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

When will life return to normal, I ask myself? It seems an age since we packed up our computers and headed home to produce this magazine remotely. But life continues, and the arrival of a new series of WDYTYA? reflects that (see page 26). In his episode, Josh Widdicombe doesn’t know how to greet his parents. He wants to hug them, but, at the time of filming, that was not allowed. Apart from moments like that, the series shows few signs of lockdown and brief travel windows even allowed for two overseas visits. Join us on Twitter and Facebook to get more from the episodes. A new series of WDYTYA? will hopefully encourage more people to explore their family history. We’ve included plenty of help for those starting out on…

Findmypast links census records to 1895 Gazetteer Family history website Findmypast ( findmypast.co.uk) has matched its 1891, 1901 and 1911 census records for England and Wales to the Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales (1895). When Findmypast users search for a name in the census records, the result will automatically be matched with the Gazetteer records, revealing details about the place that their relation lived. This includes the local history, notable inhabitants, principal trades, landmarks and churches. Marine archives help to identify 1940 shipwreck The wreck of HMS Mercury, a minesweeper that sank off southern Ireland in 1940, has been identified by researchers from Bournemouth and Bangor Universities. Their project is using marine archives and high-resolution sonar data to identify unknown wreck sites located off the British coast. Mercury, a…

Family history website MyHeritage ( myheritage.com) has added an index of 982 million names taken from its collection of historic US and Canadian newspapers. MyHeritage used optical character recognition (OCR) technology to extract the names from scanned images. The process also used machine learning to recognise nicknames, differentiate between surnames and last names, and create a record for an individual even if their first name and surname were printed separately.…

Family history site Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk) has added a collection of 300,000 photos that were taken in 1860–1970. The photographs are from the collections of Francis Frith & Co, a photographic souvenir business that was founded by Francis Frith in 1860. They include pictures of more than 9,000 British cities, towns and villages, as well as Egypt, Canada, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Hawaii, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the USA. John Buck, managing director of the Francis Frith Collection, said, “Francis Frith’s legacy to us is a national photographic archive without equal. It is a remarkable and unique photographic record of Britain over 110 years of change.” The photos can be searched by date, location and keyword. They include local sights, families and events ranging from Royal Jubilees to village fetes. Search…

Series 17 of Who Do You Think You Are? was abbreviated to a quartet of episodes as a result of the pandemic, cruelly increasing the length of time between series. Fortunately the award-winning family history show finally returned on Tuesday 12 October, after travel and TV production were able to restart. Series 18 is longer too, with seven celebrity guests exploring their family history in the UK, Denmark and Jamaica, and uncovering enthralling and moving stories including the lives of Victorian chimney sweeps, facing down fascism in the 1930s and even a link to William Shakespeare. This year’s line-up is particularly intriguing as well, and includes no less a star than national treasure Dame Judi Dench. Series 18 should provide excellent viewing for beginners and experienced family historians alike. Here’s…

1 Type freereg.org.uk in your browser to go to the website’s homepage, which includes the search facility. There is also a link to a useful ‘Help’ section. 2 To search, enter a surname and a county, date range or record type. You can extend your search to up to three counties by Ctrl-clicking (Cmd on a Mac). 3 So, if you’re looking for Granny Watkins, who married in Brecknockshire in the 1880s, enter her surname, the county and the date range. Then click ‘Search’. 4 For this example, Granny is Margaret Watkins, who married in Llandetty in 1882. Click the button next to her name to get more information. 5 Margaret married John Roach, a draper from Aberdare. There are lots of other useful details, including the names of their…

Why would a draper from Lambeth serve with the South Africans in WW1? Q I’ve finally found a clue to the First World War service of my great grandfather, Sutcliffe Arthur Bartlett (1885–1970), but I’d like help to make sense of it. The family says that he disappeared between 1914 and 1927, but I’ve discovered that in January 1920 his wife, Gladys Jackson Collins, had a daughter, Kathleen Margaret Bartlett, in Lambeth and her birth certificate describes Sutcliffe as a draper and “ex-Sergeant South Africans”. In 1914, they were at 39 Codrington Hill, Lewisham, so I want to know how Sutcliffe ended up in the South Africans and if he served in Europe or Africa. A 1941 photo of him in Home Guard uniform shows his First World War ribbons…

FINDMYPAST w findmypast.co.uk Subscription site with a large Scottish collection. LOTHIAN HEALTH SERVICES ARCHIVE w lhsa.lib.ed.ac.uk This archive is home to records of patients, nurses, doctors and other hospital employees. NATIONAL REGISTER OF ARCHIVES FOR SCOTLAND w tinyurl.com/nat-reg-arch-scot Search a register of collections held by private individuals and families, landed estates, clubs and societies, businesses and law firms. SCOTLANDSPLACES w scotlandsplaces.gov.uk ScotlandsPlaces contains all sorts of maps, plans and 18th-century tax rolls. SCOTTISH GENEALOGY SOCIETY w scotsgenealogy.com The charity’s Library and Research Centre is located at 15 Victoria Terrace, Edinburgh. SCOTTISH HANDWRITING w scottishhandwriting.com Learn how to read and interpret Scottish records back to the 16th century. SCOTTISH MINING w scottishmining.co.uk This site contains more than 22,000 names of those who worked in coal, iron or shale mining. STATISTICAL ACCOUNTS…

1 PRISONERS The first two columns give the accused’s name, rank and regiment, plus battalion if the regiment has more than one. A navy register will note the ship instead of a regiment, and an RAF register the squadron or station. 2 PLACE The third column gives the location of the CM, which is often abroad. Local newspapers might carry reports. 3 DATE A previous year may be noted if the report has been sent from abroad. 4 LAID BEFORE THE KING This is the date that the case was laid before the monarch – the commander in chief – for approval. Following advice, the monarch could overturn the verdict or sentence. 5 CHARGE Desertion is common, as here, but your relation may well have been accused of “Unbecoming character…

When accessing records online, it’s always important to take the time to look at the image of the original document. Often the transcription that the site has provided only summarises the information it contains, and it’s very easy for mistakes to creep in – so looking at the original record can both verify the transcription and uncover crucial additional details. Sometimes you can view the original document images in your web browser using an online viewer, but most of the time you’ll want to store a copy on your computer for future reference. But what can you do if it’s hard to read – whether it’s the handwriting, or the quality of the scan? Enter Transcribe 2.6, a Windows tool designed to help you transcribe documents into editable text files.…

The year is 1895, and the location is a small town in the north Italian province of Cuneo. A woman hurries to the local children’s home carrying a newborn child in her arms. The director quizzes her as to the mother’s identity, but she refuses to give any details. The truth behind the baby’s birth would remain a secret for over a century, until Paula Daily made a huge breakthrough in her family history research… MY BRICK WALL My mother’s maiden name was Gloria Arcolli and our household had a decidedly Italian flavour, especially at mealtimes. I grew up in Monroeville, a borough near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My maternal grandfather was Salvatore Mario Arcolli, who was born in Italy on 15 February 1895. He emigrated to the USA in 1921 and…

Leslie Howard served as a second lieutenant in the Northamptonshire Yeomanry in the First World War, married Ruth Evelyn and had two children. His theatrical life began at the New Theatre, London, on 14 February 1918, in a small part in The Freaks by Sir Arthur Pinero, and he continued to star in plays as well as films. In 1936 Howard was the male lead opposite Norma Shearer in MGM’s Romeo and Juliet, and after appearing in Gone With the Wind (1939) directed The First of the Few (1942) in which he played RJ Mitchell, the designer of the Spitfire. He also worked for the Ministry of Information. As one of the favourite male stars, he carried extra impact in influencing cinemagoers. He directed and narrated The Gentle Sex (1943)…

1080 William the Conqueror’s eldest son Robert Curthose is sent to Monkchester where he begins building a wooden ‘New Castle’. 1666 Pioneering feminist writer Mary Astell, advocate of equal educational opportunities for women, is born in Newcastle. 1782 Lead miner Jack Bates begins living in a cave at Marsden Rock, South Shields. Today it is known as Marsden Grotto. 1812 An explosion at Felling Colliery in County Durham kills 92 men and boys, and leads to the introduction of safety lamps. 1854 A fire breaks out at a factory in Hillgate in Gateshead, and spreads to Newcastle following a series of explosions. Ultimately 53 people are killed. 1915 Zeppelin LZ40 bombs Haxton Colliery, Jarrow, South Shields, Wallsend and Willington. Seventeen people are killed and 72 injured at Palmers’ shipyard in…

BEWICK This habitational name is common across County Durham and Northumberland. FAIRLESS This is a variant of the Scottish name Fairlie. GREENWELL The top parish for Greenwells in 1881 was Bishopwearmouth, which is now part of the western side of Sunderland City Centre. HEDLEY Gateshead was a hotspot for Hedleys when the 1881 census took place. HINDMASRH This locational name derives from someone or somewhere behind or beyond a marsh. MADDISON The 1860 dictionary Patronymica Britannica suggests this comes from Maddiston in Stirling. NISBET This border surname appears in the registration district of Hedworth, Monkton and Jarrow. RAINE This surname is found across County Durham and the North Riding of Yorkshire.…

What made you want to write the book? From childhood I was aware that I had Indian ancestors and I was curious to know a bit more about them, but it was really only when I’d retired that I had the time to travel and do the research to discover much more about who they actually were. I had of course been told lots of family stories, so it was a process of sorting out the bits that were true and the bits that weren’t. How did the process of researching the book change how you think about your family? When I was growing up in Australia there was an immigration policy called the White Australia policy, so there weren’t supposed to be Indians in Australia and I was unaware…

SANDRA ADAMS-WEST Sandra is a writer and journalist based in Port Talbot. She is also the FreeREG coordinator for Wales, and shares her tips for getting the most from this essential website on page 28. PHIL TOMASELLI Author of four military family history books and a WDYTYA? Magazine regular, Phil explains how to uncover online records of soldiers disciplined by courts martial on page 56. DR ROSALIND CRONE Rosalind is director of the International Centre for the History of Crime, Policing and Justice at the Open University and prisonhistory.org. On page 63 she shares her tips on prison research.…

So much has happened in the past couple of years that the First World War centenaries have almost faded from our memories. But now more thoughts and reflections will surely be stirred as we mark the centenaries of war memorials. From 1921 onwards, in almost every city, town and village in the kingdom, a grave and solemn ceremony was held to mark the unveiling of a memorial – a community commemoration of the grievous loss of young life, and an occasion for the virtues of patriotism, justice and sacrifice to be proclaimed. Their design and location could be the subject of heated debate. Take a simple matter such as the order in which the names of the dead were inscribed – questions were bound to be raised. Should the list…

We always get so excited here at WDYTYA? Magazine when a new series of our favourite TV programme approaches. Which celebrities will be featured? What stories will unfold? Since 2004, WDYTYA? has inspired a generation of viewers to uncover their own family history. The lead genealogists for WDYTYA?, Sara Khan and Laura Berry, have both worked on the programme for over 10 years now on and off. We caught up with Laura and Sara to ask them if they could share some advice for new entrants to this wonderful hobby. I began by asking what their first steps are when researching a new celebrity. “The first thing we do is that one or more of us will go with someone from the production team to visit the celebrity and find…

There are so many avenues to explore when researching your family tree that the task can sometimes seem overwhelming, particularly if you are beginning your journey. Of course, you start with what you know, or what your parents and grandparents know, but sometimes that might only go back a few generations, and then you are stuck. So, where do you go from that point? One unmissable resource for family historians is the parish or nonconformist register. Within the Church of England, Wales and the Church of Scotland, parish registers include details of baptisms, marriages and burials. In contrast, nonconformist registers were created by chapels of diverse faiths, such as Calvinist and Wesleyan Methodist, Baptists and Congregationalists (Independents), and as well as the information found in parish registers can include additional…

The Nazis extended their reign of terror in 1941 when they invaded Ukraine. The following year, SS troops stormed the village of Knyazhyky, near Kiev, and rounded up a teenage child from each household. They were taken away, and many never returned. One of these terrified prisoners was Maria Melnik, who at the time was only 17 years old. She was the grandmother of keen family historian Danielle Ford. She has found shocking parallels in the wartime experiences of her Polish grandfather Marian Pohl, who married Maria in 1957. Maria was torn away from her family with no time to say goodbye “As a young child, I knew my grandparents as Babcia and Dziadek, the Polish names for grandmother and grandfather,” says Danielle, who lives in Gloucester. “I remember Dziadek…

How can I find out about my ancestor’s time in the police? Q My great grandfather, James Willis, was in the police force. I found some details about him on The National Archives’ website. They show that he joined up on 18 July 1870, was a police constable in K Division in West Ham and that his warrant number was 52870. Can you tell me how to find out more information about his time as a policeman? Pauline Rouse A Serendipitously, the Metropolitan Police Heritage Centre holds a virtual people file on the holder of warrant number 52870. This links him to a man born c1842 in Woodford, Essex, who was still a police constable on his marriage to Sarah Hardiman at St Ann’s Limehouse on 20 April 1871. The…

BOOKS Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors, 2nd Edn Phil Tomaselli Pen & Sword, 2014 Phil explains which records survive, including of CMs, where they can be found and how they can help you in your research. Tracing Your Army Ancestors, 3rd Edn Simon Fowler Pen & Sword, 2017 Find out more about the records available for researching relations in the Army, including those who were court-martialled. Tracing Your Naval Ancestors Bruno Pappalardo PRO Publications, 2003 This book is invaluable for information about naval records generally and CMs in particular. You can borrow it for free from the Internet Archive at tinyurl. com/arch-tracing-naval.…

Since medieval times, British prisons have held not only those accused of crime but also debtors, sinners, religious and political opponents, disobedient soldiers and sailors, and foreign combatants. They have also employed managers (governors, keepers and matrons), guards (turnkeys, warders and gatekeepers), and sometimes other service providers (including cooks, chaplains, surgeons and schoolmasters). So it is no wonder that many of us have uncovered at least one prison connection in our family tree. INCREASED IMPRISONMENT From the mid-1700s, the use of imprisonment to punish crime expanded while it was reduced for other types of transgression. At the same time, pressure from reformers saw the institution transform from a dangerous dungeon into a healthy and, finally, tightly controlled environment. This was accompanied by better record-keeping. While records from before c1750 are…

PRISON HISTORY w prisonhistory.org The database on this free site lists surviving archives and key printed sources for English prisons operating between 1800 and 1899. FINDMYPAST w findmypast.co.uk Important collections here include ‘England & Wales, Crime, Prisons & Punishment, 1770–1935’ and ‘Prison Ship (Hulk) Registers’. PRISON REGISTER SEARCH w tinyurl.com/scottish-indexes-prisoners Search for your ancestors across roughly 30 sets of Scottish prison registers dating from the 19th and early 20th century.…

1 GIVEN UP The document revealed that Salvatore was not an orphan, as Paula originally believed. In fact, he had been given up to a foundling home in the province of Cuneo in northern Italy. 2 FOSTER MOTHER Domenica Giubellino is listed as Salvatore’s foster mother, nutrice (wet nurse) and the moglie (wife) of Giovanni. This detail helped Paula to trace their descendants and meet them in Italy. 3 BIRTHDATE Salvatore’s birthdate and his given name are listed. Sadly, he was admitted to the foundling home the very next day after he was born.…

ARCHIVE BFI REUBEN LIBRARY a Belvedere Road, South Bank, London SE1 8XT t 020 7928 3232 w bfi.org.uk/bfi-reuben-library The British Film Institute holds books, journals and digitised material. You can view many Ministry of Information films for free at tinyurl.com/bfi-ww2. BOOKS Britain Can Take It Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards IB Tauris, 2007 Britain Can Take It reveals the importance of cinema in the war. The British at War: Cinema, State and Propaganda 1939–1945 James Chapman IB Tauris, 2011 Find out more about the role of the Ministry of Information. Film Propaganda in Britain and Nazi Germany Jo Fox Berg, 2006 This book shows how both sides used films as propaganda. MUSEUM THE CINEMA MUSEUM a 2 Dugard Way, London SE11 4TH t 020 7840 2200 w cinemamuseum.org.uk The museum…

TRADE DIRECTORIES w tinyurl.com/ special-tandw Download free directories for historic Northumberland and County Durham, covering modern Tyne and Wear, from the website Special Collections Online. BISHOPS’ TRANSCRIPTS w tinyurl.com/fs-durham-bts FamilySearch has 106,352 browsable images of BTs from the Durham Diocese dating from 1639–1919. MINERS’ RECORDS w tinyurl.com/dro-depths Based on the records of the Durham Miners’ Association, this database contains over 229,000 names. WAR MEMORIALS w newmp.org.uk This project aims to record every war memorial between the River Tweed and the River Tees. PROBATE RECORDS w tinyurl.com/ neid-dur Explore the North East Inheritance Database of pre-1858 Durham probate records. The entries are hyperlinked to online images on FamilySearch.…

A HOUSE THROUGH TIME  DAVID OLUSOGA AND MELANIE BACKE-HANSEN Picador, 304 pages, £10.99 Recently published in paperback, this companion to the award-winning BBC Two programme A House Through Time is an account of British homes and those who lived in them. It focuses on the social conditions that created our homes, towns and cities, from pre-Georgian to postwar Britain. Carving through the over-plumped word count unearths a myriad of detailed and fascinating tales, each guiding the reader on how and where to do their own research by example. There is a ‘how to’ chapter for new historians, citing the properties in the TV show as case studies. Formal references within the text are kept to an elegant minimum with an extensive list of further reading at the back of the…

The British Library is asking for volunteers to help transcribe slave owners’ advertisements for fugitive slaves from colonial-era Barbados. The project ‘Agents of Enslavement’ aims to examine how colonial newspapers facilitated and challenged the practice of slavery, and to create a database of enslaved people and their networks using the archives of the Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette and the Barbadian, which have recently been digitised. A previous stage of the research project involved identifying the adverts, but volunteers are now sought to transcribe the information that they contain. To get involved, visit zooniverse.org/projects/gjevon/agents-of-enslavement.…

Family history website TheGenealogist ( thegenealogist.co.uk) has added the Lloyd George Domesday Survey records for Ealing, West London. Conducted between 1910 and 1915, the survey was introduced by chancellor David Lloyd George and assessed the value of all of the land in the UK. At the time Ealing was a suburb consisting of the seven major towns of Acton, Ealing, Greenford, Hanwell, Northolt, Perivale and Southall, in addition to Hayes, Norwood and part of Hammersmith. The new set of 52,429 records includes maps of the land as well as field books that record who owned it.…

IN PERSON THOSE WHO SERVED 23 October a Stock, Essex t 0800 011 2182 w one-name.org/seminar-events This seminar from the Guild of One-Name Studies will equip you with everything you need to trace military ancestors from the Peninsular Wars to the First and Second World Wars. £22. ONLINE BERKSHIRE FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY Various dates w berksfhs.org/whats-on ‘Getting the Most Out of UK Census Records’ (20 October, £10) and ‘An Introduction to Caribbean Family History’ (23 October, £5) are two of the society’s upcoming workshops. There are also one-on-one advice sessions on 15 November (free – booking required). INSTITUTE OF HERALDIC AND GENEALOGICAL STUDIES Various dates w bit.ly/ihgs-zoom-tutorials The institute runs virtual family history tutorials every month. The topics this month include ‘Managing Your Family History Digital Records’ (19 October), ‘Finding…

1 Visit https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/ certificates . You will be asked to log into your account, or register to create one. 2 Click ‘Order a Certificate or PDF’ if you know the necessary details, otherwise choose ‘Search the GRO Indexes’. 3 Choose ‘Birth’ or ‘Death’ (marriages can’t be searched). Fill in known details and the date ±2 years. Click ‘Search’. 4 Results will appear below. Select one or more and choose a certificate through the post (£11) or a PDF (£7). 5 For marriage records, select ‘Order a Certificate or PDF’ and enter the year you think that the marriage took place. 6 Add the GRO Index Reference (found on sites including FreeBMD; freebmd. org.uk) to pay £11, or it’s £14 without.…

Behind the scenes at FreeREG is an army of volunteers. From programmers to coordinators, they all work tirelessly to keep the website up and running. But the backbone of FreeREG is our transcribers. These are men and women of all ages and from diverse backgrounds. Although the majority live in the UK, we have help from all over the globe. Our transcribers work from images of registers, some of them quite faint or with handwriting that is hard to read, and record the information that they find there. They can work at their own pace – there are no deadlines to meet. Volunteers range from those who have no experience to those who are well versed in reading through registers. Training can be provided, and each county, or region, will…

GENESZUKACZ GENEALODZY w geneszukacz.genealodzy.pl/ lang-eng Find soldiers who served in the Polish Army, in addition to records of births, marriages and deaths in the Baltic states, Belarus, Poland and Ukraine. LESZNO STATE ARCHIVES w archiwum.leszno.pl/new Danielle visited the archive in Leszno, western Poland, to find essential records. Its holdings can be searched online. POZNAN PROJECT w poznan-project.psnc.pl You can search transcriptions of 1,907,029 marriage records from the 19th century in the historic region of Greater Poland (the Prussian province of Poznan) at this free site.…

When were these two photographs taken? Q These two photos were recently passed on to me. The one of the man is labelled as William Bennett. It was taken at the studio of Chancellor, 55 Lower Sackville Street, Dublin. The second photograph, which may show three brothers, was also probably taken in Dublin. I think there’s a similarity between William and the person at the rear. Can you help me date them? Loretta Lawrance A These photos depict William in the mid-Victorian era. His single portrait is a carte de visite, a format produced in Ireland c1860 to the early 1900s. Online articles and Edward Chandler and Peter Walsh’s Through the Brass-Lidded Eye: Photography in Ireland, 1839–1900 (The Guinness Museum, 1989) describe John Chancellor as a photographer in the family…

The online archive of The Scotsman, spanning 330,104 pages published between the newspaper’s creation in 1817 and 1950, is a fascinating resource. It is accessible via a British Newspaper Archive subscription (britishnewspaperarchive. co.uk), and to ‘Pro’ subscribers of Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk). Also, access is free to anyone who belongs to one of Edinburgh’s libraries. The archive can be searched by date or date range, and by using more than one word in the search criteria. Searching for John Smith, though, may offer results including John Brown and Henry Smith, so do try to exclude common words or phrases. Also, the articles were scanned using optical character recognition, so some words have been entertainingly misinterpreted. Looking at the edition published on 1 October 1921 means finding all manner of material: from the…

1 CRIME Sometimes the description will include the names of any victims (if applicable). 2 EDUCATION AND RELIGION Details sometimes changed during imprisonment. Convicts might learn to read or write, or they might change their religion to improve conditions. 3 TRANSFERS Convicts might be sent to a local prison (eg Wakefield) to serve their first stage. Some served part of their sentence abroad, for example in Bermuda or Gibraltar. 4 CONFINEMENT  Convicts typically spent their first stage in separate confinement (“Sep.” or “S.C.”). Their second stage was at public works, labouring in association (“P.W.”). While they were in local prisons, awaiting trial or, after conviction, transfer, they might have been in association with other prisoners (“Assoc.”). 5 CHARACTER AND CONDUCT You might see the number of ‘marks’ forfeited for infractions…

BOOKS Criminal Ancestors, 2nd Edn David T Hawkings The History Press, 2009 This guide explains how to use a variety of criminal justice records. Shades of the Prison House Harry Potter Boydell Press, 2019 This readable history of incarceration in Britain runs from the Dark Ages through to the 20th century. WEBSITES ANCESTRY w ancestry.co.uk ‘UK, Prison Commission Records, 1770–1951’ contains records relating to local and convict prisons in England and Wales including registers, photo albums and journals. Other collections here include registers from prisons in Cornwall, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Somerset and West Yorkshire. DIGITAL PANOPTICON w digitalpanopticon.org This site allows you to search records relating to 90,000 convicts sentenced at the Old Bailey in London. It also features examples of convicts’ lives constructed from records, and essays on sources and…

Shifting boundaries and jurisdictions means that there are a number of places where you may find material relating to your Tyneside and Wearside kin. Newcastle itself, for example, was historically part of Northumberland, before becoming an independent county in 1400. Then it joined Tyne and Wear in the great county shakeup of 1974, becoming one of five metropolitan boroughs alongside Gateshead, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Sunderland. Similarly the area known as Wearside is partially situated in Tyne and Wear and in County Durham. As a result, documentary evidence relating to your family tree may survive in the county archives in Ashington or Durham, within diocesan collections, or in metropolitan, city or local-history collections. Two diocesan archives covering the area are the Diocese of Newcastle and the Diocese of Durham.…

Although we tend to think of archives as repositories of documents that were created hundreds of years ago, they are continually growing. As today’s current events become tomorrow’s history, archivists have to make difficult decisions about what contemporary items to preserve for future generations. The Folklore Library & Archive in Devon focuses on the folkloric traditions that our ancestors handed down through the generations. Its collections also show how these traditions continued to be practised in the recent past. This month, curator Mark Norman explains how an unassuming document reveals the fascinating story of the ‘Running of the Black Dog’, a procession that took place in the county in the 1990s and 2000s but had roots reaching back to the 12th century and beyond. WHICH DOCUMENT HAVE YOU CHOSEN? This…

WATCH NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF IRELAND tinyurl.com/yt-nai-talks Free The National Archives of Ireland has released its 2021 programme of virtual talks online for free. Topics include researching house history, the process of recovering the documents destroyed in the Public Record Office fire of 1922, and workhouses’ closure during the War of Independence. PODCAST WHAT’S HER NAME Podcast services Free This podcast about women’s history is hosted by sisters and academics Dr Katie Nelson and Olivia Meikle. Through interviews with guest historians, writers and scholars, the pair aim to bring to life the ‘lost’ women of history. Recent episodes include Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, a heroine of Indian independence at the time of the Raj, Gold Rush miner Eilley Bowers, and Ukrainian composer Stefania Turkevych. WEBSITE A TALE OF TWO SISTERS siarchives.si.edu/history/…

OXFORD DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY The ODNB provides concise but very useful biographies of many figures who have made a major contribution to the history of the British Isles. Here we found an entry for Henry Rich, the 1st Earl of Holland, a courtier who fought for the Royalists. The website can be accessed free of charge via many local library memberships or through subscriptions. The entry for Josh’s forebear is at tinyurl.com/odnb-rich. PAMPHLET The publishing of pamphlets was becoming increasingly common at this time. These precursors to newspapers provide us with contemporary accounts of significant events. A pamphlet describing Rich’s execution has been digitised and is available for free via Google Books, where it can be viewed at google.co.uk/books/edition/ The_Manner_of_the_Beheading_of_Duke_Hamb/ QjpoAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1. PARLIAMENTARY ARCHIVES This archive has an extensive catalogue that…