Welcome to the Family History Social

TheGenealogist’s latest release of transcripts of RAF ORBs provide the most complete collection of indexed AIR 27 records

TheGenealogist has today released over 4.2 million transcripts for its RAF Operations Record Books (ORBs), fully searchable by Name, Rank, Aircraft, Squadron, and Date plus many other fields, making it simpler to find your air force ancestors. 

TheGenealogist uniquely allows you to search the period 1911-1963. With over 11 million records online, this is the largest collection of searchable AIR 27 records making it the best place to find details about your RAF ancestors. 

Handley Page Hampdens taking off in formation at RAF Waddington

TheGenealogist’s significant transcription effort has been aimed at providing detailed indexes which cover 1911 to 1963. 

Mark Bayley, Head of Content at TheGenealogist said: “We are delighted to be releasing such a large number of AIR 27 ORBs, making TheGenealogist the most comprehensive site for AIR 27 records online.” 

The ORBs on TheGenealogist include not only the journal-like day to day entries recorded on Form 540 in which you can find RAF personnel mentioned, but also all of the appendices that go along with these documents, giving many statistical details as well as “Secret Orders”.

Some feedback TheGenealogist has received:

“One of your best. To be able to follow the day to day activities of individuals down to the hours the planes take off and land is amazing. I look forward to the rest of this data set.”

“A 2 minute search brought up 2 years of operations logs for my Father, who was a pilot in 123 Squadron stationed in North Africa, India & Burma. They are full of amazing information. Everything from a near miss when a Japanese machine gun bullet ‘entered his cockpit’, what films they watched & complaints about the food. Just wonderful.”

“Just to say a big THANK YOU for giving my family access to records of my late Uncle Douglas Thom's operations in 90 Squadron Bomber Command in 1944. We have been very frustrated that his log books seem to have "disappeared" when his home in mid Wales was cleared. Now at least we have a time-line of his sorties and more information to add to his "not often spoken about" story. I will be passing what you have on him to my cousin, his son Doug, in Canada.”

Learn more about RAF records and read TheGenealogist’s free articles here: https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/raf/ 

This collection is provided in association with The National Archives. 

These records and many more are available to Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist.co.uk

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, who put a wealth of information at the fingertips of family historians. Their approach is to bring hard to use physical records to life online with easy to use interfaces such as their Tithe and newly released Lloyd George Domesday collections. 

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology links records together to help you find your ancestors more easily. TheGenealogist is one of the leading providers of online family history records. Along with the standard Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records, they also have significant collections of Parish and Nonconformist records, PCC Will Records, Irish Records, Military records, Occupations, Newspaper record collections amongst many others.

TheGenealogist uses the latest technology to help you bring your family history to life. Use TheGenealogist to find your ancestors today!

TheGenealogist has released records of 72,663 individuals so that researchers will be able to discover useful details about ancestors’ homes from the following London areas in 1910: Albany, Belsize, Camden Town, Chalk Farm, Euston, Grays Inn Road, Highgate East, Highgate West, Kilburn, Priory and Adelaide Parish (Hampstead), St Andrew East, St Andrew West, St Giles East, St Giles North, St Giles South, Saffron Hill, Somers Town and Tottenham Court Road.

Tottenham Court Road, London

These property tax records, collected by the Inland Revenue’s Valuation offices, are linked to detailed OS maps that will pinpoint down to plot level and can be searched by name or keywords using the Master Search, or by selecting a pin from the map displayed inside TheGenealogist’s powerful Map Explorer™. The ability to switch between georeferenced modern and historic maps allows the researcher to see how the neighbourhood in which their ancestors had lived or worked may have altered with the passing of time.

IR58 records around Highgate Cemetery on TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™ 

The huge value of these IR58 records, uniquely digitised by TheGenealogist from the originals at The National Archives, are that Family history researchers as well as house historians will be able to discover all sorts of information about the past owners and occupiers of the homes, land, outbuildings and property recorded in these areas at the time before Britain was plunged into the First World War.

Read TheGenealogist’s article From showgirl to Dame of the British Empire: https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/from-showgirl-to-dame-of-the-british-empire-1519/

Travel back in time and locate an ancestor’s address from the 1911 England and Wales census using contemporary and georeferenced maps on TheGenealogist.co.uk’s Map Explorer™.

1911 census records identified on TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™ 

This groundbreaking feature allows you to pin down your ancestors to properties on a contemporary map at the time of the census in 1911. With this feature family historians are able to walk the streets where their ancestors lived as not only can it be accessed on a computer but also on the move on a mobile phone!

This is an invaluable tool for house historians making it easier than ever to link census records to properties and complementing the already rich georeferenced Lloyd George Domesday Survey and Tithe records that are already available on TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™. 

For the first time the properties recorded in the 1911 census can now be matched with georeferenced mapping to show where our English or Welsh ancestors had lived at the time of the census taken on the night of the 2nd April 1911. The majority of London can be seen all the way down to property level, while the rest of the country will identify down to the parish, road or street.

With this new release, viewing a household record from the 1911 census will now show a map, pinpointing your ancestors house. Clicking this map loads the location in Map Explorer™, enabling you to explore the area and see the records of neighbouring properties.

Discover the neighbourhoods in which your ancestors lived, and gain an insight into their lives from local churches to employment prospects in the area and the roads, rail or water links that were available. 

Read TheGenealogist’s article: Where did they live? – Mapping Your Ancestors home in 1911: https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/where-did-they-live--mapping-your-ancestors-home-in-1911-1513/ 

The latest release from TheGenealogist sees 60,290 new owner and occupier records being added to their unique Lloyd George Domesday Survey record set. The IR58 Inland Revenue Valuation Office records reveal to family historians all sorts of details about their ancestors' home, land, outbuildings and property owned or occupied in Edmonton, Enfield and Southgate at the time of the survey in the 1910s.

Baker Street, Enfield from Image Archive on TheGenealogist

These property tax records, taken at a time when the government was seeking to raise funds for the introduction of social welfare programmes, introduced revolutionary taxes on the lands and incomes of Britain's population. To carry out this policy the government used surveyors to catalogue a description of each property in a street and also to plot it’s location on large-scale OS maps.

Using the IR58 records from The National Archives, these valuable records can now be searched using the Master Search at TheGenealogist or by clicking on the pins displayed on TheGenealogist’s powerful Map Explorer™. The ability to switch between georeferenced modern and historic maps means that the family historian can see how the landscape where their ancestors had lived or worked may have changed over time.

Baker Street, Enfield – Lloyd George Domesday OS map on Map Explorer™ 

This online 1910s property records resource is unique to TheGenealogist and enables the researcher to thoroughly investigate a place in which an ancestor had lived in the 1910s notwithstanding that the streets may have undergone unrecognisable change in the intervening years. 

See TheGenealogist’s page about the Lloyd George Domesday Survey here:

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/lloyd-george-domesday/

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, who put a wealth of information at the fingertips of family historians. Their approach is to bring hard to use physical records to life online with easy to use interfaces such as their Tithe and newly released Lloyd George Domesday collections. 

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology links records together to help you find your ancestors more easily. TheGenealogist is one of the leading providers of online family history records. Along with the standard Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records, they also have significant collections of Parish and Nonconformist records, PCC Will Records, Irish Records, Military records, Occupations, Newspaper record collections amongst many others.

TheGenealogist uses the latest technology to help you bring your family history to life. Use TheGenealogist to find your ancestors today!

TheGenealogist releases 1910 Property Records for Barnes, Hampton, Richmond upon Thames, Teddington and Twickenham.

Discover the homes of England’s most infamous monarch, English Rugby and the modern home of England's Archives in the latest release from TheGenealogist.

49,552 owner and occupier records have been added to TheGenealogist’s unique Lloyd George Domesday Survey record set this week with the release of the 1910 Land Survey records for the areas of Barnes, Hampton, Richmond upon Thames, Teddington and Twickenham.

Lloyd George Domesday Survey on TheGenealogist of land in Richmond before The National Archives was built

Family history researchers can combine these with other records such as the 1911 Census, and Trade, Residential and Telephone directories to discover more about where their ancestors lived C1910. The IR58 Valuation Office survey records give researchers additional information about their ancestors' home, land, outbuildings and property. 

These occupier and ownership records can be searched for using the Master Search at TheGenealogist or by clicking on the pins displayed on TheGenealogist’s powerful Map Explorer™. This means that the family historian can see how the landscape where their ancestors lived or worked changed over time.

Only available online from TheGenealogist, these records enable the researcher to thoroughly investigate a place in which an ancestor lived even if the streets have undergone massive change in the intervening years. In TheGenealogist’s featured article on this week’s UK episode of Who Do You Think You Are? they were able to locate the exact property referred to on the census used in the TV programme researching Alex Scott’s family.

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/who-do-you-think-you-are/alex-scott-1479/

Example of exclusive Lloyd George Domesday Survey locates 189 St George’s Street address of Alex Scott’s ancestor in census used in Who Do You Think You Are? episode

Read TheGenealogist’s article: The Market Garden below high water that became the site of The National Archives and the tumble down swanky office

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/richmond-owner-and-occupier-records-1491/ 

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, who put a wealth of information at the fingertips of family historians. Their approach is to bring hard to use physical records to life online with easy to use interfaces such as their Tithe and newly released Lloyd George Domesday collections. 

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology links records together to help you find your ancestors more easily. TheGenealogist is one of the leading providers of online family history records. Along with the standard Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records, they also have significant collections of Parish and Nonconformist records, PCC Will Records, Irish Records, Military records, Occupations, Newspaper record collections amongst many others.

TheGenealogist uses the latest technology to help you bring your family history to life. Use TheGenealogist to find your ancestors today!

TheGenealogist has just released records of baptisms, marriages and burials from Wexford Catholic Parish Records and new Dublin Will and Grant Books to provide a valuable resource for those researching Irish ancestry.

The Dublin wills are from the Deputy Keeper Of Ireland, Index To The Act or Grant Books, and To Original Wills, of The Diocese Of Dublin 1272 -1858 (26th, 30th, and 31st Report) and cover an area that is bigger than the current County of Dublin as the diocese included a sizeable part of County Wicklow, some substantial parts of southern and eastern County Kildare, as well as smaller portions of Counties Carlow, Laois (Queen’s County) and Wexford.

The Wexford Parish records, which are being released at the same time, have been newly transcribed by TheGenealogist and also benefit from their SmartSearch that enables subscribers to look for the parent’s potential marriage records from baptism records and also potential siblings. Each result also has a link to view the registers on the National Library of Ireland’s website should the researcher wish to see an image of the actual page of the Catholic parish register.

This new release, now available to all Gold and Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist will be a useful resource for those researchers who wish to find out more about their Irish ancestors.

Read TheGenealogist’s article: George Harrison’s Wexford ancestors found in the Irish Parish Records https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/george-harrisons-wexford-ancestors-found-in-the-irish-parish-records-1473/ 

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, who put a wealth of information at the fingertips of family historians. Their approach is to bring hard to use physical records to life online with easy to use interfaces such as their Tithe and newly released Lloyd George Domesday collections. 

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology links records together to help you find your ancestors more easily. TheGenealogist is one of the leading providers of online family history records. Along with the standard Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records, they also have significant collections of Parish and Nonconformist records, PCC Will Records, Irish Records, Military records, Occupations, Newspaper record collections amongst many others.

TheGenealogist uses the latest technology to help you bring your family history to life. Use TheGenealogist to find your ancestors today!

St Mary Magdalene, Sandringham

TheGenealogist has significantly increased their Norfolk Parish Records coverage by releasing 1,445,523 new individuals into their growing Parish Record Collection. 

These records, which are released in association with the Norfolk Record Office, are fully searchable and transcribed while also being linked to high quality images making them an extremely valuable resource for researchers of this eastern part of England. 

This latest addition brings the total number of individuals in the parish records for Norfolk on TheGenealogist to over 12 million. These new parish records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist and allows family historians to find the names of forebears, their parents’ forenames, the father’s occupation (where noted), and the parish that the event had taken place within. Parish records can cover from the mid 16th century up to much more recent times, as TheGenealogist’s latest feature article discovers when it finds Royals sandwiched on the Parish Register page between Carpenters and Production Operatives.

Announcing the Domesday Book records on Map Explorer™

The Map Explorer™ now also allows researchers to search for Domesday book entries from the period twenty years after the Norman Conquest. Pins on the map indicate where a record exists in 1086 and links to records that show holdings before and after the conquest. Discover the name of the Overlord, Tenant in Chief and Lord of areas across England. Find out the numbers of villagers – and even slaves that were the lord’s property – for places at the time of William the Conqueror’s rule. Researchers can click the link to read the transcripts of the records that give details of the land, see who held it in 1066 and then in 1086, as well as see images of the actual pages from the 1086 Domesday Book.

Sandringham Domesday records on the Map Explorer™ 

Read TheGenealogist’s article: Parish Registers – egalitarian records where royalty and ordinary folk share the same page.

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/parish-registers--egalitarian-records-where-royalty-and-ordinary-folk-share-the-same-page-1455/ 

TheGenealogist has released 52,429 records for the Borough of Ealing in the west of London for the period just prior to the First World War. This area consists of the seven major towns of Acton, Ealing, Greenford, Hanwell, Northolt, Perivale and Southall as well as the area of Hayes, Norwood and part of Hammersmith. It was once in the county of Middlesex and because it was half way between city and country, with pleasant greenery, it was often referred to as the ‘Queen of the Suburbs’. 

[Ealing Broadway from the Image Archive on TheGenealogist]

The records can be quite revealing for family historians as they give details of houses and other buildings owned in the area by our ancestors at a time when the Government surveyed Ealing in the period between 1910-1915.

To make it easier to understand how areas may have changed over the years TheGenealogist has also plotted each property onto large scale contemporary Ordnance Survey Maps which are available on its versatile Map Explorer™. This allows users to switch between modern and historical maps so that a researcher is able to see any changes that have taken place in the surrounding neighbourhood with the passing of time.

These land tax records, when used in conjunction with other records on TheGenealogist such as census, street directories etc can build a better picture of the environment in which your ancestors worked, lived or played.

Family history researchers can use these records to

• Search for a person by name
  
• Search by county, parish and street
  
• Discover descriptions and values of the houses occupied by an ancestor
  
• Zoom down on the map to show the individual properties as they were in the 1910s
  
• Use the controls to reveal a modern street map or satellite view underlay
  
  

Read TheGenealogist’s article about the famous home of St Trinian’s and Lavender Hill Mob found in these Ealing records: 

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/the-home-of-st-trinians-and-the-lavender-hill-mob-appears-in-the-land-tax-records-ir58-1444/

TheGenealogist’s Map ExplorerTM, the powerful mapping tool for family historians, has been boosted this week by the addition of four new counties of georeferenced Tithe Maps into the record set layer. 

Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist can now view the Victorian Tithe Maps linked to apportionment records for Cornwall, Derbyshire, Northamptonshire and Worcestershire which are overlaid on the modern and historical maps of the base and middle layers of Map Explorer™. This enables the user to see the land as it appeared through time. Tithe records allow researchers to find land that was owned or occupied by ancestors in the period 1837 to 1850s with some additional altered apportionments in later years when property was sold or divided. This meant that it is not just the wealthy landowners who are recorded in the tithe records but also those tenants who may have farmed a small plot or lived in a cottage.

First & Last House, Land’s End from TheGenealogist’s Image Archive

Map Explorer™ includes various years of georeferenced Ordnance Survey maps, current road and satellite view maps and with the additional Tithe record layer researchers can see how their ancestors’ environment had changed over the decades. When used in conjunction with other records, such as the census, the family history researcher can gain a fascinating insight into their forebears’ story.

• This release adds 784 maps across 4 counties
• Total new Tithe plot pins on Map Explorer: 547,976
• Total number of Tithe maps in Map Explorer™ including this release now: 10,494
• 4,504,575 viewable records are now indicated by Map Pins on Map Explorer™

In TheGenealogist’s article about this release, we can look at how some furze-covered tracts of countryside at Land’s End were transformed by a family into a tourist spot. Finding the plots of neighbours on the tithe maps and by also using TheGenealogist’s census collection and its standout feature allowing a researcher to view all the households on a street, we are able to investigate how the different names in the records were related to each other with various “cousins'' living next door or owning adjacent plots of land.

Read the feature article ‘Keeping it in the Family – The Tale of Land’s End’

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/keeping-it-in-the-family----the-tale-of-lands-end-1438/

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, who put a wealth of information at the fingertips of family historians. Their approach is to bring hard to use physical records to life online with easy to use interfaces such as their Tithe and newly released Lloyd George Domesday collections. 

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology links records together to help you find your ancestors more easily. TheGenealogist is one of the leading providers of online family history records. Along with the standard Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records, they also have significant collections of Parish and Nonconformist records, PCC Will Records, Irish Records, Military records, Occupations, Newspaper record collections amongst many others.

TheGenealogist uses the latest technology to help you bring your family history to life. Use TheGenealogist to find your ancestors today!

TheGenealogist reaches over 1 million 1910s Property Records

TheGenealogist has now added a total of over 1 million individuals to its unique Lloyd George Domesday Survey recordset with the addition this week of 85,959 individuals from the 1910s property tax records for the Borough of Haringey. Covering the areas of Hornsey Central, Hornsey East, Hornsey West, as well as Tottenham A, Tottenham B, Tottenham C and Wood Green this week’s release is made up of maps and field books that name property owners and occupiers in a exclusive online resource that gives family history researchers the ability to discover where an ancestor lived in the 1910-1915 period. 

When combined with other records such as the 1911 Census, the IR58 Valuation Office records give researchers additional information about their ancestors' home, land, outbuildings and property. While these records may be searched from the Master Search or main search page of TheGenealogist, they have also been added to TheGenealogist’s powerful Map Explorer™ so that the family historian can see how the landscape where their ancestor lived or worked changed as the years have passed.

All of the contemporary OS maps are linked to field books that reveal descriptions of the property, as well as listing the names of owners and occupiers. This release makes it possible to precisely locate where an ancestor lived on a number of large scale, hand annotated maps for this part of London. These map the exact plots of properties at the time of the survey and are layered over various georeferenced historical maps and modern base maps on the Map Explorer™. Only available online from TheGenealogist, these records enable the researcher to thoroughly investigate a place in which an ancestor lived even if the streets have undergone massive change in the intervening years. 

Read TheGenealogist’s article that finds the Tottenham cottage responsible for giving the old Spurs football ground its popular name: https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/haringey-land-valuation-records-uncovers-the-modest-house-that-gave-its-name-to-a-famous-football-stadium-1429/

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, who put a wealth of information at the fingertips of family historians. Their approach is to bring hard to use physical records to life online with easy to use interfaces such as their Tithe and newly released Lloyd George Domesday collections. 

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology links records together to help you find your ancestors more easily. TheGenealogist is one of the leading providers of online family history records. Along with the standard Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records, they also have significant collections of Parish and Nonconformist records, PCC Will Records, Irish Records, Military records, Occupations, Newspaper record collections amongst many others.

TheGenealogist uses the latest technology to help you bring your family history to life. Use TheGenealogist to find your ancestors today!