News and Articles from 2017

We have added over 1.9 million individuals to our parish record collection covering the county of Sussex. Published in association with The Parish Record Transcription Society, this second release of records for the English county more than doubles the number of Parish Records available for the area.

There are now over 3 million individuals in our Sussex Parish Record Collection.

The new batch covers individual records of:

• 1,278,413 Baptisms
• 308,746 Marriages
• 327,091 Burials

The Parish Record Transcription Society (PRTSoc) worked with TheGenealogist and S&N to make their records available online. With a combined 3 million plus individuals from baptism, marriage and burial records now fully searchable it is easier than ever to discover ancestors from Sussex by turning to TheGenealogist's Parish Record Collection.

These records are published as a result of a major project undertaken by PRTSoc staff and dedicated volunteers to transcribe the parish registers of West Sussex with the aim of preserving them for generations to come.

TheGenealogist has just released over 2.7 million BT27 records for the 1930s. These Outbound Passenger Lists are part of an expanding immigration and emigration record set on TheGenealogist that feature the historical records of passengers who sailed out of United Kingdom ports in the years between 1930 and 1939. With the release of this decade of records, the already strong Immigration, Emigration, Naturalisation and passenger list resources on TheGenealogist have been expanded again.

The fully searchable BT27 records from The National Archives released today will allow researchers to

• Discover potential family members travelling together using TheGenealogist's SmartSearch. This unique system is able to recognise family members together on the same voyage. In this situation, it will display a family icon which allows you to view the entire family with one click.
• Find people travelling to America, Canada, India, New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere in the Passenger lists of people departing by sea from the United Kingdom.
• View images of the original passenger list documents that had been kept by the Board of Trade's Commercial and Statistical Department and its successors. Discover the age, last address and where the passenger intended to make their permanent residence.
• These fully indexed records allow family historians to search by name, year, country of departure, country of arrival, port of embarkation and port of destination.
Those with ancestors who sailed from Britain in the 1930s will welcome this fascinating new release from TheGenealogist, which adds to their current Emigration records, now totalling over 19 million and dating back to 1896.

To find out more, read Nick Thorne's article "Passenger lists from the 1930s record the voyages of our ancestors".

The first part of an exciting new major record set has been released to help family historians find where their ancestors lived in early Edwardian England. The 1910 Lloyd George Domesday Survey combines a unique combination of maps and residential data, held by The National Archives, which enables researchers to precisely locate their ancestor's house on large scale (5 feet to the mile) hand annotated maps of London.

TheGenealogist's new release links individual properties to extremely detailed ordnance survey maps used in 1910 which are coupled with the accompanying books that will also provide researchers with basic information relative to the valuation of each property, including the valuation assessment number, map reference, owner, occupier, situation, description and extent. It will also enable family historians and those doing house histories to locate a specific house using an address that has previously been found in a census, or in a street directory. Fully searchable by name, county, parish and street.

• Individual properties linked to extremely detailed ordnance survey maps
• Locate an address from a census or street directory on a map
• Fully searchable by name, county, parish and street
• Zoom-in to individual properties as they existed in 1910

The initial release from TheGenealogist is for the City of London and Paddington with maps and their index records. Future releases will expand out across the country with cross-linked maps wherever they are available.

You can read Nick Thorne's article, which explores this fascinating new collection here.

TheGenealogist has added another 15,000 names from 53 new War Memorials.

In time for Armistice day TheGenealogist has added to their War Memorial records on the website so that there are now over 383,000 fully searchable records.

This latest release includes war memorials from Worcestershire and South Yorkshire as well as some further monuments from Australia, Canada, London and various other British counties. A more unusual one added in this release is from Olds, in Alberta, Canada - the memorial is a Sherman tank!

One record features a Sheffield soldier who was finally recognised after nearly one hundred years, you can read more in our article here.

TheGenealogist has added over 140,000 individuals to their Parish Records for Worcestershire and Warwickshire to increase the coverage of these midland counties.

Released in association with Malvern Family History Society and the Nuneaton & North Warwickshire Family History Society, this is an ongoing project to make available high quality transcripts to family history researchers.

• 97,841 individuals have been added to the Worcestershire baptism records
• 44,250 individuals join the Warwickshire baptism records

These new records can be used to find your ancestors' baptisms, in fully searchable records that cover parishes from this area of England. With records that reach back to the mid 16th century, this release allows family historians to find the names of ancestors, their parents' forenames, the father's occupation (where noted), and the parish where the event took place.

If you have not found your ancestor in the various British census returns, and you know that they may have been serving at the time in the British Army, then The Worldwide Army Index for 1851, 1861 and 1871 from TheGenealogist may help you to find them.

Many thousands of men of the British Army were serving overseas in far flung parts of the British Empire over the 1800s. This index of names is compiled from the musters contained in WO 10-11-12 Series War Office Paylists held at the National Archives, Kew. The 1851, 1861 and 1871 Worldwide Army List lists all officers and other ranks serving in the first quarter of 1851, second quarter of 1861 and 1871 together with their regimental HQ location (Although the 1861 index excludes officers as they were not mustered in all the Paylists). The index is, therefore, effectively a military surrogate for the census.

Over 70,000 records have extra notes that can indicate whether a soldier was discharged, on leave (along with their location), transferred, or retired. Many notes include a place of birth and former occupation.

Also included within the records are recruits, boy soldiers, bandsmen and civilians working in the armed forces as clerks, pension recruiters and suchlike. Colonial regiments, which invariably contained numbers of British subjects are also featured.

You can read military researcher Roger Nixon's article about life in the British Army to find out more about these records.

The Illustrated War News was a weekly magazine during the First World War, published by The Illustrated London News and Sketch Ltd. of London. The IWN publication contained illustrated reports related entirely to the war and comprised of articles, photographs, diagrams and maps. From 1916 it was issued as a 40-page publication in portrait format, having been landscape prior to this. It claimed to have the largest number of artist-correspondents reporting on the progress of the war until it ceased publication in 1918.

Over 2,200,000 individuals added to our Parish Record Collection for Somerset and Dorset.

TheGenealogist has released Baptism records for Somerset covering the years 1538-1996, along with Burial and Crematorium records for Somerset and Dorset covering 1563-2003. In association with Somerset and Dorset FHS, these new records cover hundreds of parishes for the counties.

Somerset and Dorset Family History Society worked with TheGenealogist to publish their records online, making over 2.2 million individuals from baptism and burial records fully searchable. Ann-Marie Wilkinson, the Chair of Somerset and Dorset FHS said:

"The Somerset and Dorset Family History Society are very pleased to be working with TheGenealogist to bring these records into the online community. Also we will be able to provide access for members to TheGenealogist from our Research Centre."

Mark Bayley, Head of Online Development at TheGenealogist, welcomed Somerset and Dorset FHS to the growing number of family history societies on both TheGenealogist and FHS-Online, saying:

"We're delighted that Somerset and Dorset FHS chose to publish their records through TheGenealogist and FHS-Online. This release adds to the ever expanding collection of parish records on both websites. These partnerships help societies boost their funds whilst bringing their records to a much wider audience, through online publication."

This release joins TheGenealogist's Somerset and Dorset collection including Bishop's Transcripts and parish records for many areas and years to form a major resource for the county.

TheGenealogist has added over 1.1 million individuals to its parish record collection. Published in association with The Parish Record Transcription Society, this first tranche of records will be followed by more releases in the near future.

This new release covers individual records of:

• 717,000 Baptisms
• 213,000 Marriages
• 208,000 Burials

You can read our article featuring these records about a particularly violent gang of men who terrorised the South coast in the early 1740s and a story of religious division.

You can read more about this release here.

We have enlarged our Court & Criminal Records collection so that even more black sheep ancestors can now be searched for and found on our site. With a new release of records you can unearth all sorts of ancestors who came up against the law - whether they were a victim, acquitted, convicted of a minor offence or found guilty of a major crime such as murder.

Uniquely this release gives you the ability to search for victims of the crime (Over 132,000); hunt for people using their name or alias, or look for an offence; and see images of the pages from the books and registers that reveal even more fascinating information about the individual.

As these records cover a vast range of transgressions we are able to find men and women who stole small items such as shirts, potatoes, boots etc. We can also discover people who had married bigamously, forged money, uttered a counterfeit half-crown, burgled, murdered or were accused of other crimes.

From petty thieves to the man who murdered the Prime Minister - click here to read our article on the new releases

We have extended our UK Parish Records collection with a new release of 650,000 parish records for Nottinghamshire. These fully searchable records reach back to 1633 and cover parishes from this important East Midland county of England, so can be used to find your ancestors' baptisms, marriages and burials.

You can use these transcripts to find the names of ancestors, parents' forenames (in the case of baptisms), father's occupation (where noted), abode or parish, parish that the event took place in, the date of the event, and in the case of marriage records the bride's maiden name and the witnesses' names.

Click here to see how the new records feature Lord Byron and his mathematical daughter.

With the 1921 census still years away from public release, TheGenealogist has launched one of their most exciting record sets this year. Their new circa 1921 resource covers 23 counties and includes over one million records. These form part of the Trade, Residential & Telephone record sets on TheGenealogist, covering a period currently not served by a census.

The fully transcribed, searchable records released today will allow researchers to:

• search on forename, surname and profession
• search by street, town and county
• look for a business name
• discover your ancestors’ addresses
• find professions listed

Read the full press release here.

In our latest article, Nick Thorne investigates these new records and finds many famous names, such as Harry Gordon Selfridge, founder of Selfridge's department store; Jesse Boot, who was behind the chemist chain that still carries his name; Winnie-the-Pooh's author A. A. Milne; J.M. Barrie, who created the characters of Peter Pan and Wendy; plus the celebrated economist, John Maynard Keynes.

Read Nick Thorne's article - Addressing where they were in 1921.

We have just added over 1,363,000 individuals to our Northumberland Parish Record Collection. These fully searchable records, that cover the ancient parishes of the northernmost county of England, make it easier to find your ancestors' baptisms, marriages and burials. Some of the records can take you as far back as 1560.

This release includes 903,314 individuals in Baptisms, 157,329 individuals in Marriages, and 302,378 individuals in Burials.

Within these records you can find Grace Horsley Darling, the famous lighthouse keeper’s daughter who saved a shipwrecked paddle steamer. She was born in 1815 at her grandfather's cottage in Bamburgh in Northumberland. Read more in our press release.

Find out more by reading our press release.

We have just added over 100,000 records to our occupational collection that will allow you to find ancestors with a medical background. These records list all qualified Doctors/Dentists in the U.K. at the time, including their name, address, date of registration and qualifications.

These new releases include:

• The Medical Directory 1848
• The Medical Register 1861
• The Medical Register 1873
• The Medical Register 1875
• The Medical Register 1891
• The Medical Register 1903
• The Dentists Register 1888
• The Dentists Register 1937
• The Royal College of Physicians List of Fellows 1908
• St Thomas's Hospital List of Old Students, June 1936

We have just released the colour tithe maps that cover the City of York and Ainsty to its National Tithe Records collection to compliment the grayscale maps and apportionment books that are already available. In addition, we have added 23 new residential and commercial directory books to our ever expanding collection of Trade, Residential and Telephone Directories to help those with Yorkshire ancestors find their addresses. Here is a list of the new directories:

• N and E Ridings Yorkshire Directory, 1921
• The Post Office Bradford Directory, 1921
• Yorkshire, West Riding 1936 Kellys Directory
• Bradford Trade Directory 1920-1921
• Bradford District Trade Directory 1920-1921
• Kelly's Directory of Bradford 1927
• Yorkshire - Leeds & Bradford Directory circa 1861
• Hull Directory 1872
• Leeds Directory 1907
• Leeds Trade Directory 1837
• Yorkshire, History, Directory and Gazetteer 1822 (Vol.1 West Riding)
• Yorkshire, History, Directory and Gazetteer 1823 (Vol.2 East and North Ridings)
• Gent's History of Hull 1735
• Huddersfield County Borough Directory 1937
• York Directory 1897
• Kelly's Directory of North Riding Yorkshire 1897
• Sheffield and District Directory 1912
• 1822 Yorkshire North Riding Directory
• The East Riding of Yorkshire Directory 1897
• Huddersfield Directory 1937
• Hull Directory 1897
• Historic Sketch of the Town of Sheffield 1822
• Yorkshire & the Northern Province Phone Book [1900-01]
• Halifax, Huddersfield and Dewsbury 1863-1864 Mercantile Directory

You can read Nick Thorne's article on finding out more about your Yorkshire ancestors here.

TheGenealogist has just released four and a half million BT27 records for the 1920s. These Outbound Passenger Lists are part of the growing immigration and emigration record sets on TheGenealogist and contain the historical records of passengers who departed by sea from U.K. ports in the years between 1920 and 1929. With the addition of this decade of records, the already strong Immigration, Emigration, Naturalisation and Passenger List resources on TheGenealogist have been significantly expanded.

The fully searchable records released today will allow researchers to:

• Identify potential family members travelling together with SmartSearch. TheGenealogist's unique system can recognise family members together on the same voyage. In this case it will display a family icon which allows you to view the entire family with one click.
• Find people travelling to America, Canada, India, New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere in the Passenger lists of people leaving the United Kingdom by sea.
• See images of the original documents which were kept by the Board of Trade's Commercial and Statistical Department and its successors.
• Discover the ages, last address and where the passenger intended to make their permanent residence.
• These fully indexed records enable family historians to search by name, year, country of departure, country arrival, port of embarkation and port of destination.

Those with ancestors who travelled out of Britain will welcome this fascinating new release from TheGenealogist. It adds to their Immigration and Emigration record set which already includes passenger lists from as far back as 1896 and the valuable Naturalisation and Denization records.

In our latest article, Nick Thorne investigates these new records and finds many well known names from the time, including actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr, war poet Siegfried Sassoon, founder of the Boy Scouts Lt General Robert Baden-Powell, Liberal Politican and Prime Minister David Lloyd George and the one time leader of the Suffragette movement Emmeline Pankhurst, among others.

Read Nick Thorne's article - Ancestral Voyage

We have expanded our Newspaper and Magazine collection with the release of more editions of The Sphere that cover August 1914 to June 1919.

Using the historical newspapers and magazines resource on TheGenealogist enables researchers to follow current affairs that may have affected or concerned our ancestors at the time. Because the articles were written as events were occurring, they provide contemporary accounts of the world that our ancestors lived in and can furnish us with great insights into opinions of the time. In the case of the First World War years, covered by this release of The Sphere, we can gain information about individuals or read about situations that are similar to ones that our ancestors may have found themselves in.

The Sphere was an illustrated paper founded by Clement Shorter (1857-1926), who was also responsible for establishing the Tatler, and it covered general news stories from the UK and around the world.

Click here to read Nick Thorne's article, "The Sphere: Providing Insights into Your Ancestor's Lives".

The new records cover 35 different registers of people who were entitled to vote in Wakefield, West Yorkshire and other constituencies situated in Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset and New Westminster in Canada. They are taken from the official lists produced to record who was entitled to vote in the various parliamentary elections. These records have been added to our Poll and Electoral Roll collection which covers millions of records.

Also being released is The Roll of Mayors of the Borough and Lord Mayors of the City of Leicester, which can take the researcher all the way back to ancient times! It records the names of men holding that office from the 10th year of the reign of King John in 1209, all through history to 1935.

You can read our latest article on the evolution of parliament and election eligibility here.

The TV series 'Indian Summers' starring Julie Walters has created an interest in India under British rule. This new record set reveals information about those ancestors that lived in the subcontinent, their lifestyle and the communities that they lived in.

Millions of British people went out to India in the past and so many family historians will have an ancestor that made the journey. For some, India would turn out to be their last resting place and among their ranks were merchants, soldiers, sailors, civil servants, missionaries and their families.

This Release Includes:

• Parish Records of British in India
• Headstone Records of British Cemeteries in India
• British War Memorials in India
• East India Registers
• Indian Army and Civil Service Lists
• Image Archive - British in India

To browse the Image Archive for relevant photographs, search for the tags 'India' and more specifically 'Hill Station' for pictures like the one above.

The release of The British in India Collection on TheGenealogist now allows family historians to find ancestors who went out to British India in a very broad-ranging set of resources ranging from the early 1800s up to the 1920s.

We have just released a batch of London school and university records to join our ever growing educational collection.

Researchers can use this new data to find ancestors who attended or taught at a variety of Educational establishments within London between 1831 and 1927.

The list of records included in this release are:

• University of London Historical Record 1836-1926
• The Skylark Magazine from Haberdashers' Aske's Hampstead School 1918
• The Wilsonian Magazine April 1914-April 1919
• University College School, London Register 1831-1891
• Royal College of Chemistry, Royal School of Mines and Royal College of Science Register of Associates
• Record of Old Westminsters Vols 1 and 2 earliest times -1927
• King's College, London Calendar 1921-1922
• Dulwich College War Record 1914-1919

You can read more about the release, including an example from the records here.

TheGenealogist has released the Colour Tithe Maps for Middlesex. These join the grayscale maps of the National Tithe records already available on TheGenealogist. This latest issue covers parishes in the County of Middlesex and will allow researchers to view the plots where their ancestors may have owned or occupied land at the time of the survey which took place at the start of Victoria's reign.

The searchable schedules, or apportionment books, contain detailed information on land use and these are linked to the maps on TheGenealogist. Clicking through from the transcript to a map will jump straight to the plot for an individual and can reveal buildings, fields, houses, rivers, lakes, woods and also cover villages, towns and cities.

This is a new collection of Quarter Session rolls and books from Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire, Surrey and Middlesex covering dates from as far back as the 16th century and up to, in some cases, the Victorian period.

The Quarter Session records were produced by local courts traditionally held at four set times each year. Being made up of two or more justices of the peace and presided over by a chairman, they sat with a jury at Epiphany (in January), Easter (March/April), Midsummer (June/July) and then at Michaelmas (September/October).

Find the names of people before the courts that include those indicted, witnesses, as well as the names of the Justices of the Peace and the Clerks. Some of the earliest records in this release reach as far back as 1549 for Middlesex and 1591 in Worcester

TheGenealogist has just launched a new collection of Police Letter Books for Hampshire. This is an intriguing mixture of promotions, retirements, movements, and other observations about Police officers in this county from 1891 to 1911. In amongst its pages, you will be able to trace the career of your Hampshire police ancestors as they rise, or even fall.

These records reveal names and collar numbers of officers promoted, reduced in rank or dismissed from the force for committing various acts of misconduct. The misdemeanors often seem to involve alcohol, ranging from accepting a glass of beer to being drunk on duty. For those more competent officers, who were commended for their actions in the pages of these documents, you can read the actions that had been seen as deserving of inclusion in the Letter Books.

Click here to read our article on PC John Walsh, whose highs and lows are chronicled in the new records

We have just released the Colour Tithe Maps for Northumberland. These maps join the previously released greyscale maps for the majority of the country that have been already published.

• Containing over 600 colour maps, linking to over 62,000 tithe records for this county
• These maps are a fantastic resource that enable you to see where your ancestors owned or occupied land in Northumberland
• The only online National collection of tithe records and maps

The searchable schedules, or apportionment books, contain detailed information on land use and these are linked to the maps on TheGenealogist. Clicking through from the transcript to a map will jump straight to the plot for an individual and can reveal buildings, fields, houses, rivers, lakes, woods and also cover villages, towns and cities.

We have added over 282,000 individuals to our extensive Parish Record collection. With records from Essex, Cumberland and Norfolk, making it easier to find your ancestors' baptisms, marriages and burials in these fully searchable records covering ancient parishes. Some of the records go back as far as 1672.

We are all aware that parish records will give us those all important dates and names for our ancestors - but in some cases they can also reveal interesting stories as well. When a vicar or parish clerk feels that the person that they are entering into the register needs an extra explanation, other than just the date and the name of the person, then some fascinating historical accounts can emerge for researchers to read. Click here to read our article on The Fat Man of Maldon.

The new release of War Memorial Records mean there are now over 350,000 searchable records. This latest release includes war memorials from London, along with further English counties including Cumbria, Berkshire, Warwickshire and Suffolk. The collection also stretches across the globe to encompass new War Memorials situated in Perth, Australia and the Province of Saskatchewan in Canada. Fully searchable by name, researchers can read transcriptions and see images of the dedications that commemorate soldiers who have fallen in the Boer War, WW1 and various other conflicts.

In amongst these newly published War Memorial Records are those for St John's church in Bassenthwaite, Cumbria. This is a fascinating WW1 roll with men who died or served including information such as that for Louis Willis Bell who died at Rouen as a result of poison gas. Another notable entry is that for Isaac Hall. This soldier enlisted in January 1915 in 7th Border Regiment and was discharged on the 21 March 1917 because of wounds resulting in the loss of his left leg.

We have added over 60,000 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