Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2026 i Family Tree UK

A new version of the British Library (BL) catalogue launched on its website (www.bl.uk) on 8 December 2025. The new system will allow ‘easier access to these collections, real-time availability data and the ability to track your request,’ explains BL. The new catalogue will include records for most of the British Library published collections up to October 2025. BL: ‘We will also be relaunching our Archives and Manuscripts catalogue around this time, although this will have a different ordering process initially.’ The Archives and Manuscripts collection around this time which will be a snapshot of the collection as of October 2023. The launch of the new catalogue is excellent news, following extreme disruption to the online information systems of BL website, after a ransomware cyber attack in October 2023, which…

Round One: Sorted! 1 Where do you think you are? A good knowledge of geography is important for many aspects of our research. Can you arrange these six English towns from north to south?: Chester Gloucester Leicester Manchester Rochester Worcester 2 Read all about it! In their descriptions of people and the places they lived and worked, the great 19th century novels can help us to understand what life was like for our ancestors. Can you match these iconic novels to their date of publication: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 1813 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 1847 Middlemarch by George Eliot 1855 North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell 1861 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 1871 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy 1891 3 Let battle commence! Many of…

There are many occupations described in historical documents or censuses that almost no one is gainfully employed doing any more. People my age may remember certain jobs that have gone by the wayside. I recall home milk delivery in the early 1950s with milkmen using horsedrawn wagons. Where I grew up, the last one on active duty was retired in the spring of 1953. Most of us will recollect many other ordinary things people did for a living that have been eliminated through modernisation or mechanisation: lift (elevator) operators, pinsetters in bowling alleys and telegram messengers. Many occupational descriptions were unique to the language of the day and would not now be politically correct to use. We still have predominately female flight attendants, for example, but you probably won’t hear…

Many, many years ago – nearly 60, to be exact – I began to research my family tree. These were the olden days, long before the internet was even a twinkle in a scientist’s eye. My grandfather was able to tell me about his grandfather, Abraham Cockman, who had been headmaster of a school in Grantham but had been born in London. The census returns for the years 1841 to 1861 could be searched at the Land Registry in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Turning the paper pages of the census was worth the time spent queueing in Portugal Street for a seat and then examining street indexes to identify the right piece number. I found Abraham, his young wife and family newly arrived in Grantham in 1861, and, armed with a…

DNA has a language of its own, one you may be unfamiliar with, but it’s worth getting to grips with it to help you make use of genetics in your genealogy. I have included only those words that crop up really frequently when talking about DNA and family history. Some are general scientific terms and others are phrases that have evolved, specific to the genealogy community. Below I explain them in fairly basic terms but I’ve also included links to help you delve deeper. Autosomal DNA ‘Autosomes are the 22 pairs of non-sex chromosomes found in both males and females,’ writes genetic genealogist Donna Rutherford. ‘The 23rd pair are the sex chromosomes (X and Y). Most consumer DNA tests (like AncestryDNA, 23andMe, MyHeritage, etc.) are based on autosomal DNA, which can…

Tips & tactics to try to trace someone ‘lost’ from the records in the US, c. 1925 Q I have a query about my ancestor Henry Clark born in 1893 in Newcastle Upon Tyne. He emigrated to the US in 1922, leaving Liverpool on 10 November 1922 and arriving in Montreal Canada, then he headed to the US. He is on the 1925 Census for Iowa, living with his sister Margaret Kitching née Clark 1881-1946. It doesn’t give much about Henry but confirms that he has been living and working in the US for 3 years. After this census, he disappears. I have tried to find Henry or Harry Clark on the 1930 US Census, but there are too many candidates. I know his sister Margaret is on the 1930…

There was October apple-bobbing, November bonfires, and shouting up the chimney to Santa whilst making toast over a crackling fire. January came in with kisses at midnight, a wave to the raggedy old year, and hope that next year would be better. Fresh starts, embryonic new projects, and unrealistic resolutions carried us over the threshold in a glorious New Year midnight singsong. By the time we’d broken our resolutions we’d forgotten what they were, and personally, I gave them up years ago. However, something currently sits on my desk spearing me with a baleful eye, demanding action, commitment, and a modicum of pain. It’s a new, home build PC, silently demanding I ignore Windows 11 no longer. Beside it, ageing, outdated, but infinitely affable, sits its ancient Windows 10 predecessor.…

The Essex Regiment Museum (ERM) collection consists of more than 50,000 items relating to the history of the regiment from its formation in 1751, to its amalgamation in 1958 into the East Anglian Regiments. When the ERM closes in January the majority of its collection will be transferred to the Royal Anglian Regiment Museum Trust (RARM). Some items will remain on display at the Museum of Chelmsford. • https://www.royalanglianregiment.com/news/essex-regiment-museum-in-chelmsford-set-to-close-in-january-2026/…

I always knew that my surname, Edwardson, wasn’t a name you heard every day – outside my immediate family, I’d never met someone else with the name. But it wasn’t until I began tracing my family tree in 2019 that I realised how rare it truly is. The 1891 Census lists just 391 Edwardson families in the whole of England and Wales — placing it comfortably in the rarest 10% of surnames. Why so rare? After all, it’s a straightforward patronymic, like Richardson or Thompson. There’s nothing obviously exotic about it. But unlike Edwards, its shorter counterpart, Edwardson appears to have remained a very minor thread in the larger tapestry of British surnames. The table below, showing the frequency of selected short and long patronymics in the 1891 Census, makes…

We family historians are brilliant at gathering evidence. Yet when it comes to writing up our family history we can get stuck. Make 2026 the year that this changes… On this brand new four-week course, tutor Carole McCulloch will share practical steps you can implement to build your family history project and tell your family story, all with the assistance of AI tools. AI Bootcamp programme: 8 to 28 January 2026 Preparation and orientation Designing your project Organising your AI workflow Transfroming facts into narratives Telling the story Showcasing & sharing “You’ll build a complete family history mini-project from start to finish, with guidance at every step.” Pre-course reading will be available in advance. The four course webinars will take place live on Zoom on 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th…

This is one in a series of articles; the intention is to provide an overview of useful family and local history records in existence, covering the period 1066-1485. Each article can be enjoyed as a standalone read, but the maximum benefit will be enjoyed by reading the entire series. The series began in the July issue of Family Tree. This issue we will continue with wills, and then Feet of Fines. This series of articles includes leads and resources for all countries within the British Isles. This issue, however, the article covers wills solely for England, as surviving collections for Wales, Scotland and Ireland for the period we are focussing on, are very scarce. WILLS How can wills help with genealogical research? Wills can be an excellent resource for finding…

Star player: Great-Great Uncle Jimmy Family history research can, as we know, take us down many paths with surprising outcomes but I would never in my wildest dreams have thought that it would result in my cousin and I standing on a football pitch in front of 46,000 fans! In March 2024 I wrote about my footballer ancestor Jimmy Miller for Family Tree magazine and described how in the 1980s my maternal grandad had told me that my nan’s uncle had played for Rangers and been a talented footballer. Jimmy was born on 10 February 1871 and started in his local club Annbank in Ayrshire before moving to Sunderland, Rangers, West Bromwich Albion FC and Chelsea. He was also a Scottish International player. The lists of clubs he was associated with…

Saturday 31 January 2026 sees the 31st Scottish Indexes Conference, hosted by genealogy husband-and-wife team Emma and Graham Maxwell. ‘This free, online event will explore irregular marriage in Scotland, a fascinating DNA case study, the hidden world of illicit distilling, a deep dive into church records, and the history of the Edinburgh Public Dispensary,’ enthuses Emma Maxwell. Expert speakers include Tahitia McCabe, Head of the Strathclyde Institute for Genealogical Studies at the University of Strathclyde; Daisy Cunynghame, Heritage Manager & Librarian for the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh; Michael Tobias, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Strathclyde; Andrew Armstrong, Genealogist; and Alison Spring, Genealogist. • Register free at: https://www.scottishindexes.com/conference.aspx…

During the Second World War, between 1942 and 1945, approximately 240,000 African American GIs were stationed in Britain. The British government was concerned about Black soldiers and white British women having relationships, as they thought biracial children would create ‘a difficult social problem’ (Lucy Bland and Dr Chamion Caballero: https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/brown-babies-second-world-war). As a preventative measure, the government created policies discouraging friendships and relationships between white people and Black troops; policies that only succeeded in stigmatising interracial unions and destroying relationships between children and their fathers. Some readers might imagine these policies were a ‘product of their time’ – the result of a lack of understanding of racial prejudices from a government made up entirely of white politicians. However, the government was desperate to keep these policies from the general public, marking…

Medals or medallions have been awarded since Roman times in one iteration or another. The War of the Three Kingdoms (or British Civil Wars or English Civil War) did award gallantry medals, and in 1650 Parliament issued a silver bronze or lead medal to the various ranks of the Army for its defeat of the Scots at Dunbar. First official campaign medal The first official campaign medal awarded to all ranks, and named to them in the British Army, in the same metal though, was the Waterloo Medal (Figures 1 & 2). After that date, many hundreds of campaign medals were awarded, a number with bars to denote various smaller campaigns within a war or theatre of operations throughout the 19th century. These medals are highly sought-after and can command…

The winter of 1882 cast a dramatic chill over Suffolk, with the infamous Great Snowstorm sweeping across the county in early December. Amid the biting cold and snow-laden skies, eight-year-old George Beck was admitted to St Audry’s Lunatic Asylum in Suffolk, a decision that speaks not of neglect, but of desperation. His parents, George and Athelinda Beck, were already struggling to feed and care for their growing family in a time when poverty was both widespread and unforgiving. With limited income and no access to specialised support, they faced an impossible choice. Among the carefully kept records of St Audry’s, George’s entry is quietly devastating. Most patients were older adults, their lives unravelling slowly under the weight of emotional strain, social isolation, and long-term hardship. Diagnoses were framed in the…

Lynn Bates says: I wonder if you could please approximately date these two postcard photographs left to me in family papers. The couple in the first photo are, I am told, my maternal greatgrandparents, Joseph Grayston/Grayson (1849–1934) and Mary (née Halsall, 1851–1919). Joseph was a farm labourer and they lived in Aughton, Liverpool. The back of this postcard has a handwritten message: ‘Dear Harry [Grandad was known by the name Harry], I daresay you will know these faces alright they are not very well taken but you can tell who they are. With love from mother.’ I presume the recipient is my maternal grandfather Henry Grayson (1893–1975) and the sender is his mother, Mary Halsall. The second photo shows a striking and powerful-looking man of the Grayston/Grayson family. I think…