Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2018 i Who Do You Think You Are?

I would always recommend taking out a subscription to one of the main genealogy websites at some point in your research (and if you are not sure which is the right one for you, look out for next month’s issue where we put Ancestry and Findmypast through their paces). However, it is easy to forget how much can actually be done for free. In fact, having a subscription to a website can sometimes blinker you from other resources that may hold a vital piece of your family history puzzle. Luckily respected genealogy blogger (and keen bargain-hunter) Chris Paton shares his favourite websites that won’t cost you a penny on page 15 – plus he has useful tips on what you can get from pay-for websites for free. We’ve also got…

‘We hope with the launch of a petition calling for the release that genealogists and historians will rally to the call’ Irish genealogists call for 1926 census release The Council of Irish Genealogical Organisations has launched an online petition calling for the early release of the census returns On the anniversary of the founding of the Irish Free State, the Council of Irish Genealogical Organisations (CIGO) launched a petition calling for the Irish government to release the 1926 census returns in advance of the standard 100-year limit. On 6 December 1921 the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed, bringing an end to the Irish War of Independence and providing for the establishment of the Irish Free State, which was founded exactly a year later on 6 December 1922. On 6 December 2017…

Prior to the establishment of civil registration we rely on church records for information, in the form of baptismal registers, marriage records and burial registers. The starting point here for English and Welsh research is familysearch.org, which has many substantial collections of parish registers digitised and freely available, as well as diocesan copies of registers called Bishops’ Transcripts. In addition there are many searchable databases on FamilySearch without corresponding images, such as the International Genealogical Index and the ‘England and Wales Non-Conformist Record Indexes (RG4-8), 1588–1977’ collection. Many volunteer efforts also exist, such as FreeReg (freereg.org.uk), and various Online Parish Clerks projects covering different counties, such as the excellent opc-cornwall.org. For Scotland, information including names, dates and parishes within Church of Scotland birth and marriage registers are included within the…

If your ancestor’s estate was taken through the probate process, several free sites exist to help locate information, whether a will was left or not. For England and Wales the civil courts-based probate process commenced in 1858, with summaries of all adjudications recorded in the National Probate Calendar. These can be freely searched on the Probate Service’s website at probatesearch.service.gov.uk, although there is a fee to order a copy of the original grant of probate or letter of administration. A free index to soldiers’ wills is also available from the same website, including name, regimental number and date of death. Prior to 1858 the Church of England was responsible for probate in England and Wales, although it can be problematic to locate the relevant ecclesiastical court within the Church’s hierarchy.…

Indexes to service records for First World War soldiers can be freely searched at familysearch.org, but images can only be accessed at local FamilySearch centres, or from home if you register as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Chris Baker’s The Long, Long Trail (longlongtrail.co.uk) provides detailed accounts of the regiments and battalions that fought in the conflict, while the Great War Forum (1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums) covers just about every topic that you may wish to discuss. If your ancestors were Irish, soldiers’ wills from the First World War are freely available at soldierswills.nationalarchives.ie, while resources for the Welsh experience of the conflict are at cymru1914.org. For both world wars the National Library of Scotland provides monthly army lists for the British Army at archive.org/details/nlsarmylists. First World…

Many free resources can help us to understand the environment within which our ancestors lived. The National Library of Scotland’s site maps.nls.uk provides five centuries of Scottish mapping, but also offers Ordnance Survey maps for England and Wales. A Vision of Britain Through Time has good coverage for Britain also at visionofbritain.org.uk, with accompanying gazetteer entries, while Northern Ireland is well served by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland’s Historical Maps viewer at bit.ly/proni-maps. Various regional mapping projects also exist, such as Know your Place for the west of England (kypwest.org.uk). Disasters also generated resources, such as the fire-insurance maps at the British Library website (bit.ly/fire-maps), and the Bombsight project illustrating where bombs landed during the London Blitz (bombsight.org). For gazetteers, British History Online (british-history.ac.uk) offers topographical dictionaries of…

What did Harry do during the First World War? Q My friend Joyce is the only daughter of Harry Lee Burton, born 1 September 1898 in West Ham, London. She would like to know what he did in the First World War. She knows that he was a cyclist despatch rider in the Royal Artillery, but he refused to discuss his experiences, only saying, “When the guns started, it was hell on earth.” Harry turned 18 in 1916, which I assume is when he enlisted. His last known address before the war was 80 Clifton Road, Canning Town. I have tried searching for his service record, but although there are some that could be his, they don’t show dates of birth. I have managed to find an entry on forces-war-records.co.uk…

Q My maternal ancestors are reputed to have come from Alsace-Lorraine, and were grain merchants who supplied Napoleon’s army on the invasion of Russia. They then escaped into Russian-occupied Poland on the winter retreat from Moscow. Their son, Myer Kresner, married Meriam Moerling in the early 1840s and reportedly had six surviving children, but I can only trace five sons and not the missing child – probably a daughter. In the 1900 US census Meriam Krasner, aged 73, is living in New York with her son Israel, wife Leah and their children. Meriam states that she has six out of eight living children. Five of these children, including Israel (born c1844), were born in Poland: Louis (c1846), my great grandfather Woolf (born 3 January 1855 in Skepe, Poland; changed name…

The first British police force was established in London in 1829, when the Metropolitan Police Act passed under Sir Robert Peel, the home secretary at the time. This was followed by the County Police Act in 1839, which allowed the creation of police forces across the country. Fred Wensley was one of the first celebrity detectives, investigating notorious crimes in London in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He kept a detailed record of his career in his notebooks, now held among his papers at the Bishopsgate Institute. Stefan Dickers, special collections and archives manager at the institute, solves the mystery for us… Who exactly was Fred Wensley? Frederick Porter Wensley (1865–1949) was a British police officer from 1888 until 1929, reaching the rank of chief constable in Scotland…

Many excellent regional websites offer information about professional photographers. For example photohistorysussex.co.uk includes a database of studios from towns and villages across the county, plus you can explore biographies of noted Brighton photographers, with hundreds of example images. Although it’s no longer updated www.photolondon.org.uk has a similar database, 19th Century Photographers and Allied Trades in London: 1841–1901. There’s a multi-county collection of databases at earlyphotographers.org.uk/databases.html, or you can try specific sites covering the Isle of Wight (childsweb.net), Birmingham and Warwickshire (hunimex.com/warwick/photogs.html), Cambridgeshire (fadingimages.uk/cbphoto.asp and bit.ly/mike-petty), Derbyshire (bit.ly/dbyphoto ), Hertfordshire (bit.ly/hertsphotos), Ayrshire (bit.ly/ayrshire-photos), Edinburgh (edinphoto.org.uk), Glasgow (bit.ly/glasgowphotos ) and the Isle of Man (bit.ly/islephotos ). You should also visit local archive, museum and library websites to see what local history images are online. Some, like our expert’s choice, will have dedicated…

Many newly qualified medical professionals chose to serve in the armed services before establishing themselves in private practice; for others, it became their lifelong career. The Royal Navy offered the opportunity to see the world and to gain greater experience in medicine and surgery. A major attraction of serving as a Royal Naval surgeon was the ability to progress through the ranks and an increase in salary with each promotion; another was the pension or gratuity awarded upon retirement. There was a defined career structure starting with assistant surgeon (originally ‘surgeon’s mate’), surgeon, staff surgeon and fleet surgeon. Applicants for assistant surgeon posts had to prove that they had served an apprenticeship, but did not necessarily need a medical degree. They had to pass an examination that could not be…

We’re always looking for fun and exciting ways to share our research findings with others, and Timeline 3D for iPhone, iPad and Mac is one of the best yet. The software enables you to create a pseudo-3D events-based timeline, comprising images, documents and video accompanied by your own text notes. This step-by-step guide reveals just how easy it is to use – you can create as many timelines as you like and switch between them as required, plus the ‘Export’ function allows you to back each timeline up to a cloud storage account, as well as share it with others. The core functionality is completely free – the idea is that you run the timeline from your iOS device or Mac. If you have access to an Apple TV device,…

John Stuart Mill was the son of a famous writer, James Mill. He was subjected to a rigorous educational programme which meant that he was learning Greek at three years old and advanced philosophy at twelve. He became both a brilliant philosopher and a nervous wreck, prey to both severe facial twitching and recurrent depression. Mill was an active campaigner for birth control and spent two nights in jail for distributing literature promoting it. His main cause in life was the liberty of the individual and the limits of the power of the state. He met the love of his life, Harriet Taylor, at a dinner party in 1830. She was also a radical thinker and was attracted by his strong convictions supporting sexual equality and the removal of legal…

BEDFORDSHIRE FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY Bedfordshire Family History Society (bfhs.org.uk) has been offering research advice since 1977. As well as holding meetings and maintaining a bookshop, the society sells local parish register transcriptions, census indexes and monumental inscriptions via genfair.co.uk and parishchest.com. METHODIST HERITAGE The Methodist Church in Britain has its own heritage organisation, Methodist Heritage, which aims to preserve and promote the history of the Christian denomination. In addition to the overarching website methodistheritage.org.uk Methodist Heritage operates four smaller sites, each of which is devoted to different branches of the movement: mymethodisthistory.org.uk, mywesleyanmethodists.org.uk, mybiblechristians.org.uk and myprimitivemethodists.org.uk . Each site features an online ‘community archive’, containing an array of free resources aimed at people researching their Methodist ancestors. NONCONFORMIST REGISTERS The most comprehensive collection of nonconformist registers is held at The…

1313 Thomas de Beauchamp, the 11th Earl of Warwick, is born. He lays claim to the first recorded use of the Bear and Ragged Staff emblem, in the form of an embroidered bed covering. 1569 A Catholic uprising in the north prompts Elizabeth I to demand that Mary Queen of Scots be moved from Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire to Coventry. 1616 William Shakespeare is buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. Most of the estate goes to his eldest daughter, while his wife Anne gets the “second best bed”. 1848 A new infirmary is built alongside Warwick’s workhouse on the Union Road. It is extended during the Victorian period, and the workhouse building is incorporated into Warwick Hospital in 1930. 1852 The Great Western Railway opens…

WATCH One-Day Genealogy Seminar MyHeritage familytreewebinars.com/mhseminar, free MyHeritage held a genealogy seminar on 29 October 2017. You can watch the presentations online for free, with titles including ‘Google for Genealogy: Search Tricks to Tease Out Information’. LISTEN National Life Stories British Library soundcloud.com, free To mark the 30th anniversary of its National Life Stories project, the British Library is creating a podcast of its best interview extracts, as well as interviews with the oral historians who collected them. The topics include the 1988 Piper Alpha oil-rig disaster and the library’s 2017 exhibition Gay UK. DOWNLOAD Buckinghamshire 1823 Pigot’s Directory S&N Genealogy genealogysupplies.com, £9.95 (discounts may be available) If you’re interested in tracing Buckinghamshire kin, this dataset is a useful resource. The directory carries local listings of major professions, nobility, gentry,…

EAST In a Fen Country Churchyard 17 January WOMEN’S INSTITUTE CENTRE, HUNTINGDON huntsfhs.org.uk secretary@huntsfhs.org.uk Illustrated by pictures of dozens of gravestones throughout the Cambridgeshire fens, David Edwards draws attention to the fascinating amount of information that can be found in their inscriptions. Free, but donations welcome. Keep Young & Beautiful 3 February – 14 April HERTFORD MUSEUM hertfordmuseum.org 01992 582686 Discover a range of historic concepts of beauty, how and why people have enhanced or changed their appearance, lifestyle activities and how we have kept in shape, illustrated by a wide range of objects from the museum’s collections. Free. LONDON Tracing Your Huguenot Ancestors 20 January SOCIETY OF GENEALOGISTS, ISLINGTON sog.org.uk/books-courses/events-courses 0207 553 3290 Over 200 years an estimated 50,000 French Protestants, or Huguenots, came to Britain to escape religious…

PLUS The Domesday Survey Get the most out of this 1910 survey of Edwardian London Preserving documents Expert advice on protecting certificates and photographs Settlements and removals Tips for using paupers’ records to grow your family tree Victorian asylums How they cared for people with learning disabilities The best websites British in India kin for AROUND BRITAIN FIND YOUR WEST SUSSEX FOREBEARS MARCH ISSUE ON SALE 13 FEBRUARY 2018…

Early bird conference tickets go on sale Tickets for a major new family history conference this summer have gone on sale. ‘Secret Lives: Hidden Voices of Our Ancestors’, run by the Society of Genealogists (SoG), the Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives (AGRA), the Guild of One-Name Studies and the Halsted Trust, will take place from 31 August to 2 September 2018 at the Jury’s Inn, Hinckley, Leicestershire. Tickets cost £120–£320 for bookings made before 30 April. The confirmed speakers include genealogist Nick Barratt and criminal-history expert Angela Buckley. To book, go to sog.org.uk/books-courses/secret-lives-conference-2018. TheGenealogist adds 1930s passenger lists The family history website thegenealogist.co.uk has expanded its collection of passenger lists by adding records from 1930 to 1939. The new dataset of 2.7 million records includes passengers on ships…

‘There’s no doubting the vital role women played in the war effort and on the home front’ The struggle for suffrage Alan Crosby considers what his ancestors would have thought of votes for women This year we celebrate 100 years since the first women were granted the right to vote in United Kingdom parliamentary elections. They had to be 30 or over, and to fulfil various property qualifications. The same legislation, the 1918 Representation of the People Act, also introduced the vote to all males over 21. Ten years later the franchise was finally extended to all women, on an equal basis with men. It had been a lengthy struggle – the first serious suggestions that women might be given the vote came in the late 18th century, and in…

Many free websites exist that can help with finding burial information across the UK and Ireland, including monumental inscriptions which can enable you to establish connections to additional family members and dates of death. One of the largest is Find A Grave (findagrave.com), which allows you to search for burials and to see photographs, where available, of surviving headstones. Similar sites include BillionGraves (billiongraves.com), Interment.net (interment.net) and the Gravestone Photographic Resource (gravestonephotos.com). Various regional projects also exist, such as Wishful Thinking at places.wishful-thinking.org.uk which has some excellent coverage of counties’ monumental inscriptions, in particular Cheshire and Staffordshire. For Scotland, Highland Memorial Inscriptions (sites.google.com/site/highlandmemorialinscriptions) has indexed a substantial number of burials in the Highland region, including Inverness, while the website Memento Mori (memento-mori.co.uk) has extensive coverage of the Central Belt, including…

For criminal ancestors or victims, Digital Panopticon (digitalpanopticon.org) provides access to many records concerning 90,000 transportation cases from Britain to Australia. However, the resources it utilises include projects such as The Old Bailey Proceedings Online (oldbaileyonline.org) and criminal registers of prisoners on London Lives (www.londonlives.org/static/CR.jsp), which go beyond detailing just those who were transported. For rolls of honour for members of the police who fell while on duty across the British Isles, visit policememorial.org.uk. For Scottish ancestors, the catalogue of the National Records of Scotland (nrscotland.gov.uk) includes records from the ‘Solemn Database’ of 19th-century criminal cases, while many published accounts of trials from the Court of Session can be found for free on books.google.co.uk. If you can trace back further, you can find out if your ancestor was ever tried…

Census records for 1841–1911 are very useful for locating individuals in family units, and finding information on ages, birth parishes and occupations. Records from 1841 merely list occupants in a household, while from 1851 the relationship to the head of the household is noted. Although census record images need to be paid for online, many free transcription-based databases exist that can provide some of the information the images contain. FamilySearch (familysearch.org) offers free transcriptions from 1841 to 1911 for English and Welsh censuses, although the source citations offered are quite poor. Records for Scotland are also searchable from 1841 to 1891; however, unlike the returns for England and Wales, the Scottish returns only provide information for a single individual, and do not show who else might have been present in…

Last year, in January, hundreds of readers joined us for our first ever Transcription Tuesday. It was a great success with lots of positive feedback from everyone involved. This year we are hoping to inspire hundreds more of you to transcribe even more records than we did in 2017. So what is Transcription Tuesday? Well, for those of you who weren’t involved last year, it’s a day that we set aside to give something back to family history by transcribing digitised records online. If you sign up to participate, you will get to see the original documents via your web browser and will be guided to transcribe the words that you see directly via the website. It’s a great way to improve your ability to decipher handwriting, and the work…

Not everyone who dives into their family history discovers a story that would be worthy of the plot of a gripping historical novel. But Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine reader Judith Bennett followed the clues to try to track down a mysterious French forebear, discovering along the way a passionate affair, a bloody suicide and a man who fought for his principles and paid the price. Uncovering the truth about her McConchy ancestors involved some of the most challenging investigative work the magazine has seen – it’s a truly riveting tale. “I started researching in about 1990. There was a story in my husband’s family, that one of his forebears was an admiral in the Brazilian Navy. That was really what started it. Then my brother and I…

GILL BLANCHARD is the author of the book Tracing Your East Anglian Ancestors BEVERLY HALLAM Francis is research Prictor co-ordinator appears at 1851 the Families censusin return British India Society (fibis.org) after this CELIA HERITAGE is the author of the book Tracing Your Ancestors through Death Records JEANETTE ROSENBERG OBE is a professional genealogist who specialises in Jewish research JAYNE SHRIMPTON is a professional dress historian and portrait specialist PHIL TOMASELLI is a military family history expert and the author of Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors IAN WALLER is a former chairman of the Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives (AGRA) HELEN WHITTLE is a member of AGRA and the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG)…

Actor Charles Dance was able to learn more about the life of his father, Walter, in his recent episode of Who Do You Think You Are? . Walter died when Charles was only four years old, so knew very little about him. Charles had a picture of his father in military uniform, which he had assumed was from the First World War, but discovered that it was actually for the South African campaign towards the end of the 19th century. We were able to research Walter’s military career by referring to the wealth of records held at The National Archives (TNA) and now also available online. First, records for noncommissioned officers like Walter held in TNA series WO 97 can be searched in the British Army Service Records collection on…

‘The letters are crucial for understanding ancestors’ experiences on the home front’ Personal stories, personal tragedies... we see so many terrible statistics of casualties in the First World War, but of course every experience was intensely personal for individuals and families. As family and local historians research and reconstruct soldiers’ lives we may have to rely on oral history, newspaper reports, military records and the names carved on memorials. But sometimes there are precious first-hand sources, such as letters and diaries, that give a perspective from the soldier himself. Gwent Archives in Ebbw Vale has recently received £9,400 from the Heritage Lottery Fund for a project called ‘Sharing Private O’Brien’, based on the former mining village of Abersychan in the valley between Pontypridd and Blaenavon. It focuses on a series…

Census presentation The census includes annual entries from 1768 to 1831, with a separate record of paupers on each page. Each head of household is named along with the number of people living in that household. Bodham’s list of paupers Note that four widows are listed (“Wid”), and four households only have one inhabitant. Father and son The left-hand page includes a William Lynes Senior and a William Lynes Junior, with three and five people living in their households respectively. Total Bodham had 111 parishioners at the time of the census. Full house There were eight people in Robert Grey’s house. Recently deceased Thomas Christmas is noted as “dead” in the margin.…

ARCHIVES County libraries usually hold electoral registers. Jeremy Gibson and Colin Rogers have done invaluable work in tracking down early records, see Poll Books 1696–1872: A Directory to Holdings in Great Britain and Electoral Registers Since 1832; and Burgess Rolls, available from the Family History Partnership (call 01706 825557 or visit thefamilyhistorypartnership.com/publications). These tell you, county by county, the years for which there are records, and where they are kept. BOOKS • Ladies Elect: Women in English Local Government 1865–1914 by Patricia Hollis (Oxford University Press, 1987) This classic work about Victorian and Edwardian women in politics includes details of when women were voting for different authorities. • The Political Worlds of Women: Gender and Politics in Nineteenth Century Britain by Sarah Richardson (Routledge, 2013) Using modern research methods and…

Catalyst Science Discovery Centre, Widnes catalyst.org.uk/museum/about-our-collections Explore the history of the chemical industry in north-west England. The centre has archival and photographic collections. Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History gracesguide.co.uk This exhaustive website features potted histories of firms and industrialists, with links to source references. The History of Soapmaking bit.ly/historysoap This Open University web page covers soapmaking from Sumeria in 3000 BCE onwards. Labour and Housing at Port Sunlight bit.ly/wlgeorge The Internet Archive has a free digital copy of WL George’s 1909 book on living and working conditions in Port Sunlight, with photos. Port Sunlight Museum portsunlightvillage.com/the-museum Find out about the village’s construction, meet characters from its past and step inside an Edwardian worker’s cottage.…

The worst fog in the history of the UK had some far-reaching effects, but for the people caught up in it, the challenge was just how to get through the day. At its worst, those who ventured out struggled to breathe. Even indoors there was little respite, as fog crept its way inside. It started on Friday 5 December after a period of prolonged cold had led people to burn more fuel than normal. Five great coal-fired power stations – Battersea, Bankside, Fulham, Greenwich and Kingston upon Thames – poured smoke, hydrochloric acid, sulphur dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere. Domestic fires contributed to the mix with their use of ‘nutty slack’, a cheap fuel made of coal nuggets and coal dust. This had not been rationed as had…

Life of a Teenager in Wartime London by Duncan Leatherdale (Pen & Sword, 176 pages, £19.99) This book is based upon a diary kept by the author’s grandmother Glennis, who lived in South London as a teenager during the Second World War. Other information has been included to create a comprehensive view of London at that time. The book is divided into chapters, each explaining an aspect of everyday life and how it was affected by the conditions of wartime London. It is clear that much research has been undertaken, with numerous documents used, together with firsthand accounts to support the information given. There are some interesting facts – for example, cinemas were used as air-raid shelters; 12 lb of grass contains more vitamins than 340 lb of fruit and…

10 February ROYAL COLLEGE OF NURSING  rcn.org.uk/news-and-events/events/nursing-family-history 0207 409 3333 This event from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) will help you research First World War ancestors, especially nurses and Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) members. It will start with a talk by Kirsty Gray on researching First World War family history, followed in the afternoon by Dick and Lisa Robinson talking about Dick’s great aunt, wartime nurse Edith Appleton. There will also be three workshops – the ‘Treasures Tour’ of scrapbooks and treasures from the RCN’s collections; a practical session on using ancestry.co.uk and online nursing records; and a creative writing workshop with nurse and poet Molly Case. £7 for members, £8 for non-members.…

‘Peggy had to deliver twins on a mattress on the floor, and use a drawer for a cot’ According to her ‘sister tutor’ at Maidstone Hospital, Peggy Cutbush was “born to be a nurse”. As to how Peggy discovered her vocation, it helps to understand that, when the Second World War broke out in September 1939, Peggy joined the Red Cross where, following training, her job was to treat air-raid victims. These are details that Peggy’s grandson, Max Higgins, learned when he came across a memoir that Peggy, who died in 2015, wrote in her final years. It’s the story of a full life, encompassing a childhood in rural Kent as a farmer’s daughter, time as a nurse and midwife, and a long and happy marriage to Len Higgins, who…

74 year-old Robin King, who was abandoned as a baby in wartime London, has finally found his birth family thanks to DNA testing: bit.ly/RobinKing 15,107 Hampshire Bishops’ Transcripts, dating from 1680 to 1892, are available for free on familysearch.org 522 people donated £23,152 to an online fundraiser by the Pankhurst Trust to plant a Suffragette Garden at the former home of Emmeline Pankhurst in Manchester, both commemorating the suffragettes and providing a sanctuary for Manchester Women’s Aid 6th cousin five times removed: the relationship between Prince Harry’s new fiancée, actress Meghan Markle, and Winston Churchill, according to genealogy website myheritage.com…

Researching your family history can be an expensive business, requiring investment in subscriptions for websites such as Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk), Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk) and TheGenealogist (thegenealogist.co.uk). Many powerful resources are available for free, however, which can save you a small fortune. Some have fully indexed and digitised collections, such as FamilySearch (familysearch.org), where you can see an image of the actual document, while other resources act more as useful finding aids for records, but still need to be corroborated. A good starting point is to check local libraries for licensed digital collections available free online to members (such as newspaper databases) as well as local history collections. Many archives and their associated ‘friends’ groups (such as that for Dundee at fdca.org.uk) provide free indexes, while local family history societies in an area…

Some of the most useful resources have been published by other researchers investigating their own family. Among them are trees on familysearch.org, discussion forums, websites and even family histories compiled for print publication. Such resources come with a serious health warning, however: they will only ever be as accurate as the people who compiled them! There are various sites online carrying pedigree information, including The Peerage which collects material on British peers and some European royals (thepeerage.com). Various genealogical discussion forums are also valuable, including RootsChat (rootschat.com) and Talking Scot (talkingscot.com). If you are searching for an unusual surname, members of the Guild of One-Name Studies will be pleased to assist with any enquiries (one-name.org). Many published family histories can be found on Google Books (books.google.co.uk) and the Internet Archive…

Many newspapers are available for free as part of the Burney Collection and the British Library 19th Century Newspaper Collection, which, although superseded by britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk, can still be accessed at many libraries through their licensed digital collections. Richard Heaton’s Newspaper Collection at bit.ly/richards-newspapers further provides access to transcripts and extracts from just under 900 fully searchable Georgian and early Victorian regional newspapers, predominantly for Lancashire and the south of England. Welsh Newspapers Online, from the National Library of Wales, offers free access to more than one million pages from 120 Welsh newspapers at newspapers.library.wales. For Scottish residents, the archive of The Scotsman can be similarly accessed through the National Library’s licensed digital collections at auth.nls.uk/eresources . The Google News Archive (news.google.com/newspapers) also hosts the Glasgow Herald (1806–1990) and the Glasgow…

Family history magazines and books are full of ‘How To’ articles explaining how you can trace your ancestors. But many people trying to do this become stuck, not because they don’t know what to do, but because they make mistakes. So, for a change, here is a ‘How Not To’ article, based on the pitfalls that I see people – from beginners to experienced record-searchers – succumbing to on a daily basis. By avoiding the mistakes highlighted in this article, you should find the tracing of your ancestors considerably easier. By going back over your work and putting mistakes right, you may well make that breakthrough for which you’ve been hoping. Many people today base their family tree research on one of the big commercial genealogy websites. These offer a…

LAND TAX RECORDS Land tax was introduced in England in 1692. The documents are vital for locating individuals between censuses, and often list both proprietors and tenants. Ancestry.co.uk holds land tax records for London and other places including Surrey. NATURALISATION RECORDS Before 1844, foreigners wishing to become British subjects had to obtain a private Act of Parliament. The catalogue of the House of Lords and House of Commons archives can be searched at portcullis.parliament.uk. After 1844, naturalisation was granted by the Home Office and most of these records are at The National Archives. Ancestry.co.uk has Naturalisation Certificates and Declarations from 1870 to 1916. OBITUARIES Newspaper archives such as britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk can throw up an obituary for an ancestor. As well as providing information about the deceased’s life, they can offer other…

Emily Stephens, formerly Ditcher bit.ly/2ytlw5t According to the 1939 Register, Emily Ditcher was born on 26 March 1915. On 21 May 1940 she married James Patrick Stephens at the Register Office in Rhyl, Flint. A daughter, Doreen, was born in 1940 in the district of Bale. Despite this information, I have not been able to trace Emily’s death. It is possible that she could still be alive, although she would now be 102! She was definitely alive in 1986 as she registered the death of her husband, James Patrick Stephens. I have visited Westminster Archives, which has copies of death registers from the General Register Office up to the present day, but I could not find an Emily Stephens with a birth date of 26 March 1915. Any help would…

“Many county collections that include photographs are now available online. A particularly extensive one that I have been using recently is Oxfordshire’s, with more than 100,000 images (pictureoxon.com). These collections can be particularly useful if you know that an ancestor came from a certain place within a county, but they can also be more generally helpful especially for researching the clothing of ordinary people. Using search terms such as ‘class’ for school photographs, ‘wedding’ or various occupations brings up dated examples that can be used to compare and contrast with your own photographs. Unusual clothing such as smocks can also be searched for, so it is worth searching by photographic event; clothing descriptions; personal details such as occupation; membership of clubs or societies; and location too if known, to see…

Name The name of the medical practitioner – note that this often includes a middle name to make it easier to tell people apart. Medical dynasty Sons and nephews often followed their fathers and uncles into the profession, so look out for different generations in the Register. Date of registration The date of registration with the Council; those practising before the Medical Act registered in December 1858 or January 1859. Residence The Medical Register includes practitioners with British qualifications who lived abroad, either in private practice or with the army or navy. Qualifications The names of the qualifications held and the year they were awarded; there could be a considerable gap between qualifications. Residence in hospital A hospital address suggests that the practitioner was a house physician or surgeon living…

LIBRARY • Wellcome Library 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE 0207 611 8722 wellcomelibrary.org There is a guide for researchers at bit.ly/wellcome-guide. MUSEUMS • George Marshall Medical Museum Worcestershire Royal Hospital, Worcester WR5 1DD 01905 760738 bit.ly/gmm-museum • London Museums of Health and Medicine  medicalmuseums.org This website includes details of 25 London museums. • Thackray Medical Museum 141 Beckett Street, Leeds LS9 7LN 0113 244 4343 thackraymedical museum.co.uk WEBSITES • Army: The National Archives Research Guide  bit.ly/tna-army • Historical Directories of England and Wales  bit.ly/special-directories • Hospital Records Database  nationalarchives.gov.uk/hospitalrecords • Irish trade directories  findmypast.co.uk/irish-directories • Royal Navy: The National Archives Research Guide  bit.ly/tna-navy • Scottish Post Office directories  bit.ly/nls-postoffice…

 How long have you been doing your family history? ‘Minutes from the Methodist Conference allowed me to follow William’s progress’ I first began researching my ancestry over 40 years ago as a result of my paternal grandfather, who had drawn up a family tree because his brother had married my grandmother’s sister. The couples also shared a set of great grandparents and were therefore second cousins, which I found really interesting. What did you uncover before hitting your brick wall? I had always assumed that both sides of my family came from the north-eastern counties of England: Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, County Durham and Northumberland. However, while researching my maternal ancestors I found that my great great grandfather, Thomas Brocklehurst, was living in Hull on the 1861 census but listed as having…

There is plenty of room for place-name confusion if you are a county newbie This month we return to Warwickshire, whose crest, the Bear and the Staff, derives from heraldic devices used by the earls of Warwick as far back as the 14th century. It was the original emblem worn by the 1st Warwickshire Militia regiment, raised in the mid-18th century, and was used as a badge for the newly established Warwickshire Constabulary in the mid-19th century. The boundaries and jurisdictions of Warwickshire, and its neighbours Worcestershire and Staffordshire, have changed over the years thanks in part to rapid urban growth. Modern Warwickshire boasts the county town Warwick, plus Kenilworth, Stratford-upon-Avon, Rugby and the largest town Nuneaton. Meanwhile Coventry, Solihull, and much of Birmingham, formerly part of the historic county,…

Victoria Crosses on the Western Front: Third Ypres 1917 by Paul Oldfield (Pen & Sword, 828 pages, £40) Paul Oldfield has produced an exhaustive account of the Victoria Cross-winning actions in the Third Battle of Ypres, which was fought from 31 July to 6 November 1917. The illustrated guides to the combat will be particularly useful to battlefield visitors, and biographies of the decorated soldiers are included. Abolitionists, Doctors, Ranchers and Writers by Lynne Marie Getz (University Press of Kansas, 353 pages, £20.95) Historian Lynne Marie Getz has written an engaging chronology of her family, whose lives were entwined with American history. Her 3x great grandparents were involved in the anti-slavery movement, and their son fought in the Civil War then took part in the drive to settle the West.…

A House Through Time Thursday 18 January, 9pm BBC TWO As the fascinating series tracing the lives of those who lived in a single Liverpool home continues, we’ve reached the year 1891. Time to meet the Snewings, saddlers who spent more than four decades resident at the house. Death in the family, the First World War and the rise of the motorcar all have an impact on their story. Coming closer to the present day, the episode also looks at how Liverpool’s inner city declined with the Great Depression, so that the house became a shabby lodging house. At the beginning of the Second World War, those renting rooms included Jack Greenall, a docker who worked through the Blitz – and kept a secret from his employers. The series, presented…

World Jewish Relief archives Ruby Wax recently discovered how the Holocaust affected her family on Who Do You Think You Are? . If you have European Jewish ancestors too, you can learn about their lives by sending a free research request to the World Jewish Relief archives 1 Navigate to the World Jewish Relief homepage at worldjewishrelief.org. Click on the ‘About us’ tab, followed by ‘Your Family History’. 2 Scroll down the page and complete the registration form, including as much information about the person you want to trace as possible. The archives contain more than 35,000 files relating to refugees who fled Nazi Europe, including children brought to the UK via the Kindertransport scheme. 3 As soon as you’ve finished, click the ‘Send’ button. Once the archivists at World…