To mark the 70th anniversary of the start of WWII Ancestry.co.uk publishes records of more than 100,000 British Army POWs
Continue reading about Colditz Prisoner of War Records Now Online
Was your ancestor a social climbing soldier in the Hundred Years War?
I read somewhere recently that nobody blogs any longer. People apparently increasingly communicate their thoughts through Twitter’s 140 characters. Yet there are still lots of blogs about. History seems particularly suited to blogging as there is a lot going on and lots of good stories to write about.
There are several excellent genealogy newsletters. The best known is Dick Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter http://blog.eogn.com which includes a wide range of news stories culled from a variety of sources or sent to him directly. There’s also a plus edition you can subscribe to for a few dollars per year (it is an American site, although there is fair coverage of events this side of the Atlantic). Closer to home, Chris Paton, who writes Ancestors’ Internet News pages, blogs at http://scottishancestry.blogspot.com with a full range of news mainly from Scotland and Ireland. He covers a lot of stories with some interesting comments.
However, there are few if any family history blogs devoted to the research for individual ancestors (if I have missed something interesting let me know). This lack is made up by a number of great general history blogs. Stories from Scottish military history is covered at http://scottishmilitary.blogspot.com and The Times Archive has stories based on old issues of ‘The Thunderer’ http://timesonline.typepad.com/timesarchive. Indeed a number of institutions do have blogs. For example, the National Maritime Museum’s Caird Library does so http://www.nmm.ac.uk/library and, in the US, the Rhode Island Historical Society has some excellent entries (many with a surprisingly British resonance) http://rihs.wordpress.com. One of the few English local history societies to include a blog is from Foxearth on the Essex/Suffolk border at http://www.foxearth.org.uk/WeblogIndex.html although it is not updated all that often there are some excellent stories. A British Library curator, Matthew Shaw, reflects on history, particularly political history, at http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/takingliberties.
A number of blogs are based on reprinting diaries of other documents in "real time" with explanatory text and other information. The best known example is Pepys Diary at http://www.pepysdiary.com, but there are others such as The Natural History of Selborne at http://naturalhistoryofselborne.com and the WW1 war diary of the 9th Battalion York and Lancaster Regiment at http://yldiaries.blogspot.com. The blogger here is researching the career of William Henry Bonser Lamin, an ordinary Tommy in the regiment, and there are accompanying letters from the front. And at http://bookofthomastye.blogspot.com there is a ongoing transcription of an 18th century account book.
There are several problems with blogs. Often enough they are self-indulgent twaddle. Alternatively they might not be updated frequently (of which I’m aware I’m guilty).
Another issue is that they can be surprisingly hard to track down. There is a blog search facility on Google, but it is pretty useless http://blogsearch.google.co.uk. Links to many history blogs (generally American, but not entirely) is http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/9665.html and a list of some 20 blog directories at http://www.searchenginejournal.com/20-essential-blog-directories-to-submit-your-blog-to/5998. Do you blog or have a favourite blog then pass it on.
