All Saints in the East Riding of Yorkshire.

These parish records are crucial for any family historian as they predate the start of civil registration in England and Wales in 1837 - a seemingly insurmountable brick wall for many. The index gives the date and place of burial as well as age at death.

The records can be searched as part of an Explorer subscription to the findmypast website, or with pay-per-view units.

More parish records will be added to the website over the coming months.

http://www.findmypast.com/BirthsMarriagesDeaths.jsp

Free access to U.S. Military Records via Ancestry.com till May 30th

2008-05-26T15:59:00.002+01:00

http://landing.ancestry.com/military/collections.aspx?sssdmh=dm13.167025&o_iid=35869&o_lid=35869

GRO Update from FFHS

2008-05-26T15:57:00.003+01:00

On 28 January we announced that following the closure of the Family Records
Centre GRO indexes for all registration events would be made available on
microfiche at Greater Manchester County Record Office, Birmingham Central
Library, Bridgend Reference and Information Library and Plymouth Central
Library, as well as The National Archives.? We have just heard that City of
Westminster Archives Centre has been added to this list.

The information available at each of these centres will include births,
deaths and marriages from 1837 to 2006, adoptions from 1927 to 2007, civil
partnerships from 2005 to 2007, overseas registrations from 1761 to 2006 and
the provisional indexes for births and deaths for 2007. During the course of
2008 and 2009 each of these sites will receive updates and replacements.

The plans to have a full set with the up-to-date? & supplementary indexes at
the Society of Genealogists fell through.? However, they are still going
ahead with plans to offer free access to GRO indexes ? on fiche up to 1926
and online images from 3 providers (Findmypast, Ancestry and Family
Relatives) up to 2006.? Watch their website (www.sog.org.uk) for more news
on this.

Jamaican Family Search -Genealogy

2008-05-26T15:54:00.001+01:00

This Jamaica, West Indies, genealogical research site contains transcriptions from various documents for 1655 to 1947 (and a few to 1993), including nineteenth century Jamaica Almanacs (which list property owners and civil and military officials), the complete text of "Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies" written in 1875 by J. H. Lawrence-Archer, Jamaica Directories for 1878, 1891 and 1910, extractions from Jamaican Church records, Civil Registration and Wills, and excerpts from newspapers, books, and other documents. It includes images, a Glossary, Historical Background, and other Utilities to aid in putting this information into focus. New information is added constantly, thus creating a virtual genealogy library for those researching Jamaican families. Here you will come across people from all walks of life: large landowners and paupers, slave and free, knights, gentlemen, laborers, seamen, soldiers, lawmakers and lawbreakers. They all left their imprint in the Jamaican records. Facts come to light, and skeletons jangle in the closet. The colors of people mentioned in the Registers, and the variety of people found here, reflect our island motto, "Out of Many, One People."

Jamaica was a British colony until it gained its independence in 1962. In the 17th through 19th centuries Britain required that the colony should take a census or a count of the population in various years in order to provide statistics concerning the makeup of the population. The results which have been preserved as census records do not contain any names of individuals, but merely numbers of persons in various categories, which generally included: white, black, free colored, certain countries of origin, and occupation. One exception is the Census information for Hanover for 1823 which has been found in some Colonial Office correspondence and is on this site. Because of this lack of what most genealogists would consider census information, the best substitutes are the Jamaica Almanacs, lists of landowners, Directories, Church Registers, and tombstones. This site offers information from these substitutes, as well as excerpts from old newspapers and other sources.

This site now contains over 276,800 names of people who lived in Jamaica at some time.

Pages are identified here with an [F] (Free access to everyone) or an [M] (Members only), followed by Links to the pages. For an explanation of Terms of Use, or how to obtain a Free Subscription, please see below.

This website is authored by an individual, and not by a corporation.

http://jamaicanfamilysearch.com/index.htm

Merchant Shipping Crews, Masters, Vessels and Owners

2008-05-26T15:48:00.002+01:00

Another useful web site for merchant shipping, which you probably all know
about anyway but won't hurt to mention again, is
http://www.crewlist.org.uk/. This isn't just about crew lists. If you
click on "CLIP Finding Aids", there are lists crews, but also Vessels by
Name, Vessels by Official Number, Masters, Masters by Vessel, Owners, Owners
by Vessel etc. The period of coverage is 1861-1913.

Courtesy of Jeanne Bunting, Guild of One-Name Studies

U.S. Military Ancestors - Ancestry.com - Free Access

2008-05-26T15:45:00.002+01:00

Free Public Access on Ancestry.com

In case you missed it, the following was in today's announcement from Ancestry.com:

To commemorate the NARA-Ancestry.com agreement on the eve of Memorial Day, Ancestry.com is making its entire U.S. Military Collection -- the largest online collection of American military records -- available for free to the public. From May 20 through May 31, people can log on to http://www.ancestry.com/military to view more than 100 million names and 700 titles and databases of military records, the majority of which come from NARA, from all 50 U.S. states.

Find My Past .Com Launches New Version of the 1901 Census Online

2008-05-17T11:27:00.004+01:00

Leading UK family history website findmypast.com today unveils its brand new version of the 1901 census. Records from the first two counties, Somerset and Gloucestershire, are now online and available to search at findmypast.com, and the remaining counties will be added gradually over the coming months.

Applying its trademark meticulous approach to quality control, findmypast has completely re-transcribed the 1901 census from scratch, with the aim of providing an industry leading product. In addition, a variety of fields have been transcribed, making it possible to search for an individual using, for example, their calculated year of birth, their age or occupation.

To narrow down results, try searching for a second person living at the same address. It is also possible to search for an address on the census, as well as for a person. You can also choose in what order you want to view search results - by birth year, oldest first; by birth year, youngest first; alphabetically by name A to Z or alphabetically by name Z to A. In addition, the free search results include the name of the county of residence - a boon to anyone not familiar with every registration district.

These new features have also been added to all the other censuses at findmypast.

And finally, search criteria are now also retained, making it easier to carry out the same search across all the censuses on findmypast.

http://www.findmypast.com/home.jsp

New Web Site: www.NewYorkAncestors.org

2008-05-16T08:50:00.002+01:00

The following announcement was written by the New England Historic Genealogical Society:

NEHGS LAUNCHES NEW WEB PORTAL HIGHLIGHTING NEW YORK RESEARCH TOOLS

NewYorkAncestors.org Features a Wealth of New York State Resources

Boston, MA – May 15, 2008 – New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston today announced the launch of a new Web portal highlighting the wide variety of New York resources available on their award-winning Website, NewEnglandAncestors.org. This new portal, located at www.NewYorkAncestors.org, will direct members to a wide range of databases, publications, and articles focusing on New York state research.

"We are thrilled to feature our New York resources with this new portal," said D. Brenton Simons, NEHGS President and CEO. "We've seen a tremendous increase in New York research within our membership in recent years. Although our organization has long been associated with New England research, we want people to know that we offer so much more. When we look at the region genealogically speaking, the two areas of New England and New York are very closely connected."

Resources and research tools will be available to all NEHGS members as part of their membership, and include a wide range of New York databases such as vital records, probate records, census, tax, and voter lists, cemetery records, church records, court records, and published genealogies and biographies. NEHGS also has available articles such as Marian Henry's "The Erie Canal: 'Mother of Cities'" and "New York State Cemeteries: A Finding Aid." Visitors can also find for sale a variety of publications helpful to the New York researcher.

www.NewYorkAncestors.org is part of the growing NEHGS family of web portals, including www.NewEnglandAncestors.org, www.GreatMigration.org, and www.NotableKin.org.

Also, NEHGS will soon be making available for the first time, electronic access to the scholarly quarterly publication, "New Netherland Connections," published by Dorothy Koenig.

About NEHGS

Founded in 1845, New England Historic Genealogical Society is the country's oldest and largest non-profit genealogical organization. Located in Boston, NEHGS collects, preserves, and interprets materials that help make accessible the histories of families in America. The NEHGS research library, one of the most respected genealogical libraries in the field, is home to millions books, journals, manuscripts, photographs, microfilms, documents, records, and artifacts that date back more than four centuries. The award-winning web site www.NewEnglandAncestors.org offers access to more than 110 million names in 2,400 searchable databases. NEHGS has more than 23,000 members nationally. NEHGS staff includes some of the leading expert genealogists in the country, specializing in early American, Irish, English, Italian, Scottish, Atlantic and French Canadian, and Jewish genealogy.

http://www.newyorkancestors.org/

400 Years of Surrey Wills Go Online

2008-05-16T07:57:00.002+01:00

The Surrey Will Abstracts are among the most valuable research sources for the county of Surrey, and for family and social history generally. Dating from the 15th to 19th centuries, these fully indexed abstracts of all 28,000 wills proved in the Archdeaconry and Commissary Courts of Surrey (and known still to exist) are now available online exclusively on British Origins [at http://www.britishorigins.com].

They provide a more detailed picture of how our ancestors lived than almost any other genealogical resource. They come from a cross section of society, most testators being people of relatively modest means - artisans, small farmers, tradesmen. Many contain rich details of the testator's property and the value placed upon it - clothes, furniture, tools, land. Even if you don't find any of your own forebears in these records, by searching on date and occupation, you may find people living at the same times and in similar conditions to your ancestors.

The Surrey Will Abstracts provide one of the best sources of any kind for identifying family members. The average will contains the names of ten people and often many more; most of whom are related.

http://www.britishorigins.com/

Find My Past partners with Family Search

2008-05-15T17:38:00.002+01:00

FINDMYPAST.COM PARTNERS WITH FAMILY SEARCH TO BRING MORE BRITISH HISTORICAL RECORDS TO A WORLDWIDE AUDIENCE

UK family history website www.findmypast.com has announced the start of a
new partnership with US-based FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org).

The two family history organisations have been awarded licences by The
National Archives of the United Kingdom to digitise and make available both
the 'Chelsea Pensioners' retired soldiers records between 1760 and 1914, and
the Merchant Seamen's collection of records dating from 1835 to 1941.

Chelsea Pensioners and militia records
The three-year digitisation project will scan eight million images from the
War Office's 'Royal Hospital Chelsea Soldiers' Service' documents dating
from 1760 and 'Militia Attestation Papers' documents from 1870, through to
1913.

These fascinating records truly bring to life the comings and goings of
pensioners in the Royal Hospital Chelsea, including each ex-serviceman's
name, age, birthplace and service history, as well as details of physical
appearance, conduct sheet, previous occupation, and in some cases the reason
for discharge. After 1883, details of marriages and children may also
appear.

Merchant Seamen records
The partnership will also digitise the Board of Trade's merchant seamen
records from the periods 1835 to 1844 and 1918 to 1941. The documents will
be made available online to enable people to easily search the names, dates
and places of birth of ancestors who served as merchant seamen.

Fascinatingly, many of the twentieth century records include portrait
photographs of the sailors as well as personal details and summaries of the
voyages they served on. The records include people of many nationalities and
women's service records.

Nearly a third of UK families have ancestors who served as a merchant
seaman, this series of records are of huge importance to the nation's
heritage and history.

Digitisation partnership
Findmypast.com will create indexes and transcriptions to enable members of
the public to easily search the records online at both www.findmypast.com
and www.familysearch.org, while FamilySearch will be responsible for
scanning the images on site at The National Archives.

General Register Office - Open Days

2008-05-15T17:34:00.002+01:00

General Register Office ( GRO ) Open Days

The Certificate Services Branch will once again be holding Open Days, giving
members of the public a chance to find out more about how birth, death and
marriage certificates are produced and see inside the wonderful Victorian
building which is the home of Civil Registration for England and Wales.

The Open Days will take place on Saturday 7th June 2008 and Saturday 14th
June 2008.

Visitors to the Open Days will be given the opportunity to:
Take a tour of the General Register Office ( GRO ) site in Southport
and see a demonstration of the certificate production processes.
View exhibitions from various Family History Organisations including
The National Archives.
View and discuss issues with other business areas of GRO
Attend talks on various topics connected with GRO and other
organisations.

All places need to be booked well in advance.

If you are interested in attending on either of the above dates please
contact:
Certificate Services Contact Centre
Tel: 0151 471 4508 or 0151 471 4530
8:00am to 4:00pm - Monday to Friday '

Oxfordshire FHS Open Day Saturday 20th September

2008-05-12T18:30:00.001+01:00

This year's Open Day will be held in our regular meeting venue - the Exeter Hall in Kidlington, just north of Oxford.

The venue is situated on a frequent bus route, and is easily reached by public transport. Those travelling by car will find Kidlington close to the main A34 and A40 trunk roads, as well as to the M40 motorway. There is limited free car parking on site.

As usual it will run from 10am to 4pm.

The Open Day will feature the usual assortment of visiting Societies, publishers, dealers in second hand books and postcards, and the like. Our own Society's library and search services will be available for consultation, whilst we will also be manning a beginners' helpdesk. Additionally, there will be computing demonstrations, which will give advice on such things as which genealogical software package to choose, and the use of the internet in family history.

Admission to the Open Day is free, as is the on-site car park.

Light refreshments will be on sale at reasonable prices.

http://www.ofhs.org.uk/OpenDay.html

Bucks FHS Open Day, Aylesbury, Saturday 26th July

2008-05-12T18:28:00.002+01:00

The 2008 Open Day will be help at The Grange High School, Wendover Way, Aylesbury on Saturday 26th July from 10am to 4pm.

The Society holds an Open Day each year at which most of the Society's databases, libraries, books and publications are available. We are also grateful to our colleagues in numerous other Societies who visit to help make it a great day out for family historians. Full details of the societies and other exhibitors who will be joining us will appear here as they are confirmed. Please make a note in your diary to join us.

http://www.bucksfhs.org.uk/index.php

Home Counties Family History Fair, Sunday June 15th

2008-05-12T18:24:00.002+01:00

One day show. this show is being held in the historic Bletchley Park, home of the famous wartime "Enigma" codebreaking fame. Tie in your visit with a tour around the buildings at the park and see where it all happened.

Nick Barratt, from BBC TV's "Who do you think you are", will be giving talks on genealogy.

There is a refreshments bar and food and a BAR- B-Q.

Admission is £4, children free. For directions, go to the Bletchley Park website www.bletchleypark.org.uk/calendar/event

http://www.centralexhibitions.co.uk/8.html

Workhouse - New Book by Simon Fowler

2008-05-09T20:43:00.002+01:00

The true stories of those who lived in, ran or investigated the institutions that dominated lives for 250 years.

Workhouses in Britain cast terrifying shadows over ordinary lives, especially after the New Poor Law Act of 1834 laid down that 'going indoors' should be the main form of poor relief available. This popular history explores the reality behind the legend, drawing on personal stories such as that of the anonymous 'Indoor Pauper', investigations and reports, contemporary ballads and even graffiti to bring the institution vividly to life. Tales of individual workhouses, from all parts of the country, are interwoven with rarely seen documents and images from the National Archives as well as a wealth of local sources.

Workhouse considers all aspects of institutional life, from the homes of masters and mistresses to wards for orphans and vagrants. It reveals fascinating everyday details such as the dietary, routine and clothing, as well as examining the effect of the workhouse experience on individual lives. It shows how workhouses featured in literature, from Dickens to Orwell, were condemned by celebrities such as Florence Nightingale, and yet became deeply rooted in their communities. For those interested in researching further – including their own pauper ancestors – the book includes a full guide to sources.

Workhouse

by Simon Fowler

The people - the places - the life behind doors.

Category: New books

Format: Paperback

Date of publication: March 2008

Publisher: The National Archives

Available from The National Archives bookshop or:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Workhouse-people-places-behind-People/dp/1905615280/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210362278&sr=1-1

Nonconformist Records - The National Archives

2008-05-09T20:20:00.002+01:00

New online - a new partnership project between The National Archives and S&N Genealogy Supplies means that you can now access images of these records online. BMD Registers External website - link opens in a new window provides access to the non-parochial and nonconformist registers 1567-1840, held in RG 4Links to the Catalogue, RG 5Links to the Catalogue and RG6Links to the Catalogue. This includes the births, marriages and burials certificates and notes of the Society of Friends' (Quakers) plus the birth registry of Baptist, Presbyterian and Protestant Dissenters (known as 'Dr Williams Library'). Basic searching is free of charge, but there is a fee for advanced searching and to download images.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/familyhistory/bmd/

Holocaust Archives Now Available to the Public

2008-05-09T13:03:00.002+01:00

The International Tracing Service's archives have now been opened for the public after more than 60 years.

For genealogists of Jewish families, tracing the 6 million Jewish victims that disappeared without a trace has been a challenge. More than 50 million documents are held at the International Tracing Service (ITS) at Bad Arolsen, Germany. For years, this archive has collected documents to help trace what happened to family members.

For decades after World War II, the files were used only to help find missing persons or document atrocities to support compensation claims. But in November, the last of the 11 countries that govern the archive under the auspices of the International Committee of the Red Cross cleared the way for public access.

Since then, interest has skyrocketed. Erich Oetiker, deputy director of the archive, said while the staff of 400 continue to process some 1,000 tracing requests per day, there are now also near daily visits from historians or individuals eager to trace a lost person's fate or view an original document.

The archive has little information online, almost everything is on paper. Other major Holocaust collections exist at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., as well as Israel's Yad Vashem—both of which hold digitized copies of part of the collection—along with the Polish Institute for National Remembrance.

You can find more information at:

International Tracing Service: http://www.its-arolsen.org

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: http://www.ushmm.org

Yad Vashem: http://www.yadvashem.org

Institute of National Remembrance: http://www.ipn.gov.pl/wai/en/10/5

Boer War 1899-1902 Roll of Honour

2008-05-07T21:22:00.003+01:00

Image copyright of Roll of Honour.com

Throughout this site there are many sources of information which relate to the Boer War. This page attempts to bring these sources together under the guise of one index page.

http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Boer/

West Country Ancestors?

2008-05-07T21:02:00.002+01:00

Blitz Memorials - Bristol, Bath and Weston-Super-Mare

A register of those who lost their lives due to enemy action in Bristol, Bath, Weston-super-Mare and surrounding districts, 1940-1944

http://www.fishponds.org.uk/memorials.html

World War II Lost Bombers Database

2008-05-07T20:59:00.003+01:00

A database of the lost bombers lost during the World War II.

http://www.lostbombers.co.uk/

British Phone Books, 1880-1984 Releases 1-4

2008-05-07T20:52:00.002+01:00

This collection contains British phone books published between 1880, the year after the public telephone service was introduced to the UK, and 1984, from the historic phone book collection held by BT Archives. The database currently contains 1780 phone books and provides near full county coverage for England as well as containing substantial records for Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.

http://content.ancestry.co.uk/iexec/?htx=List&dbid=1025&offerid=0%3a7858%3a0

The London Burial Grounds

2008-05-07T20:49:00.002+01:00

"In Looking one day at Roque's plan of London (1742-5) I noticed how many burial grounds and churchyards were marked upon it which no longer existed. I made a table of them, and traced their destiny . . ."

Mrs Basil Holmes, London Burial Grounds,1897

Over a hundred years have passed since Mrs Holmes recorded the location of nearly 500 burial grounds in the city and suburbs of London, of which 364 still existed in whole or in part. Since then there have been two world wars, and development on a massive scale. At the beginning of the 21st century, how many still survive?

http://www.londonburials.co.uk/

Free Genealogy Forms

2008-05-07T11:30:00.003+01:00

You can download free genealogy forms from this website:

http://www.free-genealogy-forms.com/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/

Indian Ancestors?

2008-05-07T11:03:00.002+01:00

Families in British India Society

If you are researching family of British or Anglo-Indian descent who lived and / or served within the Indian Sub-continent from 1600 to 1947, you may well find something about them in our pages. Thanks to our army of volunteers, our data on pre Independence India is continually increasing and is available to all-comers free of charge in the fibis search section of this website. We wish you every success in your research and trust that you will contribute the results of your success to our pages for the benefit of others.

http://www.fibis.org/

Irish Ancestors - County Sligo

2008-05-06T20:25:00.002+01:00

The Irish Family History Foundation's Online Research Service (ORS) are pleased to announce the availability of the records of the Co. Sligo Heritage and Genealogy Society covering the parishes and districts of county Sligo. This adds another 200,000 baptismal, birth, death and marriage records to our database.

http://sligo.brsgenealogy.com/index.php?&set=yes

Talks & Lectures at The National Archives (TNA), Kew

2008-05-05T16:33:00.002+01:00

The National Archives is proud to present a new programme of family history talks, lectures and other events, starting on 6 May 2008, in association with Ancestors magazine. The talks and lectures will take place in the new Talks Room on the first floor, each event starting at 14:00 and lasting for roughly one hour. For further details of all TNA's events please visit the website at: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/events/calendar.htm

Was your ancestor a clergyman?

2008-05-02T08:56:00.002+01:00

An ongoing project, this relational database of the careers of Church of England clergymen is indexed by name, location or bishop and searchable by all of these as well as date range (between 1540 and 1835) and county.

http://www.theclergydatabase.org.uk/cce/apps/

Researching the history of your house?

2008-05-01T08:46:00.002+01:00

The National Archives - House History - Guide to resources, is a good place to start

Starting house history research

We hold the records of central government and the courts of law for England and Wales and the United Kingdom. We also maintain the National Register of Archives and the Manorial Documents Register, which can help researchers to locate manuscript sources for British history outside the public records.

These pages provide a brief introduction to sources for the history of houses. House history can be enormously rewarding, though it is rarely straightforward. Research into the history of your house can be divided roughly into two main areas: the ownership and occupation of your property, and its building and architectural history, but the sources available are often useful for both.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/househistory/guide/

More Old Bailey Files Are Now Online

2008-04-29T11:12:00.001+01:00

The web site contains the transcripts of every trial heard at the Old Bailey from 1674 to 1913, a total of more than 210,000 criminal trials. Sadly, it includes the biographical details of around 3,000 men and women executed at Tyburn.

The web site, published by the Humanities Research Institute, is a collaboration by the Universities of Sheffield and Hertfordshire and the Open University. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the trials run to more than 110,000 pages of text and some 120 million words. In addition to the text of the trials, the website provides 195,000 digital images, as well as contemporary maps, images of the courtroom and information on the historical and legal background to the Old Bailey court.

Note: the website is extremely busy at the moment, you may have difficulty in gaining access.

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org.

That's My Family - A Canadian Genealogy Search Engine

2008-04-28T14:13:00.003+01:00

A new search tool searches genealogy and family history databases hosted by Canadian federal, provincial or territorial archives centres and libraries, as well as those of several commercial partners. "That's My Family," or "Voici Ma Famille," is free of charge and available in both French and English. It was launched and is maintained by Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) with support from Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and the Council of Provincial and Territorial Archivists (CPTA) of Canada.

"That's My Family" hosts no data of its own. It is a search engine, similar to Google, that indexes data found on other sites. The difference is that "That's My Family" looks only at Canadian sites that contain genealogy information. As such, it can save you a lot of time; you do not have to search each site individually.

http://www.voicimafamille.info/Metamoteur/explications_en.html

Devon Ancestors ?

2008-04-28T14:02:00.001+01:00

Devon Ancestors

A useful website for anyone researching Devon Ancestors

http://www.devonheritage.org/index.htm

English Palaeography Workshop Saturday 10th May 2008

2008-04-22T14:45:00.004+01:00

Guild of One-Name Studies - English Palaeography Workshop

Saturday 10th May 2008 - London Metropolitan Archives

For further information and booking procedure follow the link below:

http://www.one-name.org/Seminar_LMA_May2008.html

Guild of One-Name Studies - Seminars 2008 / 2009

2008-04-22T14:43:00.002+01:00

The following events have been provisionally arranged and may be subject to change.

9th August 2008 Guild Hands-on Practical Computer Seminar: Computer Science Block, Durham University

15th November 2008 Guild Pre-19th-Century Sources Seminar: Poundbury, Dorset

February 2009 Guild Poster Seminar: London

16th May 2009 Guild Non-UK Sources Seminar: Hampsthwaite Hall near Harrogate, Yorkshire

August 2009 Guild New Members Seminar: Amersham Free Church Hall, Buckinghamshire

http://www.one-name.org/timetable.html

Society of Genealogists Courses May 2008

2008-04-22T14:36:00.002+01:00

SOG Courses for May 2008

http://www.sog.org.uk/events/calendar.shtml#may08

Genealogy Research System

2008-04-22T13:18:00.002+01:00

Deltadrive Genealogy Research System (GRS) is a database software package that enables you to organise all the documents, information and other stuff that you collect when researching your family history. You can enter all the data from certificates, census returns, internet sites etc and find it again when you need it. Many other facilities help you link the individuals, sort, index and create family trees from the source data.

GRS offers a systematic way to research family history and genealogy. The software enables you to collect and store information through to creating family trees and can form the basis of a historical study of families, family names or places.

http://www.deltadrive.co.uk/index.html