Every week, we dig through new genealogy records online and post the “gems” we find here. It’s a long list this week to catch up from our holiday break: which of these records may mention your ancestors?
ALASKA VITAL RECORDS. A new FamilySearch collection includes indexed images of nearly 60,000 Alaskan birth, marriage, divorce and death records dating from 1816-1959.
AUSTRALIA CIVIL REGISTRATIONS. A new browse-only collection of Tasmanian civil registrations (1839-1938) is now online at FamilySearch.org. It includes district registers, counterfoils of marriage certificates and some church records.
BRITISH IN INDIA. Findmypast has published new record collections relating to British overseas travelers, workers and expatriates. The first includes “British people who either lived, worked or travelled in India from as early as 1664 up to 1961 with an index of births, marriages, divorces and deaths compiled by the Society of Genealogists.” There are also new collections from the India Office: births and baptisms and wills and probates.
DIGITAL BOOKS. A new FREE collection of 150,000 digitized books is searchable at MyHeritage.com. Among the titles are family, local and military histories; city and county directories; school and university yearbooks and church and congregational minutes.
ENGLAND PARISH AND ELECTORAL. Significantly-updated indexes of Kent parish registers and registers of electors (both dating to the 1500s!) are now online at FamilySearch, as Lancashire parish records to 1538 and another collection of parish registers back to 1603 that include Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire.
SOUTH AFRICA CHURCH. A new collection of Netherdutch Reformed Church of Africa Records (1838-1991) from Pretoria, South Africa is now browsable at FamilySearch. Christening, marriage and membership records are among them.
WALES ELECTORAL REGISTERS. Over 1.6 million indexed names from electoral registers for Glamorgan and West Glamorgan, Wales (1839-1935) are now searchable at FamilySearch.org.
Because there is such a strong genealogy interest in the LMA, they are making a huge effort to reach out to genealogists. They’re all about educating us and sharing what’s at LMA through their website, hands-on classes, remote research services and partnerships with data sites like Ancestry.co.uk and FindMyPast.co.uk. All this from a city archive!
Check out this video they’ve made for family history researchers:
Doesn’t that video make you want to check out the LMA for yourself? On their website, click on Family History. Read up on the basics, then click on Information Leaflet No.1 for a detailed description of their holdings. If you can’t visit, you can use their Family History Research Service. But it looks like a pretty tempting research destination!
Our weekly roundup of new genealogy records online includes: the 1891 NSW Australia census;Portsmouth, England electoral registers; Frankfurt, Germany deaths; Massachusetts Revolutionary War soldiers; North Carolina probate and recent U.S. obituaries.
ENGLAND ELECTORAL REGISTERS. Findmypast continues to expand its collection of electoral registers with nearly 200k transcripts from Portsmouth, England (1835-1873).
GERMANY DEATHS. Over half a million indexed records and accompanying images are at a new, free FamilySearch collection of death records for Frankfurt, Germany (1928-1978).
MASSACHUSETTS REVOLUTIONARY WAR. A new browsable collection of “index cards to muster rolls of soldiers who served in Massachusetts regiments during the Revolutionary War, 1775-1783″ is now searchable at FamilySearch. The card file comes from the Massachusetts State Archives in Boston.
NORTH CAROLINA PROBATE. More than a half million images and 25,000 indexed records have been added to a free collection of North Carolina estate records (1663-1979) at FamilySearch.
US OBITUARIES. FamilySearch has updated its collection of recent U.S. obituaries indexed from GenealogyBank newspaper images. Nearly 15 million records have been added. The index is free to search.
Thank you for sharing these new genealogy records online with your fellow genealogy buddies and society members! You’re a gem!
A local genealogist used these strategies to help identify old photos taken on holiday in England by an Australian family. Read more about her savvy tips below and view the free video on using Google image search by Lisa Louise Cooke.
Sandra Stocks can’t resist solving genealogical mysteries–her own, or someone else’s. So when she saw an article in the Huddersfield Daily Examiner of West Yorkshire titled, “Can you solve the mystery of these old photographs?” she had to answer.
The photos in the article belonged to an Australian family. They included a series of images taken in the 1930s while the party was on holiday along the Great British coast. A partly-legible name and address on a picture postcard in the group provided a clue.
A few of the article’s readers responded with assistance. One of these readers was Sandra, who volunteers with the Kirkheaton Family History Group. Her answer was featured in a follow-up article (“Mystery SOLVED!”). We reached out to Sandra ourselves, to see if she would share the research strategies she used to identify these old photos. Very generously, she did!
Sandra Stocks, left, with Ann from Canada. Their grandfathers were cousins; they met via Ancestry.com and Ann visited England. They met up at The Croppers Arms pub, where a mutual ancestor was a 19th-century landlord. Photo courtesy of Sandra Stocks.
How-to Identify Old Photos in 4 Easy Steps
Genealogy Gems Premium website members can listen to her full answer in the Genealogy Gems Premium Episode 143. In the meantime, here’s a helpful summary for everyone:
1. Look closely at the photo for any identifying names or words. Sandra begins by saying, “Although the name on the postcard looked like Mr. J. Stogley, when I looked on the newspaper’s website there were other photographs, one which showed the name P. Hogley, Druggist, above a shop window.” (Don’t see anything? Skip to step 4, below.)
2. Use any names or places you identify to consult historical records for that place and time. Sandra continues, “I then searched on Ancestry.co.uk for Joseph Hogley, which, being an unusual name, was easy to find…In the 1911 English census he was living with his wife at the address on the postcard, so I knew I had the right chap. I then searched for him in [an] earlier census and found his family, and his brother Percy Hogley, a druggist, the writer of the postcard.”
3. Follow up in other historical records to identify additional relatives–and possible subjects in the photos. Sandra most often consults birth, marriage, and death records on Ancestry.co.uk and Findmypast.co.uk. “Not everybody wants to pay for a subscription,” she acknowledges, so she also recommends FreeBMD.org.uk “which allows you to search births, marriages, and deaths in England and Wales. A quick search of births for Hogley between 1850 and 1932 would have given me the births of Joseph and Percy Hogley in Huddersfield in 1875 and 1877, respectively. I used FreeBMD to discover that Joseph and his wife had a son, Bernard Thomas Hogley, in 1913 and Bernard married in 1945.”
4. If the photos have no identifying names or places, go straight to those who might recognize them: the locals. Lastly, Sandra shares, “There is a great family history forum where I could have posted a photograph and within a very short time somebody would have told me an approximate year when the picture was taken. The website is RootsChat.com and they also have pages for each English and Welsh county where local people are more than happy to help with genealogy queries.”
More on How-to Identify Old Photos
Unidentified old photos exist in nearly everyone’s family history holdings. Pull those old photos out and discover what else you can discern using these additional tips in Lisa Louise Cooke’s free video titled “How to Google Image Search to Identify Old Photos Using a Smartphone & Tablet.” By learning how to match the images you have to other images on the web, you may find some great new clues for your genealogy! This trick works great for distinct or well-known images, such as a location, or perhaps an important person in your family tree. Give it a try!
Recently I heard about a slew of WWII documents at The National Archives [U.K.], some newly available online. Look closely at the descriptions: they have holdings of records of non-British forces, too!
Battle of Britain air observer. Wikipedia Commons image. Click to view.
Recently The National Archives [UK] promoted some of the WWII documents in its vaults, in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. Below are resources and collections they’ve highlighted.
Guide to Royal Air Force Service Records. Use this overview to see what records are available at The National Archives, and learn about related records that have been digitized and indexed at Findmypast.
Royal Air Force combat reports. These are “official reports which pilots or air gunners filed after they had encountered enemy aircraft on operational flights,” says a description on the site. “The reports cover action seen by the squadrons, wings and groups serving with Fighter Command, Bomber Command, Coastal Command and the Fleet Air Arm. Now held at The National Archives in series AIR 50, they include Commonwealth, United States Army Air Force and Allied units based in the United Kingdom during the Second World War.”
Royal Air Force operations record books for squadrons. “Most of them date from the Second World War but there are some from the 1920s and 1930s and a few from the First World War,” says the site. “The ORBs, in series AIR 27, were created to provide a complete record of a unit from the time of its formation. Each book includes an accurate record of operations carried out by the unit. This online collection also includes some operations record books for dominion and Allied Air Force squadrons under British Command.” Part of the series is viewable online.
Every week, we dig through new genealogy records online and post the “gems” we find here. It’s a long list this week to catch up from our holiday break: which of these records may mention your ancestors?
