The Newest Batch of British & Irish Genealogical Records Now Online

It’s always exciting to see new genealogical records come online because they offer new hope for discoveries and brick wall busting. 

Findmypast, a leader in British genealogical records, has recently added thousands of new records to existing and new collections. Among these you’ll find everything from baptism and burial records to British and Irish digitized newspapers. 

British Records

Huddersfield, England Baptisms                                                       

A large market and university town in West Yorkshire, England, Huddersfield is nestled between Leeds and Manchester. It’s the 11th largest town in the United Kingdom, and is known for it’s Victorian architecture. Huddersfield railway station was described by former Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom John Betjeman as “the most splendid station façade in England”, second only to St Pancras, London. 

Huddersfield Railway Station (RLH)

Over 52,000 records covering 14 new parishes have been added to Findmypast’s collection of Huddersfield Baptisms. All new parishes are highlighted in the Huddersfield baptisms parish list.

Each baptismal record includes a transcript of an original parish register entry. This will reveal a combination of your ancestor’s:

  • baptism date,
  • parent’s names,
  • father’s occupation
  • and father’s address.

Click here to search the Huddersfield Baptisms                                      

 

Yorkshire, England Memorial Inscriptions

If you are trying to find out when your ancestor died and was laid to rest in Yorkshire, this growing collection is worth a look. Over 5000 additional records have been added to the Yorkshire Memorial Inscriptions collection. 

These newly added records cover 14 Anglican churchyards across the York area (West Riding, North Riding and Ainsty).

The bulk of the records mainly cover the years of the First and Second World Wars. 

Search for your ancestors now in the Yorkshire Memorial Inscriptions

 

Middlesex Baptisms and Monumental Inscriptions

An historic county in southeast England, Middlesex was established in the Anglo-Saxon system from the territory of the Middle Saxons. It existed as an official administrative unit until 1965, and now mostly falls within the ceremonial county of Greater London, with small sections in other neighboring ceremonial counties. 

Baptisms

Findmypast has recently added over 64,000 new records to existing parishes within the collection of Middlesex Baptisms. These transcripts of original parish register entries will reveal a combination of your ancestor’s baptism date, parent’s names, father’s occupation and address.

The collection also covers parts of London, Surrey, and Hertfordshire.

Search the Middlesex Baptisms Collection

Monumental Inscriptions

Over 5,000 additional monumental inscription records are now available to search. The new records cover two cemeteries in Teddington as well as the Parish of St Mary’s in Sunbury.

Monumental Inscriptions can reveal the names of others buried in that plot as well as more specific details regarding age, birth and death dates. This can be incredibly helpful as it can provide you with the names and dates of your ancestor’s next of kin, including their relation to one another.

Search the Middlesex Monumental Inscriptions here.

 

Essex Genealogical Records

Essex is a large county in the south-east of England and forms part of the Metropolitan Green Belt just beyond greater London. The original Kingdom of Essex, founded by Saxon King Aescwine in AD 527, occupied territory to the north of the River Thames and east of the River Lee. In the 1640s, during the English Civil War, notorious witch hunter General Matthew Hopkins lived in the county accused 23 women in Chelmsford in 1645.

You will find five million baptism, banns, marriages, and burial records from Essex on Findmypast. These records were created from the original registers held by the Essex Record Office and other sources.

John Constable The Hay Wain
The oil on canvas The Hay Wain by John Constable shows the Essex landscape on the right bank.

Essex Baptisms

This collection covers 532 parishes and reveals:

  • birth place,
  • birth date,
  • birth place,
  • denomination,
  • residence,
  • baptism date,
  • baptism place,
  • parents’ names,
  • and father’s occupation.

Search the Essex Baptism Index 1538-1920 here.

Essex Marriages and Banns

These records cover 553 parishes and provide the following information:

  • residence
  • occupation
  • marital status
  • banns year
  • marriage date
  • location
  • spouse’s name
  • spouse’s residence
  • spouse’s marital status
  • father’s name
  • spouse’s father’s name
  • names of any witnesses

Search the Essex Marriages and Banns 1537-1935

Essex Burials

This collection covers 455 parishes and provide:

  • birth year
  • age at death
  • denomination
  • birth year
  • burial year
  • burials date
  • burial place

Search the Essex Burial Index 1530-1994

 

Derbyshire Genealogical Records

Derbyshire stole my heart this year during a recent trip to England where I spoke at THE Genealogy Show conference. It’s preserved historic beauty can be greatly attributed to the Peak District National Park which mostly falls within this East Midlands area county. 

Derbyshire
Photo: My recent visit to beautiful Derbyshire, England

Births and Baptisms

Just under a thousand additional records from 15 non-conformist parishes have been added to the Findmypast collection of Derbyshire Births and Baptisms.

Mainly covering Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, the full list of new additions has been highlighted in their Derbyshire parish list.

Search Derbyshire Births and Baptisms here.

 

Kent Burials

Over 4,500 records of burials that took place at St Martin’s church in Cheriton are now available to search here. These new additions cover two periods, 1843 to 1855 and 1907 to 1958. Search these records to discover where and when your ancestor was buried, as well as the names of their spouse and father.

These burial records constitute a valuable resource for researching ancestry in Kent and have been provided in association with:

  • Canterbury Cathedral Archives
  • Kent County Council
  • the North West Kent Family History Society,
  • Folkestone & District Family History Society
  • and Val Brown. 

 

Billion Graves Cemetery Indexes at Findmypast

You just might be able to pinpoint your ancestor’s final resting place with the new additions to Findmypast’s Billion Graves Cemetery Indexes. The latest update includes:

Cemetery records like these can provide you with information regarding your ancestor’s birth and marriage dates.

According to Alex Cox of Findmypast, “With an abundance of cemeteries, it can be overwhelming trying to pinpoint the precise cemetery in which your ancestor was laid to rest, and visiting each potential location is costly. However, in partnering with BillionGraves, we aim to make available all the cemetery records held on their site for free, saving you time and money as you search for your ancestor. BillionGraves is the largest resource for GPS-tagged headstone and burial records on the web, with over 12 million headstone records.”

 

British and Irish Newspapers

Additions to Existing Newspaper Collections

Findmpast has added 98,602 brand new pages to eleven of their existing titles. Spanning the years 1865 to 1999, the new additions include extensive updates the Huddersfield Daily Examiner as well as titles covering the south of England (Crawley and London), the Midlands (Coventry), and the North West (Liverpool).

Further updates have also been made to the specialist publication – Field – for which they now have editions up to 1911.

Additional updates have been made to twenty-one  existing titles, covering the length and breadth of Scotland, Ireland and England. These include updates to two Cornish titles – the Royal Cornwall Gazette and Lake’s Falmouth Packet and Cornwall Advertiser, as well as updates to seven Scottish titles, including the John o’Groat Journal and the Perthshire Advertiser.

There has been a significant update to the Bristol Times and Mirror, with over 33,000 pages added, covering the years 1897 to 1911.

Also updated are two early Labour publications – Clarion and the Labour Leader – as well as one of our religious titles, Witness (Edinburgh), and the sporting title, the Football Post (Nottingham). As you can see, there is a diverse range of interests represented.

New Newspaper Titles

The Queen, The Ladies’ Newspaper and Court Chronicle, a society magazine by Samuel Beeton established in 1861, and the Women’s Gazette and Weekly News have also been added. Published in Manchester, this was a ‘journal devoted to the social and political position of women.’

More historical newspapers added this summer include:

  • Hawick Express covering the years 1892, 1903-1904, 1913-1914, 1919-1940, 1950-1952
  • Coatbridge Express covering the years 1885-1951
  • Dalkeith Advertiser covering the years 1869-1953
  • Barrhead News covering the years 1897-1912
  • Banffshire Herald covering the years 1893-1912
  • Banffshire Advertiser covering the years 1881-1902, 1905-1912

Check out the latest British & Irish Newspaper Updates here.

Family History Episode 17 – Using Family History Centers, Part I

Family History Genealogy Made Easy Podcast

Originally published 2009

Republished February 4, 2014

 

Download the Show Notes for this Episode

Welcome to this step-by-step series for beginning genealogists—and more experienced ones who want to brush up or learn something new. I first ran this series in 2008. So many people have asked about it, I’m bringing it back in weekly segments.

Episode 17: Using Family History Centers, Part I

This episode is the first of a series in which we answer questions about Family History Centers (now also known as FamilySearch Centers), the regional satellite facilities of the main Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. When I’m done with you, you won’t have a single excuse left for hesitating to use these wonderful family history research resources!

My very special guest is friend of the show Margery Bell, Assistant Director of the Oakland Family History Center in Oakland, California. Margery has over 35 years of experience working in Family History Centers. In our first segment she introduces us to the Family History Center and walks us step by step through the process for ordering and using microfilm. Then in our second segment, Margery discusses the wide range of resources beyond microfilm that you will find at both your local Family History Center and one of 14 larger Regional centers. In our final segment she digs in to all of the kinds of other genealogical resources we can find at Family History Centers. Even if you’ve already been to a Family History Center, you’re still going to learn some new things along the way!

Resource Links

Find a Family History Center near you

Family History Library Online Catalog

 

Iowa Newspapers Stacking Up With No Plan to Film

newspaper_stack_800_8757According to a news story by IowaWatch.org, current Iowa newspapers are piling up at the archives of the State Historical Society of Iowa in Des Moines, with no current plan to microfilm or otherwise preserve them.

“Traditionally, the papers would have been sent off [for microfilming], but a 2009 budget cut ended that 50-year practice,” says the report. “A bill proposed last year would have provided funds for the backlog, but the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs, which oversees the historical society, put on the breaks. It rejected the proposed funding citing pending completion of a master planning process and assessment study to evaluate what it has in the archives and how to preserve those materials in the future.”

Over 1500 bundles of newspapers await microfilm preservation, at an estimated cost of around a quarter million dollars. Officials state that they are reviewing a master plan for preserving all important materials in the state archive, not just newspapers. Click here to read the full story.

What can you do to ensure that today’s newspaper history lives on in your family

  • Digitize current obituaries and articles that mention your family.
  • Image meaningful headlines and write a journal entry about why they are important to you.
  • Keep track of these images, full source citations and your thoughts in organizational software like Evernote and attach them to your family tree in your own software and in your online trees.

How to Find Your Family History in NewspapersMeanwhile, make the most of what historical newspapers had to say about your family. More of these papers are accessible online, either directly as digitized content or through microfilm rentals or research services you can learn about online. Learn more in Lisa’s book, How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers.

Digital Family History Book Collection Hits 200k!

plant_growing_out_of_book_800_wht_9084

A milestone 200,000 digital family history books are now online at the multi-library Family History Books collection at FamilySearch.org. The growing collection, which began in 2007, includes “family histories, county and local histories, genealogy magazines and how-to books, gazetteers, and medieval histories and pedigrees,” according to the landing page.

Last time I looked for books here, I found one on my Homer ancestors. This time around, I found another gem: a book of children’s stories written about these ancestors! Digitally-archived volumes like county and local histories, published  family histories and others are so valuable because they are immediately accessible and because they are keyword-searchable. Try these keyword search strategies:

  • Look for only a surname (in case the first name is written different ways or a different relative is mentioned).
  • Search for the name of a neighborhood, street, church, school, business, type of work or other keywords that pertain to your family.
  • Use the Advanced Search feature to focus your search for a keyword in a title, type of publication (periodical, etc).

Once you’re reading a book, you can click on the info icon (a circle with an “i” in it on the upper right) to see more information about the book, including source citation and copyright information.

While the number of volumes online skyrockets, the online Viewer for reading them is only gradually improving. Here’s a TIP from FamilySearch staffer Dennis Meldrum: “Safari does not work well with the Viewer.” Neither do mobile devices like the iPhone or iPad. “The Viewer works best with IE or Firefox. It also works with Chrome, but the Adobe Tools do not work. We are aware of the limitations of the Viewer and are working to replace it by the end of the year.”

evernote_libraryWant to keep track of which genealogy books are on your shelf and which you’ve found online? Create an Evernote genealogy library! Click here to learn how to do that with books on your shelf, and then add additional titles with the links in Evernote. Sharpen your Evernote skills for genealogy by becoming a Genealogy Gems Premium member. This gives you a full year’s access to our Ultimate Evernote for Genealogy Education, with five (so far) full-length video classes for beginner to expert and five mini-sessions, too.

Disaster Preparedness for Genealogists: Assess Your Assets Part 1

fire

This morning I looked out my window and could see a huge plume of smoke. Across the valley a wild fire is raging that began yesterday afternoon. The hot and very dry conditions have fueled the flames, and homes are starting to be evacuated.  It’s a grim reminder that disasters do happen and no one is immune.

It is National Preparedness Month in the United States, and for genealogists, that means disaster planning for our home archives and family history files. We don’t like to think about the unthinkable: losing our original photos, documents and years’ worth of research in a fire, flood, hurricane or other disaster. But it’s happened in places as high-and-mighty as federal archives here in the USA: it can certainly happen in our homes. Even a leaky roof, downed tree, bug infestation, basement mildew issue, theft or other “minor” disaster can mean total annihilation of our family archives if it’s in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As I watch the fire and monitor it’s progress on Twitter, I’m thankful that I can rest easy that my precious family history is protected in a number of ways. This month, I’ll share four steps to help you secure the future of your family past, one step for each of the next four weeks. This gives you time to follow through on each piece of advice before you get to the next step. This week’s step:

ASSESS YOUR GENEALOGY ASSETS. What needs protection?

Your top priority, as a genealogist, will likely be original photos, documents, artwork and one-of-a-kind family artifacts like a family Bible. In other words, things that can’t be replaced.

Next, think about things you’d rather not have to replace: records you’ve ordered from repositories; several years’ worth of genealogy notes and files; computerized family trees. Make yourself a list, so in the weeks to follow you can carry out an emergency plan for each item (starting with high-priority items) as your time and budget permit. Next week’s topic: DUPLICATE THE PAST.

 

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