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New! Scotland Genealogy Records Online
Five new Scotland genealogy record collections are online at Findmypast. Also: Irish police registers; records from Wiltshire and Westmorland, England; and digitized British and Irish newspapers. Enjoy exploring your British Isles ancestry!
Featured collection: Scotland genealogy records
Check out these five collections for your Scottish ancestors dating back to the 1760s. They’re on subscription website giant Findmypast.com, along with the other records featured in this article. (Read more about Findmypast and what makes it one of our Genealogy Giants.)
Scotland, Edinburgh Temperance Pledges 1886-1908. “Did your Scottish ancestor sign a temperance pledge between 1886 and 1908? These temperance pledges were introduced by the United Presbyterian Church and originally called the Band of Hope Register. The index records names, birth years, addresses and includes the names and ages of numerous children who signed the pledge.”
I haven’t received any emails or notifications about my membership. What’s going on?
In your iTunes LIBRARY, on the line where the Genealogy Gems Podcast is listed click the GET ALL button. This will download all the past episodes to iTunes on your computer, to be listened to at your convenience.
Downloading will take several minutes. You will see a little spinning orange circle to the left of the podcast name as it downloads. Once the episode is downloaded the text will turn from gray to black. Double click the episode and it will start to play after a moment or two.
Scotland, Berwickshire, Ladykirk Heads of Household 1811. “Discover your Scottish ancestors from Ladykirk in Berkshire. This early census recorded the names of the heads of the household in Ladykirk in 1811 as well as information pertaining to their family and other members of their household. The index has been transcribed by the Scottish Genealogy Society. The original list came from the Kirk Session Records for Ladykirk.”
Scotland, Edinburgh St Cuthbert’s Census 1790. “Explore your Scottish ancestry with the 1790 census of the parish of St Cuthbert’s in Edinburgh. The index has been transcribed by the Scottish Genealogy Society. The original list came from the Kirk Session Records for Ladykirk. This early Scottish census listed the names of each of the head of the household and within each family unit the number of parents, children, lodgers, and servants. Then each category was separated into male and female.”
Scotland, Perthshire, Inhabitants of the Burgh of Perth 1766. “Discover your Scottish ancestry with this list of inhabitants of the Burgh of Perth in 1766. The inhabitants list was taken by the magistrates on 19 March 1766 and the following days. This early census recorded the names of the heads of the household and then noted certain facts about the others in the house; such as age, occupation or religion.”
Scotland, Shetland, Tingwall List of Inhabitants 1785. “Discover your Scottish ancestors lives in the Shetland Islands! Search this list of inhabitants of the parish of Tingwall. This early census will reveal a combination of your ancestor’s age, residence and the number of other people residing in their household.”
New Irish genealogy records online
Ireland, Dublin Metropolitan Police Prisoners Books 1905-1908 and 1911-1918. “The Dublin Metropolitan Police prisoners books cover the year ranges of 1905 to 1908 and 1911 to 1918. These valuable records provide great insight into social and political life in Dublin during periods of great upheaval, including the start of the First World War and the Easter Rising. The records will provide useful information for those interested in genealogy, criminology, and family history.”
“Each record includes both a transcript and an image of the original document. The entries are handwritten and include the details of daily charge sheets. Each volume contains an index of prisoners with references to the pages containing details of the charge. The volumes contain a wide range of alleged crimes—from murder to breaking glass. Additionally, the age range represented by the accused perpetrators is equally vast—from eight to eighty. Of note, a new series of offenses were introduced following the passage of the Defense of the Realm Act on 8 August 1914. These new offenses were often used against political activists.”
Tip: To view original images, click on the link in your search result under “Record Source.” As shown in the example below for an entry for Michael Shea, first copy the text within the double quotations (it begins with https) and paste it into a new window in your web browser. This will take you to a digitized volume. Open the page viewer and go to the page and line number mentioned in the search result (shown below).
Ireland, Dublin Metropolitan Police general register 1837-1925. “Discover your ancestor in the Dublin Metropolitan Police’s general registers. The records pertain to recruitment and transfers within the police force from 1837 to 1925. While the register was used up until 1975, due to data protection reasons, only the entries up to 1925 have been digitized and made available.”
“The general register recorded both biographical and professional details of the men in the force, including: warrant number, name, age, height, trade or occupation, county, parish, post town, previous public service, by whom recommended, divisions attached to, service details (dates, rank, promotions), good service pay, date and cause of removal from the force, reappointment details, and general observations. From 1858 onwards, religion was added as well.”
England genealogy records now online
Wiltshire registers & records. This collection is currently comprised of the Quarter Sessions Great Rolls for the County of Wiltshire. “The majority of this volume comprises extracts from the quarter sessions. Appendixes include a Wiltshire will, Wiltshire wages in the seventeenth century, transcription of petition of John Dicke, and autograph letters.”
Westmorland registers & records. Three local publications comprise this collection:
- Grasmere: the Church, the Churchyard, Rushbearing, Dove Cottage — By George Middleton, published in 1920, this volume gives a history of the Grasmere Church.
- Parish Registers of Ravenstonedale, Vols I & II, 1571-1780 — Transcribed and edited by the vicar of Ravenstonedale, R W Metcalfe. Included in this volume are christenings, weddings, and burials.
- Some Westmoreland Wills, 1686-1738 — the list of wills included in this volume can be found on image number 9. The introduction explains that ‘the unique collection of old wills, summarised in this volume, is in the possession of the Society of Friends at Kendal [and] give a clear picture of rural life in the North of England in the late 17th and early 18th century’.
British & Irish newspaper updates
Updates have been made to several digitized newspaper collections on Findmypast.com. See if your family appears in any of these, from Dublin to Liverpool and back to County Sligo, Ireland:
Must-use Scottish genealogy records website
If you’ve got Scottish roots, read this article about ScotlandsPeople! This official government website for historical and genealogical records is a must-use for anyone tracing their roots back to Scotland.
About the Author: Sunny Morton
Sunny is a Contributing Editor at Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems; her voice is often heard on the Genealogy Gems Podcast and Premium Podcasts. She’s known for her expertise on the world’s biggest family history websites (she’s the author of Genealogy Giants: Comparing the 4 Major Websites); writing personal and family histories (she also wrote Story of My Life: A Workbook for Preserving Your Legacy); and sharing her favorite reads for the Genealogy Gems Book Club.
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!
Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode 221 – Recorded at FGS
The Genealogy Gems Podcast
Episode #221
with Lisa Louise Cooke
Live from FGS 2018!
Lisa chats with a podcast listener, talks about vital records with Shannon Combs-Bennett and welcomes a drop-by guest, Daniel Horowitz of MyHeritage.com.
Episode highlights:
- Fantastic news from RootsTech;
- A great new resource from Library & Archives Canada;
- An update from Your DNA Guide Diahan Southard on MyHeritage DNA tools;
- The long-awaited conclusion of Project Lizzie.
LIVE FROM FGS!
Lisa records the podcast in the exhibit hall with guest Shannon Combs-Bennett and a live studio audience
LIVE MAILBOX: Chatting with Jeannette
Jeannette from Niagara County Genealogical Society, shown here (left) with Lisa
The FGS conference supports the missions and activities of genealogical societies. Learn more about FGS and find a genealogical society near you here.
Genealogy Gems supports societies, too! Society memberships and reprintable articles for your newsletters. Go to the Societies dropdown menu on GenealogyGems.com:
If your society is interested in hosting Lisa Louise Cooke for a seminar, go to the Seminars tab and click Book Lisa.
INTERVIEW: Shannon Combs-Bennett on Vital Records
Learn more about using vital records in your research in the free Genealogy: Family History Made Easy Podcast, episode 4.
INTERVIEW: Daniel Horowitz, MyHeritage
As MyHeritage’s Genealogy Expert, Daniel Horowitz provides key contributions in the product development, customer support and public affairs areas. He holds board level positions at the Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA) and the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) among others. Daniel served as teacher and study guide editor for 15 years for the family history project “Searching for My Roots” in Venezuela.
Join Daniel Horowitz and Lisa Louise Cooke at MyHeritage LIVE!
Who: Daniel Horowitz, Lisa Louise Cooke and MORE great presenters!
What: MyHeritage LIVE
Where: Oslo, Norway at the Radisson Blu Scandinavia hotel
When: November 2-4, 2018
It’s open to anyone who would like to learn more about MyHeritage – including subscribers, DNA customers, those with free basic accounts, and those who haven’t used MyHeritage yet but would like to find out more.
Tickets include entry to the Friday night reception, keynote speeches, all conference sessions, lunch and coffee breaks on Saturday and Sunday and entry to the exclusive MyHeritage LIVE party on Saturday night. Now through September 24, register for Early Bird discount price of €75.00. MyHeritage.com is the place to make connections with relatives overseas, particularly with those who may still live in your ancestral homeland. Click here to see what MyHeritage can do for you: it’s free to get started.
MyHeritage.com is the place to make connections with relatives overseas, particularly with those who may still live in your ancestral homeland. Visit www.MyHeritage.com
Subscribe to the free Genealogy Gems newsletter
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LIVE MAILBOX: Adrianne Keeps Connected with the Podcast
How to identify old cars in photographs
Savvy tips for identifying old photos: An Australian family on holiday in England
Genealogy Gems Premium members may also listen to an interview with Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, in Premium Podcast episode 141. She’s the author of Family Photo Detective, a must-have resource for identifying old photographs.
BONUS CONTENT for Genealogy Gems App Users
If you’re listening through the Genealogy Gems app, your bonus content for this episode is a short but inspiring story from someone who came to one of my classes and then went and found something cool on YouTube relating to her family’s employment with airline TWA….Don’t miss it! The Genealogy Gems app is FREE in Google Play and is only $2.99 for Windows, iPhone and iPad users.
Lisa Louise Cooke uses and recommends RootsMagic family history software. From within RootsMagic, you can search historical records on FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.com.
Keep your family history research, photos, tree software files, videos and all other computer files safely backed up with Backblaze, the official cloud-based computer backup system for Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems. Learn more at https://www.backblaze.com/Lisa.
NEWS: RootsTech Goes to London
RootsTech will host an event in London from 24–26 October 2019 at the ExCeL London Convention Centre. Registration opens in February 2019. Find out more about RootsTech London 2019 at https://www.rootstech.org/London.
NEWS: The “Unconference” Experience
REGISTER TODAY: Genealogy Roots: The “Un-Conference Experience”
Lisa Louise Cooke, Diahan Southard, and Sunny Morton will share a stage on October 4-5, 2018 at the SeniorExpo in Sandy, Utah. (Psst: You don’t have to be a senior to attend!) Here’s the scoop—and a special registration discount!
Who: Lisa Louise Cooke, Diahan Southard, and Sunny Morton
What: Genealogy Roots: The Un-Conference Experience! at SeniorExpo
Where: Mountain America Expo Center (South Towne Expo Center), 9081 S. State St., Sandy, Utah
When: October 4-5, 2018, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
THE ARCHIVE LADY: Library Archives Canada Co-Lab
The Library and Archives of Canada (LAC) has introduced a brand-new crowdsourcing opportunity for genealogists or anyone interested in records transcription: Co-Lab.
The LAC has put a call out for volunteers to be part of a collaborative project to transcribe, add keywords and image tags, translate content from an image or document and add descriptions to digitized images using “Co-Lab” and the new “Collection Search”. The more volunteers that participate in this project, the more accessible and usable the digital collection will become for everyone.
You can become a contributor in two ways:
Take on a “challenge” of images put together by experts at LAC
Use the new Collection Search to find materials that matter most to you, then enhance them. Anyone can now contribute to digitized images that are found while doing research.
The volunteer must register and create a user account so you can keep track of the records to which you have contributed. Once this free account is established, a volunteer can contribute as much or as little as they would like.
The “Challenges” are content put together under a theme. For instance, under the “Challenges” tab on the website you could choose to transcribe the “Correspondence between Sir Robert Borden and Sir Sam Hughes” The theme for this challenge is listed as “military heritage.”
Or another “Challenge” someone might choose could be “New France and Indigenous Relations” whose theme is listed as “Aboriginal Heritage.”
There are also new “Challenges” being posted to the site, so check back often.
Maybe you would like to contribute using Collection Search. The website describes how this tool works: “When you are conducting research using our new search tool and find images, you’ll see that you have the option to enable this image for Co-Lab contributions. After answering just a few short questions, you can enable an image found in Collection Search for Co-Lab use and transcribe/translate/tag/describe to your heart’s content.”
There is a short tutorial to get you started and show you the ropes. The launch of Co-Lab also introduces a new image viewer, which allows you to zoom in on different parts of the image or move around the image itself. This tool is useful when transcribing or adding keywords and image tags to describe all the small details. Every image in Co-Lab is subject to review by other members. If something is found to be incorrect or if you find something that is wrong, it can be marked as “Needs Review” for others to take another look and decide what is correct.
The best part about this new Library and Archives Canada tool is that every contribution by the volunteers benefits fellow genealogy researchers and improves records access. Every additional tag or translation becomes new metadata and is searchable within 24 hours of the transcriptions or tagging being done.
So, if you are like me and are eager to get as much genealogical and historical records online and transcribed, check into The Library and Archives of Canada’s new Co-Lab and Collection Search!
DNA: Improvements to MyHeritage DNA
with Diahan Southard, Your DNA Guide
Improvements to MyHeritage DNA
GEM: The Conclusion to Project Lizzie
Click here to read Ron’s blog post announcing the satisfying conclusion of Project Lizzie. To learn more about Ron, stop over at storyhow.com, where Ron teaches business people how to tell stories.
PROFILE AMERICA: Picture This
PRODUCTION CREDITS
- Lisa Louise Cooke, Host and Producer
- Sunny Morton, Contributing Editor
- Diahan Southard, Your DNA Guide, Content Contributor
- Melissa Barker, The Archive Lady, Content Contributor
- Hannah Fullerton, Production Assistant
- Lacey Cooke, Service Manager
Download the Show Notes PDF in the Genealogy Gems Podcast app.
Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting this free podcast and blog!
New Online Records this Week Include 53M+ England and Wales Electoral Registers
More than 53 million England and Wales electoral registers are now searchable at Findmypast. Also new or updated online: Swedish emigration registers and marriage records, Australian newspapers, Queensland seamen and New Zealand vital records.
England and Wales electoral registers
Genealogy giant Findmypast.com has published England & Wales Electoral Registers 1920-1932, a new collection with more than 53 million indexed electoral registers for England and Wales for the 1920s and early 1930s.
“Combined with the 1911 census and 1939 Register, today’s release means that Findmypast is now able to provide customers with unrivaled record coverage for early 20th century Britain, allowing them to trace their ancestors across a period of history that has traditionally been problematic for many researchers,” states a press release. (The 1921 census isn’t yet available to researchers; the 1931 census was lost in a fire and 1941 wasn’t taken because of the war.)
According to Findmypast, “Electoral registers are listings of all those registered to vote in a particular area. The lists were created annually to record the names of eligible voters and their reason for eligibility, such as their residence or ownership of a property. Registration for voters in England has been required since 1832 and registers were typically published annually, making electoral registers and excellent resource for tracking ancestors between the census years or for uncovering the history of your home or local area.”
This collection is the result of reprocessing an earlier collection to improve image quality and indexing accuracy, making the records much more searchable. As the press release explains, “For the very first time, the Registers can now be searched accurately by individual names in a similar way to other indexed collections currently available on the Findmypast. Searches will now also cover all of England and Wales and matching records from the registers will feed into hints for all customers with a Findmypast Family tree.”
The electoral register collection isn’t comprehensive for every place and year. Some registers don’t survive and others are still being imaged. According to the site, “holdings are modest to 1885, good from then until 1915 and modest again from 1918 to 1932. It should also be noted that during the First World War compilation of the registers was suspended and was then resumed in 1918.”
Here’s a related collection update: Genealogy giant and subscription site Ancestry.com has updated its database of the 1939 Register for England and Wales. This record set will likely continue to be updated over time, at both Ancestry.com and Findmypast (which first published it), as additional data is released from under privacy restrictions.
Sweden emigration and marriage records
Ancestry.com has published a new collection of Swedish Emigration Registers for 1869-1948. It contains nearly 1.5 million records kept by local police at major ports of embarkation for emigrants who left Sweden to live abroad. According to the collection description, these records “provide details of those who left, where they left from and their intended place of arrival. Many of the passengers traveled beyond the port of arrival, settling in other cities and countries so be sure to check the image for intended destinations to see where they may have eventually established a new home.”
Another Swedish collection has recently been updated at Ancestry.com, too: Sweden, Indexed Marriage Records, 1860-1947. It now contains nearly 6.7 million Swedish-language records from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Sweden. Find both these collections at Ancestry.com: under Search > Catalog, enter “Sweden” as a keyword to bring up all Swedish collections. Or get a little help by clicking on the image above to read a free article on beginning Swedish genealogy research.
Ancestry.com requires a subscription for records access. To view subscription options and get signed up, click here.
Australia and New Zealand record updates
Australia newspapers. Ancestry.com has updated its collection of Australia, Newspaper Vital Notices, 1831-2001, now with more than 2.5 million records. According to the description, “this database contains birth, marriage, and death notices from three Australian Newspapers for the years 1831–2001: The Age, The Sydney Mail, and The Sydney Morning Herald.”
Queensland seamen. Look for Aussie men who went to sea in Findmypast’s collection, Queensland, Seamen 1882-1919. “From this index, you may learn the name of the ship your ancestor worked on….The 19,554 names included in this index were taken from the registers kept by the Harbours and Rivers Department….Each result includes a transcript of the original documents held by the Queensland State Archives.”
New Zealand vital records. Findmypast has added over 62,000 transcripts of baptisms, marriages & burials to its collection of New Zealand vital record indexes. “These civil registration records date back to 1848 and will provide you with all the information you need to order a copy of your ancestor’s original certificate from the NZ government website.”
Please help us spread the word!
Thanks for helping us let others know about these new England and Wales electoral registers, Swedish and Australian/New Zealand records online! Just share this article on your favorite social media site: word gets around fast when you do, and more genealogists will be able to make more discoveries for their family trees. You’re a gem!
About the Author: Sunny Morton
Sunny is a Contributing Editor at Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems; her voice is often heard on the Genealogy Gems Podcast and Premium Podcasts. She’s known for her expertise on the world’s biggest family history websites (she’s the author of Genealogy Giants: Comparing the 4 Major Websites); writing personal and family histories (she also wrote Story of My Life: A Workbook for Preserving Your Legacy); and sharing her favorite reads for the Genealogy Gems Book Club.
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!