Welcome to the Family History Social

The 1891 census is now linked to historical and modern georeferenced maps by TheGenealogist to make it easier than ever to find where ancestors lived and see the surrounding neighbourhood.

Family and house historians are able to investigate the streets, lanes and wider areas of where their ancestors lived at the time of the 1891 census in this latest release from TheGenealogist. A release that sees the 1891 census linked up to the Map Explorer™ for the first time. 

Census transcript linked to mapping

The 1891 Census joins the 1901 census, 1911 census and the 1939 Register that are already connected to the innovative Map Explorer™. This means that researchers are able to identify, with just the click of a button, where their forebears lived and to see the routes their ancestors used to visit shops, local pubs, churches, places of work and parks. With a historical map it is possible to find where the nearest railway station was, important for understanding how our ancestors could travel to other parts of the country to see relatives or visit their hometown.

With this release, Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist can pinpoint ancestors’ properties at the time of the 1891 census and so investigate the neighbourhood from behind their computer screen. Alternatively, users may also access TheGenealogist on their mobile phone to trace their ancestors’ footprints while walking down modern streets.

Most of the London area and other towns and cities can be viewed down to the property level, while other parts of the country will identify down to the parish, road or street.

Viewing a household record from the 1891 census on TheGenealogist will now show a map, locating your ancestor’s house. Clicking on this map loads the location in Map Explorer™, enabling you to explore the area and see the records of neighbouring properties.

See TheGenealogist’s article:    

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/from-census-to-map-in-1891-1578/

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!

Millions of homes recorded in the 1901 census have now been plotted on historical georeferenced maps by TheGenealogist. Family history or house historians can now explore the areas where their ancestors lived and see how far it was for them to walk to the shops, visit their local pub, travel to work or take a train to another city or town.

Following on from their recent releases of the 1939 Register and the 1911 Census records linked to contemporary and modern map layers on TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™, now the same innovative features have been applied to the 1901 Census of England and Wales. 

With this release Diamond subscribers are able to pinpoint where their ancestors’ properties were at the time of the census count and so metaphorically walk the streets from the comfort of their home. Alternatively, users may access TheGenealogist on their mobile phone to physically discover the neighbourhood while on the move.

This key tool can make the lives of the family or house historian easier than ever to research census records for buildings and the newly linked 1901 census complements the rich georeferenced Lloyd George Domesday Survey and Tithe records that are already available on TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™ as well as the 1939 Register and the 1911 Census records recently added to this website.

The majority of the London area and other towns and cities are viewable down to the property level, while other parts of the country will identify down to the parish, road or street.

With this new release, viewing a household record from the 1901 census will now show a map, locating your ancestors' house. Clicking on this map loads the location in Map Explorer™, enabling you to explore the area and see the records of neighbouring properties.

See TheGenealogist’s article about the 1901 Census on MapExplorer™: The Clog Dancers house and the paths they would have trodden. https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/the-clog-dancers-house-and-the-paths-they-would-have-trodden-1560/ 

Find out more at TheGenealogist.co.uk/map

Search for Dublin Ancestors with the latest release from TheGenealogist

This week TheGenealogist is pleased to be releasing 60,000 records from the 1851 Dublin City Census Index. This new release will be a great aid for those researchers with ancestors who may have been living in Ireland’s Capital City on the 30 March 1851 at the time when the census was taken. 

Jaunting Cars In Dublin from TheGenealogist’s Image Archive

Researchers will find the Index to the 1851 Dublin census to be a wonderful tool for anyone searching for people in Dublin city in the mid-nineteenth century. It provides the names and addresses of approximately 59,000 heads of household and was compiled by Dr D A Chart.

You can search over a million early Irish census records from 1821 to 1851. Also the only complete surviving censuses for Ireland that exist, 1901 and 1911 (over 8 Million records) can be searched via TheGenealogist’s unique search tools, allowing you to search for an ancestor using their address or keywords.

Earlier records compiled for 1813 to 1891 were destroyed at the government's request or by the civil war in 1922. This only leaves census substitutes for researchers of nineteenth century Ireland to use in their quest to delve into their family history.

Fortunately for Dublin Dr. D. A. Chart used the census to compile a “1851 Dublin Heads of Household Index” in 1915. At the time this was primarily to assist staff working in the Public Record Office of Ireland (PROI) searching for proof of age for applicants for the old-age pension.

This index survived the fire and is one of the few remaining fragments of census information available for that time. 

TheGenealogist also has a number of Irish Trade and Residential Directories that can be useful for those researching their Dublin ancestors, as well as the previously released Dublin Will and Grant Books.

The 1851 Dublin City Census Index in this current release covers the parishes of

St. Andrew's, St. Anne's, St. Audeon's, St. Bridget's, St. Catherine's, St. George's, 

St. James's, St. John's, St. Luke's, St. Mark's, St. Mary's, St. Michael's, St. Michan's, 

St. Nicholas Within, St. Nicholas Without, St. Patrick's Deanery, St. Paul's, St. Peter's, 

St. Thomas's, St. Werburgh's and the civil parish of Grangegorman.

About TheGenealogist

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

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

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

TheGenealogist releases over 31,000 Land Tax records from 1910

Fascinating English land tax records from the years before the First World War are being released today by TheGenealogist. Researchers are now able to search 31,394 newly added records of owners and occupiers to discover their ancestors from Merton, Mitcham, Morden and the Wimbledon areas. 

Each record is linked to clear scanned pages of the actual IR58 Field books, sourced from The National Archives, and the properties plotted onto large scale contemporary IR121 maps. These maps are digital copies of the ones used at the time by the Valuation Office of the Board of the Inland Revenue to locate each and every parcel of land in the survey taken in between 1910 and 1915. TheGenealogist’s versatile Map Explorer™ allows their Diamond subscribers to view georeferenced modern and historical layers beneath the IR121 recordset map and so discover how the roads, fields and general environment has changed over the years. 

Grazing land that would become the site of the Centre Court at Wimbledon in the following years

House historians and family history researchers alike will appreciate the ability to unearth valuable particulars about ancestors’ homes and land from these areas of south west London. They will also be able to see how similar, or even how very different the area where their ancestors lived had been at this time when compared to the map of the area today. 

Included in those records being made available today is the past and present home of the iconic tennis tournament known as the Wimbledon Championship. The researcher is able to discover that the present day Centre Court, home to the only Grand Slam tennis event still to be held on grass, had in 1910 been rural fields put to use as “Grazing Land” by its owner Lady Sarah Lane. 

The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, at the time of the survey, was then squeezed into a much smaller area of land in Wimbledon than it is today. That plot, where once the Championship played out, still plays a part in sport today albeit at a much lower level of competition.

Read TheGenealogist’s article: From Grazing Land to the Grass of Centre Court  

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/wimbledon-from-grazing-land-to-the-grass-of-centre-court-1534/

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!

Family historians with an aristocratic ancestor in their family tree will be pleased to hear that TheGenealogist has just significantly boosted the number of records in its Peerage, Gentry and Royalty collection. While many family history researchers believe that their forebears were simply ordinary folk, it turns out that many of us can find a link to a family that has a published pedigree. We only have to look at how Danny Dyer or Josh Widdecombe discovered their Royal and Aristocratic ancestors in their episodes of the Who Do You Think You Are? UK TV series. 

While this relationship to the upper levels of society may be as a result of an illegitimate line, nonetheless a link to an ancestor that features in a pedigree is of huge help in tracing back many generations, as much of the work has been done for you by the compilers of the records.

Heraldic visitations, one of the records to be included in this release, were tours of inspection undertaken by Kings of Arms throughout England, Wales and Ireland. Their purpose was to register and regulate the coats of arms of nobility, gentry and boroughs, and to record pedigrees. A number of later books, while they can not precisely be described as Heralds Visitations, provide similar information and can likewise help the researcher to populate their family tree back through the ages and are also in this record release.

This latest release covers the following searchable book records:

Armorial Families, Arms Authorized by The Laws of Heraldry 1863, Boyle’s court guide  1888, Burke’s Handbook to the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire 1921, Burke’s Landed Gentry Volume 1886, Debretts House of Commons and the Judicial Bench 1887, Encyclopedia of Heraldry or General Armory of England Scotland and Ireland 1844, Genealogica Bedfordienses Landed Gentry of Bedfordshire 1538-1700, Grantees of Arms to The End of The XVII Century, Herefordshire Visitation Of 1569, His Majesty the King 1910-1935, Imperial British Calendar 1823, Index Nominum to the Royalist Composition Papers, Kelly’s Handbook To The Titled Landed and Official Classes 1909, Landed Gentry of Bedfordshire 1538-1700, Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica - Third Series Vol IIIV, Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica - Third Series Vol IV, Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica Fourth Series Vol II 1908, Nottingham Visitation 1569 and 1614, Short View of the Peerage of Ireland 1759, Standing Council of the Baronetage Official Roll of the Baronets 1929, Suffolk Visitations of 1561 1577 1612, Sussex Visitations 1530 and 1633-4, The Pedigree Register for London 1907-1915, The Peerage of Ireland 1754, The Royal Kalendar 1786, The Royal Kalendar 1788, The Royal Kalendar 1796, The Royal Kalendar 1804, The Royal Kalendar 1820, Webster’s Royal Red Book Court and Fashionable Register January 1915, Worcestershire Visitation 1569

Read TheGenealogist’s article: The Castle Ruin and its connection to the Australian ‘King’

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/the-castle-ruin-and-its-connection-to-the-australian-king-1530/ 

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!

From the news:

This month, The Society of Genealogists have launched an interim database of  their Memorial Card Collection, donated by Phillip Jones. You are now able to search the full Memorial Card Collection of 4,500 and 8,500 digital images. Mourners sent the cards after the loss of a loved one to distant family members, friends and neighbours announcing the death and giving details of the funeral. Cards like these can be used to build a family tree.

For more information see: https://www.sog.org.uk/our-collections/featured/memorial-cards

With a release of the records of over 35,000 individuals by TheGenealogist, family historians will now have the ability to discover valuable particulars about ancestors’ homes from the following parts of London in 1910: Cowley, Cranford (Bedfont), Great Stanmore, Harefield, Harlington, Harmondsworth, Harrow, Harrow Weald Hayes, Hillingdon East, Hillingdon West, Ickenham, Little Stanmore, Pinner, Ruislip, Uxbridge, West Drayton, Yiewsley and Wealdstone.

Lloyd George Domesday Map of Ruislip, London

These latest residential records have been linked to detailed OS maps which allows the researcher to pinpoint an ancestors’ property on maps that go down to plot level. These land tax records were originally collected by the Inland Revenue’s Valuation Office and are sourced from The National Archives IR58 records. Searchable by name or keywords using TheGenealogist’s Master Search, or by selecting a pin from the map displayed inside the powerful Map Explorer™, this tool allows family historians the ability to switch between georeferenced modern and historic maps and so to gain a better understanding of the neighbourhood in which ancestors from 1910 had lived or worked and to see how it may have changed in the intervening period. With contemporary maps you can see where the nearest churches, public houses and railway stations to your forebears' homes were, along with other places that may have featured in your ancestors’ daily life in the area.

St Martin’s Church Ruislip from TheGenealogist's Image Archive

Property records, such as these that were uniquely digitised by TheGenealogist from the originals at The National Archives, allow house and family history researchers the ability to unearth information that had been recorded by the authorities about the owners and occupiers of the homes, land, outbuildings and property at the time.

Read TheGenealogist’s article: Landowner and Occupiers records for Harrow reveal the school, homes and other properties details

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/landowner-and-occupier-records-for-harrow-reveal-the-school-homes-and-other-properties-1524/ 

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!

For the first time, researchers will now be able to see more accurately where their ancestor’s house was situated on maps down to house, street or parish level, giving more detail than ever before.

J R R Tolkien recorded in 1939 Oxford displayed on Bing Satellite map

TheGenealogist.co.uk has also added over 258,000 new records that have now been officially opened. Now you can use TheGenealogist’s SmartSearch on even more records in the 1939 Register to discover where your ancestors were living.

Film star Leslie Howard’s house in Surrey shown on a historical map

With the addition of the more precise mapping feature there are some very compelling reasons to search the 1939 Register on TheGenealogist. Firstly it benefits from their unique and powerful search tools and SmartSearch technology. This offers a hugely flexible way to look for your ancestors as the authorities scrambled in 1939 to issue identity cards and ration books for the population.

Secondly, searching the 1939 Register on TheGenealogist allows researchers to take advantage of some powerful search tools to break down brick walls. For example there is the ability to find ancestors in 1939 by using keywords, such as the individual’s occupation or their date of birth. Researchers on TheGenealogist may also search for an address and then jump straight to the household or, if you are struggling to find a family, you can even search using as many of their forenames as you know.

With a record found in the 1939 Register, TheGenealogist then gives you the ability to click on the street name to view all the residents in the road. This feature can be used to potentially discover relatives living in the area and can therefore boost your research with just a click.

The 1939 Register on TheGenealogist also benefits from innovative SmartSearch technology that enables you to discover even more about a person by linking to their Birth, Marriage and Death records.

The 1939 Register, when linked to a more detailed mapping tool than ever before, is a fantastic resource for family historians searching for where forebears lived in September 1939.

See TheGenealogist’s article:Powerful mapping linked to 1939 Register pinpoints ancestor’s households https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/powerful-mapping-linked-to-1939-register-pinpoints-ancestors-households-1520/ 

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

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

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

Handley Page Hampdens taking off in formation at RAF Waddington

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

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

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

Some feedback TheGenealogist has received:

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

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

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

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

This collection is provided in association with The National Archives. 

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

About TheGenealogist

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

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

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

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

Tottenham Court Road, London

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

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

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

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