Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2021 i Who Do You Think You Are?

One of the great perks of my job is that I get to have a subscription with all of the main genealogy websites, and I think that even if I didn’t have this job, I would subscribe to more than one. However, multiple subscriptions is a luxury that not everyone can afford, so we have put together an article explaining how you can still benefit from the major subscription websites without parting with your hard-earned money (page 16). Don’t forget too that you can often access subscription sites for free at libraries and archives (some are even allowing remote access during lockdown). The reason why many of these records are free is because they were transcribed by volunteers, so if you have ever benefited from a free index, now is…

A Scottish genealogist is appealing for help tracing the families of two men from Paisley, Renfrewshire, who were killed while serving with Bomber Command in the Second World War. The men are Thomas Frame Millar (c1925–1943), who was the son of John Peacock Millar and Helen Webster Kerr, and Robert Johnstone Blake (1915–1944), who was the son of George and Annie Blake and married to Janet Deans Blake. The men are thought to be buried in Maubeuge-Centre Cemetery, France, and a local researcher is now seeking to create a memorial to them and other Allied airmen killed in the area. If you have any information about these men’s surviving relatives, please email Clare Wilson on enquiries@ treehousegenealogy.co.uk or contact Treehouse Genealogy on social media.…

Three youths from Thornbury appeared in the magistrates’ court after being caught trying to steal four hens. Police Constable Greenslade told the bench that he’d caught them after following “a trail of feathers and footprints”, according to the Western Daily Press. Despite their fowl deed, the magistrate heard that the three young men – Lloyd Clutterbuck, Charles Smith and Frank Holpis – were otherwise of good character, so they were placed on probation.…

ScotlandsPeople (scotlandspeople. gov.uk) is set to release Scottish kirk-session records in early 2021. Emma Maxwell of Scottish genealogy business Scottish Indexes (scottishindexes. com) announced the news at the virtual Scottish Indexes Conference on 6 December. The records consist of minutes of the disciplinary procedures that ministers and elders of the Presbyterian Church held for parishioners. It is understood that the records will be digitised but not indexed, and will be part of a “gazetteer-based search system” according to the ScotlandsPeople website.…

ONLINE INSTITUTE OF HERALDIC AND GENEALOGICAL STUDIES Various dates e registrar@ihgs.ac.uk w ihgs.ac.uk/courselist The IHGS is offering a range of Zoom tutorials, with upcoming topics including ‘Looking at More Military Service Records’ (14 January) and ‘Searching for Your Quaker Ancestors’ (4 February). £10 each. PHAROS TUTORS Various dates t 01440 857602 w pharostutors.com/ coursesmainsd.php Pharos Tutors’ online courses include ‘Discovering Your British Family and Local Community in the Early 20th Century’ (starts 26 January, £49.99); ‘So You Think You Know FamilySearch – a Guided Tour’ (starts 1 February, £41.99); and ‘Introduction to One-Name Studies’ (starts 2 February, £49.99). 'HÀDQFH› AND PROTEST: FORGOTTEN INDIVIDUAL JEWISH RESISTANCE IN NAZI GERMANY 12 January t 020 7636 7247 w wienerlibrary.co.uk/ Whats-On?item=592 Holocaust historian Prof Wolf Gruner examines how Jewish people within Nazi Germany resisted…

‘You could end up bulldozing your most bothersome brick walls’ Ancestry and Findmypast are the two most popular subscription sites for family historians in the UK, but many researchers will tend to pick one option and stick with it. The rationale behind this decision certainly appears to make sense at first: these websites offer access to many of the same ‘big hitters’ – such as census and birth, marriage and death (BMD) records – so why fork out extra cash on a subscription to both? Whatever the reason, this mindset means that you could be missing out on records that can take your research further – a surprising number of which are actually available free of charge. With some careful digging, you could end up bulldozing your most bothersome brick…

Every time I looked in the mirror I saw her, and when I spoke I heard her voice. When I hurt myself and cried I felt her pain, and when I laughed with joy I shared her happiness.” Paulette Szklarz was only six years old when she was separated from her twin Annette, who was arrested by the Nazis and taken to Auschwitz. The pain of losing her must have been unbearable. Paulette survived the war and came to live in Britain where she was adopted by her older cousins. She married Maurice Barnes and they settled in Edgware, Middlesex, where they raised their daughters Caron and Debra. because ‘We never we spoke knew about it would the upset Holocaust Mum , ’ FROM FACT TO FICTION Paulette and her…

ANTHONY ADOLPH is a genealogist, and wrote Tracing Your Aristocratic Ancestors MICHELLE HIGGS is the author of Tracing Your Medical Ancestors REBECCA PROBERT is a legal historian and the author of Marriage Law for Genealogists JAYNE SHRIMPTON is a professional dress historian and portrait specialist ALAN STEWART is a family history writer, and author of Grow Your Own Family Tree STEPHEN THOMAS is a genealogist with over 20 years’ experience PHIL TOMASELLI is a military family history expert, and wrote Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors SIMON WILLS is the author of Tracing Your Seafaring Ancestors Why did my ancestors have two weddings 14 years apart? Q Why would a couple, Joseph Collins and Catherine Johnson, have two marriage certificates, 14 years apart, in the same church – St Bartholomew’s, Edgbaston,…

What is the significance of the elephant brooch here? Q I found this photograph among some things inherited by my partner’s Scottish aunt. We guess there is some significance to the elephant brooch pinning the subject’s chest plaid. Any information would be welcome! Sylvia Gillies A This is a studio photograph of an experienced and long-serving colour sergeant (sergeant-major) in the Dumbartonshire Rifle Volunteer Corps (DVC) taken after 1894 and before 1908. The DVC were part-time soldiers, the unit being formed in 1860. Volunteers were organised into 14 companies across the county and commenced training. For most of the period, their uniform was rifle-green with scarlet collar and cuffs. In 1880, as part of general army reforms, the companies were grouped together as one battalion, and in 1881 became a…

The Box, Plymouth’s £46.8 million archive, museum and art gallery space, opened its doors in September 2020. As well as displays celebrating the city’s history, the building is the new home of the former Plymouth and West Devon Record Office, now known as Plymouth Archives, The Box, whose collections are more accessible than ever. Archivist Claire Skinner opens up one of The Box’s documents – an autograph book from over 100 years ago that provides a fascinating chance to hear the voices of teenage girls from the Edwardian era. TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE AUTOGRAPH BOOK. The book was kept by Marjory Katherine Elizabeth St Aubyn (1893–1987), daughter of the 2nd Baron St Levan, who owned property in Cornwall and Devon. She went on to marry John Parker, the 6th…

CHARLES BOOTH’S LONDON w booth.lse.ac.uk Browse poverty maps and notebooks from researcher and philanthropist Charles Booth’s hugely important survey Inquiry into Life and Labour in London (1886–1903). LONDON MUSEUMS OF HEALTH AND MEDICINE w medicalmuseums.org This is the online hub for the 26 museums in the city where you can uncover the history of medicine. WELLCOME LIBRARY BLOG w blog.wellcomelibrary.org Although this blog is no longer updated, it includes many interesting posts about London’s public health and the Medical Officer of Health reports.…

BOOKS The Book of Trades, 3rd Edition Richard Griffin & Co, 1837 This edition of this frequently published book includes comprehensive explanations and diagrams of carpentry tools, joints, methods and so on, and can be viewed online for free at bit.ly/ggl-trades-1837. Tracing Your Trade and Craftsman Ancestors Adèle Emm Pen & Sword, 2015 Adèle’s overview of trades, unions and apprenticeships includes a chapter on the building trades. WEBSITE London Lives londonlives.org/static/ CarpentersCompany.jsp You can find information about the London guild the Carpenters’ Company and a reading list on this website dedicated to the social history of the capital.…

BOOKS The Adoptee’s Guide to DNA Testing Tamar Weinberg Family Tree Books, 2018 Although primarily aimed at the US market, this is a well-balanced and informative overview of the uses of DNA testing in adoption research. A Child for Keeps: the History of Adoption in England, 1918–45 Jenny Keating Palgrave Macmillan, 2008 Keating provides a thorough account of the story of adoption before and after the 1926 Act came into effect. A History of Adoption in England and Wales, 1850–1961 Gill Rossini Pen & Sword, 2014 Gill’s book includes a guide to the resources available for researching adoptions. WEBSITES FORMER CHILDREN’S HOMES w formerchildrenshomes. org.uk Here you will find excellent background information on a wide variety of children’s homes, and guidance on the whereabouts of records. THE WORKHOUSE w workhouses.org.uk…

Picture the scene: a bustling Victorian city ringing to the sound of industry and commerce, the hum and clatter of machinery churning out mass-produced goods interspersed with the distinctive mooing of cows. We’re used to considering 19th-century urban life as characterised by factories, mills and smog, so the presence of large livestock seems decidedly incongruous. Yet strange as it might now seem, city dairies were once a common sight, often situated cheek-by-jowl with residential properties in densely populated areas. Regency London was home to thousands of cattle, and contrasting estimates place 12,000–40,000 dairy cows in the capital by the mid-19th century. This was echoed in cities across the country, with some small urban dairies still operating as recently as the 1980s. Among the many factors that saw the rise of…

You can discover amazing things in our collections,” says Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre archivist David Plant. “We all have our favourites. The 1604 pedigree of the Seymour family is a colourful joy to behold, an estate plan embellished with a border depicting various real and mythical creatures – plus we have correspondence from the likes of Florence Nightingale, ‘Capability’ Brown, Thomas Hardy and George III. “Recently we acquired a 1626 charter issued by Charles›I granting Swindon the right to hold a market, which is a welcome addition to our collections. Also, I’ve recently come across an unusual item in the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry collection dating from the Second Boer War. It’s a piece of material containing a message sent by Sir Godfrey Lagden from Maseru giving instructions to Major…

The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker Roger Hutchinson Abacus, 2017 Hutchinson presents a concise guide to the census. Census Schedules and Listings, 1801–1831 Richard Wall, Matthew Woollard and Beatrice Moring University of Essex, 2012 This introduction includes details of surviving records. Making Sense of the Census Revisited Edward Higgs Institute of Historical Research and TNA, 2005 Higgs explains census records for England and Wales from 1801 to 1901.…

COMMUNITIES OF RESISTANCE WW1 CONSCIENCE AND DISSENT IN BRITAIN DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR CYRIL PEARCE Francis Boutle, 560 pages, £30 The term conscientious objector (CO) embraces those who claim exemption from serving in the armed forces on grounds of religion, politics or pacifism. Cyril Pearce’s book may be considered the essential reference work on COs in the First World War in mainly large, English communities. The author points out that while many COs were court-martialled under the 1916 Military Service Act and imprisoned, others were made to take on medical roles and other work of national importance on the roads and land. Surprisingly, after the war had ended some COs were elected under the Labour Party banner and served at national-government level. A bibliography is embodied within the detailed…

How did you come to write the book? In the beginning I didn’t want to write about myself. I wanted this broad stroke of talking about African-American customs and traditions through the lens of intergenerational trauma and fear. That was something that was really interesting to me, especially in the age of the Black Lives Matter movement and learning about police surveillance and violence, land displacement, dispossession, and so on and so forth. So I started writing the book, but my editors realised just how distant I was vocally and tonally. You need to have that personal element in there, so that part about my family actually came later. Has the book brought you closer to your roots? When it comes to African-American genealogical research, the work is never done.…

JON BAUCKHAM Jon worked on Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine for many years before moving on to BBC History. Now a freelance writer, he shares his tips on free records on page 16. MICHELLE HIGGS Medical Office of Health reports featured in David Walliams’ episode of WDYTYA? so we are delighted to have Michelle explain how you can find and use them on page 52. GILL ROSSINI Gill has been teaching family and social history since 1988, and is currently writing a guide to researching adoptions for family historians. You can read her advice on page 61.…

ScotlandsPeople site gets 1,000 additional maps ScotlandsPeople (scotlandspeople. gov.uk) has added 1,000 more maps and plans to its online collection. The maps date from the mid-16th to the mid-20th century. Among the newly added records are examples by notable Scottish surveyors and engineers, including Thomas Telford (1757–1834) and John Home (1733/4–1809). Among them is Home’s 1774 survey of the mouth of the River Ness, which lists the names of landowners along its banks. WW2 RAF record books added to TheGenealogist Family history site TheGenealogist (thegenealogist.co.uk) has added more than 1.8 million Royal Air Force Operations Records Books from the Second World War to its collection. TheGenealogist is in the process of digitising all of the records from series AIR27 at The National Archives in Kew. The books record the movements…

The London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) has launched a digital database that reveals the lives of Londoners of African, Caribbean, Asian and indigenous heritage going back over 400 years. Switching the Lens (bit.ly/LMA-BAME) is the result of work by LMA staff and volunteers to uncover BAME individuals in the archive’s Anglican parish registers, which began in 2000. The records, which are free to search online, date from 1561–1840 and list over 2,600 individuals. The database includes the 1765 baptism record of former slave Jonathan Strong. Abolitionist lawyer Granville Sharp represented him in a successful legal challenge to his enslavement in 1769.…

The year of the world’s oldest Christmas card, which was put up for sale in December Olive Buller The First World War nurse was identified after her granddaughter in Canada saw her photograph on an episode of Antiques Roadshow 10,500 The number of records from County Kilkenny added to roots ireland.ie £500,000 The value of the COVID-19 Archives Fund launched by The National Archives Society of Antiquaries The society has warned that it may have to sell some of its items to meet the rising cost of rent on its London headquarters 23,272 The number of Northumberland nonconformist records added to familysearch.org…

ADMISSIONS TO BROOKWOOD AND HOLLOWAY MENTAL HOSPITALS, 1867›1900 Record count 11,670 An index to mental-hospital registers held by Surrey History Centre, listing patients’ names, ages and dates of admission. CORNWALL MILITIA AND SEA FENCIBLES INDEX, 1780›1831 Record count 4,151 Details of local militiamen and naval militia from records at Cornwall Record Office. ENGLAND AND WALES CRIMINAL REGISTERS, 1791›1892 Record count 1,556,259 An index to records, with some details of sentences, from The National Archives. FIFE VOTERS LISTS, 1832›1894 Record count 47,875 Eligible voters in Fife, eastern Scotland, courtesy of Fife Library and Archives Service. IRELAND COURTS MARTIAL FILES, 1916›1922 Record count 1,913 People arrested on suspicion of Irish Nationalist activities after the 1916 Easter Rising. LIVERPOOL CREW LISTS, 1861›1919 Record count 1,064,441 Details of sailors…

BRITAIN, PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS, 1830›1923 Record count 31,862 Copies of registers listing members of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons of England. BRITISH & IRISH ROOTS COLLECTION Record count 63,023,456 A ‘mega collection’ detailing people found in smaller North American record sets who hailed from Britain or Ireland. BRITISH RED CROSS SOCIETY REGISTER OF OVERSEAS VOLUNTEERS, 1914›18 Record count 243,983 Transcribed index cards of First World War Red Cross volunteers, showing information such as job title and home address. DEVON WILLS INDEX, 1163›1999 Record count 295,609 A volunteer-created resource bringing together details of nearly 300,000 Devon wills from hundreds of different sources. DUNDEE AND FORFARSHIRE ›ANGUS› HEARTH TAX, 1691 Record count 5,824 Transcriptions showing how much money residents had to…

ASSOCIATION OF JEWISH REFUGEES w ajr.org.uk AJR is a charity that offers support and companionship to Holocaust refugees and their families. It is also building a library of memoirs written by survivors of Nazi persecution. AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU MEMORIAL AND MUSEUM w auschwitz.org The museum’s website has a search facility that can help you find ancestors who were imprisoned at Auschwitz. WIENER HOLOCAUST LIBRARY w wienerlibrary.co.uk The library is one of the world’s most extensive archives of the Holocaust and includes eyewitness testimonies, press cuttings and photographs.…

Who is the baby in this picture? Q Could you help me date this photo of my great grandmother with a baby? Her eldest daughter was born in 1893, but in the 1891 census she had two boys – one aged four years, the other four months. These boys died – could this be one of them? Janice (Penny) Munden A This professional card-mounted studio portrait appears to be a carte de visite (CDV) print, a format fashionable in Britain from 1860, remaining popular until the 1890s. The date of this portrait can be narrowed down to the late 1800s or the early 1900s from the mount style. The photograph itself provides an even more precise timeframe of c1888–1892. Your great grandmother is fashionably dressed in a tight-fitting buttoned bodice…

RootsIreland (rootsireland.ie) is the website of the Irish Family History Foundation (IFHF), the umbrella body for an all-Ireland group of disparate heritage centres that began transcribing parish registers back in the 1980s. These two factors – the IFHF’s highly decentralised structure and the organisation’s origins before the start of the web – have both left their mark. On the positive side, RootsIreland’s transcripts of church registers come from the original records held locally, not the very poor microfilms used by Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk) and Findmypast (findmy past.co.uk ). That head start makes them orders of magnitude more accurate, even allowing for sometimes dodgy transcription. The site’s surname variants listing is also much better, tailored to the mind-bending weirdness of Irish surnames. And its search interface (once you get down to county…

Britain’s rapidly expanding Victorian towns and cities were insanitary with overcrowded dwellings, dirty water, and a lack of drainage and sewers. So it is no wonder that they very quickly became hotbeds for such deadly diseases as cholera, smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, typhoid and typhus. The 1848 Public Health Act gave powers to local authorities to establish local boards of health in England and Wales, and to set up water supplies, sewers and public baths. They could also appoint a Medical Officer of Health (MOH) for their area. However, the legislation was only permissive, so local authorities rarely used these powers because of the financial implications. Progress was slow, except in innovative cities such as London and Liverpool. From 1872, it became compulsory for English and Welsh local authorities…

The word ‘carpenter’ derives from the Old French carpentier/ charpentier, from the Latin word carpentarius meaning carriage. Carpenters have traditionally installed rafters, roofs, beams and joists to support a building, while joiners, according to early-19th-century manual The Book of Trades, spent their days “fitting various pieces of timber together”. In other words, joiners made and/or fitted windows, doors, wainscoting, picture rails, dados, skirting boards, staircases and floors in domestic interiors. In reality, our ‘chippie’ forebears often combined these jobs, and it’s common to see “carpenter/joiner” as an occupation in census records. The joiner was the higher skilled, and his handiwork more exposed to the eye. But workers in both trades required a knowledge of geometry, measuring and arithmetic. A village carpenter did jobs for anyone who put work his way,…

The key to unlocking the stories of our ancestors’ lives begins and ends (quite literally) with birth and death records. And for events after 1837, when civil registration was introduced in England and Wales, copies of those records can be ordered from the General Register Office (GRO). Previously, copies of birth, marriage and death records had to be ordered as certificates costing £11, but now you can order uncertified digital copies of birth and death records for just £7 (marriage records still have to be ordered as certificates). The digital copies come as PDF files which are universal, and provide an exact electronic copy of the original document you can print out or attach to your tree. Although sites like freebmd.org.uk offer indexes to the GRO’s records, there is an…

Florence, Baroness Horsbrugh was a dynamic politician and campaigner whose career was devoted to the welfare and protection of the vulnerable. For her dedication as head of the Ministry of Munitions canteen, and for managing a ‘cooked food bank’ for families in the First World War, she was awarded the MBE in 1920. She assisted with arrangements for the evacuation of children in the Second World War, and in 1951 became the first female member of a Conservative cabinet, as minister of education. In 1936, Horsbrugh was deemed the perfect choice to chair a parliamentary committee to examine the workings of the 1926 Adoption of Children Act, which was raising significant concerns about its effectiveness. Through interviewing 65 witnesses, the committee uncovered a sorry mix of neglect, lies, failure to…

During the 19th century, southwest Wales led the world in the copper-smelting industry. Its skilled workers emigrated to the USA, Australia and Chile where major deposits of copper ore had been found. Other Welsh smelters, including Henry Davies, made arduous and dangerous journeys across Europe to take employment in isolated copper works. His descendant’s husband Bill Williams tells us more… MY BRICK WALL My wife Cynthia had always believed that her paternal great grandfather Henry Davies had travelled to Russia in the early 1900s to advise on copper smelting. Apparently, the Tsar rewarded his efforts with a pocket watch and a letter of thanks. I was keen to establish the truth. Henry was born in 1857 in Conwil, Carmarthenshire. In about 1875 he moved to Burry Port, near Llanelli, and…

No individual epitomises the ‘capitalist cowkeeper’ more completely than Richard Laycock of Islington. Born into a family of established goose-farmers, he took over what would become Laycock’s Dairy on Liverpool Road from his stepfather, North London landowner Daniel Sebbon. The areas of pasture on the city’s northern perimeter had a long and esteemed heritage of rich pasture and high-quality dairy produce. As Jill Hetherington notes in ‘Dairy Farming in Islington in the Early Nineteenth Century: the Career of Richard Laycock’, published in Transactions of the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society in 1987: “From Tudor times, Islington had been known as ‘Cow Town’, a Parish of Dairy Farms and ‘the place where groweth creame’.” By 1810, the year of his stepfather’s death, Laycock had built up an empire of between 500…

1227 Salisbury receives its city charter under the name ‘New Sarum’. Sailsbury doesn’t become its official name until 2009. 1258 The main body of the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary (better known today as Salisbury Cathedral) is finished. 1632 Architect Christopher Wren is born in East Knoyle. 1666 Pioneering archaeologist John Aubrey records the first detailed plan of the prehistoric monument Stonehenge. 1841 Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Box Tunnel opens between Bath and Chippenham. 1843 The Great Western Railway opens a works at Swindon. 1918 Sir Cecil Chubb gifts Stonehenge to the nation. 1938 Archaeologists discover a male skeleton underneath a toppled stone at Avebury. Objects found with the man suggest that he worked as a barber-surgeon in the 14th century. 1943 The village of Imber (above) is evacuated…

AMOR This name is particularly common in the 1881 census districts of Milton Lilborne, Bromham and Pewsey. CLEVERLY This habitational name is thought to come from Claverley in Shropshire. GIDDINGS Aquarter of all of the Giddings recorded in 1891 were living in Wiltshire. GINGELL This name is thought to be related to a common Bavarian surname. HIBBERD The surname Hibberd frequently crops up in and around East Tisbury and Wilton, as well as Basingstoke in Hampshire. Are any of these in your family tree? MASLEN Maslen and its variants are derived from the medieval personal name Masselin. PLANK This surname’s origins may be topographic or occupational, or an anglicised spelling of the Huguenot name Planque. PONTING This is a topographical name for someone who lived near a bridge. SPACKMAN This…

Francis Place was born near Drury Lane in London, the son of a sponging-house owner. He went to school to the age of 14 and always valued education as a way of improving the lot of the poor. He was apprenticed to a breeches-maker, and had early experience of radicalism when he led a strike. He then joined the London Corresponding Society, a group learning from books that had inspired the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. In 1800 he set up shop as a tailor at 16 Charing Cross, which became a meeting place for radicals. He was friendly with such leading figures as William Godwin, Jeremy Bentham, and James and John Stuart Mill. In 1822 he published Illustrations and Proofs of the Principle of Population in…

NATIONAL LIST w familyhistory.co.uk/ pre-1841-census-records IRELAND w census.nationalarchives.ie/ search SCOTLAND w bit.ly/ nrscotland-guidescensus-pre-1841 BEDWORTH, WARWICKSHIRE (CD) w bit.ly/ nanwfhs-1821-bedworth DARTFORD, KENT w bit.ly/ fmp-1821-dartfordkent-census DEVON w bit.ly/fmp-1821-devon MARYLEBONE, LONDON w bit.ly/ fmp-1821-1831-marylebone ORKNEY w bit.ly/fmp-1821-orkney SANDAL MAGNA, WAKEFIELD (CD) w bit.ly/chest-1821-sandal…

DOWNLOAD THE NATIONAL TRUST  bit.ly/ national-trust-zoom-backgrounds Free Make your video calls in style with these gorgeous downloadable backdrops from the National Trust. They’ll transport you to rooms in some of the most famous historic properties in the country – from the study at Chartwell, Kent, the family home of Sir Winston Churchill, to Agatha Christie’s library at Greenway, Devon. VIDEO THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES  youtube.com/c/TheNational ArchivesUK/videos Free TNA’s YouTube channel is packed with videos shedding light on the millions of documents it holds, plus interviews with the archivists. The latest video, Images of a Victorian Christmas at The National Archives, uses beautiful historic documents to show how the Christmas customs that we love today developed in Victorian times. PODCAST BEGIN THE WORLD OVER AGAIN Apple Podcasts/GooglePodcasts/Spotify Free This new podcast from…

ROYAL NAVY SERVICE RECORD John Joseph Hughes was in the Navy during the First World War. We traced his career using his service record. These can be downloaded from The National Archives’ website; a small charge applies, but it’s free during lockdown: bit.ly/ tna-navy-1914-1919 . The record is also in Ancestry’s collection ‘UK, Royal Navy Registers of Seamen’s Services, 1848–1939’: bit.ly/anc-jjhughes. GRIFFITH’S VALUATION Liz went to Armagh to learn more about Bernard ‘Barney’ Ryan. We located him using the Griffith’s Valuation for his townland. Many census returns were destroyed in Ireland, but this property valuation from the mid-19th century is a useful census substitute. It can be searched for free at askaboutireland.ie, and Barney’s details are available here: bit.ly/ask-barney. SCOTTISH DEATH CERTIFICATE Barney and his family left Ireland after he…

WIN an AncestryDNA test kit from ancestry.co.uk WORTH £79 The writer of our star letter wins an AncestryDNA test worth £79 – so drop us a line and share your thoughts with us. SURPRISES FROM A SERVICE RECORD If, like me, you know family members were too young to have enlisted or been conscripted during the Second World War, you may not be aware that National Service was still in place until 1960. So they may have a service record even if they didn’t serve during the war. When my father Garfield Williams was 70, our family offered him a parachute jump as a birthday present, to which he replied that he’d had enough of parachute jumping in his lifetime. It wasn’t until he died that I found his Soldier’s Release…

The British Newspaper Archive (BNA; britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk) has reached its target of digitising 40 million pages held by the British Library within 10 years. BNA was created as a result of an agreement between the British Library and Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk) in November 2011. It met its target ahead of schedule, in the week of its ninth birthday. The most recently digitised pages include the 1931–1949 editions of the Leicester Evening Mail. These include an article from August 1942 reporting on the first stage appearance of actor and director Richard Attenborough, who grew up in Leicester. It notes: “A few hours before he made his appearance on the West End Stage last night Richard Attenborough, the 18-year-old actor in ‘Awake and Sing’ at the Cambridge Theatre, was sworn in by the RAF.”…

The results of an international project researching the lives of clergy in 16th- and 17th-century Scotland are now available in the new online database Mapping the Scottish Reformation, which is located at maps.mappingthe scottishreformation.org . The three-year project was a collaboration between historians based at Washington and Lee University in the USA, Newman University in Birmingham, and the University of Edinburgh. The researchers worked to uncover records of Protestant clergymen between 1560 and 1689 – the years of the Scottish Reformation – through resources such as Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, which lists ministers of the Church of Scotland. The result is an online map containing the names and locations of approximately 700 clerics and 400 clergy wives. Project director Prof Michelle D Brock of Washington and Lee University explained: “We created…

IN THE MARGINS Alan Crosby uncovers some intriguing scrawls in the margins of parish registers There’s a great book by Steven Hobbs, Gleanings from Wiltshire Parish Registers, which I’m finding fascinating. It’s an anthology of the tremendously varied notes, memoranda and jottings made in registers – usually by the vicar, or rector – in the period 1538–1812. Many are about parish business and administration, but the really intriguing ones are comments made about the people of the parish and their foibles, sins and virtues. Over the years, I’ve copied out many such jottings myself, as I searched parish registers in different parts of the country, although I never did this systematically. They reveal a rich social history. At Redenhall on the southern edge of Norfolk, in the freezing January of…

‘The projects really capture the range of different stories that you can uncover in your own tree’ As we bid goodbye and good riddance to 2020, one of the things that was most challenging about the year was the need to find plenty of ways to keep busy at home, while normal life was suspended by the measures to control the spread of the coronavirus. As family historians, we’re fortunate to already have a hobby that’s perfectly suited to social distancing – and since the first lockdown began, many newcomers will have been inspired to search online for the first time and start their own trees. With continued uncertainty about how long coronavirus restrictions will last, it’s the perfect time to bring back our annual online volunteer event, Transcription Tuesday.…

What happened to my wife’s great grandfather, John Hannay, after he was declared bankrupt? Q My wife’s great grandfather, John Hannay, was born in Dudley c1851. He appears to have had a successful career as a doctor and surgeon, and in 1879 married Elizabeth McEwen in Dudley. In 1880, he was a doctor at Weobley. In 1885, John was living in Lea Cross, Shropshire, in a large country house. That year, a notice appeared in the London Gazette stating his partnership with a Mr Lawson, as Apothecaries and Surgeons, had been dissolved in 1884. Another in 1887 refers to John Hannay as being bankrupt. From 1887 to 1890, he is listed as “travelling” in the medical directory. His name was removed from the Medical Register in 1889. In the 1891…

BEYOND 2022 w beyond2022.ie This project aims to create a virtual-reality replica of the Public Record Office of Ireland before its destruction in June 1922. DIPPAM w dippam.ac.uk The website Documenting Ireland: Parliament, People and Migration (DIPPAM) includes an ‘Irish Emigration Database’ and the oral archive and database ‘Voices of Migration and Return’. EMERALD ANCESTORS w emeraldancestors.com This commercial website boasts over 1.5 million genealogy records for Northern Ireland. Emerald Ancestors also has a useful tool that you can use to identify individual townlands. GRIFFITH’S VALUATION w askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation This valuation of Irish property was carried out between 1848 and 1864. It’s a source of detailed information about where our ancestors lived in Ireland in the mid-19th century. IMC DIGITAL EDITIONS w irishmanuscripts.ie/product-category/ imcdigital-editions/?action=digitisation_backlist Explore the results of the Irish Manuscripts…

The 1895 report of Alexander Blyth, the Medical Officer of Health for St Marylebone in West London, includes this table detailing the population, births and new cases of infectious sickness. The report has been digitised and is available to view for free on the Wellcome Library’s website at wellcomelibrary.org/moh 1 LOCAL HEALTH BOARD The reports were compiled for the local health board, partly to gauge where money should be spent on public health. 2 PARISHES Figures for the five different parishes in the sanitary district of St Marylebone are shown for the purposes of comparison. 3 POPULATION The Medical Officer of Health used the official census statistics to get an accurate population count across the district. 4 DISEASE In 1895, the infectious disease with the most cases was scarlatina, followed…

Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk) has digitised membership books for the General Union of Carpenters and Joiners 1886–1921. Details include members’ names, ages, dates of admission, marital status, contributions made and financial payments received, including money paid as out-of-work benefits. The union’s full archive (1845–1921) is held at the Modern Records Centre, Warwick University, which also has records for similar carpenters’ unions; see warwick.ac.uk/ services/library/mrc/research_guides/family_history/carpntr. However, not all of these records have been digitised for genealogical subscription services, or even catalogued. Notices in back issues of the Gazette , free at thegazette.co.uk, provide evidence for bankrupt carpenter ancestors. Articles in local newspapers available via the British Newspaper Archive (britishnewspaperarchive. co.uk) may also name bankrupts. Findmypast holds trade directories too, while Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk) has Leicester University’s digitised directories, which are also available for free…

‘From 1 January 1927 adoptions could be legally recognised’ Piecing together the diverse and tantalising fragments of an adoption frequently involves painstaking research. Until the late 1920s adoptions were largely informal, rarely generating any meaningful paperwork and not enforceable in law. Organisations such as children’s homes and adoption societies were sometimes short-lived, and their records have not survived; other adoptions were intra-family adoptions, or ‘stranger’ adoptions, with no paperwork at all. The situation changed significantly on 1 January 1927, when the 1926 Adoption of Children Act became law. Adoptions could now be legally recognised and recorded, and the adopted child had the status of a parent’s biological child, although it’s important to note that informal adoptions still continued for years. This legal process could be supported by intermediaries such as…

ADOPTION SEARCH REUNION w www.adoptionsearchreunion.org.uk Set up by the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, this is a key website for tracing birth records and birth/adoptive family. ANCESTRY w ancestry.co.uk The varied records on subscription websites such as Ancestry can help you uncover the background and birth relatives of an adoptee. GENERAL REGISTER OFFICE w gov.uk/adoption-records The GRO’s website offers advice on accessing the records it holds, including the Contact Register and the Adopted Children Register.…

BOOKS The Cowkeeper’s Wish Tracy Kasaboski and Kristen den Hartog Douglas & McIntyre, 2019 Two sisters have researched the moving tale of their Welsh ancestors, who migrated on foot to London with their cattle. Cows, Cobs & Corner Shops Megan Hayes Y Lolfa, 2018 Hayes tells the story of how Welsh dairy farmers supplied consumers in London. Urban Cowboys Duncan Scott DWS Publications, 2010 Scott provides a fascinating insight into urban dairies. MUSEUMS MUSEUM OF ENGLISH RURAL LIFE a University of Reading, 6 Redlands Road, Reading RG1 5EX t 0118 378 8660 w merl.reading.ac.uk/ collections/dairy-collection The museum has documents and literature relating to the wider dairy industry. WEBSITES COWKEEPERS w johnhearfield.com/ Cowkeeping/Cowkpr1.htm This useful introduction to historic cowkeeping in London lists several primary sources. THE LIBRARY TIME MACHINE w rbkclocalstudies.wordpress.…

TRADE DIRECTORIES w bit.ly/ specialwiltshire The University of Leicester’s site Special Collections Online includes Kelly’s directories for Wiltshire from 1867, 1898, 1903 and 1911, as well as a Pigot’s volume from 1822. PARISH REGISTERS w wiltshire-opc.org.uk/ genealogy This volunteer-run website holds transcribed genealogical information from parishes across the county. You need to become a member of the site to access the data, but registration is free. VICTORIA COUNTY HISTORY w history.ac.uk/research/victoria-county-history/ county-histories-progress/wiltshire Explore the VCH’s many volumes for Wiltshire. BMD INDEXES w wiltshirebmd.org.uk Volunteers have been working with the local registration service to produce indexes to Wiltshire births, marriages and deaths back to 1837. RECORDS OF QUARTER SESSIONS w wiltshirerecordsociety.org.uk Here you can download digitised copies of the society’s publications, which vary from accounts of parliamentary garrisons, to Wiltshire quarter…

ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES BRISTOL ARCHIVES a B Bond Warehouse (via Create Centre), Smeaton Road, Bristol BS1 6XN t 0117 922 4224 w bristolmuseums.org.uk/ bristol-archives The Archdeaconry of Swindon transferred to the Diocese of Gloucester and Bristol, so its Bishops’ Transcripts can be found in Bristol. HISTORIC ENGLAND ARCHIVE a The Engine House, Fire Fly Avenue, Swindon SN2 2EH t 01793 414600 e archive@historicengland.org. uk w historicengland.org.uk/ services-skills/archive-services This archive has over 12 million photos, drawings and reports. SALISBURY CATHEDRAL ARCHIVES a Chapter Office, 6 The Close, Salisbury SP1 2EF t 01722 555120 w salisburycathedral.org.uk The records here span 900 years and include minute books, correspondence and deeds. SWINDON CENTRAL LIBRARY a Regent Circus, Swindon SN1 1QG t 01793 463238 e localstudies@swindon.gov.uk w swindon.gov.uk/info/20026/libraries/302/local_studies_local_history_and_genealogy The borough’s local-studies material is on the…