Just too late to make the April issue of Ancestors is the news that Find My Past have added three counties to the 1911 census http://www.1911census.co.uk: Yorkshire North Riding, Yorkshire East Riding, and Durham. All three are fully searchable. They anticipate that the remaining English counties will be launched in about a month’s time. Findmypast have also extended the expiry date of any credits with a 90 days expiry date bought to date by an additional 90 days (meaning they will expire 180 days from the date of purchase). For further up to the minute details please see Findmypast’s excellent blog: http://blog.1911census.co.uk. In the March issue we included an article about the Enumerator’s Summary Books in the expectation that they would be added to the 1911 census site roughly at the time the issue went on sale. Unfortunately the launch of these books has been put back, probably to late Spring. It is not unknown for launches of online services to be delayed; we were caught out by another example of the phenomenon. I’m assured the wait will be worth it. Incidentally the Scottish 1911 census is likely to be released slightly earlier in March or April 2011, rather in January 2012 as we said in the March issue.
I’m surprisingly often asked by readers about the births, marriages and deaths of Britons abroad. There are a number of registers at The National Archives which can help. Those in series RG 33 (General Register Office: Foreign Registers and Returns) are now online at http://www.thegenealogist.co.uk (This is a pay-to-use site). The records include births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials of British subjects abroad in Europe, the Empire and bizarrely Lundy Island. The series contains original registers, notebooks and copies of entries in registers kept by incumbents of English churches and missions, British embassies and legations; documents deposited for safe keeping, correspondence and memoranda. The material is largely for the 19th and 20th centuries but includes some for the seventeenth century concerning the English congregation at The Hague. It also includes a volume of marriages solemnised on board HM ships (1842 to 1879); a volume of events registered by British consuls prior to the Consular Marriages Act, 1849; and two volumes compiled by the Colonial Office noting deaths from enemy action in the Far East, between 1941 and 1945.
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Users of the personalised Google start page, iGoogle, can now search The National Archives’ website directly from their iGoogle page using a new gadget. Add the gadget by clicking on "Add stuff’" on your iGoogle page and then searching for The National Archives. Alternatively you can go directly to the gadget (you will need to sign in to your iGoogle page, or create one), or visit http://tinyurl.com/archive-search-gadget for this.
