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

Unlike census records, which have been fully digitised and can be searched via the main subscription sites, parish registers are only partially digitised with different collections available in different places, making it impossible to do a universal search. But don’t despair because we have trawled the internet to find the images and indexes that will take your research back hundreds of years (see page 16). From the genealogy giants to the labours of love, we’ve highlighted the websites you need to know about. And if we’ve missed one, write in and tell us about it! We’re also marking the 75th anniversary of D-Day with a fascinating article about one man’s search for the truth about the landings. Turn to page 26 to find out more, including how to apply for…

A research project is seeking volunteers to transcribe records of early Australian criminals. Criminal Characters, run by Dr Alana Piper of the Australian Centre for Public History at the University of Technology Sydney, aims to transcribe the Central Register of Male Prisoners and the Central Register of Female Prisoners from the Public Records Office Victoria. The records date from the 1840s to 1950. You can help transcribe the records via Zooniverse at zooniverse.org/projects/ajpiper/criminal-characters, and find out more at criminalcharacters.com. The project website notes: “By revealing untold stories about the lives of people who committed crimes in Australia across time, this project will make a significant contribution to the fields of history, criminology and law, as well as the work of family and local historians.”…

Family historians who keep their family tree on genealogy website findmypast.co.uk will benefit from tree-to-tree hints from 1 July. The new feature will flag up connections with other trees, enabling users to benefit from each other’s research and discover distant relations. Only deceased kin will be included in the sharing, and users of Findmypast’s family trees can opt out by changing their setting from ‘shareable’ to ‘private’. Although a similar service is already available on sites such as ancestry. co.uk, recipients of hints on Findmypast will not be able to see the original tree. A Findmypast spokesperson said: “We hope this new feature will enable users of all levels to make new connections and discoveries.”…

Family members of the 749 American sailors and soldiers killed in a D-Day training exercise gone wrong have attended the unveiling of a new artwork to mark the 75th anniversary of the tragedy. The memorial, consisting of 749 bootprints on Slapton Sands in Devon, was formally opened on 28 April to commemorate the victims of Operation Exercise Tiger. The tragedy occurred during a rehearsal for the D-Day landings when eight tank-landing ships were sunk by German U-boats. Among the dead was Sergeant Louis Archer Bolton from Iowa. His niece, Laurie Bolton, attended the commemoration. “Only five men from his platoon survived Exercise Tiger,” she said. “He was just 19 years old when he died and a newlywed, only having been married for just under a year.” The bootprint installation was…

I was looking at some late-18th-century wills from Rainhill near Liverpool, and transcribing the rather boring legalese that padded out what were really fairly straightforward clauses. The testators (all of them male) usually bequeathed the assets to their wife, although some made it clear that if she remarried she’d lose everything except a modest lump sum or an annuity. That made good sense, harsh though it might seem, because (until the Married Women’s Property Acts of the late 19th century) if she married for a second time all her assets would automatically transfer to her new husband, passing out of one family into another and in effect disinheriting the children. ‘The man was prevented from getting his grubby hands on any of the precious assets’ On the death of the…

ANCESTRY £ w ancestry.co.uk Ancestry is the leading source for Oxfordshire records, thanks to partnerships with Oxfordshire FHS and History Centre. It has nearly two million pre-1813 parish records, while later collections of baptisms (1813–1915), burials (1813–1965) and marriages (1754–1930) now stand at almost 2.2 million. It has nearly 280,000 records from Sutton in Surrey; over 400,000 from Bexley in Kent; and 35,000 Medway Methodist records. Other notable collections include 17,000 Methodist records from the Isle of Wight and 49,000 Hampshire marriage allegations. FINDMYPAST £ w findmypast.co.uk Through a partnership with Kent History and Library Centre, Findmypast has digitised more than 2,500 Kent parish registers dating up to 1918. It also has extensive records from the Canterbury Cathedral Archives, and has published indexed parish records from a number of societies…

ANCESTRY £  w ancestry.co.uk Ancestry has strong coverage of West Yorkshire thanks to a deal with West Yorkshire Archive Service, with 4,953,780 pre-1813 records, and post-1813 6,287,209 baptisms, 4,130,806 marriages and banns, and 1,331,307 burials. It also has 1,192,245 transcribed parish records covering the rest of Yorkshire. FREEREG w freereg.org.uk For Yorkshire the site has 1,883,760 records from the West Riding, 170,174 from the East and 564,301 from the North. THEGENEALOGIST £  w thegenealogist.co.uk TheGenealogist has a varied collection of baptism, marriage and burial records from Yorkshire. FINDMYPAST £  w findmypast.co.uk FMP is publishing records in partnership with members of the Yorkshire Digitization Consortium, including the Borthwick Institute, Doncaster Archives, Sheffield Archives and Local Studies Library, and Teesside Archives. The website has a wide selection of baptisms, marriages, burials and…

ANCESTRY £ w ancestry.co.uk Ancestry has deals with Lancashire County Council, Liverpool City Council and Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives. From Manchester, it has 5,107,883 Church of England records, 398,724 nonconformist records (1758–1987) and a special collection of 844,760 records from Manchester Cathedral. It added 466,000 records to its Liverpool collections last year and now has 4,701,772 Church of England records, 2,677,456 Catholic and 39,049 Quaker. It holds 10,439,487 Lancashire records, and has added the Cheshire transcriptions also available on FamilySearch. FINDMYPAST £ w findmypast.co.uk Findmypast also has a partnership with Lancashire Archives, adding 1.1 million baptism records from 191 parishes in the county; 713,000 banns and marriage records from 194 parishes; and 712,000 burial records from 123 parishes. The records extend to 1917 for baptisms, 1932 for banns and…

FINDMYPAST £ w findmypast.co.uk FMP’s partnerships with the National Library of Wales and the Welsh County Archivists Group make it the main website for Welsh parish registers. ANCESTRY £ w ancestry.co.uk Ancestry has select sets of 2,167,852 baptisms, 79,657 marriages and 1,315 burials, together with browse-only parish registers for Monmouthshire (dating from 1568 to 1812) and Caernarvonshire (1541–1793). FAMILYSEARCH w familysearch.org The site has many of the Welsh parish records on Findmypast (but index only). FREEREG w freereg.org.uk FreeREG has good coverage across Wales. Its biggest collections are Glamorgan (760,064 records), Denbighshire (396,733 records) and…

“The command came to drop the ramp and in an instant I knew we were entering a killing zone,” recalls US Ranger veteran James Gabaree. “I jumped into the water, knee deep and red with blood. Explosives were going off ahead of us, and enormous sheets of fire from artillery guns, rifle and mortar fire blanketed the beach. Machinegun bullets were hitting the water with such force, it looked like it was raining. It was slaughter. Men were dying all around me.” D-Day – 6 June 1944. Operation Overlord, the campaign to liberate Nazi-occupied Western Europe, is underway on the Normandy coast. Some 7,000 naval vessels have landed 132,000 soldiers on five beaches codenamed Gold, Juno, Omaha, Sword and Utah.US units hit Utah and Omaha; while at Gold, 25,000 men…

At first I didn’t realise what it said – then I thought, ‘Is that real?’,” says Adrian Stone, recalling the moment he spotted the word “African” next to the name of his earliest slave ancestor Ebo Venus in the registers for the Kellits Plantation in Clarendon, Jamaica. “That’s the biggest record I’ve found, without a doubt. “Finding an African slave on your tree is quite rare. It can be difficult to connect the dots to that generation, because of gaps in the records and knowing how to find things. It can be done, but it’s tricky.” In Adrian’s case, it was the culmination of 10 years’ hard work, researching an impressive 6,000 ancestors, over 10 generations as far back as the 1770s. But there are exciting new developments to add…

What uniform is Harry wearing? Q This is Henry George Levy (1895–1983) – known as Harry – in military uniform. He served in the army during the First World War and received serious facial wounds from a gunshot. The photograph shows him during the Second World War. He wasn’t allowed to serve in combat due to his injuries, but worked for a government department in London and rose to the rank of major. Is it possible to tell me more about the uniform he is wearing? Carol Ashley A This is a photograph of an officer of the Royal Artillery in service dress, taken early in the Second World War. He’s served in the First World War, so must be aged 40 or older. All Army Officers appear in The…

John Lewis’ Memory Store website (johnlewis memorystore.org.uk ) should appeal to anyone who has an interest in retail history. The John Lewis Partnership is famous for its department stores and Waitrose supermarkets, which have a related Waitrose Memory Store site (waitrose memorystore.org.uk ). All of the employees of the partnership have a share in the group’s profits and are known as partners. The site includes the history of the department stores, from the foundation of the first John Lewis store in Oxford Street in 1864, to its acquisition of numerous established businesses – some much older than John Lewis itself. Initially, these carried on trading under their existing names, but today the only department store retaining its original name is Peter Jones in Sloane Square, where the partnership idea began.…

Veterinary medicine has its origins in the ancient world, and advice on the welfare and treatment of domestic animals appears in early documents from Egypt and India. For much of history, care focused on the horse because of its importance in transport, agriculture and warfare and, through the Middle Ages up until the end of the 18th century, farriers combined shoeing with ‘horse doctoring’. Among the remedies listed in the 1721 Farrier’s Dispensatory are lead, quicksilver and brimstone, along with cow-dung wraps for stiff legs. In the second half of the 18th century there were moves to introduce a more scientific approach, and Europe’s first veterinary college was established in Lyon, France, in 1762. The Odiham Agricultural Society, a group of Hampshire gentry, then proposed that a similar college be…

Findmypast has made major improvements to its online tree over the past year, allowing subscribers to link records to individuals in a similar fashion to ancestry.co.uk. A new hints feature makes this process easier than ever, and – if you discover a match – you can incorporate facts into an ancestor’s profile and even grow your tree by adding new members from shared records (such as census returns). In this tutorial we’ll show you how to set up a tree on Findmypast, and use the website’s hints feature to find matches and merge them into your tree. Although there’s a dedicated Findmypast app for Android and iOS devices, we’re focusing on accessing the site through any desktop or mobile web browser. First, navigate to findmypast.co.uk and sign in with an…

1 MEMBER’S NAME Members are listed, surname first, by initial letter, but beyond that may appear anywhere in the list. Full alphabetisation would have been much too time-consuming. 2 AGE While it was common to begin work at 14 years old or even younger, the ASE restricted membership to those who had completed their apprenticeship. So most members were in their 20s or older when they signed up. 3 NAME OF SOCIETY The ASE was formed in 1851 from the merger of numerous smaller bodies. Entries such as “Mechanics” or “Smiths” indicate which of these unions the individual originally joined. 4 BRANCH OF TRADE The term ‘engineer’ was a broad one. Here the union records whether members were fitters, pattern-makers, turners or in some other specialist trade. 5 MARITAL STATUS…

Researching the history of a family business can be challenging. In the absence of surviving records kept by the business itself, genealogists are often forced to complete the jigsaw using a mixture of different sources, such as trade directories and newspaper cuttings. However, as Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine reader Richard West discovered, the research process sometimes requires a bit of lateral thinking – as well as the help of knowledgeable local experts. And, much like buses, you can wait ages for a ‘eureka moment’, only for two to turn up at once! THE BRICK WALL After catching the genealogy bug 10 years ago, I steadily began building my tree while encountering all of the usual moments of excitement, gasps and frustrations. One branch of the tree hailed…

Agnes was the daughter of ‘Professor’ Fred Beckwith, master of swimming at Lambeth Baths. Born in 1861, she swam from London Bridge to Greenwich in 1875 – a distance of four miles – in a dress, petticoats, pantaloons and stockings. It took her one hour and seven minutes, and according to contemporary accounts she finished the swim “almost as fresh as when she started”. Along with her mother, brother Willie and a ‘merman’ called Thomas Attwood, they formed the ‘Beckwith Frogs’, a troupe of marine acrobats who performed at bath openings and in theatres. At the Westminster Aquarium in 1880, Agnes drew a huge crowd to see her tread water for 30 hours, a record previously held by Captain Matthew Webb – the first man to swim the English Channel.…

Lothian refers to a region of Scottish Lowlands between the southern shore of the Firth of Forth and the Lammermuir Hills. It is formed of East, West and Midlothian, which together include towns such as Bathgate, Dalkeith, Dunbar, Linlithgow, Livingston, Haddington, Musselburgh, Prestonpans and Queensferry – and, of course, Edinburgh. The city must be one of the genealogical capitals of the world. Collections of national and international significance, local and city repositories, museum holdings that punch well above their weight and many world-famous heritage attractions are within walking distance of each another. ‘To dig into East Lothian’s archives, you need to visit the John Gray Centre at Haddington’ This is home to institutions such as the National Records of Scotland and the National Library of Scotland. Assuming you have moved…

Bathgate Chemical Works, established in the mid-19th century, was one of the first sites where mineral oils were processed on an industrial scale. The industry traces its history back to James Young’s discovery of cannel coal in the Boghead area of Bathgate. Once this source was used up, the firm turned to distilling paraffin from shale, leaving the landscape dotted with orange spoil heaps called ‘bings’. West Lothian Archives holds some material relating to the industry that flourished around Bathgate, and there’s scottishshale.co.uk, the website of the Museum of the Scottish Shale Oil Industry in Livingston. The site details companies, works and mines, plus photographs and names from employment records.…

TRACING YOUR POTTERIES ANCESTORS A GUIDE FOR FAMILY AND LOCAL HISTORIANS MICHAEL SHARPE Pen & Sword, 224 pages, £14.99 This new addition to Pen & Sword’s series Tracing Your Ancestors focuses on the Potteries, a distinct area of North Staffordshire. Covering the six pottery towns – Burslem, Fenton, Hanley, Longton, Stoke-on-Trent and Tunstall – as well as Newcastleunder-Lyme and the Staffordshire Moorlands. The book describes how the industrial district developed, its important place in history and how you can trace any ancestors who lived there. Michael Sharpe’s book is well researched and clearly structured. The most detailed chapters are devoted to the pottery industry, including key players, the manufacturing processes, different roles and the working conditions. However, the book also explores the other key local industries of canals, coalmining and…

In the 1840s a young couple, Benjamin Jones and Margaret Davies, walked from Wales to London in search of a better life. Benjamin found work as a cowkeeper, but their descendants continued to live in poverty in London until their great granddaughter Doris emigrated to Canada after the First World War. Now Doris’ granddaughters, sisters Kristen den Hartog and Tracy Kasaboski, are telling their family’s story in a new book, The Cowkeeper’s Wish. We spoke to Kristen to find out more. What inspired you to write the book? The book was nine years in the making. Many years ago my sister and I decided that we would like to write the story of our father’s family in the Netherlands in the Second World War. Collaborating on The Occupied Garden was…

Many of us will be familiar with William Hogarth’s iconic print Gin Lane . Completed in 1751, the engraving depicts a London street rife with death, debauchery and moral decay. Although the print was intended to be a satirical comment on the 18th-century ‘gin craze’, Hogarth took inspiration from the real-life parish of St Giles in the Fields – an area notorious for its high levels of poverty and crime. It is also the first image that comes to mind whenever Brian ‘It was a catastrophic blow for a widow with four children under 13’ Penn thinks about his great grandmother Eliza Merrin, who was born in St Giles in 1858. Almost a century after Hogarth’s death, the area’s reputation remained unchanged. “Eliza was raised in a slum known as…

CLAIRE VAUGHAN Having worked on Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine for 10 years, Claire is now a freelance journalist. On page 26 she meets military enthusiast Gary Sterne to talk about D-Day. PAUL BLAKE Paul is a well-known face on the family history circuit and has recently published Tracing Your Insolvent Ancestors. Turn to page 54 to learn from his masterclass on Probate Calendars. MARK CRAIL Having worked for a union 30 years ago, Mark saw the potential for family historians. He now runs the website unionancestors.co.uk. Find out how to use the records on page 63.…

Ancestry adds Cheshire and Kent parish records Two new collections of county parish register transcriptions have been added to ancestry. co.uk. The collections consist of 4,810,782 records from Cheshire (1538–1909) and 1,318,564 from Kent (1538–1914), and include baptisms, marriages and burials. The release of the Kent records follows the publication of over 2.6 million Kent parish records and images on findmypast.co.uk. The Cheshire records are also available for free on familysearch.org. Design for UK Holocaust memorial revealed Revised plans for the UK’s first memorial to the victims of the Holocaust have been unveiled. The UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre will be in London’s Victoria Gardens. The plans were developed following a consultation on the initial design, unveiled in 2017. Communities secretary James Brokenshire said the memorial “will stand as…

LONDON PLANTING A FAMILY TREE ONLINE AT MYHERITAGE/ MYHERITAGE DNA TEST AND MATCHING 5 June a Society of Genealogists, Clerkenwell w bit.ly/sog-planting t 020 755 3290 In this two-hour talk Daniel Horowitz, genealogy expert at myheritage.com, explains how to build a family tree on the website and how to use the company’s DNA tests. Attendees will be entered into a prize draw to win a DNA kit. Free – booking required. AGM AND OPEN MEETING 2019 15 June a Resource for London, Islington w fibis.org/events/event/ agmand-open-meeting-2019 e events@fibis.org The Families in British India Society is holding its AGM and open meeting on 15 June, featuring talks on researching your ancestor’s ayahs and the life of civil servant and educator Thomas Prendergast, as well as the chance to ask experts your…

Parish records are the backbone of family history research. Until the introduction of civil registration in 1837, they were the only source for tracing the key stages of our ancestors’ lives – birth and baptism, marriage, and death and burial. The growth of the internet has made it possible to access these crucial records from anywhere in the world. Every year at Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine we look at the latest updates in online parish records, showing where and how you can find your ancestors. All of the major regions of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland now have at least some representation online. The big commercial websites all have different strengths – for example, Ancestry is the go-to website for London, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, while Findmypast…

ANCESTRY £  w ancestry.co.uk Ancestry’s biggest collection in this area covers Gloucestershire, with nearly five million pre-1813 records; over three million 1813–1913 baptisms; 14,000 1834–1913 confirmations; nearly 1.5 million 1754–1938 marriages and banns; over 800,000 1813–1988 burials; and an index of 24,000 nonconformist baptisms. It also has strong collections in Somerset, with nearly 4.5 million pre-1813 records, and, from the more modern period, nearly three million baptisms; 1.5 million marriages, bonds and allegations; and 585,000 burials. It also has over six million records from Wiltshire, two million from Bristol, 339,000 from Cornwall and over 900,000 from Jersey. FREEREG  w freereg.org.uk FreeREG now has nearly 130,000 records from Wiltshire. It has added over 100,000 records each to Somerset (now with 3,706,920 records) and Cornwall (2,348,698). Its collections also continue to grow…

FINDMYPAST £ w findmypast.co.uk Findmypast has digitised parish registers from the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland; Lincolnshire parish registers to browse, covering births and deaths to 1911 and pre-1837 marriages; and indexed marriages, licence bonds and allegations. The site also has access to FamilySearch’s Derbyshire transcriptions, although without the images on FamilySearch. It has transcripts of 14,000 baptisms, 190,000 marriages and 400,000 burials from Northamptonshire Family History Society and good coverage of Nottinghamshire, including over 1.4 million baptisms. ANCESTRY £ w ancestry.co.uk In Northamptonshire, Ancestry has 4,138,400 pre-1813 records, and, in the pre-1912 era, 2,323,156 baptisms, 733,877 marriages and 484,456 burials. In Derbyshire, it has 2,331,333 pre-1813 records, 1,949,884 1813–1916 baptisms, 1,489,255 1754–1932 banns and marriages, and 631,828 1813–1991 burials. FREEREG w freereg.org.uk The site has 3,347,485 records…

FAMILYSEARCH  w familysearch.org The site has over 900,000 parish records for Northumberland and 60,000-plus images, and 106,352 browse-only Bishops’ Transcripts for Durham (1639–1919). DURHAM RECORDS ONLINE £  w durhamrecordsonline.com This site is a good source for Durham, Northumberland and Yorkshire with 3,730,651 records containing 9,203,741 names. Searching is free, with records costing £1.50 to view. FREEREG w freereg.org.uk FreeREG continues to increase its coverage of this region slowly. It now has 650,378 Durham records and 873,954 for Northumberland. ANCESTRY £ w ancestry.co.uk View the same browsable Durham Bishops’ Transcripts as FamilySearch. FINDMYPAST £ w findmypast.co.uk Findmypast has Northumberland and Durham baptism, marriage and burial indexes created by Northumberland and Durham Family History Society.…

ROOTSIRELAND £ w rootsireland.ie RootsIreland has exclusive records uploaded by family history societies, including transcriptions of Catholic and Protestant parish records. There are databases for all six of Northern Ireland’s counties. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF IRELAND w registers.nli.ie Access images of Catholic parish registers covering most parishes in Ireland and Northern Ireland up to 1880 for free. Indexes to this collection are available on both Ancestry and Findmypast. ULSTER HISTORICAL FOUNDATION £ w ancestryireland.com The site has almost two million pay-per-view baptism, marriage and burial records for Counties Antrim and Down, from c1660 up to 1930 for births and marriages and 1998 for burials. EMERALDANCESTORS £ w emeraldancestors.com This website has over 1.5 million Northern Irish records, including church records. It’s free to search, with the full records available to subscribers.…

When Gary was writing his books, the US government was regularly releasing new documents relating to D-Day (and still is). He accessed this material at the US National Archives in Washington DC (archives.gov/ dc) and the National WWII Museum in New Orleans (nationalww2museum.org). Some of these papers are also held by The National Archives, Kew, in the series WO219 (discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk). REPORTS, COMMUNICATIONS AND CORRESPONDENCE FILES These covered the lead-up to D-Day, the action itself and the aftermath at all levels. They included written orders, transcripts of radio messages, and morning reports (documents produced each morning for every basic unit of the army, detailing personnel changes for that day). INTELLIGENCE REPORTS Gary found a lot of material relating to Maisy within reports from local Resistance groups, overflights from reconnaissance aircraft (the…

JAMAICA ALMANACS w jamaicanfamilysearch.com Adrian used these 1811–1833 records, which listed slaveholders’ names and how many slaves each one owned. PRIVATE COLLECTIONS w discovery.nationalarchives. gov.uk Search TNA’s online catalogue Discovery for family papers and other miscellaneous collections of records held in archives or even private collections. SLAVE REGISTERS w nationalarchives.gov.uk Introduced in 1813 to monitor illicit transportation and the lawfully enslaved, these were generally compiled every three years, spanning 1813–1834. You can find the registers in the series T71 at TNA.…

Which of my relatives are these? Q I’m trying to identify the people in this photograph. I believe they are relatives from Darvel or Galston, Ayrshire. The baby appears to be wearing a christening robe trimmed with Darvel lace, and the others have lace collars. The elderly woman is likely to be one of three: my 3x great grandmother, Jane Loudoun (1807–1893); my 3x great grandmother, Margaret McIntosh (1820–1894); or my great great grandmother, Margaret Lochore (1846–1924). Maggie1904, via the WDYTYA? Magazine Forum A This photograph was probably taken at home by arrangement with a professional photographer from a local studio. The scene is composed on the lawn of what looks to be a domestic garden with views indicating a rural setting – possibly in Ayrshire, as you suggest. The…

WHAT IS THE TERM FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE FIRST COUSINS TWICE OVER, SUCH AS THE CHILDREN OF A SET OF BROTHERS WHO MARRY A SET OF SISTERS? Usually, family historians refer to such cases as ‘double cousins’. This is when two siblings from one family have children with two siblings from another. So the children are doubly related, on Was bothBath sides a place of their of settlement family, and for your are forebear double?first cousins. You can also have double second cousins. This is when two first cousins have children by two other first cousins, for example. Double first cousins can share a quarter of their inherited DNA, which is the same level as half-siblings. Interestingly, if a set of identical twins has children with another set of identical…

BLACK COUNTRY LIVING MUSEUM w bclm.co.uk This immersive, award-winning museum has recreations of period shops including bakers, pawnbrokers and ironmongers. CURRENCY CONVERTER w nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter If you come across any prices in your ancestor’s business, this handy tool can help you calculate the equivalent value in today’s money. THE FAMILY RECORDER w thefamilyrecorder.blogspot.com Find out more information about the history of British retail with the blog of this month’s expert, TNA’s Audrey Collins. HOUSE OF FRASER ARCHIVE w housefraserarchive.ac.uk Here you can read all about the small drapery shop in Glasgow that grew into the House of Fraser department store. LONDON LIVES w londonlives.org/static/AHDSFIR.jsp Visit this site to search through a free database of Fire Insurance Policy Registers (1777–1786) held at the London Metropolitan Archives. THE NATIONAL CO-OPERATIVE ARCHIVE w archive.coop…

1 LONG DELAY Jane Barnard had died over 60 years earlier in 1828. The grant itself may provide an explanation for the delay. 2 OFFSPRING Two of John Barnard’s children, Maria Emma Tester and Thomas Henry, are named as executors, but there may be other children mentioned in the will. 3 OCCUPATION John Reynolds Barnard’s occupation, boot and shoe maker, is given. As with the other entries, the value of his personal estate (£277 8s 8d) is included. 4 DISTANT DEATH Joseph Barnard died in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, now the judicial capital of South Africa. He would have held property in England or Wales. 5 ADMINISTRATION Martha Barnard is an example of an “Administration (with the Will and Codicil)” – a codicil is a supplement to a…

Your relatives may also appear in obituaries and correspondence published in The Veterinarian (1828–1902). Volumes to 1875 are at rcvsvethistory.org/library-collection/ the-veterinarian. Later volumes are currently being digitised, and the searchable digital archive is due to be completed by mid-2020. In addition, The National Archives in Kew holds brief service details of veterinary officers who served in the early 20th century, along with some unit War Diaries (search discovery. nationalarchives.gov.uk), while copies of the Journal of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps are held at the Museum of Military Medicine: museumofmilitarymedicine.org.uk. A Register of Veterinary Surgeons, listing date of qualification and place of practice for all those who qualified as vets before the end of May 1874, has been digitised and is free to download from the Internet Archive at bit.ly/ rcvs-register…

1 FINDMYPAST UNION COLLECTION w bit.ly/fmp-unions Findmypast users can search three million records taken from the admission books, members’ registers and other documents of 26 trade unions held at Warwick University’s Modern Records Centre. 2 THE UNION MAKES US STRONG w unionhistory.info Produced by the Trades Union Congress and London Metropolitan University, the site is built around themes including the 1926 General Strike. Documents include TUC annual reports listing thousands of names. 3 ABE BOOKS w abebooks.co.uk Many trade unions published books on their own history that can often be found for a few pounds second-hand. One good example is PC Hoffman’s They Also Serve: The Story of the Shop Worker (Porcupine Press, 1949).…

ARCHIVES BRITISH LIBRARY a 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB t 0330 333 1144 w bl.uk Search the Evanion Collection for posters, advertisements and other ephemera to do with swimming and bathing. Many county archives also hold resources relating to council-run swimming facilities. BOOKS Great Lengths: The Historic Indoor Swimming Pools of Britain Dr Ian Gordon and Simon Inglis English Heritage, 2009 The authors explain in detail the development of indoor pools. Liquid Assets Janet Smith English Heritage, 2005 This history of Britain’s lidos includes archive photos, case studies and their architecture. The Story of Swimming Susie Parr Dewi Lewis Media, 2011 Parr explores the social history of bathing in Britain. WEBSITES BRITISH NEWSPAPER ARCHIVE w britishnewspaperarchive. co.uk The BNA holds millions of digitised newspaper pages. Search for ‘outdoor swimming’…

1128 Holyrood Abbey is founded by King David I. In December 1768, the roof collapses. 1571 The two-year ‘Lang Siege’ of Edinburgh Castle begins. This sees the destruction of the castle’s medieval defences. 1745 The first significant engagement of the Jacobite rising occurs near Prestonpans, East Lothian. 1766 Scottish architect James Craig enters and wins the competition to plan the New Town of Edinburgh. 1811 The first recorded golfing competition for women takes place on New Year’s Day at Musselburgh Links. 1830 Charles Wyville Thomson is born in Linlithgow, West Lothian. His research as the chief scientist on the 1872–1876 Challenger expedition will revolutionise oceanography. 1839 Scottish astronomer and mathematician Thomas Henderson of the City Observatory, Edinburgh, becomes the first person to measure the distance to Alpha Centauri. 1882 Construction…

ARCHIBALD This is taken from the Scottish personal name, which itself has Anglo-Norman and Germanic origins. BLACKIE In the 1881 census, the name Blackie crops up most frequently in Berwickshire and East and Midlothian. BORTHWICK A habitational name from southern Scotland, Borthwick remains common in the Lothians and Scottish Borders. DENHOLM This habitational name derives from a place near Hawick, and Old English words referring to a piece of dry land. DICKSON Common across the Lothians, this is the Scottish and Northern Irish patronymic from the personal name Dick. HAMILTON This habitational name crops up throughout Scotland. LAWRIE In the 1881 census this shortened form of Lawrence is most commonly found in the Lothians, Peeblesshire and Berwickshire. PORTEOUS This topographic name is thought to refer to someone who lived in…

INHERITANCE  DANI SHAPIRO Daunt, 304 pages, £9.99; UK publication 6 June How many of us, when taking a DNA test, truly consider the possibility that our life could be turned upside-down? In this engaging and thought-provoking book, subtitled A Memoir Of Genealogy, Paternity, And Love, Dani Shapiro relates her journey of self-discovery, after finding out that the man who had raised her was not her biological father. Genealogists everywhere will identify with the frustrations, dead ends, sparks of inspiration and breakthroughs of the research process, as Shapiro’s hunt for her biological father unfolds. The narrative does not dwell on the science and is aimed at the general reader, although a short glossary would have been welcome. Inheritance is best summed up by its ambiguous dedication: “To my father”. Is this…

HOW ILLITERATE WERE OUR ANCESTORS? I was interested in Alan Crosby’s explanation of the difficulties of writing with quill pens (Off The Record, June), because I’ve often wondered about this together with the supposed ‘illiteracy’ of our ancestors. When we see, for example, “John Smith X his mark” in marriage registers (the most likely records to have our ancestors’ signatures), we usually jump to the conclusion that they must have been illiterate. But was that necessarily the case? Perhaps they could read and, with care, write, but felt too embarrassed to attempt to write on an important official document under the watchful gaze of the vicar, with the high probability of blotting or smudging? Some years ago when registering the birth of one of our children I was asked to…

The grave of Joseph Merrick, known as the ‘Elephant Man’, has been uncovered by family historian and writer Joanne Vigor-Mungovin. Merrick (1862–1890) became a well-known celebrity in Victorian society because of his extreme facial deformities. He was exhibited in travelling shows before living in London Hospital, where he died aged 27. His skeleton is still kept by Queen Mary University of London, but the burial site of his flesh was unknown. Vigor-Mungovin decided to search for Merrick’s grave after finding out that two of Jack the Ripper’s victims are buried in the City of London Cemetery and Crematorium in Newham. She searched the cemetery’s free online records (col-burialregisters. uk ) and found Merrick’s burial record, dated 24 April 1890. The City of London Corporation has said that it will place…

The archaeological treasures that were found in an Anglo-Saxon burial chamber known as Britain’s equivalent of Tutankhamun’s tomb have been revealed. The chamber, in Prittlewell in Essex, was uncovered by archaeologists from the Museum of London Archaeology in 2003. Sixteen years of research have revealed a large number of priceless artefacts buried with the tomb’s unknown occupant. These include a 1,400-year-old painted box – the only surviving example of early Anglo-Saxon painted woodwork – and the only complete form of an Anglo-Saxon lyre. Objects from the site are now on display for free at Southend Central Museum, and an online replica of the burial is available on prittlewellprincelyburial.org.…

ANCESTRY £ w ancestry.co.uk Ancestry’s long-term partnership with the London Metropolitan Archives means that the site is the best place to go for London records. The total currently stands at over 21 million Church of England baptisms (1813–1917), 13 million marriages and banns (1754–1932), and two million deaths and burials (1813–1917). There are over 17 million more pre-1812 records. Other interesting collections include London and Surrey marriage bonds and allegations (1597–1921); confirmation records (1838–1923); Crisp’s Marriage Licence Index (1713–1892); and more than 200,000 nonconformist register records (1694–1931). There are also 132,000 extracted Middlesex parish records (transcripts only). FINDMYPAST £  w findmypast.co.uk The site has over four million parish records from the City of Westminster Archives Centre (1538–1945), while the Greater London Marriage Index (1502–1871) covers modern Surrey and Hertfordshire as…

ANCESTRY £ w ancestry.co.uk Norfolk Record Office has supplied its digitised parish records to all of the main family history websites. Ancestry in particular has a strong Norfolk collection, with 4,939,287 pre-1813 baptisms, marriages and burials; 2,010,794 1813–1915 baptisms; 1,269,762 1735–1940 banns and marriages; and 47,008 1813–1990 deaths and burials. It has just updated its collection of Bishops’ and Archdeacons’ Transcripts (1600–1935), bringing the total to 5,930,500. It also has a good collection of 2,220,120 Essex records (transcripts only). FINDMYPAST £ w findmypast.co.uk Since last year, Findmypast has expanded its Norfolk parish register collection, with an additional 436,000 records. From Cambridgeshire, it has transcriptions of 800,000 baptisms, 240,000 marriages and 550,000 burials. It has 270,000 Essex baptisms, 137,000 marriages and 200,000 burials. It has published digitised parish registers through its…

THEGENEALOGIST £ w thegenealogist.co.uk The site has extended its Warwickshire parish records collection, adding records containing 1,270,000 names. FINDMYPAST £  w findmypast.co.uk FMP has added more than 370,000 register images in a partnership with Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Archive Service, and has digitised registers from almost 325 parishes (1538–1900) held by Shropshire Archives. There are registers for Warwickshire too, and indexes from Derbyshire and Worcestershire. FAMILYSEARCH w familysearch.org The site has added Staffordshire parish records (1538–1944), which Findmypast has indexed. FamilySearch also has a collection for Warwickshire (1535–1963). FREEREG  w freereg. org.uk The site has strong coverage of Staffordshire, with 3,760,210 records. Its collections have grown across the area: it now has 535,627 records for Warwickshire, 521,258 for Worcestershire and 132,670 for Shropshire. Herefordshire remains the same at 20,493 records. ANCESTRY…

FAMILYSEARCH w familysearch.org FamilySearch has indexes of more than 26 million baptisms from across Scotland (1564–1950) and four million marriages (1561–1910), together with a collection of Church and kirk session records (1658–1919). SCOTLANDSPEOPLE £ w scotlandspeople.gov.uk ScotlandsPeople is the National Records of Scotland’s official family history site, and the only place where you can get the original parish register images. It holds Church of Scotland Old Parish Registers (OPRs), as well as records for other Presbyterian sects and the Catholic church. The indexes are free to search, but you need to buy credits to view the images. FREEREG w freereg.org.uk FreeREG has good coverage of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Ayrshire, Banffshire, Bute, Caithness, East Lothian, Fife, Midlothian (although the website has no baptisms for this county), Orkney and Roxburghshire. ANCESTRY/FINDMYPAST £ w…

ARCHIVE THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES a Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU t 020 8876 3444 w nationalarchives.gov.uk Search the online catalogue at discovery.nationalarchives.gov. uk using terms such as ‘Operation Overlord’, or the name of the army unit your relative served in. If you know their battalion, find out what they were doing before, on and after D-Day via the War Diaries in series WO171. War Office directorates, in WO106, cover reports on actions and campaigns. MUSEUMS IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM a Lambeth Road, London SE1 6HZ t 0207 416 5000 w iwm.org.uk The museum’s permanent Second World War display Turning Points: 1934–1945 includes D-Day. MAISY BATTERY a 14450 Grandcamp-Maisy, Calvados, Normandy t 07411 932197 w maisybattery.com Visit the museum that Gary opened on the site. NATIONAL ARMY MUSEUM a Royal Hospital Road,…

Why can’t I find George’s birth? Q I can’t find a birth record for my maternal great grandfather George Cooper, or who his mother was. His life seems to have started when he got married! He wed Emily Lewis on 27 September 1896 in Nottingham, and they had two children: my grandmother, Laura Victoria, and her brother, Bertram George Arthur. His marriage certificate lists his father as George Cooper, bootmaker; but I can find no information on his mother. George, a master shoe repairer, died in Burton upon Trent in 1945. The death certificate of his wife, Emily, listed her as the widow of George Arthur Cooper. The 1939 Register gives his date of birth as 5 January 1875. Both the 1901 and 1911 censuses give George’s place of birth…

How can I find out more about my mother’s life India?  Q I’d like to find out who my ancestors were. Someone once told me that Beresford was a ‘bastard’ name. I’d also like to know more about my mother, Joyce Audrey Smith, who was born in Calcutta, India, and passed away aged 83 in 2016. My mother’s father was an army officer serving in India; my mother said that in Calcutta, they had a really big house with servants. My grandmother, mother and aunt Joan arrived back from Calcutta in 1945, after having lost my grandfather in India. My mother’s younger brother, Dennis, died of malaria on the journey back from India. She was sent off to boarding school when the family arrived from India, and separated from her…

Since it was founded in 1870, the British Red Cross has played a vital role in treating millions of victims of conflict around the world. In 1909, it helped set up the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), which was formed of groups of volunteers. During the First World War, thousands of VAD members went overseas to nurse injured soldiers. Alasdair Brooks, heritage manager at the Red Cross Museum and Archives, explains that it holds a VAD card that belonged to one very special volunteer – an aristocrat whose determination to help others led to her witnessing the Russian Revolution. WHO WAS LADY SYBIL GREY? Lady Sybil Grey (1882–1966) was the daughter of the fourth Earl Grey. Her father served as governor general of Canada from 1904 to 1911 and she accompanied…

BOOKS Wills & Probate Records: A Guide for Family Historians, Second Edition Karen Grannum and Nigel Taylor The National Archives, 2009 This book covers wills and administrations from 1858 onwards. The Wills of Our Ancestors Stuart A Raymond Pen & Sword, 2012 Raymond’s book includes a chapter on wills and administrations from 1858. WEBSITE WILLS OR ADMINISTRATIONS AFTER 1858 w bit.ly/wills-after-1858 This research guide from The National Archives includes information on how to access similar records for Ireland and Scotland.…

BOOKS The British Veterinary Profession, 1791–1948 Iain H Pattison Hyperion, 1983 This comprehensive history is out of print, but secondhand copies can be found on such websites as abebooks.co.uk and amazon.co.uk. A Victorian Veterinary Student’s Diary Dick Lane (ed) Granville Penn Press, 2010 This chronicle of the life of George Williamson, a student at the Veterinary College of London, includes a clipper journey to Hong Kong. The book is available from the Veterinary History Society for £23 plus P&P (£19.70 plus P&P for society members): bit.ly/vet-diary. WEBSITE RCVS Vet History w rcvsvethistory.org Browse an archive of letters, artwork, case notes, periodicals and pamphlets covering over 200 years, held by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.…

How one trade unionist secured unions’ future in England and Wales Robert Applegarth deserves the credit for bringing professionalism to the often ramshackle trade unionism of the early Victorian era, and providing it with a respectability that gave working people a voice in Whitehall and Westminster. Born in Hull, the son of a captain of a whaling brig, Applegarth began work at the age of 10. In 1857 he joined the Sheffield Carpenters’ Union, becoming its secretary and leading it into a merger in 1861 with the newly formed Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners. Within a year he was the general secretary of the national union. Under Applegarth, the union grew from a membership of 1,000 to 10,000 in just eight years. But it is in his role as…

BOOKS Historical Directory of Trade Unions Peter Carter, Arthur Marsh, Victoria Ryan and John B Smethurst (eds) Gower/Ashgate, 1980–2009 More than 5,000 unions are listed in this six-volume guide. Each organisation has an entry with a range of useful information. Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors Mark Crail Pen & Sword, 2009 Written specifically for family historians, this offers a narrative history of trade unions over the past 200 years and a detailed guide to the surviving records. United We Stand: A History of Britain’s Trade Unions Alastair J Reid Allen Lane, 2004 This is the most recent history of trade unionism, and remains a key source. MUSEUM PEOPLE’S HISTORY MUSEUM  a Left Bank, Spinningfields, Manchester M3 3ER t 0161 838 9190 w phm.org.uk The “national museum of democracy” houses the…

1788 PENAL COLONY FOUNDED This year the first British convicts sent to Australia reached their new home. The American Revolution meant the English colonies there could no longer be used for the transportation of convicts. Consequently, British prisons and hulk ships were full to bursting with criminals whose offences did not merit the death penalty, or whose death sentences had been commuted. So where could they go? The Cabinet neatly connected this problem with another one: how to develop the Australian territory which had been claimed for Great Britain by Captain Cook in 1770 and was virtually empty of European settlers. On 13 May 1787 Captain Arthur Philips left Portsmouth with 11 ships carrying 558 male convicts, 192 women, and 13 children of convicts. There were about 300 crew and…

EAST LOTHIAN IMAGES ONLINE  w www.johngraycentre.org/ historic-image-collection/the-collection Access thousands of images drawn from the vast 75,000-strong collection held at the John Gray Centre, showing people, places, school classes, civic galas and long-demolished buildings in East Lothian. You can either click on a place name or use the more advanced search options to explore what the database holds. SCOTTISH POST 2IÀFH DIRECTORIES digital.nls.uk/directories/ browse This wonderful digital resource offers free access to directories held at the National Library of Scotland. From the homepage, expand the ‘Place’ option and browse titles covering Edinburgh, East, West or Midlothian or search using the box, bottom-left. EDINBURGH COLLECTED  edinburghcollected.org A community archive of memories and images uploaded by users relating to Edinburgh and supported by the City of Edinburgh Council. EDINBURGH NEWSPAPERS  news.google.com/ newspapers?nid= vob_afvdn6ec Browse…

DOWNLOAD DORSETSHIRE 1823 AND 1844 PIGOT’S DIRECTORY w genealogysupplies.com £5 with special offer Trace your Dorsetshire ancestors, including before the introduction of the census, with these two directories from S&N Genealogy sold as one download. The Pigot’s Directory records include local listings of major professions, nobility, gentry, clergy, and transport and freight services, as well as background and information on education, public services and public houses. WATCH CAN SEO w bit.ly/yt-can-seo Free If you have Scottish ancestors and are interested in developing your own knowledge of Gaelic, this BBC series from 1979 aimed at Scottish Gaelic learners is available for free on YouTube. It shows you the basics of the language with 20 half-hour episodes of simple drama. The accompanying textbook is also available for free at bit.ly/can-seo-book. PODCAST ANCESTRAL…