TheGenealogist adds 1939 Register

TheGenealogist has released the 1939 Register, adding the site’s unique and powerful search tools and SmartSearch technology. This offers a hugely flexible way to look for your ancestors at the start of the Second World War.

TheGenealogist’s well-known brick wall-shattering search tools include the ability to find your ancestor in 1939 by using keywords, such as the individual’s occupation or their date of birth. You can also search for an address and then jump straight to the household. If you’re struggling to find a family, you can even search using as many of their forenames as you know.

Once you’ve found a record in the 1939 Register, you can click on the street name to view all the residents on the street, potentially finding relatives living nearby.

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology enables you to discover even more about a person, linking to their Birth, Marriage and Death records.

The 1939 Register can often reveal to you important additional information about your ancestors that will help build your family’s story. The powerful keyword search can find evacuees by searching for their name and date of birth along with the keyword “evacuee”. The fact individuals are listed with their full dates of birth is a huge benefit that the 1939 Register has over the census, which simply lists the age of a person.

TheGenealogist makes searching the 1939 Register more flexible. Search by

• Name (Including wildcards, e.g. Win* Church*)
• Address (e.g. Whitehall)
• Keywords (e.g. Admiralty)
• First names from a family group (e.g. Winston, Clementine)

See TheGenealogist’s article on finding the highest paid film star and entertainer of the time, George Formby

New military records go online

TheGenealogist has released over 150,000 individuals to its ever expanding Military Record Collection. Containing names, places and dates, these publications can aid the family history researcher find their ancestors and build a fascinating story of their lives. With records from Britain, Canada and a number of Indian registers and directories, these searchable records contain lists of men and women who served their country in various capacities connected to the military, and not just on the front line.

Included in the latest release is The War Office List 1920, where we can find a Miss Florence Agnes Hebb who had been Deputy Chief Superintendent of Typists at the War Office. We can follow her appointments from December 1890, when she first joined the War Office as a typist, to receiving an M.B.E in January 1918 and then becoming Controller of Typists at the Air Ministry in March of that year.

Another record, the Monthly Official Military Directory for Salisbury Plain, April 1914, finds the fledgling Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding when he was an Army Captain, ‘under instruction’ in WW1 and attending the Central Flying School at Upavon, Wiltshire.

The records can be used to discover more about an ancestor’s achievements and are fantastic for identifying where next to apply your research. These books can give dates of postings along with ranks or positions held in establishments, as well as a great deal more useful information that may help to build a better family history.

See the case study here .