Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2025 i Family Tree UK

Directories of engineers and apprentices More than 100,000 new names have been added to TheGenealogist.co.uk’s growing occupational collections. The details have been obtained from a variety of publications, including (to name just two of many sources): The Junior Institution of Engineers, List of Members, 8 May 1950 – providing details of early-career engineers across the UK; and The British Engineers’ Association Official Directory of Members, 1917 – highlighting professionals active during a crucial time in wartime engineering. Durham Home Guard index WO 409 An index for Durham Home Guard Form of Enrolment records is now available to search on TheGenealogist in the military collections. The Form of Enrolment – Army Form W3066 – contains personal information and other service information such as length of service in the Home Guard and…

Poring over maps of Bolton, Ordnance Survey old and new, I’m wondering why my great-grandfather John Tonge and his family moved house quite so often. To help, I’ve drawn up a list, in date order, of all the street names I’ve seen on the records so far, but I’m tying myself in knots with it. The earliest addresses are on one of the old photocopies I found at Mum’s – my great-grandparents’ marriage certificate. It shows John Tonge, a 21-year-old grinder, married Mary Gerrard, a 26-year-old cotton operative, on 23 May 1886. Mary was living at 5 Black Lane, John’s address is somewhere called Blindsill, and the wedding took place at the church of St James, New Bury – which turns out to be not my hometown Bury, but a…

Family tree software: an introduction Family tree software is, for most family historians, the one essential software commitment that we all make. Usually, early in our research journey, we decide to start organising and recording our findings in a single place. And thus, the search for the most suitable family tree software commences. It isn’t easy for novice family historians to be able to anticipate all the functionality that they may need in their chosen package over the many years they may use it. Nor is it easy to distinguish between the merits and demerits of the many different packages on the market. But the stakes are high: • Select a poor piece of software and you may rue your choice for years to come. • Select a package that…

With Family Tree Plus Premium you’ll receive every issue of Family Tree magazine in the post, but that’s just the start. You’ll also be able to join live webinars, watch a huge library of video guides, search and read back issues, and qualify for special discounts. When we say 'ultimate' we really mean it! Your subscription includes: ✓ Live regular webinars ✓ Over 100 hours of on-demand videos ✓ New videos added every month ✓ Searchable archive of Family Tree ✓ Every new issue in the digital library ✓ Exclusive discounts on masterclasses, workbooks & more ✓ Your members-only newsletter, filled with expert tips ✓ Every print issue of Family Tree delivered to your home ✓ Print edition of the annual ‘Family History Handbook’ ✓ Tracing Your Ancestors Through Family Photographs…

Dating Victorian and Edwardian photographs: coloured card mounts Professional studios began mass producing card-mounted printed photographs in around 1860, with small cartes de visite or cdvs (c.10 x 6.5cms). These were followed by cabinet portraits (c.16.5 x 11.5cms) and rarer non-standard sized prints, and the manufacture of photographic mounts became a significant industry. As with all consumer goods, over time production advanced and output diversified, reflecting shifting fashions and a growing demand for novelty, and progressively presenting new aesthetic choices to both photographers and their clients. One major variant was the colour of the card used for mounts, and, although a few different shades might be in use at any given time, this striking characteristic narrows the potential date range for every surviving studio photograph and any rarer early amateur…

AI transcription of handwritten records by Ancestry has been around for a few years (think of the recent 1950 US Census launch, and subsequent transcription in record time, thanks to AI assistance). Now, however, Ancestry is providing beta access to an AI transcription tool available to Ancestry members. To try it out, choose an image from your gallery, and select ‘transcribe’. The parish register, shown, and experimentation with English census records, returned the response: ‘Unfortunately, we can’t create a transcription. But this feature is constantly being upgraded to handle more document types. Please try again soon.’ Wayne Shepheard, as his recent Family Tree Plus presentation (May 2025), demonstrated the successful use of Ancestry’s AI tool, and also provided an insightful comparison of AI transcriptions generated by Transkribus, ChatGPT, Copilot and…

The new collections on MyHeritage (April 2025) include passenger and air arrival records, immigration records, draft and enlistment records, military awards and casualty lists, gravestones and memorials, land petitions, and pages from historical newspapers. Learn details about each new record set on the MyHeritage blog: https://bit.ly/4kFnreK The details about the record sets include the date span that the set covers and the sort of details you may expect to find in a search result. Details about the source of the information are provided when viewing a search result.…

The civil registration of marriage in Ireland commenced in April 1845 for couples marrying through Protestant denominations, or on a non-denominational basis through civil marriages performed by state-appointed registrars. It would not be until January 1864 that all marriages were required to be registered with the state, Roman Catholic marriages included. The records are freely available online at www.irishgenealogy.ie, with additional records for Northern Ireland after 1921 also available at https://geni.nidirect.gov.uk; there is a 75-year closure period for both sites. But what were the rules surrounding the legality of marriage in Ireland prior to civil registration, and what happened when Irish marriages didn’t go according to plan? Prior to 1845 we need to look to church records for evidence of marriage, with many Protestant denominated marriages transcribed at www.rootsireland.ie, and…

How to review software I’ve been using for over 20 years? Our reviews in the series of articles are intended to follow similar formats, for which we’ve created a standard set of functional questions that we’ll aim to respond to, as far as possible, for each application (see the tables on pages 38-39). Where to find it? Family Historian is written, maintained and published by software company Calico Pie. You can view the website here: www.family-historian.co.uk. Cost? Purchase is via a one-time licence fee. At time of writing (Spring 2025), the cost of a single user licence is £59.95. Note that additional, smaller fees are payable for significant upgrades, eg v6 to v7. These occur only every few years. Minor updates are free. Free trial? They run a 30-day free…

When I took my first DNA in 2017 I thought the tools available were fantastic then – but looking back now I can’t believe the innovations companies have made to help us on our DNA adventures in the meantime. I’d like to share with you some of the best tools around, and explain how they make your match list that little bit easier to understand. Plus I plan to share tips to help you use these tools effectively. (I will also point out some of the misconceptions along the way so you don’t need to make the mistakes I have!) Note, some of the tools below require a subscription. TOOL: Relationship predictions Whichever company you test with, you will receive a match list. This is a list ordered from the…

Can you confirm whether this mystery soldier is named Arthur or Albert Milne? Q I share with you here a mystery photo of a soldier with no cap badge, who is probably the natural grandfather of my friend, Jenny Sweeney. Her grandmother, Ada Sophia Ward, born 1893, was age 21 when she lived at Limbury, Luton in early 1915, and fell pregnant, giving birth on 23 November 1915 to Jenny’s father, Reginald Arthur Albert Ward. When an adult, Reginald told Jenny Ada’s story. Apparently, his natural father was a soldier named Arthur Albert Milne. Reginald showed Jenny a photo of soldier Milne, which he always carried in his wallet, plus that one or both of his middle names came from Milne’s forename(s). Milne later got a message to Ada that…

With a brief segue into Staffordshire and a sidestep into Essex, my family tree is firmly rooted paternally, on the Warwickshire/Leicestershire border, and maternally in Yorkshire. In other words, Dad, with his agricultural labourers, his cattle drovers, carriers and one modest criminal, and Mum with her lead miners, hill farmers, lay preachers and one missing slice of the ancestral cake due to shenanigans of a lively Essex girl. They mightn’t seem exciting enough for Who Do You Think You Are?, but my lifelong belief about family history stories is that it’s all down to ‘how you tell ’em’. Like jokes, they fall flat if too factual. If too long winded, they produce the dreaded glassy eye stare. I remember Michael Parkinson once saying his labouring family were too dull for…

Trove.scot is a new platform bringing together information into one place from the HES Historic Environment Portal, Canmore and the Property in Care Collections, and Scran. The first batch of over 50,000 items has already been transferred from Scran and is now available to view on Trove.scot. The full transfer will be completed by March 2026, meaning that there will be a period during which up to 200,000 items will not be available to access online. Scran url links will not currently redirect to Trove. scot, so, unless this situation changes, your links (eg in your research or blogs etc, will need to be updated by you to the new Trove.scot location). For further information please see www.historicenvironment.scot/about-us/news/retiral-of-hes-web-services/…

It’s an inescapable consequence of living in an island nation that, prior to the advent of air travel, everyone arriving in – or departing from – the country would have done so by sea. Over the centuries, some efforts were made by the authorities to keep records of those arriving on these shores (there was less interest in those heading in the opposite direction) but it wasn’t until the last few decades of the 19th century that the British government began to maintain anything approaching a comprehensive record of arrivals and departures; even then, the records didn’t cover voyages within Europe. The National Archives holds a variety of records relating to ‘alien’ arrivals in the UK from 1793 onwards, but these certificates and passenger lists are far from being comprehensive.…

Surname studies are not always the whole, or the easiest, answer to researching families. Most of us love to research the name we currently go by or were born with. But does that give us the complete picture of our family connections? Blended families occur on both sides of my own family in every generation I have been able to trace. In fact, my own family is blended. That fact never, as far as I know, caused any stress between parents or siblings. How the children saw themselves and which name they carried through life is a curious study, though. Identifying the instances of blended families In a search for an ancestral family, one might come across a census record with one or more individuals shown as children in a…

This is the first of a series of articles; the intention being to provide an overview of useful family and local history records in existence, with advice on where to find them. The articles will include leads and resources for all countries within the British Isles, while the case study woven through the articles is that of an English parish. Note too that the feudal system developed with differences among each of the countries and the terminology varies too. What period will we cover & why? For the purposes of this series of articles in Family Tree, the medieval period is being viewed as the period from the Norman conquest in 1066 to the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, which signalled the end of the rule of the Plantagenets. Essentially…

What did those serving in the RNAS, RFC and, later, RAF and WRAF wear? Family photographs can often be the starting point of our family history journey to learn about a family member’s time serving in the military. Here is quick summary of points to look out for, and a selection of period photographs. Early pictures show groups of pilots and groundcrew in varying designs of uniforms from both services. Most of the RFC pilots still wore the badges of their parent regiment, along with a brevet (wing or wings) denoting whether they are a pilot or an observer. Later brevets would include single ones for all sorts of aircrew from Air Gunner, and double ones on the top sleeve of parachutists. Those serving in the RNAS are fairly easy…

I’ve transcribed that! RE: FT May, page 10, includes gravestones. For my sins I recorded all the monumental inscriptions (graveyard & church interior) of every parish church in the Diocese of Monmouth plus a number of nonconformist chapels – some 250 churchyards in total. On page 34 of that same issue of Family Tree you tell of the information in school records. I’ve transcribed the admission registers and log books of five Newport (Mon) schools all dating from the late 1800s. At the moment I’m transcribing a Newport solicitor’s ‘Letter Book’ from 1813/1814. Dave Woolven Editor: It is quite remarkable how much transcribing you have completed – and still going strong. If anyone would like to find out more about Dave’s work, please contact him at woolven440@btinternet.com. A phenomenal achievement…