Nicki Dray, UKindexer's Manager, explains how becoming involved in a volunteer project can not only help to share genealogical information that may have otherwise remained hidden, but can also be very rewarding.
On 1st April 1918 the very first air force in the world to be independent of army or navy control came into being. This was the birth of the RAF when towards the end of the First World War the pilots of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service were merged into a new organisation. Adopting the motto 'Per ardua ad astra' that translates as 'Through adversity to the stars', its first Chief of the Air Staff was Major-General Sir Hugh Trenchard.
Those of our predecessors who dedicated many years to the armed forces may have been rewarded with a long service medal and if you find an ancestor who had been given the Meritorious Service Medal (MSM) then they are likely to have been a long serving Warrant officer or non-commissioned officer above the rank of corporal, or equivalent.
The addition of the 1940s decade of the BT27 outgoing passenger lists to those already on TheGenealogist introduces some intriguing ship's passages to research. Using these records researchers can find ancestors who may have braved not only the vagaries of the weather out at sea, but also the threat of the lurking German submarines.
In South East England, bordering London, is the attractive county of Buckinghamshire, named after Bucca, an Anglo-Saxon landowner. The newly released colour tithe maps of Buckinghamshire, that now compliment the tithe records on TheGenealogist, allow us explore the landscape of this area in Victorian times and look for the plots of land owned or occupied by ancestors from all levels of society at the time of the survey.
'Transportation beyond the seas' was a form of punishment that most family historians are aware of as being handed out by the courts in Britain in the 18th and 19th century. We discover more using the newly released HO 8 criminal records
It is not just the great and the good that we can read about in the pages of The Illustrated London News. There are many articles dealing with a wide range of stories. If your ancestor was involved in a newsworthy event then it is worth searching the collection to see if they got a mention in the paper. As well as baptisms there were death notices, wills, marriages, crimes and court cases, plus the political stories of the time.
The recent release of parish records for Warwickshire by TheGenealogist contains many individuals who have been recorded by their local church when they were baptised, married or buried. Inevitably, in amongst their numbers are a few interesting characters - including one Warwickshire landowner who was a double murderer.
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