Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2025 i Who Do You Think You Are?

The walls of my home office are plastered with maps of Bristol. The oldest dates from 1581 and the most modern is a large, framed Ordnance Survey sheet from 1903 showing the street I live on only half-finished. Maps are an obvious choice for local and house history, but they play a vital role in family history too. Turn to page 14 for my tips on how to use them to get closer to your roots. On page 19 Janet Few shares her advice for researching your female lines, ahead of International Women’s Day on 8 March. As Janet says, even where named records are sparse, we can try to flesh out the lives of our female ancestors using other resources. After all, half of our direct forbears were women.…

JANET FEW Genealogist, writer and tutor, Janet Few (thehistoryinterpreter.com) likes to focus on the stories of ‘forgotten women’. Her advice on page 19 will inspire you to do the same. LAURA BERRY Laura has been one of the lead genealogists for the TV series for many years. Her tips for tracing royal lines on page 28 may just give you your own WDYTYA? moment. CAROLINE ROBERTS A London-based writer who specialises in social history, Caroline highlights the struggles faced by the blind on page 56 and how campaigners fought for better support.…

1 Visit oldmapsonline.org and select ‘Explore maps’. You can sign in using your Google account. To the right of the base map is a list of historic maps, along the bottom is a timeline and at the top is a search box. Type in the name of a place. 2 Select a map from the right-hand panel. There are four options across the top. ‘Discover’ places the map onto a base map and ‘Document’ just presents the map on its own. Paid subscribers can change the base map for the ‘Compare’ option. 3 Adjust the timeline along the bottom of the screen to find maps that relate to the time your family lived in the area. Generally the website is good at putting the most useful maps at the top…

Discovering an aristocratic forebear is the holy grail of genealogical research. Who wouldn’t want to embed their ancestry in the legendary tales of royal courts and great houses? If you uncover a lord in your tree then there’s also a chance of connecting with a monarch further back, since minor royals married into the landed and political classes, thereby maintaining a circle of power and wealth. Aristocratic bloodlines were well documented to pre-empt inheritance disputes and demonstrate links to illustrious forebears, and many published pedigrees can be found easily. The difficulty lies in separating fact from fiction. Even manuscript pedigrees are secondary sources, and every relationship should ideally be verified with contemporary historical records such as church and court documents. Genealogy websites are awash with trees that have been uploaded…

BRITISH NEWSPAPER ARCHIVE w britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk Uncover links between the gentry and their descendants in obituaries, BMD notices, and high-society gossip columns. THEGENEALOGIST w thegenealogist.co.uk Here you can find Prerogative Court of Canterbury wills, and indexes to parish records. You can also search Heralds’ Visitations and other published volumes. THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES w discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk Search Discovery by surname for estate papers, deeds, pedigrees, wills, equity-court proceedings etc at TNA and in regional archives.…

I provide what I hope is a fairly comprehensive introduction to the subject of British soldiers taken as prisoners during the First World War at The Long, Long Trail: longlongtrail.co.uk/soldiers/a-soldiers-life-1914-1918/british-soldiers-taken-as-prisoners-of-war/. This is a fascinating topic, which doesn’t tend to get as much publicity as the camps and escapees of the Second World War. During the First World War some 7,335 officers and 174,491 other ranks of the British Army were captured by the enemy – almost half of whom were taken between March and November in the last year of the war, thanks in part to a shift towards ‘elastic defence’ battle tactics that were more likely to leave combatants stranded. British soldiers taken prisoner in France and Flanders were usually moved to Germany and incarcerated in camps, or retained…

Q This postcard was my grandad’s. Could you tell me what Harry might have been doing in India during the First World War, and what regiment he served in? Janette Martin A The clue here is the postmark on the back of the photo: “Ahmednagar”. Now called Ahilya Nagar, it’s in the Indian state of Maharashtra, in the western peninsula. During the First World War it was the site of an internment camp for German, Austrian, Turkish and other ‘hostile’ civilians from India, East Africa and Thailand. The inmates were guarded by European troops. Early in the war, regular British battalions left India for Europe to be replaced by Territorial Units, and then by (mainly) Garrison Battalions consisting of men who were less fit (often previously wounded). From The Long,…

Genealogical software such as Family Tree Maker and RootsMagic make it easy to incorporate records from certain websites into your family tree, but their web-merging features are usually restricted to just one or two online sites. And what if your chosen program – such as Family Historian -doesn’t offer any form of online record-merging? One solution is to invest $24 a year (about £19.50) in a subscription to the Online Repository Assistant (ORA). This Windows-only program uses your browser to provide powerful tools that help you manage your research, and simplify the process of copying information into any family history program from such sites as Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk), Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk), MyHeritage (myheritage.com) and TheGenealogist (thegenealogist.co.uk). The ORA is compatible with all of the major browsers, including Chrome, Edge and Firefox, and…

ARCHIVE RNIB ARCHIVE a RNIB Heritage Services, Grimaldi Building, 154a Pentonville Road, London N1 9JE t 0303 123 9999 e heritageservices@rnib.org.uk w tinyurl.com/rnib-archive The archive’s material represents the history and culture of blind and partially sighted people in the UK over the past 150 years and beyond. Booking is essential. BOOKS In the Mind's Eye: The Blinded Veterans of St Dunstan's David Castleton Pen & Sword, 2014 Read the stories of the men and women who lost their sight in the service of their country, and how St Dunstan’s (now Blind Veterans UK) helped them rejoin society. The Blind Victorian: Henry Fawcett and British Liberalism Lawrence Goldman Cambridge University Press, 2003 This exploration of the politician’s life and career includes his influence on Victorian culture. PODCAST BLINDNESS IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN…

The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 6 December 1921 ended the three-year Irish War of Independence, and established the Irish Free State one year later. This comprised 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland, the remaining six preferring to form Northern Ireland. The period saw unrest between communities of mainly Protestant unionist and Catholic nationalist civilians, and left an indelible mark on Irish genealogy with the destruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland (PROI) building in Dublin in 1922. While research in Northern Ireland has unique challenges, not least because of the loss of 19thcentury census returns thanks to the fire at the PROI (for 1821-1851) and an order from the Dublin government to pulp them (for 1861–1891), it is somewhat offset by civil registration records, parish registers, 20th-century census records…

LISTEN VINCENT VAN GOGH IN BRIXTON tinyurl.com/bbc-snds-vin Between 1873 and 1875, the young Vincent van Gogh lived in London. This half-hour documentary from the BBC Radio 3 series Between the Ears explores the story of his time there in the archival records, and recreates the sounds of his journey from his job in Covent Garden to his lodgings in Brixton. Free. PODCAST AMERICAN RAILROAD silkroad.org/american-railroad-podcast This podcast from the artistic collective Silkroad is presented by musician Rhiannon Giddens. It uses music and storytelling to tell the stories of the diverse communities who built the US railroad system in the 19th century, including African-American prison labourers; Irish, Japanese and Chinese immigrants; and the Native American tribes who lost their land to the railway. Free. WATCH EXCAVATIONCONFRONTATION-REPAIR? FAMILY HISTORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST…

I know that links to the royal family aren’t as big a motivator as they used to be for family historians. Changing attitudes, along with a wealth of records – such as newspapers – that feature people from all walks of society, have resulted in a shift in what people like to focus on. However, Laura’s article on page 28 has tempted me to go back to my notes and look again at the men recorded as gentlemen on my tree (and their wives). Concentrating on those lines can lead to ‘gateway ancestors’ – people who have well-documented aristocratic connections that can take your tree back hundreds of years.…

Well, I finally did it! After years of ‘not quite getting round to it’, and putting it off until the general quality of the results improved, in November I sent off my little phial of saliva and waited eagerly for the results of my DNA test. This uncharacteristically decisive action was prompted by a visit to Poland in late September, when my cousins and I discussed the results of their recent DNA tests, which were fascinating. Their father was half-English and halfAmerican, although he was to all intents and purposes Polish (born and bred there, and Polish was his first language). Their mother, however, is fully Polish but with some Austro-German ancestry. The DNA results reflected this complicated inheritance very closely. They have 37–39 per cent “Central and Eastern Europe”…

The straightforward prose is powerful and shocking. “My heart pounded like a drum inside my ears. ‘Four, five, six…’ the counting continued. A shadow dashed past me and ran toward the barbed-wire fence. Another ear-splitting pop of the gun. They shot number seven in the back. ‘Shuffle up, the rest of you!’ Stomach heaving, I counted with them. Was I ninth or tenth? ‘Where were we? Seven, eight, nine, ten! Kneel!’ Another crack. The man next to me slumped to the ground. Did the comrade on the barbed wire save my life? I didn’t even know his name.” This excerpt comes from the secret memoirs of Sibel Roller’s father Dragan. It gives a terrifying insight into the reality he faced in the Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia during the Second…

ARCHIVES COLLEGE OF ARMS a 130 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4BT t 020 7248 2762 e enquiries@college-of-arms.gov.uk w college-of-arms.gov.uk Family historians can hire a herald from the College of Arms who has access to a private archive of medieval pedigrees, or book an evening tour of the college’s Record Room. COURT OF THE LORD LYON a New Register House, Edinburgh EH1 3YT t 0131 556 7255 e lyonoffice@gov.scot w courtofthelordlyon.scot Visitors are welcome to consult registers of arms here by appointment, but private genealogical research is not undertaken. SOCIETY OF GENEALOGISTS a 40 Wharf Road, London N1 7GS t 020 7251 8799 e hello@sog.org.uk w sog.org.uk/research-hub/visit-us The society’s library includes pedigrees, peerage publications and copies of parish registers. A day pass for non-members costs £20. BOOK Tracing Your Aristocratic…

392ND BOMB GROUP w b24.net This website includes sections on eight German camps with maps, photographs, government records and accounts. COFEPOW w cofepow.org.uk The website of the charity Children and Families of Far East Prisoners of War includes digitised liberation questionnaires, and casualty lists from both camps and the ‘hell ships’ that the Japanese used to transfer POWs. COMMONWEALTH WAR GRAVES COMMISSION w cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/ Details of those who died in captivity during both world wars are available through the commission’s Debt of Honour database. IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS w iwm.org.uk/research/tracing-your-family-history/prisoners-of-war Visit for research advice and a list of useful sites. LAMSDORF REMEMBERED w lamsdorfremembered.co.uk This is another website focusing on Stalag VIIIB, through the eyes of former captive and Irish Guard Arthur Charles Evans. NEVER FORGOTTEN w powtaiwan.org Run by the…

BOOKS Title Deeds for Family Historians Tim Wormleighton The Family History Partnership, 2012 This short read is clearly laid out and a great introduction to the topic, with plenty of images. Tracing History Through Title Deeds Nat Alcock Pen & Sword, 2017 This book explains how to use title deeds for genealogical research. WEBSITE DEEDS IN DEPTH w nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/researchguidance/deedsindepth/introduction.aspx This highly informative online research guide from the University of Nottingham’s Manuscripts and Special Collections gives fantastic examples of title deeds with common translations, and explains how property is held.…

Q I’m looking for a birth record for my great great grandfather, James Barker. His parents were William and Mary Ann Barker. He had eight siblings and I’ve found all their baptisms, but not his. There was a James born into the family in 1826, but he died in 1828. James married Elizabeth Green in 1855 at St Olave, Southwark, Surrey, aged 27 years, making his birth year about 1828. They had a son William who was baptised in West Dereham, Norfolk, in 1856, so the family must have had links with that area. James died there on 3 September 1884. Wendy Barker A As any search of censuses or burials will reveal, in times past a person’s precise age was often uncertain. So the first thing to establish is…

Market days in the Shropshire town of Ludlow usually attracted a crowd, and 20 August 1840 was no exception. The Angel Inn was fully booked with guests, including William Miller Mackreth – an accountant by profession who had several business interests. He retired to his room at 11pm, and locked the door. Unbeknownst to him, an assassin was hiding under the bed. William Mackreth was born in Bristol in 1811, and was my great great grandfather. I knew nothing about his life or the terrible peril he faced until I began researching our family history. My brother Robert discovered William’s brush with death when he read a heavily illustrated blog entry by Richard Tisdale about the crime at the British Newspaper Archive (blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2017/12/08/richard-tisdale-attempted-murder/). It was a fascinating tale, so I…

GRIFFITH'S VALUATION w askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/ The valuation shows 19th-century occupiers and owners of land and buildings across the country. PRONI’s guide to valuation records is at nidirect.gov.uk/articles/about-valuation-revision-books. PASSENGER LISTS w tinyurl.com/ulster-ancestry-pass-lists Ulster Ancestry has transcribed passenger lists for ships leaving the province for North America, mostly in the 19th century. CATHOLIC PARISH REGISTERS w registers.nli.ie This National Library of Ireland site enables you to search parish register microfilms for most Catholic parishes up to 1880. CENSUS RECORDS w genealogy.nationalarchives.ie Here you can access a wide range of material including census records, shipping registers and crew lists, as well as a host of probate records including soldiers’ wills. ULSTER COVENANT w tinyurl.com/proni-cov Search images of the signatures of almost 500,000 men and women who in 1912 signed the Ulster Covenant or Women’s…

Many of us have an ancestor who was mentally ill at some time in their life. In the past, such conditions were poorly understood and sufferers were often imprisoned for many months or even years in a lunatic asylum. In the 19th century, the medical profession began treating mental illness more humanely and intelligently. The Royal College of Psychiatrists was founded in 1841 as the Association of Medical Officers of Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane. Francis Maunze, the college’s archivist and records manager, explains forgotten how a manuscript of unusual table-mat designs reveals the changing nature of mental-health treatment. CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE DOCUMENT? Gaskell Club: Table Mats of the Famous Insane is a largely handwritten manuscript by Dr Isabel Wilson. It comprises accounts of the table mats she…

SOCIAL HISTORY Bethan Watts Pen & Sword, 232 pages, £25 During the Victorian period, in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, many of our ancestors lived in urban environments amid poverty, disease and crime. The Dark and Dingy Underworld of the Victorian Slums shines a light on the shadowy streets and dangerous rookeries of the 19th century. Although the main focus is on London, there are references to other parts of Britain, such as Edinburgh and Manchester. This comprehensive and interesting book explores everyday working-class life in the bustling, and often notorious, industrial quarters of the capital, covering themes such as health and living conditions, childhood, employment, crime and punishment, and death. It also includes the more unusual topics of homosexuality, mental health and prejudice, and often challenges modern preconceptions of…

On 23 December 1933, Kirsti Huurre’s husband Kari left for work as a Soviet Union red commander. He didn’t return from his barracks that evening, and Kirsti and their two-month-old daughter Pirjo never saw him again. Kari had become another victim of Stalin’s military purges. Kirsti was born in Turku, Finland, in 1902 and, like many Finnish people, was lured to live in the Soviet Union by propaganda that promised better jobs and good housing. It was all a lie, however. She wrote a diary of her life in the Soviet Union, which is an important first-hand account of some of Europe’s most desperate times. It was published in 1942 but, due to delicate relations between the neighbouring states, it became the second most censored book in Finland (after Mein…

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Email wdytyaeditorial@ourmedia.co.uk to feature your event here for free PICK OF THE MONTH The biggest event in family history returns ROOTSTECH 2025 6–8 March w familysearch.org/en/rootstech/ RootsTech, the world’s largest family history show, takes place every year in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Since 2023 it has been a hybrid event, with the opportunity to take part online from anywhere in the world for free. The keynote speakers include Ndaba Mandela, the grandson of Nelson Mandela, and Lynne M Jackson, the great great granddaughter of Dred and Harriet Scott, an enslaved couple who unsuccessfully took their case for freedom to the US Supreme Court in 1857. There will also be more than 200 sessions in over 26 languages, with classes on all aspects of family history from countries across the…

BOOK Maps for Family and Local History, 2nd Edition Geraldine Beech and Rose Mitchell The National Archives, 2004 This guide explains tithe records, in addition to the Valuation Office and National Farm Surveys. WEBSITES A VISION OF BRITAIN THROUGH TIME w visionofbritain.org.uk Search this site for historic maps including useful boundary maps. KNOW YOUR PLACE - WEST OF ENGLAND w kypwest.org.uk This digital project features maps from a range of archives. LAYERS OF LONDON w layersoflondon.org The material here ranges from medieval maps and Charles Booth’s poverty maps to bomb-damage sites from the Second World War. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND w maps.nls.uk Visit for Ordnance Survey maps covering the whole of the UK, as well as hundreds of specialist and historic maps for Scotland. OLD MAPS ONLINE w oldmapsonline.org This…

BOOK Balkan Genocides Paul Mojzes Rowman & Littlefield, 2011 Sibel did a lot of background reading to give context to her father’s experiences, and cites this title as “possibly one of the most objective books in English on the horrors of 20th-century ethnic cleansing in the countries of the former Yugoslavia”. A paperback edition was released four years later. WEBSITES JASENOVAC MEMORIAL SITE w jusp-jasenovac.hr/Default.aspx?sid=5020 Nothing remained of the Jasenovac camp after the war. Where it once stood, there is a memorial site with a museum and sculptures set in a landscaped park. The memorial’s website has extensive information about the history of the camp, as well as a list of the victims who died there. SHOAH FOUNDATION w https://sfi.usc.edu/ This online archive contains approximately 59,000 interviews with survivors of the…

Have I found the right death record for my 3x great grandmother? Q I’m researching my 3x great grandmother, Elizabeth Edwards (born c1785), née Raynor. She was married to William Edwards, a sawyer, who died in 1841. I have found her in the censuses for 1841, 1851 and 1861, but not in the 1871 census. I have a death certificate for an Elizabeth Edwards of the correct age, who died in hospital near Greasley, Nottinghamshire, on 21 November 1870. The death was registered by Hannah Edwards, the name of my Elizabeth’s granddaughter. However, by that time, Hannah was married to Thomas Sisson and Elizabeth is described as the widow of Joseph Edwards, a coal miner, not William. Hannah was only eight months old when her grandfather died, so would not…

Q For years I have been trying to progress research into my great grandparents: Edward John Murphy (born c1844 in Dublin, Ireland) and (Mary) Jane Vincent (born between 1843 and 1848 in Marylebone, Middlesex). They had a son, Edward John Murphy, in 1884. In the 1881 census I found a Jane Vincent, widow, aged 38, a servant, born in Marylebone, Middlesex, and her daughter Elizabeth, aged 15, a servant, born in St Annes, Soho, living at 1 Stacey Street. I’m not sure who Elizabeth’s father was, or what happened to her. I can’t find Edward senior in the census for 1881, and neither him nor Jane in 1871. I’ve also never found birth or marriage records for them. Can you help me fill in some of the gaps? Derek Murphy…

The daughter of a University of Oxford academic, Gilbert was blinded by scarlet fever aged three but was educated alongside her sisters. She later became one of the very few women prominent in the blind-welfare movement. Gilbert was more in tune with the needs of blind people than many other benefactors of the time and recognised the particular challenges faced by those who had lost their sight in adulthood, often with a family to support. It was almost impossible for them to earn a living in the poorly paid ‘blind trades’, even with training. Independently wealthy following a bequest from a godparent, in 1854 she established the Association for Promoting the General Welfare of the Blind, a charitable organisation providing vocational training and employment for both men and women. It…

ANCESTRY w ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/1590 Here you can discover individuals charged with a crime, their trial and sentence (if they were convicted). Their age, birthplace and date of release may also be included. OLD BAILEY w oldbaileyonline.org Details of almost 198,000 trials at London’s central criminal court (1674–1913) are online. The testimony of witnesses, defendants and barristers provides fascinating insight. OUR CRIMINAL ANCESTORS w ourcriminalancestors.org This intriguing site focuses on crime at a local level. The case studies include John Henry Gooding, a forger who in 1919 became a spy for the British security services in Ireland.…

Thousands of Belfast residents made linen – was your ancestor one of them? By the end of the 19th century Belfast had become ‘Linenopolis’, the linen capital of the world, with about 200 companies employing more than 70,000 people. There’s a newly updated PRONI guide to researching this topic at nidirect.gov.uk/publications/ulster-textile-industry-1690-1995. The PDF includes an alphabetical list of local firms and individuals, each with a description of the kinds of records that have survived. The largest single collection is the Andrews & Co. archive comprising 544 volumes relating to the flaxspinning mill in Comber (you can watch a BBC report on its closure in 1997 at tinyurl.com/bbc-comb-flax), as well as Andrews family farms and estates.…

CHRISTINE M CLULEY Amberley, 288 pages, £22.99 The Warwickshire-based historian and author Christine M Cluley has carried out extensive research into the life of Dorothie Feilding. By working closely with the Feilding family she reveals a unique collection of Dorothie’s letters, recording her time as an ambulance driver on the Western Front during the First World War. As Britain went to war in 1914, men rallied to the flag while women were barred from serving in military combat roles. Dorothie, however, saw the war as an opportunity to serve her country. Dorothie held a privileged position as the daughter of an earl, but life in an established upper-class background somehow prepared her for the challenge of the role of ambulance driver in the Munro Motor Ambulance Corps. She became the first…