News and Articles from 2018

We have now added Colour Tithe Maps for Rutland and Huntingdonshire. Complimenting the already released schedule books and greyscale maps, these colour maps add an attractive visual aid to find where your ancestor lived in the mid 1800s.

These high resolution colour digitised maps provide greater detail. With this release, researchers can see the plots owned or occupied by ancestors that lived in the counties of Rutland and Huntingdonshire at the time of the survey in the 19th century.

These tagged colour maps and their fully searchable tithe schedule records have been reproduced from the records held at The National Archives. The collection gives the family history researcher the ability to search by name and keyword (for example parish or county) to look for all levels of society from large estate owners to occupiers of tiny plots such as a cottage or a cowshed.

We have just released the maps and field books for the Westminster area in our unique record set The Lloyd George Domesday Survey. This unique combination of maps and residential data held by The National Archives has been digitised by TheGenealogist so that researchers can locate where an ancestor lived. The maps are large scale and exceptionally detailed with hand annotations that, in the majority of cases, allow family historians to find the exact property in the street.

Researchers often have difficulty using modern maps to find where ancestors lived as road names changed over time, the Blitz saw areas bombed to destruction, developers changed sites out of all resemblance from what had stood there before and lanes and roads were extinguished to build housing estates and office blocks. As these records are linked to the maps from the period this means that you have the ability to find the streets as they existed when the survey was carried out and often pinpoint where the old properties had once been.

Complementing the maps on TheGenealogist are the accompanying Field Books that will provide researchers with detailed information relative to the valuation of each property, including the valuation assessment number, map reference, owner, occupier, situation, description and extent.

These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist. To find out more about the release, you can read Nick Thorne's Article revealing the Lady with the Lamp in the records.

TheGenealogist has added to its Court and Criminal Records collection with the release of almost 150,000 entries for prisoners locked up in Newgate prison along with any alias they were known by as well as the names of their victims. Sourced from the HO 26 Newgate Prison Registers held by The National Archives, these documents were created over the years 1791 to 1849.

The Newgate Prison Registers give family history researchers details of ancestors who were imprisoned in the fearsome building that once stood next to the Old Bailey in the City of London. The records reveal the names of prisoners, offences the prisoner had been convicted for, the date of their trial and where they were tried. The records also give the name of the victims and any alias that the criminals may have used before.

TheGenealogist has added over 1.5 million individuals to their Warwickshire Parish Record Collection to increase the coverage of this Midland county for researchers wanting to find their ancestors' baptisms, marriages and burials.

This is the final release of records published in association with Warwickshire County Record Office. These records now totall nearly 5 million individuals which have the benefit of high-quality images to complement the transcripts, making them a valuable resource for those with ancestors from this area.

You can find out more about this release in Nick Thorne's article where he discovers a Famous Rugbeian Poet within the records.

TheGenealogist has added over 42,000 records of Officers that died in the Great War, along with additional Rolls of Honour and over 30,000 War Memorials, War Graves plans, maps and listings. These fully searchable records join an already strong WW1 Collection on the site, providing a highly useful resource for those seeking their ancestors caught up in the conflict.

This new release will allow researchers to:

• Discover Officers who gave their lives in the First World War
• View images of the HMSO's Officers Died in the Great War Part I & II 1914-1918
• Find an officer's rank, cause of death, date of death and regiment
• Look for names commemorated in Rolls of Honour and War Memorials
• See War Graves plans, maps and listings

Family history researchers with ancestors who fought in the First World War will welcome these fascinating new releases that add to TheGenealogist's well-received collection of World War 1 records.

To find out more about this release, read Nick Thorne's article How to Find Soldiers that Died in WW1.

TheGenealogist has added over 4 million individuals to their BT27 Outbound Passenger Lists collection. These records join the ever-expanding Immigration, Emigration, Naturalisation and Passenger List resources on TheGenealogist. With the release of this decade of records, researchers can discover ancestors who departed from the UK by ship to destinations across the globe, such as the USA, Canada, India, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere.

The fully searchable BT27 records from The National Archives, which have just been released, will allow researchers to:

• Locate family members making a journey together using TheGenealogist's SmartSearch. This unique system is able to recognise family members travelling on the same trip. In this situation it will display a family icon which allows you to view the entire family with one click.
• View images of the original passenger list documents compiled for the Board of Trade's Commercial and Statistical Department and its successors.
• Discover the ages, occupations, addresses and where the passengers intended to make their permanent residences.
• 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 family history researchers with ancestors who sailed from the UK in the 1950s will welcome this fascinating new release from TheGenealogist, which adds to their current Emigration records that take you back to 1896.

Find out more about these records and discover celebrity voyages in Nick Thorne's Article.

TheGenealogist has added tens of thousands of additional individuals from school registers to its Educational Records. The records can be used to discover a school pupil or university student’s achievements. Educational records will confirm birth dates and sometimes place of birth. They can give the father’s name and address, which is useful when they are missing from the census. The records can also give details of former students' occupations and further information.

These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist.

To find out more about the records, read Nick Thorne's Article "newly launched education records and discovers a few celebrities of the day...".

TheGenealogist is releasing the third part of its unique online record set, The Lloyd George Domesday Survey. This major resource, based on records created for the Valuation Office survey, can now be used to find where an ancestor lived in 1910 in the area around Brent, Kingsbury, Willesden and Wembley. This useful combination of maps and residential data from The National Archives is being digitised by TheGenealogist to bring it online for the first time. These records precisely locate an ancestor's house on a large scale and extraordinarily detailed hand annotated map, pinpointing the exact property.

These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist.

To find out more about the records, read Nick Thorne's Article "Brent as a rural idyll in 1900s".

TheGenealogist has added over 1.5 million individuals to their Warwickshire Parish Record Collection, which increases the coverage of this Midland county for family researchers to find their ancestors' baptisms, marriages and burials.

These records are released in association with Warwickshire County Record Office and have the benefit of high-quality images to complement the transcripts, making them a valuable resource for those with ancestors from this area.

These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist.

To find out more about these records, read Nick Thorne's article "Exploring the Parish Registers of Warwickshire".

TheGenealogist is adding to its Court and Criminal Records collection with the release of over 160,000 records of prisoners at the bar and their victims from the CRIM 9 records held by The National Archives. These documents were created by the Central Criminal Court and document the After Trial Calendar of Prisoners.

After Trial Calendars give family history researchers details of ancestors who were up before the Old Bailey, revealing the names of prisoners that had appeared before the court, the committing magistrates, offences the prisoner had been indicted for, the date of their trial and who they were tried before. The records give the verdict of the jury, previous convictions and the sentence or order of the court. Other information in these records are the names of the victim and the level of education or 'Degree of Instruction' as well as false names that the criminals may have used to try and hide their tracks from the authorities.

• Find ancestors accused of crimes ranging from stealing a matchbox to murder
• Discover people standing trial as forgers, baby farmers, German spies and more
• Uncover some of the aliases adopted by criminal ancestors
• See the occupation or trade of the offender
• Research records covering the period 1855-1915

Read our article on the bicycle thief who became the infamous 'Brides in the bath murderer'.

TheGenealogist is releasing the second part of its exciting new record set, The Lloyd George Domesday Survey. This major new release can be used to find where an ancestor lived in 1910 in the area around Barnet, Edgware, Finchley, Friern Barnet, Hendon and Totteridge. This unique combination of maps and residential data, held by The National Archives and being digitised by TheGenealogist, can precisely locate your ancestor's house on large scale and exceptionally detailed hand annotated maps that indicate the exact property.

• Links individual properties to extremely detailed ordnance survey maps used in 1910
• Shows the original Field book often giving a detailed description of the property
• Pinpoint an address found in a census or street directory down to a specific house on the map
• Fully searchable by name, parish and street
• Zoom into the maps to show individual properties as they existed in 1910

Complementing the maps on TheGenealogist are the accompanying Field Books that will also provide researchers with detailed information relative to the valuation of each property, including the valuation assessment number, map reference, owner, occupier, situation, description and extent.

This mammoth project is ongoing with over 94,500 Field Books, each having hundreds of pages to digitise with associated large scale IR121 annotated OS maps. This second release from TheGenealogist includes the extra detailed IR58 Field Books which feature more information about the properties that have been surveyed.

The release this month covers Barnet, Edgware, Finchley, Friern Barnet, Hendon and Totteridge, just to the south of Hertfordshire. These join the City of London and Paddington Index and maps already released. More areas are coming soon for other London Boroughs and the county of Buckinghamshire.

To find out more about the records, read Nick Thorne's Article "Finding the Baronet of Barnet".

TheGenealogist has just released 116,218 records into its ever growing Poll Book Database. This useful resource for family historians can be used to find ancestors' residences from the period before the census collection. The newly released Poll Books range from 1705 to the 1830s, joining records covering periods between census years.

The database allows researchers to:

• Discover ancestors who had the vote
• Find where they were registered to cast their ballot
• Discover the nature of their qualification to vote, such as possessing a Corn Warehouse, a Workshop, a House, or owning a Brewhouse
• These Poll Books range from 1705 to the 1830s.

The records cover 18 different registers of people who were entitled to vote in between 1705 and the 1830s and cover constituencies situated in Abingdon, Bristol, Hampshire, Somerset, Suffolk, Maidstone, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Worcestershire and York.

These records have been transcribed by volunteers on the UKindexer.co.uk website, which brings benefits to the volunteers as well as the wider family history community. They join the millions of electoral resources on TheGenealogist, which include Electoral registers, Voters lists and Absentee Voters.

These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist.

Discover how John Constable's family voted in Nick Thorne's article about the release.

This searchable database is great for family historians wanting to find ancestors who officially changed their forename or surname in Britain. The Change of Names Database covers information gathered from a number of sources including Private Acts of Parliament; Royal Licences published in the London and Dublin Gazettes; notices of changes of name published in The Times after 1861 with a few notices from other newspapers; registers of the Lord Lyon [King of Arms] where Scottish changes of name were commonly recorded; records in the office of the Ulster King at Arms and also some private information.

These fully searchable records allow researchers to:

• Break 'Brick Walls' in your research
• Discover ancestors that recorded a change of name
• Find what name had been adopted and the name discarded

Read Nick Thorne's article exploring this record set.

[Image shows Lord Byron who is featured in these records]

TheGenealogist has now added Colour Tithe Maps for the North Riding and the East Riding of Yorkshire. Complimenting the already released schedule books and greyscale maps, these colour maps add an attractive visual aid to find where your ancestor lived in the mid 1800s.

The fully searchable tithe records released online allow researchers to:

• Find plots of land owned or occupied by ancestors in early Victorian North Riding and East Riding of Yorkshire on colour maps
• See where your forebears lived, farmed or perhaps occupied a small cottage or a massive estate.

With the 1921 census still some years away from public release, TheGenealogist has added to its 1921 census substitute. This resource covers a large number of county directories which have been transcribed to produce a searchable resource. This appears under Census Records as the 1921 Census Substitute on TheGenealogist and they encompass a period currently not served by a published census. With this release, the total records are boosted to 1.75 million heads of household.

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

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

If you have ancestors from the 1920s then this new release from TheGenealogist adds a fantastic name rich resource for you to use. Why not read our article on how the census substitute reveals the Suffragists Tea Room?

These 1921 directories cover Nottingham, Glasgow, Leicestershire & Rutland, Derby, Shropshire, Kent and add to those already released for Aberdeen, Bath, Berkshire, Bradford and Surrounding Districts, Bristol and Suburbs, Brixton and Clapham, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Channel Islands, Cheshire, Cumberland, Dorset, Durham, Hessle, Hull, Lincolnshire, London, London County Suburbs, Middlesbrough, Norfolk, Northumberland, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Suffolk, Westmorland, Wiltshire, Worcestershire and Yorkshire.

These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist.

We have added to our Criminal Records collection with the release of the MEPO 6 Metropolitan Police: Criminal Record Office: Habitual Criminals & Habitual Drunkards.

These are high quality transcripts with original colour images of the registers, as well as registers created by the Police to supervise released criminals - including spies! Entries can contain a description of the individual, dates of conviction or discharge from prison and even the places they frequent!
One of the most interesting features of these records are the photographic portraits taken from the Registers of Habitual Drunkards. These registers feature two photographs, face on and in profile, per individual. Some records may also give distinguishing features, the name of the prison, length of sentence and previous convictions.

TheGenealogist has added over 1,270,000 individuals to its Parish Record collection in an ongoing project with the Warwickshire County Record Office. These newly transcribed records are linked to high-quality images of the original parish register pages and bring our total for Warwickshire to over two million.

• Over 1,270,000 individuals added to the Parish Records for Warwickshire
• High-quality transcripts with original images of the registers
• Additional information such as Witnesses, Father's Name and Profession have been transcribed where given
• Released in association with Warwickshire County Record Office
• The original Parish Register images are available for a growing list of parishes

These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist and join the millions of Parish Records already on the site.

You can find out more about these records and a famous actress found within them in Nick Thorne's Article "Warwickshire Parish Records reveal the marriage of an 18th century ‘tragedienne’"

Over 64,000 additional War Memorial records have just been added, which include a complete roll of honour for both WW1 and WW2 for Shetland, with men's units and the Shetland village in which they resided. There are other war memorials in this release that cover the country including the Abercarn Tinplaters Memorial Institute in Wales. There are plaques and monuments in Bedford, Bolton, Lancashire, London, Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Warwickshire and even further afield in Canada, Western Australia and the USA. One of the Canadian memorials is a fascinating, but sadly very worn, WW2 memorial from Calgary in Canada that names 227 aircrew from Australia and New Zealand who died while training in Calgary, revealing just how dangerous WW2 aviation was.

From the USA TheGenealogist has uploaded some WW1 and WW2 war memorials from New York, including a fine one in Battery Park. This is a roll of those men and women who lost their lives in the Atlantic coastal waters in WW2 and had no known grave as a result of U-boat action. The war memorial gives researchers the ranks, units and the US state from which they were from, and the shockingly large number of Americans included is a salutary lesson when in Britain we are often only aware of our own countrymen/women who died at sea from enemy action against the convoys.

Lastly there are a number of Boer War memorials - for example the tribute within Blackpool Town Hall that commemorates the 74 Blackpool men who volunteered to join various units for service in South Africa.

These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist.

We have added over 13,000 new Headstone records covering 53 new cemeteries.

The International Headstone collection is an ongoing project where every stone photographed or transcribed earns volunteers credits, which they can spend on subscriptions at TheGenealogist.co.uk or products from GenealogySupplies.com. If you would like to join, you can find out more about the scheme in this week's article.

The headstone for the Earl of Avon, Anthony Eden, is included in this release. This politician served three periods as British Foreign Secretary and then succeeded Winston Churchill as Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957. He is laid to rest at Alvediston in Wiltshire.

Why not make the most of this sunny weather and go out and photograph your local cemetery, it's easy (all you need is a digital camera) and you could earn a free subscription! Find out more at UKIndexer.

These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist.

To celebrate the centenary of the RAF we are launching thousands of records from Air Force Lists, copies of the Flight Magazine, plus an important collection of historic reference books.

To find out more about these records, you can read Nick Thorne's Article, Celebrating the centenary of the R.A.F. with TheGenealogist's records.

We have released the records of 29,000 individuals who were decorated with the Meritorious Service Medal (MSM). The roll of names for those who were awarded this British honour in the First World War can now be searched on our website. Researchers can look for holders of this medal up to 1920 from within our ever growing military records collection.

These new records released today will allow researchers to:

• See a copy of the image of the Medal Card with the theatre of war where the medal was won
• Details the name, rank, regiment and service/regimental number
• Unique "SmartSearch" links to the comprehensive military records on TheGenealogist.co.uk
• These new records cover British servicemen from The First World War

These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist.

To find out more about these records, you can read Nick Thorne's Article, Finding ancestors awarded the Meritorious Service Medal.

We have just released 1.4 million Passenger Records covering the 1940s. This expands our Outbound Passenger Lists to over 25 million and forms part of our larger immigration and emigration collection on TheGenealogist. These newly transcribed BT27 images are from The National Archives, and feature passengers who sailed out of United Kingdom in the years between 1940 and 1949.

The passenger lists released today will allow researchers to:

• Discover potential family members travelling together using TheGenealogist's SmartSearch
• Find ancestors sailing to Africa, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and other destinations
• View images of the original passenger list documents
vSee the ages, last address and intended permanent residence
• Fully indexed records allow family historians to search by name, year, country of departure, country of arrival, port of embarkation and port of destination

Researchers who had ancestors that travelled abroad from Britain in the 1940s will find these records a fascinating addition to the vast collection of records on TheGenealogist.

These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist.

We have added Colour Maps for Buckinghamshire to our National Tithe Records collection. With this release, researchers can see the plots owned or occupied by ancestors that lived in this 'home county' at the time of the survey in the 19th century.

These tagged colour maps and their fully searchable tithe schedule records have been digitised in partnership with The National Archives. The collection gives the family history researcher the ability to search by name and keyword (for example parish or county) to look for all levels of society, from large estate owners to occupiers of tiny plots such as a cottage or a cowshed.

You can find out more about this release by reading Nick Thorne's article From Hovels to Manor Houses, Exploring Buckinghamshire Society.

We have added 651,369 records of convicts from The National Archives' HO 8 documents to our Court & Criminal Records collection. With this release researchers can find the details of ancestors that broke the law and were incarcerated in convict hulks and prisons in the 19th century.

These fully searchable records are from The Home Office: Sworn lists of convicts on board the convict hulks and in the convict prisons (HO 8). They give the family history researcher fascinating facts that include the particulars of age, convictions, sentences, health and behaviour of the convict, as well as which court sentenced them and where they were serving their sentence.

We have added over 500 editions of The Illustrated London News to our Newspaper and Magazine collection. This latest release contains newspapers that were published in the 1890s and offers a fascinating insight into your ancestors' lives.

The Illustrated London News is one of a number of newspapers and magazines that are fully searchable by name or keywords by Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist. Not only can this extensive resource add context to your ancestors' lives and times, these newspapers can be used to find out more about people who, for one reason or another, were mentioned in reports from the time.

Nick Thorne's Article "Our Ancestors in the 1890s" takes a look at this fascinating resource.

These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist.

We have added over 5 Million passenger records to our U.S.A. records, featuring people that migrated to the U.S.A. between 1834 and 1900. The mass movement of people from one country to another isn't a new thing. The motivation can be economic, political upheaval or religious persecution.

The data covers:

• 3,956,780 Germans emigrating to the United States between 1850 and 1897
• 836,122 Italians emigrating to the United States between 1855 and 1900
• 522,638 Russians emigrating to the United States between 1834 and 1897

Most were drawn to the U.S.A. by the attractions of land and religious freedom, after being forced to leave Europe by shortages of land and religious or political oppression.

This release joins the millions of U.S.A. census, death records, trade directories, wills and poll books already available on TheGenealogist

We have added over 366,000 individuals to our Parish Records for Warwickshire, to increase the coverage of this county in the heart of England.

Released in association with Warwickshire County Record Office, this brings high-quality transcripts as well as images to family historians researching ancestors in this area.

The original Parish Register images are available for a growing list of parishes.

These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist and join the millions of Parish Records already on the site.

Nick Thorne investigates the last resting place of a murderous lord of the manor, featured in the records. Read the article here.