Congratulations to Maureen Selley!

A belated congratulations to everyone's favourite Time Lady, Maureen Selley, on being awarded a British Empire Medal in the most recent Honours list, for "Services to Local History".

Maureen has been a long running volunteer with Devon Family History Society (www.devonfhs.org.uk), of which she is the current Secretary and a former Chairman. She's also a bundle of fun, and thoroughly dedicated to helping others with their family history pursuits - and more importantly, for this particular genie, a fellow Whovian!  I've had the pleasure to meet and chat with Maureen on several occasions in recent years, both at Who Do You Think You Are Live? events, and in Portugal at the Lost Cousins conferences in 2014 and 2015, and this is most certainly a thoroughly deserved recognition by the state for all of her past and continuing efforts.

The formal announcement is available in the London Gazette at https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/61962/supplement/B31.

Well done Maureen!

(With thanks to Wendy Archer at Oxfordshire FHS)

Chris

My next 5 week Scottish Research Online course commences Sept 11th 2017 - details at https://www.pharostutors.com/details.php?coursenumber=102.
For details on my Scottish & Irish genealogy guide books, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html.
For my genealogy research service, please visit http://www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk.

Guide to the UK's Gazette newspapers

Not sure if this has just been published, or if The Gazette is just tweeting about it, but Else Churchill from the Society of Genenalogists has written a useful background guide to the The Gazette newspaper's three incarnations in London, Belfast and Edinburgh at https://www.thegazette.co.uk/all-notices/content/100857.

Incidentally, for Irish research I discovered last year that fully searchable copies of the Dublin Gazette (now called Iris Oifigiuil) from 1750-1800 are freely available on the Oireachtas Library website. For further details visit my blog post at http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-dublin-gazette-from-1750-1800-is.html.

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including A Beginner's Guide to British and Irish Genealogy, A Decade of Irish Centenaries: Researching Ireland 1912-1923, Discover Scottish Church Records (2nd edition), Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html.

Irish Police Gazettte 1861-1893 records on Ancestry

Ancestry has released a new collection, Ireland, Police Gazettes, 1861-1893, available at http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=61046.

From the site:

About Ireland, Police Gazettes, 1861-1893

This collection contains printed publications used for communication among members of the police force in Ireland between 1861 and 1893. It contains information on wanted criminals, crimes committed, criminals who had been apprehended, and missing persons.

The collection can be searched by:

Name
Birth year
Publication year
Event year
Event location
Event Type
Role in Crime
Conviction Place


Ancestry has written a blog post about the collection at http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2016/08/22/wanted-criminals-and-reward-systems-revealed-in-new-irish-police-gazette-records/.

NB: In terms of coverage, the collection is very incomplete, with coverage for some years very hit and miss, and in some cases absent altogether. It starts in February 15th 1863, with no records at all then from 1864-1865, 1867-1869, 1872-1873, or 1881. Within the years presented, a quick search test has shown that in the year 1870, there are only six pages in total, whilst only 3 pages are returned for 1871, 5 for 1875 etc, so some years are very well represented, and some not at all. This is not Ancestry's fault, it has merely digitised the source as presented, which comes from Luminary Trading Ltd. Nevertheless, for what is available, you may find a useful gem.

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including A Decade of Irish Centenaries: Researching Ireland 1912-1923, Discover Scottish Church Records (2nd edition), Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html.

350 years of The London Gazette

This month sees the 350th anniversary of the London Gazette, initially published as the Oxford Gazette, and forerunner to its UK and Irish equivalents the Edinburgh Gazette, the Dublin Gazette (now Iris Ofigiuil) and the Belfast Gazette.

The Gazettes are the official paper of the state, essentially, and record a remarkable amount of useful information for family history research - notices of businesses, bankruptcies, military honours and promotions, civil awards, planning permissions, and much more. 350 years of publication is certainly worth celebrating!

The Gazette website has a dedicated section looking back at the title, available at https://www.thegazette.co.uk/history/350-years. As part of the celebrations, the site has uploaded a short animated video at https://youtu.be/JqK2Lx6mryI, presented below for convenience:

To freely search the Gazettes, visit www.gazette.co.uk.

Note that the Belfast Gazette replaced the all Ireland Dublin Gazette as a new title for Northern Ireland from 1921. I recently discovered that 50 years worth of the Dublin Gazette have also been digitised for the late 18th century - for more on this, see my blog post from August at http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-dublin-gazette-from-1750-1800-is.html.

Congratulations to the London Gazette - and onwards and upwards for another 350 years!

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including my recently released Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html. My Pinterest account is at https://www.pinterest.com/chrismpaton/.

No more Dublin Gazettes to go online from the Oireachtas

A couple of weeks ago I discovered that the Oireachtas in Ireland had made available online digitised editions of the Dublin Gazette (see http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-dublin-gazette-from-1750-1800-is.html). Although the files carrying the newspaper are incredibly large (about 1GB each), I had identified that the coverage was from 1750-1800, thanks to the Wikipedia article on the newspaper available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dublin_Gazette. Curious to know if this is the sum total of all editions due to go online, I contacted the library at the Oireachtas, and have just received the following response:

Dear Chris

Many thanks for your query and for your comments on the digitised collections. It is good to know they are proving to be a useful resource.

From having reviewed the digitisation project files as far as I am aware all of our issues of the Dublin Gazette were digitised.

To my knowledge there are currently no plans to digitise Iris Oifiguil. If anything changes in this respect I will let you know.

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any further questions.

Jennifer McGrath,
Assistant Librarian,
Library & Research Service,
Houses of the Oireachtas Service

To search for all the online editions from 1750-1809, visit the Oireachtas Library catalogue at http://opac.oireachtas.ie/liberty/libraryHome.do, where you will find many, many other valuable publications that have been digitised also.

UPDATE: *Sigh*  I initially reported that the Oireachtas catalogue showed coverage extending to 1809, rather than 1800, as had initially been shown on Wikipedia. In fact, it turns out upon download that the collection does indeed stop at the end of 1800 - the catalogue entry is wrong in stating 1809. So fifty years it remains then... (I have amended this post and the header to reflect this)

(With thanks to Jennifer McGrath)

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including my recently released Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html.

The Dublin Gazette from 1750-1800 is online

I've just made a discovery concerning the Dublin Gazette, the official newspaper of record in Ireland prior to January 1922, which I was not previously aware of. Until now I was aware that some editions of the newspaper were available online via the British Library's 1700-1800 Burney Collection, sourced mainly from 1708-1712, 1724-1725 and 1797, whilst 47 issues between 1707 and 1909 are available via the subscription based Newspaper Archive (http://newspaperarchive.com).

I'm giving a talk on newspapers this coming Saturday at the Lanarkshire Family History Show in Motherwell (see http://lfhsshow.weebly.com), and whilst updating the Powerpoint for my talk I decided to have a quick look at the Wikipedia entry for the title at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dublin_Gazette. Imagine my surprise when this appeared at the bottom of the entry:

Fifty years worth of Dublin Gazettes, from the 1750s to 1800 are linked to from the site, with the originals hosted at the Oireachtas library website at http://opac.oireachtas.ie. The Houses of the Oireachtas contain the two institutions of the Republic's national parliament, Dáil Éireann (the House of Representatives) and Seanad Éireann (the Senate).

The editions are those held by the Oireachtas in bound volumes, which have been digitised into hefty sized PDF files of about 1GB each. I've just downloaded the file from 1800, and it was 1.1GB and took about 25 minutes to download - thank God I upgraded to a new computer last weekend, as I don't think my previous one would have liked it! Nevertheless the quality is superb, and the good news is that the newspapers are keyword searchable, the editions having been OCRed.

It may take a while for me to download these, but I suspect they are going to prove to be useful!

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including my recently released Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html.

Mentioned in Dispatches dataset on TheGenealogist

From TheGenealogist (www.thegenealogist.co.uk):

Soldiers Mentioned in Dispatches are now available online

For the first time online, leading British genealogy research website TheGenealogist has released over 81,000 records of records of Mentioned in Dispatches from the First World War, linked to citations from the London Gazette.

Find thousands of soldiers and army nurses who had come to the notice of superior officers for an act of gallantry, or meritorious action, in the face of the enemy in these records. The records created, when the recipient's name appeared in an official report sent to the high command, can now be searched online only at TheGenealogist.

Some soldiers were mentioned in dispatches (MiD), but do not receive a medal for their action, they are nevertheless listed in the records as they were entitled to receive a certificate and wear the Oak Leaf decoration on their dress uniform.

Mark Bayley, head of Content at TheGenealogist said “For those people searching for ancestors who had served in World War I, Mentioned in Despatches provide a unique addition to the already strong collection of military records that are offered at TheGenealogist”

(With thanks to Nick Thorne)

Chris

My next Scotland 1750-1850: Beyond the Old Parish Records online course starts on November 5th, and runs for 5 weeks, priced at £45.99. Spaces are still available - see http://pharostutors.com/coursedescriptions.php#302