Welcome to the Family History Social

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/ 

The Family History Show Online takes place on 25th September, featuring two online lecture theatres, the popular ‘Ask the Experts’ area where you can put questions forward to specialists, live chat and forum where you can talk with other attendees, as well as a whole host of stalls so you can ask for advice as well as buy genealogical products.

New Feature for The Family History Show Online: The main Lecture Theatre now includes Live Chat, so you can post questions and comments as you watch the talk. The speakers will be on hand to answer these during the broadcast time!

Don’t miss out on a day packed with talks by experts including Nick Barratt, get answers to your questions in 1-2-1 expert sessions, and hear advice from a host of Family History Societies and genealogical suppliers. You can also meet the Discover Your Ancestors team.

https://thefamilyhistoryshow.com/online/tickets/

Dame Judi Dench, Pixie Lott, Joe Lycett, Alex Scott and Josh Widdicombe make up the lineup of stars taking part in the 2021 UK series of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’

Two-time BAFTA award-winning genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are?, produced by Wall to Wall, returns to BBC One this October with yet another star-studded line-up.

Exciting News! The BBC have announced the return of the genealogy TV series, Who Do You Think You Are? Expected to be on air this October, here are all the names of the stars taking part in this year’s UK series.

https://thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/who-do-you-think-you-are-returns-with-a-new-series-18-1449/

Expected to be aired in October 2021 on BBC One. The seven episodes of the UK series will feature the family histories of a host of celebrities including; Ed Balls, Dame Judi Dench, Pixie Lott, Joe Lycett, Alex Scott, Joe Sugg and Josh Widdicombe.

Dame Judi Dench is set to unearth her Danish roots and discover some intriguing Shakespearean connections, while former Labour MP and TV presenter Ed Balls uncovers great bravery, and some less-admirable conduct from his ancestors. Singer-songwriter Pixie Lott finds that in her family tree there is a musical legacy that is three-generations strong, whilst comedian Joe Lycett comes across a darker side to his family history story.    

Alex Scott, the TV Pundit and former footballer, learns about her Jewish and Jamaican heritage, discovering that her ancestors had suffered enormous hardships in their lives. YouTuber Joe Sugg learns that his family history can be traced as far back as the Great Fire of London, and comedian Josh Widdicombe’s lineage will take viewers back to the Elizabethan and Tudor Courts.

Emily Smith, BBC Commissioning Editor for Documentaries, says: “We are very excited for this new series of Who Do You Think You Are? and for viewers to share in the extraordinary mix of personal celebrity histories taking us across the world, and which together reflect our rich collective history”.

Executive Producer for Wall to Wall, Colette Flight, says: “Who Do You Think You Are? is back with another line-up of Britain’s best-loved celebrities exploring their family histories across the UK, Ireland, Denmark and Jamaica. The incredible personal stories they unearth of their ancestors’ lives - from royal love triangles to labourers fighting for their rights, from Victorian child sweeps to battling fascists in London’s East end – reflect and illuminate all our collective history.”

Who Do You Think You Are? is produced by Wall to Wall Media for BBC One.

The new series of Who Do You Think You Are? launches on BBC One this October. Read more about the new UK series here

Discover Your Ancestors Issue 10 released!

The 196 page bookazine contains new in-depth articles, research advice, social and general history, 'how to' features, case studies, places in focus, and much more! It is ideal for both experienced researchers and those just starting out.

• Richard Trevithick: Father of the Railway, 250th Anniversary
• Georgian Fight Club
• Death and the Victorians
• Roald Dahl's WW2 Desert Crash
• Celebrity genealogies: James Corden, Michael Sheen and Captain Sir Tom Moore
• How to research the RAF and Royal Marines
• Rural roots
• Scots paupers
• Friendly societies
• and much more!

Also included are over £80 of FREE resources! Including a free three months First Steps Plus subscription with TheGenealogist, a free three month subscription to the monthly online magazine Discover Your Ancestors Periodical, and lots of other resources!

Only £7.99 with FREE UK post and packing from here:

https://genealogysupplies.com/product/Discover-Your-Ancestors/Discover-Your-Ancestors-Magazine-Issue-10

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/

The Church of England has announced the digital mapping of all its churchyards.

The first of 19,000 churchyards will be surveyed as part of a Church of England project to create a free digital map of every grave and feature in every churchyard in the country.

The ancient church of St Bega on the shores of lake Bassenthwaite in the Diocese of Carlisle is the first churchyard to be scanned by surveyors using sophisticated laser equipment, as part of the national programme.

A new website will go online next year giving free access to the map which is expected to be of special interest to local community groups, conservationists, and those researching family history. The website will also enable the charting of biodiversity and green technology.

The Church of England has partnered with Cumbrian-based surveying company Atlantic Geomatics who will use back-pack mounted laser scanners to quickly and accurately map churchyards. They will also photograph all the visible headstones.

There are around 19,000 Anglican burial grounds in England, and the ambitious scheme will aim to digitally survey the majority over the coming seven years. Data on burials will be combined with other information, such as the National Biodiversity Network Atlas, to present the most complete picture of churchyards to date.

The project will come at no cost to parishes or dioceses in the Church of England and parishes will have free access to the map through a new web-based record system which is set to launch in Spring 2022. There will also be the option to subscribe to additional services.

Substantial funding for the programme has been given by Historic England, with the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Caring for God's Acre supporting the pilot phase, as well as support from genealogy research websites, all of which has allowed the basic service to be made available to parishes free of charge.

Use of the latest surveying equipment and bespoke software built by Atlantic Geomatics has made the national-scale survey a possibility for the first time. Operatives will aim to survey around nine or ten sites a day using back-packmounted laser scanning equipment, GPS and cameras. Taking tens of thousands measurements every second the surveyors will then process the data to create accurate maps of each churchyard.

Bishop Andrew Rumsey, who is a lead Bishop for church buildings said: “This impressive national project will make a huge difference to those researching family history, as well as easing the administrative burden on parishes.

“It will improve management of burial grounds, and make information more fully accessible than ever before, supported by additional services by subscription for those wishing to go further.

“It will soon be possible to visit almost any Anglican burial ground in the country and see in real time the location of burial plots. For those researching at distance in the UK or overseas, the digital records will place detailed information from churchyards at their fingertips.”

Church by church, and diocese by diocese, it is hoped that the all Anglican churchyards will be surveyed over the next seven years. As well as capturing details of burials, the online interactive map will detail biodiversity in churchyards, including ancient trees and plant-life, as well as green technology such as solar panels.

More information

National Graveyard Mapping Project

Source URL:

https://www.churchofengland.org/media-and-news/press-releases/nationwide-digital-churchyard-mapping-project-begins

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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!

The 100th issue of Discover Your Ancestors Periodical has just been released!

In this August 2021 edition are the following great articles:

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: Huntingdonshire 1906 Kelly's Directory

See more here: https://discoveryourancestors.co.uk/

Available now from:

https://discoveryourancestors.co.uk/subscribe/

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: Navy List 1890 - March

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!