by Lisa Cooke | Dec 4, 2015 | 01 What's New, Australian, British, Immigration, Records & databases, United States
Here’s our weekly roundup of new genealogy records online! Everyone should check out the updates to PERSI at Findmypast. Also, there records of Australia-bound passengers; British watermen; Idaho marriages; and wills for Rhode Island and Staffordshire, England.
AUSTRALIA IMMIGRATION. New at TheGenealogist are over 190,000 indexed records for passengers who departed from Britain and Ireland on early migrant ships to New South Wales in the years between 1828 and 1896. According to a press release, “The transcripts of the latest release uniquely give a family link so you can see spouses and children setting out on their new life. They also reveal details such as which ship they had sailed on, where they were landing, the passenger’s occupation and in the case where the migrant has been assisted to travel out to a job, their employer’s name.”
BRITISH WATERMEN. If any of your ancestors may have worked as watermen in London, their names may appear in several new Findmypast databases:
ENGLAND WILLS. Wills and probate records for Staffordshire, England (1521-1860) are newly searchable on Findmypast. The index includes names, death dates, occupation and next of kin information.
IDAHO MARRIAGES. A marriage index for Idaho (1842-1964, 1975-1996) has been updated at Ancestry. Indexed entries may include “name, spouse’s name, spouse’s gender, marriage date and location, county and state in which the marriage was recorded, residence of bride and groom, and source information.”
PERSI UPDATE. Findmypast has done a quarterly update to the Periodical Source Index (PERSI), a database of thousands of genealogically-relevant articles in journals, magazines and newsletters. According to a release, “35 different publications have either been newly added to the collection or updated with additional coverage….You’ll find fully searchable new articles from states, cities and towns across America….The latest additions include indexes on English, Irish, Australian and Swedish genealogy too.”
RHODE ISLAND WILLS. Ancestry’s collection of Rhode Island wills and probate records (1582-1932) has been updated. It now includes images for probate records from all counties, though some may be missing for various localities or time periods.
Thank you for sharing this post via email and social media! We love spreading good news about new genealogy records online!
by Lisa Cooke | Sep 4, 2015 | 01 What's New, Ancestry, Australian, British, Census, Church, FamilySearch, Findmypast, History, images, Military, Records & databases, United States
Here’s our weekly list of new genealogy records online. Do any collections below relate to your family history? Please share with your genealogy buddies or with societies that might be interested!
AUSTRALIA WWI WOMEN. New media resources, including a television series, Facebook page and Twitter feed have been created to share more information about Australians and New Zealanders who participated in World War I, particularly women. Click here for a related blog post from The National Archives (Australia).
COLOMBIA CHURCH RECORDS. More than a million browsable records have been added to an existing database at FamilySearch, Colombia Catholic Church Records 1600-2012. “These records include: baptisms, confirmations, marriages, pre-marriage investigations, marriage dispensations, deaths, and indexes.” Some of the collection is already indexed.
ENGLAND ELECTORAL REGISTERS. Electoral registers for Manchester, England (1832-1900) are now browsable on Findmypast. Details about an ancestor’s residence and property ownership may appear.
NEW JERSEY STATE CENSUS. FamilySearch just added more than 2.7 million records from the 1915 New Jersey Census to its free online collections. These records include “the names of each member of the household, location, gender, birth date (month and year) and birthplace.” Click here learn more about this and other state censuses.
TEXAS MARRIAGE RECORDS. More than half a million indexed records have been added to an existing free database, Texas County Marriage Records 1837-1977, at FamilySearch. Covering 140 years, the records include “various types of marriage records (registers, licenses, intentions to marry, etc.) from 183 of the 254 counties in Texas.”
Thank you for sharing these new genealogy records online with your genealogy friends and fellow society members via email and your favorite social media channels. Just use the Share buttons on this page!
by Lisa Cooke | Jun 8, 2015 | 01 What's New, Ancestry, Australian, DNA, images
AncestryDNA test kits are now available to purchase in Australia and New Zealand, according to a recent statement from Ancestry. These two countries join the UK, Ireland and the US in having access to AncestryDNA’s popular autosomal kits.
DNA testing for genetic reasons isn’t new Down Under. Your DNA Guide Diane Southard blogged on our site last fall about a National Genographic Project that looked at the mixture of genes among residents of Wellington, New Zealand. They determined that “the original Polynesian population and a small East Asian population are certainly the minority among a predominately Western European population group.”
Additionally, Family Tree DNA has a New Zealand DNA Project that anyone with NZ roots can join. It has three DNA groups for Australia: one for adoptees, one for descendants of settlers and one specifically for descendants of early buy medication for depression online convicts (Australia was originally a British penal colony). So AncestryDNA in Australia and New Zealand represents just one more option for this part of the world.
Have you had your DNA tested yet for genealogy? Have you found the results to be meaningful or useful? Diahan Southard is Genealogy Gems’ resident DNA expert. Watch for her posts here that keep up with exciting developments in genetic genealogy and teach you how to use it properly!
Her series of DNA quick guides can get you started on your DNA path and help you navigate your results at Family Tree DNA or AncestryDNA. Grab just the ones you need or the full bundle for a value price!
by | Mar 18, 2015 | 01 What's New, Australian, Immigration, Records & databases
Drawing of migrants disembarking from a ship, ca 1885. From Cassell’s Picturesque Australia vol. 3, edited by E. E. Morris : Melbourne : Cassell & Co. Ltd., 1888, opp. p. 222. Wikimedia Commons image.
Did you know that the British government has not only encouraged many people to leave Britain, it has helped them do it? This is known as “assisted immigration.” It has affected millions of our relatives’ lives, both of original migrants and their descendants.
Australia received a LOT of new residents through assisted immigration from the 1830s clear through the late 1900s. Fortunately, passenger lists kept on these folks can help you find your relatives who participated. Some of these lists have come online, including for arrivals in Queensland.
Now you can search Queensland passenger lists for assisted immigrants (1848-1912, with over a quarter million records) in two ways:
Learn more about immigration to Australia at FamilySearch. You’ll find a fun published family history about an early Australian immigrant family on our Genealogy Gems Book Club page: The Worst Country in the World: The True Story of an Australian Pioneer Family.
Here’s a Google tip for finding datasets. Often you’ll hear about NEW datasets available on major genealogy websites, as I did from FindMyPast for the above collection. But sometimes that same data (perhaps in a slightly different format) is already available for free on another site. The big genealogy websites procure data from lots of other sources that may already host it online. Yes, it’s convenient to search all these databases in one central site like FindMyPast. But don’t subscribe to a site for the sake of ONE collection without Googling the name of the dataset first. That’s what I did in this case, and I found it online at the Queensland State Archive.
by Lisa Cooke | Mar 6, 2013 | 01 What's New, British, History, Immigration, Records & databases
If you have British roots, you’ll want to check out the new collection available on Findmypast.com: a half million criminal records dating from 1770-1934!
This sounds like a pretty gripping collection, whether you’ve got British roots or not. It contains records like mug shots, court documents, appeals letters and registers from prison ships (which were used when mainland prisons were crowded). According to Findmypast.com, the records “provide a wide variety of color, detail and fascinating social history, chronicling the fate of criminals ranging from fraudsters, counterfeiters, thieves and murderers and their victims.” The 500,000 records you can search now are only a fifth of the full collection of 2.5 million that will be online soon.
The company calls this the largest collection of historical criminal records from England and Wales to be published online and is done in association with the National Archives (UK). Findmypast.com members can click here to access the criminal collection directly (make sure the box for “Institutes and Organizations” is checked).
Here’s a little more background on connections between British convicts and the U.S. and Australia….
During colonial times, Britain often punished criminals by forcing them to emigrate. The most famous destination was Australia: the first British settlement on that continent in 1787 was actually a penal colony. Australia celebrates that fact about its heritage today: learn more about the “First Fleet’s” arrival here.
Up to about 50,000 British convicts were also forced to emigrate to the American colonies during the 1700s. These included prisoners of war from Ireland and Scotland. Read more about this in Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718-1775 (Clarendon Paperbacks)
by A. Roger Ekirch. Findmypast.com isn’t able to tell us yet how many records in the criminal collection relate to forced emigrations, but anyone with roots in the U.K. should check out this collection for sure.
