Free access to PCY wills index on Origins

Thanks to Jane Hewitt for letting me know that Origins (www.origins.net) is offering free access on July 4th only to its Prerogative Court of York wills and administrations records for England from pre-1858.

Also new from Origins:

Additional Somerset Wills Abstracts 1385-1556

All probate records for the Diocese of Bath and Wells deposited at the probate registry in Exeter were destroyed by enemy action in 1942.

Fortunately there are full (printed) abstracts/extracts to some of these lost wills – collated prior to the devastation of 1942. The volumes listed below contain a complete summary of the details contained within each will, including all names (testators, executors, witnesses and beneficiaries) and places, plus incidental information such as relationships and occupations where found in the original documents.

• Abstracts of Wells Wills 1539-1541, wills proved in the Consistory Court of Wells
• Medieval Wills from Wells 1543-1546 and 1554-1556, wills proved in the Archdeaconry Court of Wells.

Surrey Peculiars Probate Index 1660-1794

An index to Wills, Administrations and inventories in the Peculiar Court of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Deanery of Croydon (Surrey) 1660-1794.

The Peculiar Court of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Deanery of Croydon included the Surrey parishes of Barnes, Burstow, Charlwood, Cheam, Croydon, East Horsley, Merstham, Mortlake, Church Newington, Putney, Roehampton, Walworth St Peter and Wimbledon.

Chris

Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)

Family History Show episode 8 now online

The eighth edition of The Family History Show, from Nick Barratt and Laura Berry, is now available online at www.familyhistoryshow.net/the-vodcasts/episode-8. This month's edition looks at medical records in particular.

(With thanks to Nick @familyhistorysh)

Chris

Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)

FamilySearch adds 1881 and 1891 Scottish censuses

Thanks to Canadian blogger John Reid of Anglo Celtic Connections for news that FamilySearch has added transcriptions for the 1881 and 1891 censuses for Scotland on the website at www.familysearch.org, now meaning that the censuses from 1841-1891 are available there. As with previous releases, there appears to be no link to the FindmyPast website, which contains additional details.

It is worth noting that although the images are available for all of the censuses on ScotlandsPeople (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk), there are in fact two options for access to the 1881 census on the site. The first is a facility to view the original image at 5 credits - as with all the censuses from 1841-1911 - whilst the  second is a full transcript of the 1881 census entries, as originally created by the Mormons many moons ago, for a single credit per household. This is the only census to offer this option on the site.

Chris

Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)

Cambridge library and Huntingdon archive hours changes

Thanks to Beryl Evans at the Federation of Family History Societies (www.ffhs.org.uk) and Alan Akeroyd, Acting Archives and Local Studies Manager at Cambridgeshire County Council (www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/leisure/archives/).

Since 1 April the opening hours at the Cambridgeshire Collection and Huntingdonshire Archives have changed. The new opening hours are:

Cambridgeshire Collection (the Local Studies collection in Cambridge central library)

Monday - Friday 9.00 - 5.00 with staff on duty
Saturday 10.00 - 5.00 with staff on duty
After 5.00pm the public area will remain open with access to local studies loan stock and some reference stock.

Huntingdonshire Archives

Monday, Tuesday 9.30 - 5.00
Wednesday 9.30 - 7.00
Thursday: closed
Friday 9.30 - 5.00
Second Saturday in each month 10.00 - 4.00

The opening hours of Cambridgeshire Archives, in Shire Hall Cambridge, remain unchanged.

Chris

Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)

The tragedy of modern Irish genealogy

Irish genealogist John Grenham has a great blog post with many home truths online at http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/irishroots/2012/07/02/why-cant-we-all-just-get-along/#.T_LQUlxn5Z8.twitter - essentially pointing out the tragedy of the cat fighting within the Irish genealogical establishment. Everyone wants the product, but no-one can effectively access it because everyone else thinks they own it, and no-one wants to give way. It's almost childish. It is unfortunately also embarrassingly, excrutiatingly, typically, very Irish.

As John says, the real victims are those trying to do their research - the very groups these communities are supposed to be trying to help. As the demand for Irish resources continues to grow exponentially, let's hope the trenches don't get any deeper.

I recommend they all head to Bewleys for a session - there's no better place to wake up and smell the coffee. Martin McGuinness shook hands with the Queen last week. And if they can do it...

(With thanks to @8thRDF)

Chris

Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)

TheGenealogist update

TheGenealogist website (www.thegenealogist.co.uk) has a couple of useful updates.

The first is the addition of 9.1 million civil registration birth transcripts, bringing the total number of birth records to over 95 million. From the records it is possible to search for the potential parents' marriage record, list potential children to a married couple and find potential birth records from a person's death record.

Secondly, the site has added further editions of the Illustrated London news from 1863-1869, as well as Harper's Magazine.

Further details at www.thegenealogist.co.uk/news.php

Chris

Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)

Society of Genealogists fellowships

At the London AGM of the Society of Genealogists (www.sog.org.uk) on June 25th, Geoff Swinfield and Jan Gow QSM were both honoured with fellowships by the society - a huge congratulations to both! Geoff has since tweeted (@GeoffatGSGS) that he was "very honoured" to have received the fellowship, whilst a photo of Jan receiving her certificate is available on the New Zealand Society of Genealogists Facebook page at www.facebook.com/NZSocGen.

Of course, the chances of bumping into such illustrious stalwarts of the genealogy world on a wet and miserable day miles north in Glasgow are quite remote for a wee paddy in Largs - unless of course, like me, you just happened to have been in the Mitchell Library to do a quick look-up in the poor law records! It turned out that Jan was in fact also in the archive doing some research, and so we went for a quick cup of tea to catch up, having last bumped into each other at Sydney Airport last December following the Unlock the Past cruise. It is a very small world...! 

As you can see from the picture below, Jan is still beaming from having received the fellowship, which she was absolutely thrilled about receiving!

Chris

Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)

Beginner's guide to archive visits

The National Archives at Kew has a great blog post outlining how to prepare for a visit to the institution, or indeed any archive in the UK, at http://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/planning-a-visit/ - well worth a read if you're planning to make your first trip to an archive!

(With thanks to @UKNatArchives on Twitter)

Chris

Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)

New Scottish Post Office Directories page

The National Library of Scotland has updated its Scottish Post Office Directories page to include a new search function. At the Addressing History website launch event in Edinburgh in November 2010 (see http://scottishancestry.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/addressing-history-launch-report.html) it was announced that an index for the directories would hopefully be online by August of last year, but although delayed it does fulfil the functionality that was promised. The new page is available at http://digital.nls.uk/directories/index.html.

In essence the site is not quite fully searchable - instead each query entered has a search performed which looks for the first 3 characters entered for a surname (or first 5 for names starting with 'Mc' and first 6 for names starting with 'Mac'). A browse function is included however, should you wish to continue to manually look through the volumes on the website.

It should also be noted that whilst the NLS website advertises that it has 708 directories from 1773-1911, the Scottish Directories category on the Internet Archive website at http://archive.org/details/nationallibraryofscotland, the partner in the project, in fact lists 818 holdings - considerably more.  For example, whilst the NLS site has Glasgow directories up to 1911-12, the Internet Archive has directories for the city at present up to 1917-18. The Internet Archive also has a separate search function on its site, using background text obtained by OCR software, as well as a separate option to browse the collection.

My initial opinion on the new NLS site is that it seems a bit overly complicated and in parts confusing, but that is undoubtedly due to the fact that it is radically different to its previous format. It will take a bit of getting used to. The simplicity of the previous set up was that you could click on a link and be taken to the Internet Archive page where the directory was held. On the other hand, searches on the Internet Archive occasionally do not work, even though the information required is often there - it has just not been picked up by poor OCR.

I have become well used to using the online directories by browsing, as I would at a library, and suspect my own way of working will likely remain the same, even with this new NLS portal. However it is useful to have a second search system, which may well come in handy.

(With thanks to ‏@geniaus, @AmandaEpperson and @ScottishHistory on Twitter)

Chris

Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)

Japanese POW records on Forces War Records

From the Forces War Records website (www.forces-war-records.co.uk)


Forces War Records re-launches with 14,000 Japanese P.O.W records

To celebrate the launch of a new design for its website, Forces War Records has just added over 14,000 new Japanese Prisoner of War records which are completely free to search and view results.

Dominic Hayhoe from Forces War Records said “In addition to our new site design, we have been extensively adding new records to Forces War Records that our members have been asking for. One area not very well covered by any sites is the Japanese Prisoner of War records. In adding these, we know we will be helping quite a few people looking for information on their ancestors. In addition to this we have created a very extensive tutorial to help with finding more information.”

He goes on to say “Of course, in addition to these new records, as ever, all our records are not simply service records in isolation. All our records are uniquely cross matched with other information related to them such as what units the person served in or what battles they fought etc. giving a much more in-depth picture of what life was really like for them.”

(With thanks to Dominic Hayhoe)

Chris

Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)