Welcome to the Family History Social

TheGenealogist has just added a marvellous new feature which makes its Map Explorer™ resource even more appealing for family historians.

Image Archive pictures located on georeferenced old and modern maps using the Map Explorer™ 

Already boasting georeferenced historical and modern maps, Tithe Records and Maps to look for your Victorian ancestors’ homes, Lloyd George Domesday Records and Maps for nearly one million individuals, Headstones and War memorials, the mapping interface now also allows TheGenealogist’s Diamond subscribers the ability to also see what their ancestors’ towns and areas in the U.K. once looked like. With the addition of these period photographs of street scenes and parish churches where researchers' ancestors may have been baptised, married and buried, this new feature allows subscribers to jump back in time.

This release sees the ever-multiplying collection of historical photographs from TheGenealogist’s Image Archive accessible for the first time from inside Map Explorer™ as a recordset layer. The various images for an area have their locations pinpointed on the maps allowing family historians to explore their ancestors’ hometowns and other landmarks from around their area.

When viewing an Image Archive record in TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™, the family history researcher is shown the image’s location on the map as well as from what point of view the photographer took the photo. Also included underneath the historical image is a modern map and street view (where it's available) so that the person researching their past family’s area is able to compare the picture from the past with how the area looks today. When used in conjunction with the other georeferenced maps and associated records, TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™ is a highly valuable tool for those researching their family history. 

See the photo location, the photographer position, plus a modern map and street view (where available) enabling a comparison to be made of the image and how the area looks today

Watch this short video to learn more about this great new feature:

https://youtu.be/Mt5f-mAyJ5Q 

You can read more and see examples in the article: Images from ancestors’ hometowns on Map Explorer™ allows us to “see” where they lived through their own eyes.

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/images-from-ancestors-hometowns-on-map-explorer-allows-us-to-see-where-they-lived-through-their-own-eyes-1416/

NEWS:

Here is a Press Release recieved from Discover Your Ancestors Magazine about an exciting development. If you love family history talks then this is a must for you:

We are excited to announce the launch of a new on-demand family history talks platform: Family History TV (https://family-history.tv)

This new website is the place to watch expert speakers from the world of British genealogy, Military History, DNA, House History and Social History deliver their informative and entertaining talks online. This new and reasonably priced service aims to open up these talks to a wider audience.

Ranging from a behind the scenes look at the Who Do You Think You Are? TV show, or advice and guidance once you have your DNA results, this channel offers videos to suit most family historians. If you are seeking advice on researching your ancestors, or would like to find out more about social history, there are videos from some of the best speakers who normally talk to packed theatres.

Family History TV features a Military Expert & Professional Researcher drawing on his years of experience from researching thousands of soldiers to explore what can be found when looking for a military ancestor. There are talks from an experienced Social Historian exploring the records that shine a light on sporting ancestors, a well respected Professional Genealogist and House Historian gives you her valuable advice, and top DNA Experts share their extensive knowledge of this popular subject.

With even more genealogical themed presentations to be released in the next few months, each talk has been professionally edited into a high quality video that can be rented for the very attractive low price of just £2.99 and then watched for the next 24 hours.

Take a look at the high quality content available and as a special introductory offer watch Keith Gregson’s Hints and Tips video for free at:  https://family-history.tv

TheGenealogist is marking the anniversary of the famous Royal Air Force Dambusters raid on the Ruhr Valley dams in May 1943 by releasing a massive tranche of fully searchable RAF Operations Record Books (ORBs) including those ORBs for the famous No 617 Squadron giving an insight into their lives.

Wing Commander Guy Gibson and his crew boarding their Lancaster bomber

With a release of 1,550,018 records, bringing the total to 6,748,021 these new diary-like RAF documents paint a picture of the goings on in a squadron on a day-to-day basis for those units under British control. 

These are uniquely fully searchable by:-

• Forename and Surname 
• Squadron
• Date Range

Using keywords users can also search for Service Number, Rank, and Duty, Aircraft type and location where the fields appear in the record. This makes it possible to easily find your Royal Air Force ancestors and discover more about their war time activities on the base and in the air.

See the usefulness of these contemporary daily diary entries in a short video that spotlights the famous leader of No 617 Squadron, Wing Commander Guy Gibson, V.C., D.F.C. and Bar, D.S.O. and Bar as he and his unit prepare for their mission to drop the bouncing bombs on the German dam targets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd0gcQdbV_4

The Operations Record Books are for squadrons primarily from after the First World War, although there are a few early squadron records from 1911 to 1918. These ORBs follow the daily happenings in the air and on the base, and frequently name the brave aircrew who battled against the odds. 

You can use the collection to follow an airman’s war time experiences from these fully searchable Air Ministry operations record books which cover various Royal Air Force, Dominion and Allied Air Force squadrons that came under British Command. The AIR 27 records allow the family history researcher a fascinating insight into their relatives serving in a number of wartime air force units, as can be seen in the video and article that shines a light on Wing Commander Gibson and his squadron. 

• See the wartime operations of air crew
• Discover pilots, navigators, radio operators and gunners mentioned in the diaries
• Find airmen receiving an Honour or a Medal
• Note the names of squadron members wounded, killed, or who did not return
• Fully search these National Archives records and images

Find out more about the AIR27 recordset here: https://www.TheGenealogist.co.uk/Air27

This release expands TheGenealogist’s extensive Military records collection for Diamond subscribers.

To take a deeper look into these records read TheGenealogist’s feature article and see how 617 Squadron recorded the famous Dambuster operation in the ORBs from the time.

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/guy-gibson-and-the-dambuster-raid-found-in-raf-operations-record-books-1411/

Discover Your Ancestors Periodical is a high quality monthly digital magazine delivered to your own personalised online account every month. This beautifully designed 30+ page online magazine is packed full of stories, case studies, social history articles and research advice. 

Sign up today for only £24.99 and receive the following:

• 12 monthly issues of the Periodical
• Access to 500,000,000 birth, marriage and death records
• Free data: Titanic passenger list
• Free ebook: Cornwall 1844 Pigot's Directory

Get your copy of the May edition by subscribing here: https://discoveryourancestors.co.uk/subscribe/

TheGenealogist’s Index of Irish Wills 1484-1858 is an index to surviving records of Wills, Grants and Administrations, held by The National Archives of Ireland (NAI). Records include the original NAI reference, which can be used to order a copy of the existing document.

This new release adds an easily searched and useful resource to the ever growing suite of records available to Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist. The Index of Irish Wills 1484-1858 features:

• More than 100,000 names
• Easily Searchable by Name, County, Address and Keyword
• Can provide dates, occupation, status and place of abode
• Can provide reference and link to order the document from the National Archives of Ireland.

World Famous Brewer, Arthur Guinness’ Will & Grant on TheGenealogist

Prior to 1858, Irish wills were administered by the ecclesiastical courts of the Established church, (the Church of Ireland), a part of the Anglican communion. In 1857, however, the Church of Ireland lost its responsibility for Irish Wills when the Probate Act of that year transferred the supervision to the state.

Read TheGenealogist’s article: Using Irish Wills to discover your ancestors https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/using-the-index-of-irish-wills-1484-1858-to-discover-more-about-ancestors-important-details-1406/

The Family History Show is back!

After three extremely successful virtual events held in the last year, The Family History Show, Online is returning in June so that once more you can enjoy all the features of a physical family history show, but from the comfort and safety of your own home.

The Family History Show, Online, organised by Discover Your Ancestors magazine, is gearing up for its return on Saturday 19th June 2021.

You'll have the opportunity to put your research questions to an expert, watch free talks and to speak to over 100 family history societies, archives and genealogical suppliers by text, audio, video chat or email from the comfort of your own home.

You will also be able to submit your questions to their Ask the Experts panel before the show. You'll have the choice of either booking a free 1-to-1 session or to submit your question to the whole panel, who will be streaming their answers on the day at 15:30.

Save on Early Bird ticket offer!

Buy your tickets in advance and save - tickets to attend The Family History Show Online are available from the website at just £6.00 each. You will also get a FREE virtual goody bag on the day worth over £10. (Tickets on the day are £8.00)

Featuring All New Talks Professionally presented and recorded lectures, not just streamed screen shares, and each talk will be available for 72 hours, so don't worry if you're in another time zone. These presentations will cover a wide variety of family history topics from multiple speakers and will be available throughout the day.

Looking in the Small Print Amelia Bennett - Expert Researcher, Census Detective with the SOG Joining the Merchant Navy Dr Simon Wills - Genealogist, Writer, and Author Solving Genealogical Puzzles with DNA Donna Rutherford, DNA Expert Exploring the Day to Day Life of RAF Ancestors Nick Thorne - Professional Genealogist and Writer ...and more to be announced soon!

Ask the Experts

Submit your questions to the panel of experts before the show. Either book a free 1-to-1 session or submit your question to the whole panel, who will be streaming their answers on the day at 15:30.

All the features of a physical show

As well as over 100 virtual exhibitor stalls to visit, you will be able to enjoy online talks throughout the day and put questions forward to specialists in their popular 'Ask the Experts' area.

To buy your tickets go to: /https://thefamilyhistoryshow.com/online/tickets/

TheGenealogist has released the records of 143,956 individuals to increase its Lloyd George Domesday Survey record set coverage. This unique online resource of nearly one million individuals records, can help researchers discover where an ancestor lived in the period 1910-1915. The new records this month are for properties situated in Balham, Battersea, Fulham, Hammersmith, Putney & Roehampton, Streatham, Tooting Graveney and Wandsworth. 

Area outlined in red is covered in this latest release

This fascinating combination of maps and residential data from The National Archives is being digitised by TheGenealogist and enables researchers to precisely pinpoint an ancestor’s house on the large scale and exceptionally detailed hand annotated maps from the period. Fully searchable and linked to the versatile Map Explorer™, Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist can see how an area has changed over time by switching between various georeferenced modern and historical map layers.

A property recorded in the Lloyd George Domesday Survey Field Book and map on 21 July 1913

Family historians often have problems finding where ancestors lived because road names can change over time. Researching the article discovered a shopkeeper living on the corner of Defoe Road and Tooting High Street. Daniel Defoe was a one time famous resident of Wandsworth. Using the Map Explorer now helps to identify that Defoe road has become Garrett Lane in modern times. The southernmost part of Garratt Lane is unusual in that two parallel streets exchanged names in the past. The original Garratt Lane was a narrower street while Garratt Terrace, on the other hand, was the main connection to Tooting Broadway. The south-east end of its length became Defoe Road before it reached the High Street, though many people were in the habit of mistakenly calling it Garratt Lane. For this reason it was agreed to exchange the names. Searching for where an ancestor lived using modern maps can be frustrating when they fail to pinpoint where the old properties had once stood.

• This new release identifies individual properties on extremely detailed 1910-1915 maps 
• See images of original Field Books often with a detailed description of the property
• Locate an address found in a census or street directory down to a specific house on the map
• Fully searchable by name, parish and street
• The georeferenced OS maps are a layer over a modern street map underlay
• Changing the base map displayed allows researchers to understand what the area looks like today

Complementing the maps on TheGenealogist are the accompanying Field Books that will also provide researchers with detailed information relative to the valuation of each property, including the valuation assessment number, map reference, owner, occupier, situation, description and extent.

This mammoth project is ongoing with over 94,500 Field Books, each having hundreds of pages to conserve and digitise with associated large scale IR121 annotated OS maps. 

See TheGenealogist’s feature article on using these records in “Finding the Wandsworth homes attacked in the WW1 ‘Lusitania’ Riots”:

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/finding-the-wandsworth-homes-attacked-in-the-ww1-lusitania-riots-1400/ 

To find out more about these records, you can also visit TheGenealogist’s informative record collection page at: TheGenealogist.co.uk/1910Survey/

Click this link to watch TheGenealogist's video on these new records: https://youtu.be/ushl8j8ovzA

The history of trials in The National Archives collection

Episode one of TNA's latest On the Record podcast series, Trials, is now available to stream from wherever you get your podcasts. The series uncovers different stories to examine the history of trials, with episode one looking specifically at witch trials. 

Also its worth checking out TNA's blog post: Seventeenth century witches 

TheGenealogist has released the 1939 Register, adding their unique and powerful search tools and SmartSearch technology. This offers a hugely flexible way to look for your ancestors at the start of the Second World War.

TheGenealogist’s well known brick wall shattering search tools include the ability to find your ancestor in 1939 by using keywords, such as the individual’s occupation or their date of birth. You can also search for an address and then jump straight to the household. If you’re struggling to find a family, you can even search using as many of their forenames as you know.

Once you’ve found a record in the 1939 Register, you can click on the street name to view all the residents on the street, potentially finding relatives living nearby.

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology enables you to discover even more about a person, linking to their Birth, Marriage and Death records.

1939 saw the evacuation of thousands of children

The 1939 Register can often reveal to you important additional information about your ancestors that will help build your family’s story. The powerful keyword search can find evacuees by searching for their name and date of birth along with the keyword “evacuee”. The fact individuals are listed with their full dates of birth is a huge benefit that the 1939 Register has over the census, which simply lists the age of a person. 

Take your research journey quickly forwards by using TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch to jump to a person’s

• Birth Record
• Marriage Record
• Death Record

TheGenealogist makes searching the 1939 Register more flexible. Search by

• Name (Including wildcards, e.g. Win* Church*)
• Address (e.g. Whitehall) 
• Keywords (e.g. Admiralty)
• First names from a family group (e.g. Winston, Clementine)

See TheGenealogist’s article on finding the highest paid Film Star and Entertainer of the time, George Formby:

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/a-window-on-september-1939-and-george-formby-the-entertainer-1398/

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’s Map Explorer on a mobile phone, using the “Locate Me” feature whilst visiting Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire. Cycling through a Modern Satellite Image, Modern Map, 1890’s OS Map and 1838 Tithe Map

Over 30 counties of georeferenced Tithe Maps have been added to date!

TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™, the resource for researchers to turn to when searching for an ancestor’s landholding whether owned or simply occupied, has been boosted with the significant addition of georeferenced Tithe Maps for Anglesey, Durham, Devon, Shropshire, Somerset, Suffolk and Wiltshire. 

From cottages with gardens to acres of farmed land and country estates, the addition of georeferenced Tithe maps as a layer over modern and other historical maps will allow researchers to see how the landscape changed over time. Map Explorer™ gives the researcher the ability to switch between layers of tithe, historical and modern maps which are all tied to coordinates and so allow the user the ability to see how places change over the years. 

From a plot identified on the tithe map it is possible to click through to then see the description as it was recorded in the apportionment record at the time, thus revealing more about what an ancestor’s holding had been. Using Map Explorer™ the family historian can browse an ancestor’s area to find other plots that they owned or occupied. Alternatively, TheGenealogist’s Master Search can be used to look for ancestors’ plots across the tithe records and then view them on Map Explorer™.

Lacock Abbey on a tithe map

Subscribers accessing TheGenealogist on their mobile devices, while out walking, can use the “locate me” function when using the tool on the move and so open up the history of what is around them. This is explored further in their featured article (see the link below).

• Total number of maps in this release is 2,738
• Total number of Tithe maps in Map Explorer™ is now 9,710
• Map Explorer™ has over four million viewable records indicated by Map Pins
• TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™ displays maps for historical periods up to the modern day.

The addition to Map Explorer™ this week of the black and white tithe maps for Anglesey, Durham, Devon, Shropshire, Somerset, Suffolk and Wiltshire, linked to the apportionment books, will enable researchers to discover ancestors who both owned or occupied property between 1837 and the 1850s, with some additional altered apportionments in later years when property was sold or divided. The records allow TheGenealogist’s Diamond subscribers to find details of the plots, the owners of the land, as well as the occupiers at the time of the survey while also identifying the actual plots on the maps. Tithes usefully record all levels of society from large estate owners to occupiers of small plots such as a homestead or a cottage. 

With this addition, Map Explorer™ now features colour tithe maps for the counties of Buckinghamshire, Cumberland, Essex, Huntingdonshire, Middlesex, Northumberland, Rutland, Surrey, Westmorland, the City of York as well as North and East Ridings of Yorkshire plus black and white maps for Anglesey, Berkshire, Cambridge, Cheshire, Durham, Devon, Dorset, Hertfordshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire Suffolk, Yorkshire West Riding and Wiltshire. 

See TheGenealogist’s article: Traveling back in time with MapExplorer™ in your hand: https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/traveling-back-in-time-with-mapexplorer-in-your-hand-1386/

Find out more at TheGenealogist.co.uk/maps/

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!