News and Articles from 2016

We have just launched over 4.1 Million new Passenger List records as part of our growing immigration and emigration record set. These contain the historical records of passengers who departed by sea from Britain in the years between 1909 and 1919. These new records significantly boost the already strong Immigration, Emigration, Naturalisation and passenger list resources on TheGenealogist.

Thanks to new technology and new Silver Halide Film provided by The National Archives, we have now been able to re-scan the entire 1891 census with vastly improved resolution and quality. This greatly improves readability, helping to locate your ancestors and view the relevant images with a superior grayscale format. Our “Deep Zoom” images have over 5 times the resolution of previous images and will be fast to view thanks to the technology used in our new image interface.

This latest release brings the total to over 459 cemeteries with over 53,000 headstones recorded with both photographs and transcriptions.

We have just added a further 17 cemeteries with 2500 new records. We always welcome new volunteers to the project who earn credits towards subscriptions and gifts.

For further details of the project see our featured article.

Released in partnership with the Hampshire Genealogical Society, there are over 2.1 million new fully searchable records of individuals released online for the first time.

With these records, those searching for ancestors from Hampshire can discover almost 1.8 million people recorded within the baptisms from this area in the south of England as far back as 1538 up to 1751.

Family researchers can also discover the details of over 212,000 individuals from marriages between 1538 and 1753 and nearly 143,800 people listed in the burials of Hampshire from 1838 to 1865.

To find out more about this release and to read about the Last Briton to Die on British Soil, see the press release here.

We have added over 130,000 records to our War Memorial database, which has reached a landmark level with over 1,500 War Memorials and over 318,000 records!

The latest additions include the Lowestoft memorial to 2,400 members of the Royal Naval Patrol service and the WW2 Army memorial to the missing at Brookwood in Surrey - which includes quite a few Canadians but also members of the Intelligence corps and Special Operations Executive.

Of special interest is the Theatre Royal Drury Lane - a WW1 memorial to actors and other workers of the stage who died in the war. There are also 2 memorials from the Royal College of Music and one from Clifton (Bristol) Rugby club.

The system includes multiple photographs of each memorial, and links to street view where possible.

Also included are 47 memorials that do not feature names, because they are nonetheless important - such as the RAF memorial on Victoria Embankment and the Australians' memorial at Hyde Park corner.

The individual memorials include nice ones for Edith Cavell, Wellington and Nelson from Norwich cathedral's grounds.

TheGenealogist has digitised and made available all the weekly editions of The Jewish Chronicle from 1905, 1906, 1907 and 1908. They are now available to all Diamond subscribers.

The Jewish Chronicle is the oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper in the world. Published in London it has a wealth of family announcements from births, deaths, bar mitzvahs, wills and naturalisations for you to find your Jewish ancestors within. There are also many letters and adverts that could aid you in your quest.

Many people hit a brick wall where an ancestor seems to disappear from all the records in the U.K. It could be that they have gone abroad for a period or emigrated for good. If your elusive ancestor went to the United States of America, TheGenealogist's new collection of over 220 million US records can help.

These new records include:

• 90 million Social Security Death records
• 1940 Census Images containing 132 million records with searchable transcripts linked to the Enumeration Maps
• Irish immigration records for 604,596 persons arriving in New York 1846-1851

Social Security Death Records

The U.S. Social Security Death Index is a database of over 90 million death records. These give information of those who died from 1936 whose death has been reported to the Social Security Administration. The data includes: Given name and surname; Date of birth; Month and year of death (or full date of death for accounts active in 2000 or later); Social Security number; State or territory where the Social Security number was issued; Last place of residence while the person was alive (ZIP code).

1940 Census

The American census is searchable by first name, surname, age, state, county, street address and place of birth (allowing us to find Brits enumerated in the American census). The records give details of over 132 million individuals with a transcription along with the actual image of the schedule. Where available, the record is also linked to the Enumeration Index Map for the area so that you can see exactly which street your ancestor lived on. Our transcripts also have the added benefit of street addresses included, allowing you to search for a street rather than an individual.

The 1940 Census transcripts on TheGenealogist are not the same as those found elsewhere online; apart from the linked maps and street addresses, we have also audited the images discovering many that haven't been transcribed previously elsewhere. These are also being added to our records. We believe that experienced researchers will welcome this release, knowing that having alternative transcripts to those already available gives the family historian a better chance of finding people whose names have been difficult to read or have contained errors in the other databases.

New York Immigration Records

The New York Port Arrival 1846-1851 series gives the family historian access to useful information about immigrants from Ireland to the United States during the era of the Irish Potato Famine, identifying 604,596 persons who arrived in the Port of New York and giving the name of the ships on which they arrived. Approximately 70 percent of the passengers listed were natives of Ireland, with the rest being nationals of 32 countries that included Canada, Brazil, Saint Croix, Russia, Morocco, the United States and various European countries. Information contained in these records include name, age, town of last residence, destination, passenger arrival date, and codes for the passenger's gender, occupation, literacy, native country, transit status, travel compartment, passenger port of embarkation, and the identification number for the ship manifest.

These new records join TheGenealogist's growing collection of other U.S.A. data sets such as the WWII PoW records, Early Settlers and Emigrants to America, Passenger Lists, American Wills, Almanacs and Directories. They are now available to all Diamond subscribers.

TheGenealogist adds to its growing collection of Parish Records with the release of those for Nuneaton & North Warwickshire.

• Released in partnership with the Nuneaton & North Warwickshire Family History Society there are over 454,000 new fully searchable records of individuals
• Allowing the researcher to discover more than 300,000 people recorded within the baptisms from this area in the heart of England
• Family historians can also discover the details of over 90,000 individuals from marriages and nearly 60,0000 people listed in the burials of Nuneaton & North Warwickshire

If your ancestor was a prominent member of a religious group then you may find them in our new releases at TheGenealogist.co.uk. These include:

• The Year Book of The Church of England in the Dominion of Canada 1926 & 1935
  These year books contain details of the members of clergy in Canada.
• New Zealand Methodist Union Index 1913
  Listing details of Methodist Ministers and their placements in New Zealand up to 1912.
• Catholic Directory 1867 & 1877
  Directories of Catholic Clergy with addresses for England, Scotland and Wales.
• Biographical Dictionary of English Catholics 1534 to 1885
  This work by Joseph Gillow gives biographies of prominent Catholics which often include details of their family, education and achievements.
• Shropshire Roman Catholic Registers 1763-1837
• The Roman Catholics in the County of York 1604
• Various Catholic Record Society volumes
  These include a variety of interesting records including various Catholic Church registers, memoirs and letters of prominent Catholics and Recusant Rolls.
• Jewish Year Books 1896-99, 1901-8, 1910-11, 1918-21, 1925, and 1928-39
  These year books list the details of prominent people within each synagogue, obituaries, Jewish officers in the Army, Navy and Auxiliary Forces, Ministers, MPs, Peers, and even Jewish 'Celebrities' of the time.
• Jewish Synagogue Seatholders in London for 1920, 1922, 1925, 1927, 1929, 1931, 1933, 1937
• The Clergyman's Almanack 1821 & 1822
  These Almanacks list archbishops, bishops, dignitaries, MPs and Peers.
• Register of Missionaries 1796-1923
  A register of the missionaries and deputations of the London Society of Missionaries. This book includes many details about each missionary, as well as listing their wives (including their maiden name).
• Durham Diocesan Calendar 1931

These records compliment the already wide range of religious occupational records such as Cox's Clergy Lists and Crockford's Clerical Directories, Jewish Seatholders, Catholic Registers, and Directories.

You can access these records under the Search tab - scroll down to Occupational Records and select the type of records you are interested in.

Search for your ancestors in TheGenealogist's latest release. It has just added a number of early army records to the already wide-sweeping body of armed forces data available on the site. The earliest records in this new release are 16th century Militia Musters for Somerset. The Certificate of Musters in the County of Somerset 1569 contain names of Militiamen (soldiers raised from the civil population) and what role they carried out including archer, pikeman and light-horseman. The Battery Records of the Royal Artillery 1716-1859 is a prime reference record containing tabulated Battery records, numerous useful historical notes, lists of various officers and more. For Mancunian military forebears The Manchester Regiment 63rd and 96th 1758-1922 includes the succession of Colonels and an alphabetical roll of regimental officers from 1758 to 1923 showing dates of service with the Regiment, dates of promotion and date and reason for being struck off. With the centenary of the First World War these records can be used to find casualties of all ranks from "The Manchesters" in the Great War. With a list of Honours and Awards, including foreign, these digitised books also provide an interesting in-depth history of the regiment so that researchers can follow the postings of The Manchester Regiment and the action in which it took part. Those researching Victorian soldiers will welcome the inclusion of several early Army Lists in this release for January 1838, December 1838, April 1886 and The Annual Army and Militia List 1855.

Completing this Early Military Records release is The Waterloo Roll Call of 1815 where you can search using Title, Forename, Surname, Regiment, Rank, and other fields where given. This list is of mainly officers who were present at the Battle of Waterloo in Belgium on June 18th 1815. They fought under the Duke of Wellington, whose record we can find in this collection. All these records can be searched from the Master Search on TheGenealogist, and are now available to all Diamond subscribers.

TheGenealogist has released over 6.23 million fully searchable records for the registers of baptisms, marriages, marriage banns and burials for Norfolk with images of the original registers . This includes more than 276,000 records relating to the boundary areas of Suffolk, bringing the total to over 9.8 million records for our project in partnership with The Norfolk Record Office.

It is now easier than ever to research Norfolk ancestor's in the parish registers of this Eastern English county. With some of the surviving records reaching back as far as the early 1500s, this is a fantastically rich resource for family historians to use for discovering Norfolk ancestors.

Released in partnership with The Norfolk Record Office, the registers of baptisms, marriages, burials and banns of marriage cover the majority of parishes in the Diocese of Norwich. This also includes a number of Suffolk parishes in and near Lowestoft that make up the deanery of Lothingland. Also covered by this release are the parishes in the deanery of Fincham and Feltwell that were part of the Diocese of Ely in south-west Norfolk.

These new records reveal the names of U.S. military as well as U.S. and some Allied civilians who were prisoners of war and internees.

They cover the years 1942-1947 for prisoners of both Germany and Japan. The record for each prisoner provides such information as serial number, personal name, branch of service or civilian status and much more.

Click here to read more...

Complementing the early UK Telephone Directory from 1899-1900 that is already available on TheGenealogist, this new release includes the 1907 Post Office National Directory which adds a resource for finding names and addresses before the 1911 census. In addition, TheGenealogist has released the 1938 South Wales District Post Office Telephone Directory. Click here to read more...

We have added over 37,450 individuals to our Baptism Transcripts for Worcestershire in partnership with Malvern Family History Society, expanding our coverage and bringing the total to over 2 million individuals. With years ranging from 1544-1891

Click Here to view the coverage of our Parish Record Transcripts

TheGenealogist.co.uk in conjunction with the Surrey Heritage Centre, is launching the Surrey Colour Tithe Maps.

Westmorland Colour Tithe Maps are published in partnership with The National Archives and is just one of the many counties to be conserved and digitised by TheGenealogist. Many more will be published in the forthcoming months.

These releases bring the addition of wonderfully detailed colour tithe maps to complement the online collection of tithe schedules and greyscale maps that have already been so well received by family historians researching where their ancestors lived.

This rich store of land occupation and usage records were created in a massive survey of England and Wales from between 1836 and the early 1850s.

In these early years of the Victorian period, at a time when people were moving from the countryside to the towns, many of the urban areas that we see today as part of cities and towns can be found mapped out as tithable plots. This includes some parts of London and other big cities where cottages and gardens are plotted in the same way as fields and woods are in the countryside.


These records are made available online by TheGenealogist in a partnership with The National Archives and several County Record Offices.

Brief History of Tithes
Tithes were an amount of produce given to the church, originally a tenth, then finally it became a tax on the income from the land. This was paid to the Church of England and to some lay people who owned the rights that had previously been due to the dissolved monasteries. In 1866 the majority of England and Wales was still paying what the government recognised was a discredited tax. Before they could legislate, however, they first had to collect details of what people paid - and so all the owners and occupiers of land subject to tithes were recorded and thus this fantastic resource was created.

With over 2.5 million Essex Parish Records our latest release makes TheGenealogist the place to go for Essex Research.

The launch of 900,000 new Essex Parish Records transcripts brings the total coverage for that county to over 2.5 million individuals. Spanning the period from 1512 to 2005

These records with our BMDs and Census allow family historians to research ancestors from this eastern part of England with ease.

We have added over 158,000 individuals to our Baptism Transcripts for Worcestershire in partnership with Malvern Family History Society, expanding our coverage and bringing the total to over 2 million individuals. With years ranging from 1544-1891

Click Here to view the coverage of our Parish Record Transcripts

TheGenealogist has added over 150,000 World War II Prisoner of War records to its already significant military records collection. These new records detail Officers and other ranks from the British Army, Royal Navy, RAF and those members of the British Empire land forces that were held as Prisoners of War in Germany and German Occupied territories.

This release will allow researchers to discover servicemen held by the Germans between 1939-1945 and includes many of the brave escapees whose stories of breaking out and dashing to freedom have captured the imagination for decades.

These records allow us to:

• Research POWs who served in Armies and other land forces of Britain and the Empire 1939-45 along with the Naval and Air Forces of Great Britain and the Empire 1939-1945
• Find names and details of men who were captured and incarcerated in German POW camps in Europe
• Check the details such as names, service numbers, and regiments of ancestors that were German POWs
• Search for daring escapees from within the camp lists
• Research where your military ancestors were held, revealing their camp number and location
• Discover the ranks, POW numbers, Service numbers and Regiments of those held

Covering the Nazi German camps in Europe, these lists are taken from official alphabetical nominal registers and reveal names and other particulars of:

• 94,608 British POWs in Germany, including Officers and other ranks

• 39,805 POWs from Empire Land Forces

• 19,250 Naval & Air Force POWs from Britain & its Empire

Joining an already comprehensive range of military records on TheGenealogist that span from 1661 to the 1940s, these lists are a useful addition for researchers. TheGenealogist’s military collections already include Army, Navy and Air Force Lists, Dambuster records, First World War POWs, plus many other records.

Market leaders in the family history retail sector S&N Genealogy Supplies have just announced the release of TreeView - a new family history software package designed for Windows and Mac. TreeView is the only software available that supports Windows, Mac, iOS and Android, with access to premium genealogical records and all for just £39.95!

TreeView has been designed by family historians to fill the gap for a powerful, intuitive and feature packed family tree program that is easy to use from the outset. TreeView stores your family tree on your computer with the option to easily sync your tree with TreeView.co.uk and TheGenealogist.co.uk. There is also a free iOS and Android app allowing you to keep your family history at your fingertips! Privacy options for your online tree allows you to retain complete control over your research.

Powerful Features

• Access your data wherever you are by syncing your tree between the software and all of your mobile devices at the click of a button.
• Navigate your family tree using a variety of different views including pedigree, family, ancestors, descendants, hourglass, fan and even a full tree view.
• Create beautiful charts and detailed reports in seconds
• Easily add details of your ancestors by attaching facts, notes, images, addresses, sources and citations.
• View your entire tree on screen, or zoom in to a single ancestor.
• Quickly discover how different people in your family tree are related using the relationship calculator.
• Identify anomalies in your data with the problem finder.
• Map out your ancestors lives - use the map view to track your ancestors life events across the world.
• Import or export your family tree using the GEDCOM standard.

TreeView has received praise from both genealogy reviewers and users:

Reviewers:

• Chris Paton, professional genealogist, writer and blogger:
• • “One of the most versatile family history software products now available”
  • “Navigating around TreeView is extremely straightforward”
• Nick Peers, genealogy writer and blogger:
• • “It keeps your research file in sync with the web via TheGenealogist hosted tree, as well as your iPad, iPhone or Android device”

Users:

• “I am so impressed with Treeview, I will be using it for my own research, it is so easy and user friendly, and has all the facilities  you could wish for.”
• “A comprehensive multi-platform package that keeps your tree backed up online with  stunningly versatile charts and reports.”
• “It’s quick to load and speedy in use”
• “I particularly like the mapping facility”

There are three versions of TreeView available:

• Free Edition - Includes essential features, with no limits on the number of individuals or the amount of data you can add
• Basic Edition (Download only, £24.95) - Adds support for:
• • Charting
  • Reporting
• Premium Edition (CD & DVD, £39.95) - Includes all features of TreeView Basic, plus:
• • 4 Month Diamond Subscription to TheGenealogist.co.uk (Worth £59.95!)
  • Printed Quick Start Guide
  • Cassell's Gazetteer of Great Britain & Ireland 1893 (Worth £16.95!)
  • Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography (Worth £16.95!)
  • English, Welsh & Scottish Landowners 1873 (Worth £36.90!)
  • Irish Landowners 1876 (Worth £12.95!)

Go to TreeView.co.uk today and find out more.

This release features the registers of baptisms, marriages, burials and banns of marriage covering the majority of parishes in Norfolk.

With access to over 3.6 million individuals, you can search transcripts linked to the original images!

Some of the surviving records are from the early 1500s. These vital records will allow family history researchers from all over the world to search for their Norfolk ancestors online for the first time.

You can read more here.