Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2019 i Who Do You Think You Are?

Wow! I can hardly believe it, but this is our 150th issue of WDYTYA? Magazine. I remember in 2007 when the magazine was just a twinkle in my eye, and now we are one of the world’s bestselling family history titles. Thank you to everyone who has supported us on this journey, and a special thank you to readers who have been with us since the first issue. Thank you also to all of the editorial staff and writers I have worked with over the years. I’m looking forward to the next 150 issues! I also want to thank everyone who took part in our third Transcription Tuesday event. It was a great success, with an entire book transcribed in a day. You can read more about it on page…

I was interested in your answer to the question ‘What is the difference between genealogy and family history?’ (Q&A, February). While searching for a burial in the 1700s in Great Dunham, Norfolk, I found entries by the rector, Ambrose Pimlowe, who did not confine himself to simply recording dates and names but got carried away in the detail, unwittingly providing future generations with valuable insight into the life of the times. For example, here is one of his entries: “1738 John Hun, an ancient pauper of almost ninety-three years, a native of Norwich who settled in this town, who could walk twenty miles with more ease and less fatigue than hundreds of twenty years of age and married at eighty years of age and went to Lycham to buy the…

The International Bomber Command Centre (IBCC) is seeking help from the public to identify the Jewish aircrew killed in the service during the Second World War. Cathie Hewitt, IBCC collections archivist and researcher, is hoping to hear from families of those who died. The IBCC will record and preserve their stories, photos, documents and memorabilia to share with future generations. Cathie has already uncovered nearly 600 stories of Jews from Europe, Canada, Australia and Jamaica who were among the almost 58,000 Bomber Command crew who gave their lives. One such man was Norman Gorfunkle (pictured), who was born in Liverpool in 1920 and joined the Royal Air Force in 1940. If you have a story to share, please contact the centre by emailing cathie@internationalbcc.co.uk.…

The 1921 census will be published on findmypast.co.uk in January 2022, it has been announced. The long-awaited records release features details of the almost 38 million people living in England and Wales in 1921, including their employment and level of education. The returns, which are held by the Office for National Statistics, are already being digitised, transcribed and indexed by Findmypast staff in partnership with The National Archives. Tamsin Todd, CEO of Findmypast, said that the census is “a fascinating snapshot of postwar Britain”. The 1921 census is particularly significant because the 1931 census returns were destroyed in the Blitz, and no census was taken in 1941. Turn to page 30 for more information.…

A project researching Belgian refugees who came to Britain during the First World War is seeking help from the public in growing an online database. The Tracing the Belgian Refugees database (belgianrefugees.leeds.ac.uk/database ) launched in January 2019, and includes records of more than 400 people. Visitors can add details of refugees they’ve researched, such as their name; gender; date of birth and date of death; date of arrival in the UK and date of their departure; profession; family members; languages spoken; and addresses. The project’s website says: “Communities and academics in the UK and further afield have already traced hundreds of Belgians in exile in villages, towns and cities. Our project aims to pool some of this knowledge and to provide an online resource which will help to give a…

Snippets of information of interest to family historians can turn up in the most unexpected places. Last summer, on holiday in France, we visited the great castle of Tarascon, which stands on the eastern bank of the Rhône a few miles upstream from Avignon. The castle was built in the first half of the 15th century, as a noble residence and fortress combined. It’s huge, towering above the small town, and the views from the roof are awe-inspiring – surely I could see for 100 miles in every direction? Inside there are immense echoing rooms, now completely empty; a multitude of stairways and passages; and gloomy courtyards overshadowed by tall towers. ‘In some rooms the walls are completely covered with writing and designs’ But there’s something else to attract the…

1 FAMILY SEARCH Searching from the homepage at familysearch.org accesses parish records from the International Genealogical Index (IGI) created by community members between 1973 and 2008, and many more transcriptions that have been added to the site since then. 2 FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY INDEXES Family history societies compile indexes of parish registers for their regions, and members know what’s available online. There’s a directory at ffhs.org.uk/members2/contacting and some indexes can be searched on findmypast.co.uk or purchased through the society. Members of the Society of Genealogists can search some national parish register indexes at sog.org.uk/search-records/searchsog-data-online. 3 ONLINE PARISH CLERKS OPCs are volunteers who transcribe parish registers for their area. These ongoing projects each have their own website, links to which can be found at ukbmd.org.uk/online_parish_clerk. 4 FREEREG More than 43 million…

‘We may find some surprises in our ethnic origin estimate reports’ The popularity of DNA testing for family history has soared recently. In January 2019 news website GenomeWeb (genomeweb.com) published a report indicating that approximately 30 million people worldwide will have taken a direct-to-consumer DNA test by the end of 2018. Tests are now cheaper than ever, while also being easy to buy online and even on the high street. It is through these tests that many of us (including me) have discovered that we have Jewish ancestry. This raises the question of how we can find the truth about our Jewish ancestors. We also need to ascertain whether we can be sure from these tests that we truly are descended from Jews. Firstly, we should look at the tests…

DATABASES 23ANDME w 23andme.com/en-gb You can export your data, but you can’t add results from elsewhere. ANCESTRYDNA w ancestry.co.uk/dna Ancestry is good for cousin matches with people who also have online trees. You can download your data to add to other databases, but you can’t add data from other providers. DNA LAND w dna.land You can upload to this database for free, but your data is used for medical and other research. The site offers a chance to connect to others on the database, as well as the latest ethnicity algorithms. FAMILYTREEDNA w familytreedna.com This site allows uploads and downloads of raw data, although there is a charge for uploads. MYHERITAGE w myheritage.com/dna My Heritage differentiates between a number of Jewish ethnicities. You can order a test or upload your…

BARNARDO’S w barnardos.org.uk/formerbarnardos-children Barnardo’s Making Connections service can help if you’re looking for records of children in the charity’s care since the 1870s. BELFAST BURIALS w belfastcity.gov.uk/community/burialrecords Discover where your ancestors were buried in the city from 1869 onwards, and see who is buried alongside them. CANADIAN CONNECTIONS w bac-lac.gc.ca/eng Order BMD records and view maps and wills at the website of Library and Archives Canada.…

Could my grandad’s blackouts be the result of his war service? Q I am trying to find out about my grandfather, John Thomson Brown, during the First World War – he was in the Ayrshire Yeomanry and was wounded. His 1918 marriage certificate indicates he was a private in the 11th Royal Scots. He had blackouts after the war, and doctors were unable to explain the cause. A warmer climate was recommended, and in December 1925 he emigrated with his family. His health did not improve, so in July 1927 they returned to Scotland. By this stage he was unfit for manual labour and sold insurance, visiting his customers by bicycle. In 1942 he had a blackout while on his bike and crashed into a bus, dying later in hospital.…

David Cronin bit.ly/david-cronin The first record I have seen of my 2x great grandfather David Cronin is in a Baptism record (Irish, Catholic Parish Registers, 1655–1915) of his daughter Mary dated 17 May 1862. This was at Passage West, Cork, Ireland. His wife is noted as Ellen Clahane. He then has a further three children born and baptised in Jersey in the Channel Islands: David in 1863, Ellen in 1865 and Patrick in April 1867. His next child, John, was born in Bristol, UK, in January 1869, as were the remainder of his children. David stayed in Bristol for the rest of his life and died here in January 1905. All censuses say he was born in Ireland, but the 1901 one says it was Waterford, Ireland. His death certificate…

Robert Dalton acquired the estate of Thurnham near Lancaster in the 1550s, and the family continued to hold the estate for the next 400 years. They were also practising Catholics, despite often facing hostility because of their faith. The Dalton family papers were given to Lancashire Archives in the 1960s, and staff are now cataloguing them with the help of funding from the Friends of Lancashire Archives. Among the records are the daily diaries and pocket ledgers of John Dalton (c1747–1837), who inherited the estate in 1778. As archivist Victoria McCann explains, they provide a fascinating insight into the day-to-day life of a Georgian landowning gentleman. CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE BOOKS? John Dalton has filled a series of Kearsley’s Gentleman and Tradesman’s Pocket Ledgers that run from 1777 to (with…

PILGRIM SHIP LISTS w packrat-pro.com/ships/shiplist.htm This website describes many 17th-century emigrant ships carrying passengers to America. THE SHIPS LIST w theshipslist.com This site has descriptions of ships, photos, details of life at sea, passenger lists, immigrant regulations and many helpful links. WRECK REPORTS w bit.ly/wreck-reports If your ancestor died in, or survived, a shipwreck, then the public inquiry will tell you more – and may also identify other passengers. Southampton Archives’ website has digital copies of 5,916 reports that date from 1876 onwards.…

BOOK These Poor Hands: The Autobiography of a Miner Working in South Wales, Second Edition BL Coombes University of Wales Press, 2010 This revealing first-hand account of life as a coal miner was first published in 1939. Tracing Your Coalmining Ancestors Brian Elliott Pen & Sword, 2014 This very practical guide and reference source is aimed at family historians. WEBSITE DURHAM MINING MUSEUM w dmm.org.uk The wealth of information on this excellent, volunteer-led site for North-East England is also relevant to many other areas.…

1 BLOCKED HEARTH The total number of chargeable hearths is given in the right-hand column. Sarah Easton, a tallowchandler (candlemaker), had one hearth “stopt-up”. 2 EMPTY Vacant houses are noted in their proper place along the street. 3 ORIGIN POINT Thomas Farriner, baker, had five hearths and one oven. It’s generally believed that the Great Fire of London started at this property, just over five months later. 4 ADDRESS Exact addresses are not given, but the street name is noted. The assessor went house-by-house along each side of the street. 5 PROSPEROUS AREA Many of the properties on Pudding Lane were big enough to have multiple hearths.…

The first official newspaper in Britain was the Oxford Gazette in 1665; in Ireland it was the News-Letter in 1685. Newspapers have been vital in recording what’s happening in their communities. If your ancestor appeared in an article, it can reveal the sort of story that brings your tree to life – from the comic to the heartbreaking. Old articles from hundreds of British and Irish newspapers have now been digitised and published online. For Irish local historian Enda McEvoy, they led him to a breakthrough in his research into a 19th-century gamekeeper. MY BRICK WALL ‘I could not find a connection that linked my John Harrod to Rachel’s family’ In October 2010 I was working at Abbeyleix Public Library in Co. Laois, Ireland, when an English couple walked in,…

Mary Somerville joined the BBC in 1925 and served as director of school broadcasting from 1929 to 1947. In 1950 she became controller of the Talks division, the first woman to hold a controller position. Somerville passionately believed in the value of radio in education, bringing dramatic re-enactments and sounds to enliven the subjects and broaden the experience. Somerville ( left ) married journalist Ralph Penton Brown in 1928. They had a son but divorced in 1945. Somerville was able to remain employed at the BBC while the marriage bar was in place because in 1933 the BBC ruled that “the retention of women after marriage is to be regarded as exceptional”, and she was deemed ‘exceptional’. She was also able to return to work after the birth of her…

Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, or HALS, is home to more than three million documents stored on five miles of shelving. But those bald statistics don’t capture the breadth and depth of the treasures held here, which stretch back to a charter from 1060, when Edward the Confessor endowed Westminster Abbey by conferring land in Wheathampstead. This rubs shoulders with a police ‘day book’ giving physical descriptions of known criminals in Sawbridgeworth, a boys’ school punishment book, and the earliest map in the collection showing the manor of Digswell in 1599. ‘Paper, brewing and aviation are three of the industries which Hertfordshire was known for’ To begin with, the average family historian is more likely to target the parish collections at HALS, which also include unique, notable and downright strange…

CATLIN This is the Anglo-Norman French form of the personal name Catherine. CHALKLEY This name is associated with the chalk hills of Southern England. DEAMER At the time of the 1891 census, about 40 per cent of all Deamers in England and Wales lived in Hertfordshire. HALSEY This name can be translated from Old English as ‘neck of land in the sea’. KIMPTON This habitational name probably originates from the village Kimpton, East of Luton. MUNT This is a topographic name for someone who lived on or near a munt , or hill. PATMORE Another habitational name. "Patemore" is mentioned in the Domesday Book. RANCE This is thought to be the patronymic form of the medieval male given name Rand – the shortened version of names such as Randolph. SEABROOK…

In 1939 Enid Campbell, the granddaughter of the 8th Duke of Argyll, sold the custody of her son Ian to her sister Joan for £500. Now Eleanor Anstruther, Ian’s daughter, is telling the story of her grandmother’s momentous decision in her debut novel, A Perfect Explanation. How did you come to write the book? We always knew that my father had been sold. It was one of those things we grew up knowing, and never questioning at all. But when I became a mother myself, it just occurred to me to ask him about it. For about six months, with his blessing, I read the entire family archive – medical papers, legal papers, and many, many letters. Then I travelled around the country, visiting the locations of the major events…

LAURA BERRY With over 10 years’ experience as a genealogist on WDYTYA? Laura has seen more than her fair share of parish registers. She explains what you can find online on page 16. EMMA JOLLY Emma is a frequent contributor to our Q&A pages and has written four books on genealogy. Although she specialises in British India, this month she explores her Jewish roots on page 26. BRIAN ELLIOTT Brian has written many books on local and regional history, and explores coal mining on page 59. It’s a topic he’s particularly interested in, because he has coal miners in his family.…

GRO birth and death PDFs now permanently available The General Register Office (GRO) has made its PDF records service permanently available. The change took effect on 16 February, the same date it raised the price from £6 to £7. The scheme allows family historians to order digital PDF copies of their ancestors’ birth records from 1837 to 1918 and death records from 1837 to 1957 via www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates. The GRO previously trialled PDF ordering from November 2016 to April 2017, and introduced the current scheme on a temporary basis in November 2017. Deceased Online adds West Norwood records Deceased Online (deceasedonline.com) has added 165,000 burial records from West Norwood Cemetery. Founded in 1836, West Norwood is one of London’s ‘Magnificent Seven’ Victorian cemeteries, and has 69 listed buildings and structures. The…

CHANNEL ISLANDS FAMILY HISTORY FESTIVAL 15–17 March a Jersey Archive, St Helier w bit.ly/jerseyfamily e archives@jerseyheritage.org Jersey Heritage presents its second annual Family History Festival. The event features three days of talks and workshops, and there will also be the chance to consult experts one-on-one. Free, but booking is required. LONDON MAPS FOR FAMILY HISTORIANS 13 March a Society of Genealogists, Clerkenwell w bit.ly/sog-maps t 020 7553 3290 In this one-hour talk, Charlie Mead introduces a wide range of maps and shows you how to use them to understand where your ancestors lived and worked. £8. NORTHERN IRELAND ALL AT SEA: MARITIME RECORDS IN PRONI 3 April a Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast w bit.ly/all-at-sea-proni t 028 9053 4800 This talk by Stephen Scarth is part of a…

When the Who Do You Think You Are? TV show first hit our screens, the idea of parish registers going online was pie in the sky. Back then genealogists spent hours scouring microfilmed copies of baptism, marriage and burial registers deposited at county record offices in the hope of tracing a family tree back beyond the start of civil registration in 1837. ‘An unprecedented number of indexes can be searched online’ With roughly 15,000 Church of England parishes to choose from in the mid-1830s, the search was almost always restricted to places where you knew an ancestor had lived. So the chances of taking your research back to the earliest registers created during Tudor times were slim, especially if your ancestors moved around. The best shortcuts before the age of…

George Rose’s 1812 Act “for the better regulating and preserving parish and other registers of births, baptisms, marriages and burials in England” introduced preprinted forms to standardise the information given in parish registers, so there’s not a huge difference between the facts we glean from baptism registers from 1813 onwards and the information in birth certificates in England and Wales from 1837. The biggest handicap is that they rarely give mother’s maiden surnames, but the preprinted registers do provide both parents’ names if they were married; the father’s occupation; family’s abode; date of baptism; and the name of the clergyman who performed the ceremony. If the child was born out of wedlock this is usually made clear, with them described as “base born”, “illegitimate” or a “natural child”. Occasionally the…

From 1598 priests were required to copy out the entries in their parish registers and send them annually to the bishop or archdeacon. These copies are known as Bishops’ and Archdeacons’ Transcripts (BTs and ATs). They’re fantastic if the original registers no longer survive or are too faded to read, but there’s always a risk that information was copied inaccurately. The 1841 BT for St Mary’s, Lewisham, states that Charles Hodgins was baptised on 31 January in that year but gives 10 January 1842 as an improbable date of birth. There’s no clear indication on ancestry.co.uk that this record is a BT; however, the search results for Charles’ baptism reveal two slightly different handwritten images – a classic sign that one is the parish register and the other a BT.…

GUIDES SOCIETY OF GENEALOGISTS w sog.org.uk The society has created a free guide in PDF format on Anglican parish registers and finding aids (visit bit.ly/sog-guide-anglican), and sells copies of its National Index of Parish Registers for 18 English counties through its online bookshop (see bit.ly/sog-book). REGISTERS ANCESTRY w ancestry.co.uk Ancestry has scanned many registers from archives in Dorset, Lancashire, Surrey, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, West Yorkshire and elsewhere, and has digitally indexed lots of old finding aids. Links to parish register records arranged by county will be located at ancestry.co.uk/cs/parish. FAMILYSEARCH w familysearch.org In addition to its indexes, FamilySearch has digital scans of microfilmed parish registers obtained from various archives. Search for a parish name at familysearch.org/search/catalog/search and click on the ‘Church Records’ list. Scanned collections have a camera symbol next to…

Endogamy – the practice of marrying within the same ethnic, religious or social group – makes it harder to research Ashkenazi Jewish family history using DNA. You may find first-cousin marriages, or other cousin unions, in your ancestry that have limited the gene pool. The most noticeable effect of this is the number of matches. I was first alerted to my Jewish ancestry by the fact that I had hundreds more matches than many of my friends who have only known British origins. The chief problem with endogamy for genealogists is that cousin matches can appear closer than they truly are. In other words, if a match appears as a predicted second cousin, it could in fact be a fourth cousin. Happily, the testing companies are now fully aware of…

EMMA JOLLY is a writer, historical researcher and member of AGRA ANTONY MARR is a member of the council of AGRA CHRIS PATON is a genealogist, author and blogger at britishgenes.blogspot.com JAYNE SHRIMPTON is a professional dress historian and portrait specialist ALAN STEWART is a family historian and author of Grow Your Own Family Tree RUTH SYMES is the author of Tracing Your Ancestors Through Letters & Personal Writings PHIL TOMASELLI is a military family history expert and wrote Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors GEOFF YOUNG is a genealogist with a particular interest in the use of technology What can I find out about the company my father worked for? Q My father, Ernest Aylott (b1893 in Dulwich East), started work as an errand boy for the grocery chain WH…

Could this member of the Home Guard be my uncle? Q I found this photograph among my mother’s possessions when she died in 1997. Her brother-in-law, Harold William Masterman, served in the Royal Garrison Artillery during the First World War. He was awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal, and his rank at the end of the war was U/P/L/Bdr. He may have later entered the Home Guard as a lieutenant in Glasgow in 1941. Is it possible to identify the cap badge, medal ribbons or rank? Did the Home Guard use First World War cap badges from their previous service, and would a trooper in the First World War become a Home Guard officer in the Second? Peter Foxton A This photo, probably taken informally in a…

Touching memento My grandmother Laura Price (née Roberts) wrote “Just as a reminder old chap” on the back of this photo for her husband. Family service My great grandparents John and Jane Roberts. Their four sons Frank, Frederick, James and Harry all fought in the war. Wounds of war Here is Laura with her husband Joseph Price. He died in 1923 during a stomach operation to address a wartime injury. Holding the baby Laura’s brother Frederick Roberts, shown here with his daughter Rosina, emigrated to British Columbia, Canada, in 1907. Words of consolation James Roberts is shown here with his brother Frank. Frank wrote to Jane upon James’ death,“Dear mother you have one thing to be proud of, he died a hero.” A varied military career Frank Roberts ( centre…

Peter Higginbotham, social historian and author of Children’s Homes (Pen & Sword, 2017) and Workhouses of London and the South East (History Press, 2019) The Hidden Lives website (hiddenlives.org.uk) is a treasure trove of material from the archives of the Children’s Society (originally the Waifs and Strays Society), formerly one of the major providers of children’s homes in Britain. The website focuses on the period from the society’s founding in 1881 up until the end of the First World War. Among its gems, the site includes copies of all the documents relating to about 150 anonymised case files, which provide a vivid insight into the often complex circumstances that could bring a child into care. Apart from parental death, these included the…

Although coal has been extracted from surface and shallow workings since at least Roman times, it was not until the early 1800s that coal mining took shape as an industry. While domestic usage remained important, it was the increasing demand for coal to power and service a huge variety of crafts, trades and burgeoning industries that tipped the balance for landowners to lease their coal-bearing lands, providing opportunistic coal masters with the chance to exploit ‘black gold’. By about 1850 the larger, deep mines employed upwards of 500 men and boys. The coal was reached via a warren of underground workings extending two, three or more miles from the pit bottom, with foul air and noxious gases extracted – in theory – via an upcast shaft. Pit workers and their…

Governments always want money. In The Cobbler of Preston, a long-forgotten 1716 play by Christopher Bullock, the character Kit Sly says, “’Tis impossible to be sure of anything but Death and Taxes” – a line later repeated by, among others, Daniel Defoe and Benjamin Franklin. An extraordinary variety of schemes have been used to extract money from the long-suffering population, some practical, others crazy. Taxation records provide rich evidence for family and local historians looking at their ancestors or studying their community in the past. They offer long lists of names before census returns become available, and tell us much about the relative wealth and social status of our forebears. POLL POSITION Detailed taxation records begin in the 14th century with the poll tax – a simple levy of a…

ANCESTRY w ancestry.co.uk The subscription site has a large and growing number of taxation records from the UK and Ireland, including images and transcripts, searchable across almost 40 collections. See the list at bit.ly/anc-tax. HEARTH TAX DIGITAL w gams.uni-graz.at/context:htx This invaluable resource makes it possible to search hearth tax records. The site at present has data for London and Middlesex, Yorkshire East Riding and Yorkshire West Riding. More regions will be added in the course of 2019. SCOTLANDSPLACES w scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/records This free site provides clear images and transcripts for many taxation records in the National Records of Scotland. It includes the standard taxes (hearth, land, poll and window) and covers the period from 1645 to 1831.…

If you have a Pro-level subscription to Findmypast, you can access exactly the same historical newspapers as the ones that are available in the British Newspaper Archive ( britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk ) 1 Log into findmypast.co.uk or findmypast.ie . Click ‘Search’ on the left-hand side of the menu bar at the top of the page, then choose the ‘Newspapers & periodicals’ option halfway down the list of categories. 2 Type a name, and/or particular keywords. You can also choose ‘British’, ‘Irish’ or ‘US & World newspapers’, or the ‘PERiodical Source Index’ of articles and records in historical, genealogical and ethnic publications. 3 You can narrow your search results by filtering by date, place, county, newspaper and type of article. In this example, we searched for Barbara Gregory in British newspapers…

ARCHIVES BRITISH LIBRARY a 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB t 0330 333 1144 w bl.uk The library holds the 1946 report Marriage Bar in the Civil Service. MODERN RECORDS CENTRE a University Library, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL t 024 7652 4219 w warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc The MRC has extensive archives of modern social, political and economic history, regarding industrial relations, industrial politics and labour history. Records include employers’ organisations, trade unions and trade associations. POSTAL MUSEUM a 15–20 Phoenix Place, London WC1X 0DA t 0300 0300 700 w postalmuseum.org You can find out more about postal worker ancestors in the museum and its archive. There is also a guide to researching postal worker ancestors online at postalmuseum.org/blog/do-you-have-postal-roots. BOOK Behind the Wireless Kate Murphy Palgrave Macmillan, 2016 This book presents…

1066 After the Norman Invasion, Edgar the Ætheling surrenders to William the Conqueror at Berkhamsted. 1213 The first draft of the Magna Carta is written at St Albans Abbey. 1471 The Battle of Barnet is fought in Monken Hadley. Edward IV’s Yorkist troops kill ‘Kingmaker’ Richard Neville. 1494 The first paper mill in England, owned by John Tate, opens in Hertford. 1785 ‘Peter the Wild Boy’, discovered living wild in the woods near Hamelin in Germany 60 years before, is buried in Berkhamsted. 1809 John Dickinson patents a paper-making machine. He uses the new design at Apsley Mills in Hemel Hempstead. 1903 The Garden City Company is formed, which leads to the creation of Letchworth (pictured) and Welwyn Garden City. 1904 Novelist Graham Greene is born in St John’s House,…

DISC NONCONFORMIST RECORDS DEPOSITED AT BRISTOL ARCHIVES, VOLUME 2 w bit.ly/nonconform-bristol £9 plus P&P This CD contains records indexed and transcribed by the Bristol & Avon Family History Society, following a first volume in 2014, and is available through its online shop. The disc covers 1603–1837 and features 13,505 baptisms, 2,011 marriages and 14,319 burials. SOFTWARE ZOTERO w zotero.org Linux, OS X and Windows Free This software allows users to organise research, capture bibliographic references and receive alerts when relevant articles are published online. Donna Cox Baker, blogger and author of Zotero for Genealogy: Harnessing the Power of Your Research, explains the value of the software for family history at gegbound.com/tag/zotero. E-BOOK 38 FAMILY TREE RESEARCH RESOURCES w bit.ly/38-tree £0.99 This e-book for Amazon’s Kindle has been written by Darrell…

NEWSPAPER ARTICLES Lulu searched britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk to find out more about Helen Kennedy’s mother, Helen Orr. She learned that she was a leading light in the Orange Order, and the Belfast Weekly News reported that a minute’s silence was held at her lodge to mark the death of her daughter. SCOTTISH BMD RECORDS Scottish parish and civil records have all been placed centrally on one website, scotlandspeople.gov.uk. We were able to locate a record of the death of Lulu’s maternal grandmother, Helen Darling Cairns (née Kennedy), which showed that she died at the age of 31 from peritonitis when Lulu’s mother Elizabeth was only eight years old. PASSENGER LISTS Lulu also researched her grandfather, Helen’s husband Hugh Cairns. She was Protestant and he was Catholic, as well as an unskilled labourer…

More than two million baptism, marriage and burial records covering four centuries of life in Hampshire are available in a new collection on familysearch.org. The free family history website has added transcriptions of 2,071,150 Hampshire parish records, which date from the introduction of parish registration in 1538 until 1980. All users of FamilySearch can view the transcriptions, while digital images of the records are available for visitors to FamilySearch Family History Centres and affiliate libraries. Parish records help you uncover your ancestors’ dates and places of birth, marriage and death, as well as the names of their parents and spouses.…

Most websites list the source of their information. For example, Ancestry has a search engine for ‘UK Parish Baptism, Marriage and Burial Records’ (found at ancestry.co.uk/search/categories/epr). In the sidebar, ‘About this collection’ provides a link to all of the individual datasets making up the collection, and explains that it’s composed of two major types of indexes – keyed transcriptions of original documents with a link to the scanned document, and ‘extracted’ records usually copied from transcriptions or indexes created by a third person or a family history society that have not been verified for completeness or accuracy. This latter type of record can also be found on findmypast.co.uk and other genealogy websites, and rarely has an image attached to it. It’s essentially a finding aid to help you locate the…

The search for my Jewish great grandfather progressed quickly when two fairly close DNA matches appeared on myheritage.com and ancestry.co.uk. I soon discovered that they were an uncle and nephew. Using 23andMe’s Chromosome Browser to separate the Ashkenazi sections of my DNA from the non-Ashkenazi, I was able to compare them with the sections of the uncle’s DNA that match mine exactly within the Ashkenazi sections. Luckily, I could narrow down the search as the uncle and nephew are only part Jewish, with the uncle having only one Jewish grandparent. The evidence indicated, therefore, that I am related to this Jewish grandparent. This reduced my potential matches to one family with four brothers. Communication with members of the family revealed photographs and details of the lives of each brother. This…

The thought of being so poor that you’re forced to give away one or more of your children will chill the blood of any modern-day parent. The past is another country, however, and from 1869 to 1930 more than 100,000 British children were given up to charities to be rehomed overseas. Many were lost from families who were so desperately impoverished that they could no longer afford food. Barnardo’s was among the charities and church institutions involved in the process. They believed that children stood a better chance of a healthy and ‘moral’ life on farms in Canada, Australia or New Zealand than in the slums and workhouses of Britain. Although some of the children were treated well, others were abused or regarded as a source of cheap labour. ‘An…

Can you help me identify these relatives from the Midlands? Q I have these two photos of family members, probably from the Coventry area, but I have no idea who they are and so dating them would be of great help. I would also like to know which type/format of photograph these represent. David Birch A These formal studio photographs represent an early format, before commercial portraits became widely popular. It’s unclear from the scans whether these are daguerreotypes, or ambrotypes. Daguerreotypes, introduced in the 1840s, were struck directly onto a silvered copper plate, had a mirror-like surface, and when tilted fluctuated between a negative and positive image: expensive in Britain, they were rare and obsolete by c1860. Ambrotypes (also known as ‘collodion positives’), widely available from the mid-1850s, comprised…

You often come across this phrase when researching poorer ancestors. Under the 1662 Act of Settlement, individuals were seen to have a place of settlement, or home parish. If those new to a parish couldn’t prove their financial independence, or needed poor relief, then they could be removed to their home parish in order for that parish to take responsibility for relieving them. Alternatively, they could gain a certificate from their parish to enable them to live elsewhere, with their parish guaranteeing that it would be responsible for any future relief. Although your settlement was often through place of birth or parentage, you could also gain a settlement elsewhere through marriage, work, renting a house worth a certain value, paying taxes, or apprenticeship.…

CARE LEAVERS’ ASSOCIATION w careleavers.com The website has information about accessing childhood care files, plus lists of local authority contacts for records of council-run homes. FOUNDLING MUSEUM w foundlingmuseum.org.uk Discover the history of the famous hospital established in 1739 by Thomas Coram to care for babies who were at risk of abandonment. LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA w bit.ly/canadian-children The Canadian archives website brings together databases and other material, for example passenger lists, that can help you trace any relatives who were sent overseas as children. MÜLLER’S w mullers.org Learn about the Orphan Homes of George Müller, who cared for 10,000 children in Bristol during the 19th century. Staff will search the organisation’s records for a small fee. ON THEIR OWN w otoweb.cloudapp.net This dated but interesting website about child migrants…

1 SHIP’S NAME BT27 contains records for all ships leaving British ports, not just those of British origin. This particular ship, PC Hooft , is Dutch. 2 FIRST PAGE The first page of a passenger list will identify the ship, her owner, her captain and her destination. 3 ‘BRITISH’ You will usually see differentiation of British and foreign passengers; 20th-century records often identify British subjects emigrating. 4 CROSSING OUT Crossed-out names probably didn’t travel (sometimes names were crossed through lightly in pencil as a roll call). 5 FULL NAME Passengers’ full names are given here. Older records often only provide surnames and an initial; women may have no initials. 6 OTHER DETAILS If included, such information as addresses, ages and occupations can help to confirm identification.…

Ancestry.co.uk now hosts the searchable database of UK mining accidents and disasters from 1878 to 1935, originally compiled by Ian Winstanley: bit.ly/anc-mining. Also Fionn Taylor’s healeyhero.co.uk site (in memory of Phil Healey, a Mine Rescue officer at Ilkeston) has a lot of useful material, including memorials, fatality lists, family history help, and an excellent glossary of ‘pit words’. Local and regional newspapers contain a huge amount of information about coal mining, and libraries and record offices may have cuttings and newspaper files that are not yet available in a digital format. The growing subscription database britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk is searchable via family names and colliery names for selected areas and time periods. Original newspapers still not scanned can be viewed at the British Library’s Boston Spa reading rooms near Wetherby, Yorkshire:…

The hearth tax has a lot of potential for research linking local history with family history. In 2018 members of the University of the Third Age (U3A) used returns from the City of London, Greenwich and the West Midlands in conjunction with other documentary sources to uncover the stories of people, buildings and localities. Andrew Wareham and Catherine Ferguson, from the Centre for Hearth Tax Research at the University of Roehampton, which transcribed the returns, worked with specialists from Birkbeck College and the Society of Genealogists to train U3A volunteers in palaeography, accessing archives and using 17th-century sources. Peter Cox, one of the leaders of the London project, says that they focused on eight City parishes for which the 1666 returns include the occupation of each householder. This gives unrivalled…

BOOK Land and Window Tax Assessment, Second Edition Jeremy Gibson, Mervyn Medlycott and Dennis Mills Federation of Family History Societies, 2004 This is an excellent introductory guide and listing of resources. WEBSITES FAMILYSEARCH w familysearch.org/wiki/en/England_Taxation FamilySearch has a very good introductory Wiki page on taxation, with links to many other more detailed pages on specific tax records; there’s also an equivalent page for Scotland at familysearch.org/wiki/en/Scotland_Taxation. THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES w bit.ly/tna-tax-guide The experts at TNA have created a free guide to finding records of taxation before 1689.…

1756 THE BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA This year more than 40 British prisoners of war were suffocated to death, in an incident that would become a symbol used to justify the country’s domination of India. The tragedy started with the British administrators of the East India Company worrying about the increasing French influence on their interests. The French were gaining a significant presence in the subcontinent, and in response the Company reinforced Fort William, the main defence of Calcutta. However, this upset the balance of power in the region and the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Daulah, feared that the British were going to expand. To forestall a military attack, he assembled an army of 50,000 with 500 elephants and marched on Calcutta. The garrison was ill-prepared. The governor and most…

RECORDS OF ST MICHAEL’S PARISH CHURCH, BISHOP’S STORTFORD  w bit.ly/st-michaels You can download this 1882 book for free from archive.org using the link above. You can also download a book of Aldenham parish registers (1559–1659) from the same site at bit.ly/aldenham . BYGONE HERTFORDSHIRE  w bit.ly/bygone-herts This 1898 work on archive.org has essays about famous places and pieces of Hertfordshire’s history. The same website also has a collection of heraldic visitations to the county: bit.ly/herts-visits. MEMORIAL BRASSES IN HERTFORDSHIRE CHURCHES  w bit.ly/herts-brass This 1903 collection of descriptions and transcriptions from church memorials across the county is also on archive.org. Among the website’s other Hertfordshire titles is The Place-Names of Hertfordshire from 1904. HISTORICAL DIRECTORIES  w bit.ly/special-herts The University of Leicester’s collection of digitised directories has several for Hertfordshire. HERTS MEMORIES  w…

THE SMALLEST THINGS  NICK DUERDEN Elliott & Thompson, 208 pages, £12.99 I was delighted to have the opportunity to read this latest offering from Nick Duerden, a beautifully written memoir of his childhood and the lives of his family members. I could feel myself relating to it in a number of ways, in particular Italian ethnicity. There was something about the cathartic way in which the book was written that appealed to me. The author has done what many genealogists have done – looked back and realised that he was in danger of losing part of his own family heritage as another generation passes, taking with them all those sometimes trivial snippets that make up our individual family histories. I came away from The Smallest Things reflecting on the power…