Welcome to the Family History Social

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/

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/

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

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!

TheGenealogist has released over 150,000 individuals to its ever expanding Military Record Collection. Containing names, places and dates, these publications can aid the family history researcher find their ancestors and build a fascinating story of their lives. With records from Britain, Canada and a number of Indian registers and directories, these searchable records contain lists of men and women who served their country in various capacities connected to the military, and not just on the front line.

Included in the latest release is The War Office List 1920, where we can find a Miss Florence Agnes Hebb who had been Deputy Chief Superintendent of Typists at the War Office. We can follow her appointments from December 1890, when she first joined the War Office as a typist, to receiving an M.B.E in January 1918 and then becoming Controller of Typists at the Air Ministry in March of that year. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Dowding#/media/File:Hugh_Dowding.jpg

Another record, the Monthly Official Military Directory for Salisbury Plain, April 1914, finds the fledgling Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding when he was an Army Captain, ‘under instruction’ in WW1 and attending the Central Flying School at Upavon, Wiltshire.

The records can be used to discover more about an ancestor’s achievements and are fantastic for identifying where next to apply your research. These books can give dates of postings along with ranks or positions held in establishments, as well as a great deal more useful information that may help to build a better family history.

Use these records to: 

• Add dates and details to the lives of your ancestors
• Discover where they served
• Fill in gaps in the information that you already have on an ancestor
• Find hints and ‘signposts’ to other records and places to search for forebears.

These records will often allow us to recount a much more rounded picture of the life of a person and so enrich the telling of their story.

You can read how, from his entry in the Monthly Official Military Directory for Salisbury Plain, April 1914, we then traced a rising star of the air force through a myriad of other military records on TheGenealogist.

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/military-records-fill-in-the-blanks-and-point-where-to-look-next-1381/

Included in this release are:

A List of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst 1833, Bombay Artillery List of Officers 1749-1902, Canada, Defence Forces List August 1938, Canada Defence Forces List November 1939, Colonial Office List for 1914, East-India Register and Directory 28th August 1821, Gradation List of Officers of the British Army July 1924, Graduation List of Officers of the British Army Oct 1915, India List Civil and Military July 1881, Northern Command Official Directory No. 45 Nov 1938, Records of Clan Campbell in the Military Service of the Honourable East India Company 1600-1858, Rules And List Of Members Imperial Service Club, Salisbury Plain Military Directory April 1914, War Office List 1939, War Office List 1920, Western Command Official Directory No. 12 April 1938

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 New Who’s Who records into its expanding Occupational Records adding nearly a hundred thousand additional individuals. This release includes records covering individuals from all over England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, USA, New Zealand and further afield.

The records can be used to discover more about an ancestor’s achievements and are fantastic for identifying where next to apply your research. Who’s Who records will confirm birth dates and sometimes the place of birth. Often they give a father’s name and occupation and a great deal more useful information that may help to build a better family history.

Use these records to: 

• Add details to the lives of your ancestors
• Discover their accomplishments
• Fill in gaps in the information that you already have on an ancestor
• Find other records and places to search for forebears.

These records will often allow us to recount a much more rounded picture of the life of a person and so enrich the telling of their story.

This latest release expands TheGenealogist’s extensive Occupational records collection that includes actors, apprentices, clergy, crew lists, directors, flight, freemen, law, railway, sports, teachers and biographies as well as a number of other Who’s Who books. 

You can read TheGenealogist’s article: Who, What, Where, When? - Discovering Who's Who at: 

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/who-what-where-when---discovering-whos-who-1371/

The records included in this release are: 

Who's Who in 1880

Who's Who 1899

Who's Who in Canada 1927

Cheshire Who's Who, 1910

Cox's County Who's Who Series. Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire, 1912

Cricket Who's Who, The Cricket Blue Book 1911

Who's Who in Hampshire 1935

Who's Who and Industrial Directory of the Irish Free State 1935

Who's Who in Kent, Surrey and Sussex 1911

Who's Who in Literature 1931

Masonic Who's Who 1926

The Methodist Who's Who 1913

Who's Who in New Zealand 1925

Who's Who and Record Quarterly 1934 July-September

Who's Who in Science 1914

Who was Who 1916-1928

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 added to its expanding International Headstone Collection with some interesting and useful new searchable images of gravestones.

These enable family historians to see details that have been recorded about their ancestors by the monumental masons in various churches and cemeteries. All the records are fully searchable with transcripts of the inscriptions that help to decipher some of the more weathered memorials.

The headstone records released cover 174 new churchyards or cemeteries and include submissions from their many prolific volunteers. The International Headstone Collection is an ongoing project where every headstone photographed or transcribed earns credits for volunteers.

The credits are used by volunteers to help support their hobby spending them on subscriptions at TheGenealogist.co.uk or products from GenealogySupplies.com. If you would like to join them, you can find out more about the scheme at: https://ukindexer.co.uk/headstone/

_{The unusual, but informative, plaque on the Penruddocke family tomb at St Michael’s, Compton Chamberlayne}

These new records are all available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist.

You can read TheGenealogist’s article: Headstones and Church Memorial plaques a fantastic resource for family historians

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/headstones-and-church-memorial-plaques-are-a-fantastic-resource-for-family-historians-1370/

TheGenealogist releases more College and University registers into its expanding Educational Records adding a quarter of a million additional individuals. This release includes records from England, Scotland, Ireland, The Netherlands, New Zealand and even a college from Portugal.

The records can be used to discover a student’s achievements and are fantastic for identifying where next to apply your research for an ancestor. Educational records will confirm birth dates and sometimes the place of birth. Usually they give a father’s name and address, which is useful when the parent is missing from the census, and they can give details of the student’s occupation and a great deal more useful information.

Fettes College, Edinburgh

Researchers can use this new data to find ancestors who attended or taught at a variety of Educational establishments in a wide range of years up to the mid 1930s. The earliest record in this release is dated 1566 in the Christ's Hospital Exhibitioners to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, 1566-1923. In contrast the latest record is 1936, taken from the List of Occupants of Rooms in St John's College 1895-1936.

These records can also be used to identify those who held high office in the institutions, so that University patrons, deans, visitors, professors and masters and the principals and governors of schools are usually included.

Also in this release we have some fascinating Irish Examination Board records from 1889, 1891 and 1892. These reveal the candidates’ names, addresses and grades in all their subjects, including some rather unusual ones. If you can find an ancestor, within these records, it will certainly be an eyeopener as they disclose what subjects your forebear had been a good or a bad student of.

The registers released on TheGenealogist today are: 

Read TheGenealogist’s article on researching more about an ancestor from the leads revealed in the pages of Educational Records:

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2020/educational-records-may-reveal-your-ancestors-unusual-achievements-1362/

Further R.A.F. Operations Record Books now released on TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist has today released additional new R.A.F. records that are fully searchable by name, aircraft, location and many other fields, making it simpler to find your air force ancestors.

In a release of over 1.8 million records, this batch of R.A.F. Operations Record Books (ORBs) joins TheGenealogist’s huge military records collection and includes entries for the famous children’s author Roald Dahl when he flew Hurricanes in WW2.

Hurricanes of No. 80 Squadron in Palestine, June 1941 as flown by Roald Dahl

The Operations Record Books record the stories of day to day operations of units and so will give the researcher an idea of action that took place as well as give insights into the everyday lives on the bases. You can use this collection to follow an airman’s war time experiences by searching 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' time while serving in a number of units of the air force. 

The ORBs give summaries of events and can reveal encounters with the enemy, pilots who went missing or were shot down, plane crashes, as well as less traumatic details such as weather and places patrolled by the aircraft and where the squadrons were based as the war wore on. As aircrew personnel are named in these Operations Record Books, researchers wanting to follow where an ancestor had been posted to and what may have happened to them will find these records extremely useful. 

Operations Record Book for No. 80 Squadron on TheGenealogist

Family historians will find the duties recorded in these documents interesting when they reveal the assignments that a serviceman took part in. Examples include Bombing, Convoy Escort, Submarine Hunt, Fleet protection, Attacking Aerodromes and Shipping, Dive Bombing Raids and more. 

Use these records to: 

• Add colour to an aircrewman’s story 
• Read the war movements of personnel in air force units
• Discover if a pilot, navigator, radio operator or gunner is mentioned in the action
• Find if an airman is listed for receiving an Honour or an Award
• Note the names of squadron members wounded, killed, or who did not return
• Easily search these National Archives records and images

This expands TheGenealogist’s extensive Military records collection.

Read TheGenealogist’s feature article: R.A.F. Operations Record Books that tell a storyteller’s story: https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2020/raf-operations-record-books-that-tell-a-storytellers-story-1356/

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