Welcome to the Family History Social

This is a story that is being run by the family history magazine Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine and is worth passing on.

A Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine reader is seeking the family of Robert and Margaret Raven to return their love letters to them.

Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine, are hoping to give the couple’s descendants an extra Christmas present by reuniting them with the precious documents.

The correspondence between Robert Raven and Margaret Blyth was bought as a lot by Bob Sheridan, a Rutland man interested in the history of the armed forces postal service and the postal marks on the letters.

But the letters revealed a moving story of lovers separated by wartime.

Bob and his friend Tracey Dene Powell researched Robert and Margaret in family history, immigration and RAF records, but have yet to find a living descendant to give the letters to.

Read more on the Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine website:

 http://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/news/appeal-return-second-world-war-love-letters-couple%E2%80%99s-descendants

TheGenealogist has just released a collection of Colour Tithe Maps for Bedfordshire to join the previously published greyscale maps in their National Tithe Records collection. This release of attractive colour digitised maps will provide the family historian with highly detailed plans sourced from The National Archives (TNA). TheGenealogist has linked these to the appropriate apportionment books that provide researchers with the details of the plots, their owners and their occupiers at the time that the survey was taken in Victorian times. These make the maps easier to understand as the streams, rivers, lakes, ponds, houses and trees are often highlighted in different colours. 

Subscribers to TheGenealogist’s Diamond membership can now select to view the latest colour or grayscale maps when using the Tithe & Landowner records for this county of England.

Colour Tithe Map of Eaton Bray, Bedfordshire

The new release covers:

• Bedfordshire colour tithe maps showing plots of land 
• The years 1837 to 1855 with some much later plans for any altered apportionments
• Owners and Occupiers recorded means that all levels of society were surveyed 

These tagged colour maps join the previously released apportionment record books, national greyscale maps and colour maps for Warwickshire, Rutland, Huntingdonshire, Buckinghamshire, City of York, Middlesex, Northumberland, Surrey, Westmorland, and the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire. The National Tithe Records collection gives the family history researcher the ability to search by name and keyword (for example parish or county) to look for property holdings from large estate owners to occupiers of small plots such as a homestead, or a cottage.

Read the article, Bedfordshire Tithe Records pinpoint ancestors’ homes large and small at:
https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2019/bedfordshire-tithe-records-pinpoint-ancestors-homes-1206/

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!

 About The National Archives

The National Archives is one of the world’s most valuable resources for research and an independent research organisation in its own right. As the official archive and publisher for the UK government, and England and Wales they are the guardians of some of the UK's most iconic national documents, dating back over 1,000 years. Their role is to collect and secure the future of the government record, both digital and physical, to preserve it for generations to come, and to make it as accessible and available as possible. The National Archives brings together the skills and specialisms needed to conserve some of the oldest historic documents as well as leading digital archive practices to manage and preserve government information past, present and future.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/  http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ 

For the latest stories, follow the Media Team on Twitter @TNAmediaofficer

S&N Genealogy Supplies, the family run largest UK genealogy publisher and award winning retailer has announced its 2020 catalogue filled with all sorts of items that the family history researcher could require.

You can download a digital version, or order a paper copy of this useful catalogue by going to this page now:

 https://genealogysupplies.com/catalogue-request/

As we are now approximately a month off Christmas perhaps it would be a good time to start thinking of those festive presents for the genealogist?

Take a look at their website for a number of special offers and gift ideas including free charts, over 60% savings on some books and upgrades to software packages.

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The Find a Will service, provided on the official government website, is now providing each copy of a probate record for  England and Wales at £1.50 each.

You can use their service to:

• search for a probate record in England and Wales
• check if probate has been issued
• check the type of probate issued
• order a copy of a probate record (including a will, if there is one)

 Order online costs £1.50 at: https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/#wills

The General Register Office (GRO) has updated it website so that they now have added to thier online indexes for deaths registered between 1984 to 2019.

The General Register Office holds a central copy of all birth, adoption, marriage, civil partnership and death registrations for England and Wales. Their website service allows you to search their historical birth and death indexes and order copies of registrations in a variety of formats including certificates, PDFs and Multilingual Standard Forms via them at the official government website.

https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/

TheGenealogist has just released the Hackney maps and field books into its property ownership and occupancy record set, The Lloyd George Domesday Survey. Family historians can use this unique online resource to see where an ancestor lived in the 1910-1915 period for a number of areas and will extend out across the country in time.

These records make use of TheGenealogist’s powerful new Map Explorer™ to access the maps and residential data, so that those who want to discover where their ancestors lived in the period before the First World War are able to see the district as it was in that period. Because these large scale maps include plots for the exact properties and are married to various georeferenced historic map overlays and modern base maps on the Map Explorer™,by using the opacity controls researchers can see how the land has changed. The Lloyd George Domesday Survey records are sourced from The National Archives and are being digitised by TheGenealogist.

Hackney Valuation Office Maps

This release includes the following areas: Clapton, Dalston, Hackney, Homerton, Hornsey South, Hoxton, Kingsland, Moorfields, South Hackney, Stamford Hill, Stoke Newington and West Hackney.

• TheGenealogist’s Lloyd George Domesday Survey records zoom down to show individual properties on extremely detailed maps used in 1910-1915
  
• Fully searchable by name, county, parish and street
  
• The transparency slider reveals a modern street map underlay
  
• Change the base map displayed to more clearly understand what the area looks like today

Read about how the Hackney Landowner and Occupier records detail the last days of a Highwayman’s Inn

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2019/hackney-landowner-and-occupier-records-and-the-highwaymans-inn-1204/

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!

 About The National Archives

The National Archives is one of the world’s most valuable resources for research and an independent research organisation in its own right. As the official archive and publisher for the UK government, and England and Wales they are the guardians of some of the UK's most iconic national documents, dating back over 1,000 years. Their role is to collect and secure the future of the government record, both digital and physical, to preserve it for generations to come, and to make it as accessible and available as possible. The National Archives brings together the skills and specialisms needed to conserve some of the oldest historic documents as well as leading digital archive practices to manage and preserve government information past, present and future.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/  http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ 

For the latest stories, follow the Media Team on Twitter @TNAmediaofficer

They Shall Not Grow Old – BBC Two Sunday 10 November 2019 10.10pm

If you missed this programme last year then you have another chance as the BBC have scheduled it to broadcast agian this Sunday.

From the BBC's website:

Employing state-of-the-art technology to transform audio and moving image archive footage more than a century old, Peter Jackson brings to life the people who can best tell the story of World War I: the men who were there.

Driven by a personal interest in the conflict, Jackson sets out to explore the day-to-day experience of its combatants. Immersed for months in the BBC and Imperial War Museum archives, Jackson created narratives and strategies regarding how this story should be told. Using only the voices of those involved, the film explores the reality of war on the front line: their attitudes to the conflict, how they ate, rested and formed friendships in those moments between battles, as well as their hopes and dreams for the future. Each frame of the film has been hand-colourised by Jackson's team, the footage 3D-digitised, transformed with modern post-production techniques, enabling these soldiers to walk and talk among us.

Reaching into the mists of time, Jackson aims to give these men voices, investigate the hopes and fears of these veterans that survived and were able to tell their stories, and detail the humility and humanity of those who represented a generation forever changed by the destruction of a global war.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0brzkzx

TheGenealogist has just released additional sets of Colour Tithe Maps to join the previously available greyscale maps in their National Tithe Records collection. This release for Warwickshire is of high-resolution colour digitised maps which will provide the family historian with highly detailed maps sourced from both The National Archives as well as the Warwick County Record Office. 

Researchers searching for owners or occupiers of Warwickshire land surveyed in the 19th century for the Tithe Commutation Act 1836 now have a choice of plans linked to the fully searchable apportionment schedules. Subscribers to TheGenealogist’s Diamond membership can select to view The National Archives’ grayscale maps, The National Archives’ colour map, or the Warwickshire Record Office colour maps when using the Tithe & Landowner records for this county. The Warwickshire Record Office maps are, in many cases, less faded and more vibrant in their colours having had less wear and tear than the alternatives. 

Colour Tithe Map of Wasperton, Warwickshire

The new data includes colour tithe maps showing plots of land covering the years from 1837 to 1855 with some much later plans where there was an altered apportionment recorded. 

These tagged colour maps join the previously released apportionment record books, national greyscale maps and colour maps for Rutland, Huntingdonshire, Buckinghamshire, City of York, Middlesex, Northumberland, Surrey, Westmorland, and the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire. 

The National Tithe Records collection gives the family history researcher the ability to search by name and keyword (for example parish or county) to look for all levels of society from large estate owners to occupiers of tiny plots such as a cottage or a cowshed.

Read the article, Warwickshire Colour Tithe Records discovers the house that went to America, at:

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2019/warwickshire-colour-tithe-records-discovers-the-house-that-went-to-america-1198/

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!

 About The National Archives

The National Archives is one of the world’s most valuable resources for research and an independent research organisation in its own right. As the official archive and publisher for the UK government, and England and Wales they are the guardians of some of the UK's most iconic national documents, dating back over 1,000 years. Their role is to collect and secure the future of the government record, both digital and physical, to preserve it for generations to come, and to make it as accessible and available as possible. The National Archives brings together the skills and specialisms needed to conserve some of the oldest historic documents as well as leading digital archive practices to manage and preserve government information past, present and future.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/  http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ 

For the latest stories, follow the Media Team on Twitter @TNAmediaofficer

TheGenealogist has just released the North Buckinghamshire maps and field books into its property ownership and occupancy record set, The Lloyd George Domesday Survey. This unique online resource allows researchers to discover where an ancestor lived in the 1910-1915 period from various London districts and now, for the first time, North Buckinghamshire.

These records make use of TheGenealogist’s powerful new Map Explorer™ to access the maps and residential data, giving those who want to discover where their ancestors lived in the period before the First World War some powerful new features to use. The Lloyd George Domesday Survey records are sourced from The National Archives and are being digitised by TheGenealogist so that it is possible to precisely locate where an ancestor lived on large scale, hand annotated maps. These plans include plots for the exact properties and are married to various georeferenced historic map overlays and modern base maps on the Map Explorer™ which allows the researcher to thoroughly investigate the area in which an ancestor lived. 

Buckingham, North Buckinghamshire Valuation Office Maps

This release includes the following places: Addington, Akeley, Ashendon and Dorton, Aston Abbotts and Wingrave, Aston Clinton, Aston Sandford, Astwoo, Aylesbury, Barton Hartshorn, Beachampton, Biddlesden, Bierton, Bletchley, Boarstall, Bow Brickhill, Bradwell, Broughton, Buckingham, Calverton, Castlethorpe, Charndon, Chearsley and Long Crendon, Cheddington, Chicheley, Clifton Reynes, Cold Brayfield, Creslow and Whitchurch, Cublington, Cuddington, Dinton, Stone and Hartwell, Drayton Beauchamp, Drayton Parslow and Mursley, Dunton and Hoggeston, East Claydon, Edgcott and Marsh Gibbon, Edlesborough, Emberton, Fenny Stratford, Fleet Marston and Quarrendon, Foscott, Gayhurst, Grandborough, Hogshaw and North Marston, Great and Little Brickhill, Great Horwood, Great Linford, Grendon Underwood, Haddenham, Halton and Wendover, Hanslope, Hardwick and Weedon, Haversham, Hillesden, Ickford, Ivinghoe, Kingsey, Kingswood and Ludgershall, Lillingstone, Linslade and Soulbury, Loughton, Luffield Abbey and Stowe, Marsworth and Pitstone, Mentmore, Milton Keynes, Nash, Newport Pagnell, Newton Longville, Olney, Oving and Pitchcott, Padbury, Quainton, Radclive, Ravenstone, Shalstone, Shenley Brook End, Simpson, Steeple Claydon, Stewkley, Stoke Hammond, Stoke Mandeville, Studley, Swanbourne and Winslow, Thornborough, Tingewick, Turweston, Upper and Lower Winchendon, Waddesdon, Walton, Water Eaton, Wavendon, Weston Turville, Wing, Wolverton, Woolstone and Woughton, Wotton Underwood.

Bletchley Park shown in the Map Explorer™ from TheGenealogist

• TheGenealogist’s Lloyd George Domesday records link individual properties to extremely detailed maps used in 1910-1915
• Fully searchable by name, county, parish and street
• The maps will zoom down to show the individual properties as they were in the 1910s
• The transparency slider reveals a modern street map underlay
• Change the base map displayed to more clearly understand what the area looks like today

Read our article on finding Bletchley Park in these records:

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2019/north-buckinghamshire-maps-reveal-bletchley-park-1194/

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!

 About The National Archives

The National Archives is one of the world’s most valuable resources for research and an independent research organisation in its own right. As the official archive and publisher for the UK government, and England and Wales they are the guardians of some of the UK's most iconic national documents, dating back over 1,000 years. Their role is to collect and secure the future of the government record, both digital and physical, to preserve it for generations to come, and to make it as accessible and available as possible. The National Archives brings together the skills and specialisms needed to conserve some of the oldest historic documents as well as leading digital archive practices to manage and preserve government information past, present and future.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/  http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ 

For the latest stories, follow the Media Team on Twitter @TNAmediaofficer

ITV has commissioned a two-part special which will see the UK’s best loved duo embark on a surprisingly emotional journey of discovery in Ant & Dec’s DNA Journey. 

A Voltage TV and Mitre Television co-production, viewers will see Ant and Dec navigate a tougher terrain than the Australian jungle.  Guided by expert genealogists and historians, the pair will follow their maternal and paternal blood lines using their DNA to search their ancestral history.    

As their travels take them to Ireland and the US, including The United Nations Headquarters, the pair will not only delve into their past but will also meet relatives they had no clue even existed, unveiling some truly shocking revelations that only their DNA could unlock. 

Whose great grandfather is a celebrated war hero and whose DNA cousin is a former US female wrestling promoter? Whose ancestors’ bones were deemed ‘of historical importance’ and who discovers that they are a descendant from Royalty?  

As Ant & Dec embark on their journey, viewers will be treated to a rare and personal glimpse into this truly remarkable friendship with their warmth and infectious humour that has not only captured the nation over the years, but has seen them achieve huge success resulting in a multitude of awards and accolades.  

Ant said:

“I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to historical events, so to get the chance to research our family history using our DNA was too good an opportunity to pass up.   What we find out is mind-blowing and nothing either of us could ever have imagined.   It’s something that will stay with us both forever. "

Dec said:

“A huge part of this was to find out my heritage, especially on my dad’s side.   I always thought I knew a fair bit about where I came from but it turns out I was wrong!  Whilst it was incredible to find out about the past, what was hugely overwhelming was to meet relatives neither of us knew we had.  It was a truly amazing experience."

Siobhan Greene, who commissioned the show when she was ITV’s Head of Entertainment Commissioned said:

“This documentary captured Ant and Dec at an intersection in their lives.  I feel sure the ITV viewers will be on the edge of their seats watching twists and turns of their DNA journey unfold, and their honesty and openness, will leave a lasting heart print.”

Kathleen Larkin, Executive Produce from Voltage TV said:

“It’s been a privilege working with such talent as Ant & Dec.  This is a film that celebrates friendship, showing two brilliantly funny best mates making a unique trip of a lifetime to find out about their heritage past and present.   It’s been a passion for all involved and we’ve loved working with the fantastic team at ITV to make something we all believe in.”

Ant & Dec’s DNA Journey is a Voltage TV and Mitre Television co-production for ITV.  It was commissioned by Siobhan Greene when she was ITV’s Head of Entertainment Commissioning and Louise Major Assistant Commissioner, Entertainment, ITV.  The Executive Producers are Kathleen Larkin and Sanjay Singhal and the Director is Iain Thompson, Voltage TV. 

 https://www.itv.com/presscentre/press-releases/ant-decs-dna-journey