A excellent new guide to help family historians research their ancestors in Worcestershire has recently been launched on the Worcester branch website of the Birmingham & Midland Society for Genealogy & Heraldry – http://www.worcesterbmsgh.co.uk. At its centre is a guide to parishes (click on ‘tracing your ancestors’) in the old historic county of Worcestershire, so it includes many places in the Black Country. For each parish the site tells you which sources are available and where they are held. There is also general information on the location of the parish, neighbouring parishes with, in some cases, photographs of the parish church. Other information can include details of the Poor Law and school records. There is also a glossary of terms you might find in parish record and material about the branch and its activities. The website is well designed and clearly laid out. Perhaps a model for other local societies to follow?
Unfortunately details of these talks came just too late for the March issue of Ancestors:
1 March – "Family History on the Internet" (with Ruth Edwards) offers a short introduction to finding your way around the internet including a practical guide to using the most important websites for family history research. 4 March – "A Brief History of Myddelton Street" Myddelton Street has been home to the Family Records Centre for nearly eleven years – but what was there before? In the last ever talk at the FRC, Dave Annal will take a look at the history of this Clerkenwell Street from its early days as a track through the fields, through the 19th century when it was a major centre for watchmaking right up to the present day. The talks begin at 2pm and are free. Tickets available on the day only at the FRC. Sponsored by Ancestors. More information at http://www.familyrecords.gov.uk/frc/extra/events_calendar.htm
Continue reading about Last two talks at the Family Records Centre
It was announced on Satuday that Scotland Online has acquired Findmypast for an undisclosed amount from its parent company the Title Research Group. My understanding is that negotiations had been ongoing for a number of months and it was certainly no secret that Findmypast was up for sale. Scotland Online is owned by the Dundee based D C Thompson group, best known for publishing the Beano and Dandy comics. Scotland Online manages the acclaimed ScotlandsPeople website and was the surprise winner of a tender to run the 1911 census website on behalf of The National Archives. Findmypast, originally 1837online.com, was the first site to put the GRO indexes online five years ago and recently has been putting the outward bound passenger lists online and won the contract to take over the FFHS family history online service. Findmypast will continue to operate from its London headquarters.
More details at:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/business/news/display.var.1978316.0.Scotland_Online_buys_family_history_website.php
In response to growing demand, The National Archives has agreed free onsite internet access to the birth, deaths and marriages indexes provided by findmypast.com.
Readers at Kew, and the Family Records Centre in Myddleton Street (until 15 March 2008), have free access to the digitised indexes, for an initial one-year trial period.
In February’s issue we included an article about Eric Gaskell’s exhibition at Rugby Art Gallery and Museum based on his genealogical research. If you can’t get to the exhibition which runs until mid-March the exhibits are available online at http://www.egdesign.co.uk/exhibition.htm. Eric has challenged me: "It may (or may not) be to your tastes, and although it looks quite abstract I hope you can see what all the dots and marks are about." I’m not sure I do, but you might!
Continue reading about The Family Line Exhibition – Art & Genealogy
This year’s Ancestors Afternoon is on Thursday 19 June in the new reader’s conference room. Normally they take place in February, but because of the building work at Kew we’ve postponed it until later in the year. The theme will be ‘problem solving’. Among the speakers will be David Annal (who writes the View from the Centre pages in Ancestors) and Sharon Hintze, from the Hyde Park Family History Centre. In addition, Professor David Hey will be giving the annual Ancestors Lecture. David is the former consulting editor on Ancestors and is probably Britain’s foremost local historian. He is also an excellent lecturer. The Afternoon will be free. Tickets and more information will be available nearer the day, but if you would like to be on the mailing list let me know.
The National Archives is helping with the review of the 30-year rule which governs when the bulk of government documents are opened to public inspection. The review team is taking evidence from government departments, historians, the media, politicians and policy groups and the general public about whether records should be released sooner. If you wish to have a say you can do so on the review’s website http://www.30yearrulereview.org.uk. The consultation ends on 29 February.
The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (universally known to all as PRONI) has just relaunched its website http://www.proni.gov.uk/index.htm. The old one was frankly unattractive, difficult to navigate around and it was hard to find anything. A quick glance suggests that all these criticisms have been rectified. If you want to know more the site has been extensively reviewed in an excellent blog on Irish family history http://www.irishfamilyhistory.ie/blog.
The Chartists were a political movement we may have learned about in history lessons at school. Their campaign for political reform in the 1830s and 1840s collapsed after the presentation of a monster petition to Parliament in 1848. Tens of thousands of ordinary people were involved in the campaign. And Ancestors contributor Mark Crail maintains a very interesting website http://www.chartists.net devoted to them.
Recently he has added 3,900 names drawn from the list of subscribers to the Chartist Land Company. These men and women came Lancashire industrial towns. He has also updated the list of "Chartist children". The first piece he wrote for us was about the Chartists who named their children after their political heroes. At the time he found about a hundred examples. He repeated the exercise last month for some of the leaders of the movement: Feargus O’Connor, William Lovett, John Frost, Henry Vincent and Ernest Jones and came up with 1,399 names. Incidentally, the 1851 census has just seven men and boys born in England before 1838 with the name Feargus. From 1838 onwards, he has found 138 named "Feargus O’Connor xxxxxxxxxx" alone and many more with the forename Feargus.
A reader asks "What are the odds of you being a direct ancestor to someone a thousand years from now? Very good or are the odds against you?" Any ideas
