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TheGenealogist launches 3.4 Million brand new enhanced census images

Researchers using TheGenealogist will now have access to the highest resolution and quality 1851, 1861 & 1871 census images for England and Wales ever seen online with vastly improved readability revealing even faint writing in pencil.

Building on the success of their previously upgraded 1891 census image release, TheGenealogist has now significantly improved the image quality of all its 1851,1861 and 1871 census images as well.

Clearer Images of the 1861 census finds Charles Dickens and family

TheGenealogist’s new images can really make a difference - Comparison of Old and New

Replacing the old bitonal images with high-resolution greyscale census images reveals  the details in the census columns or margins and where previously faint writing, shadows or pencil marks could render an image unreadable. 

Mark Bayley, Head of Development at TheGenealogist said:
“We’re extremely proud to announce this tremendous leap forward in clarity and readability. Thanks to the latest technology and many years of hard work, we now have the best possible images for the 1851, 1861, 1871 and 1891 census for England and Wales. It’s remarkable just how much extra detail you can see in these images.”

TheGenealogist’s “Deep Zoom” images have over 5 times the resolution of previous images and yet are still fast to view, thanks to the technology used in their image interface. Writing appears sharper on the new images and allows you to zoom in to reveal what would otherwise be illegible words on other sites. In addition TheGenealogist has the benefit of searchable occupations and addresses on their census transcripts, making them quicker and easier to find.

Read TheGenealogist’s article:  Murder in the margin! https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2023/murder-in-the-margin-1688/ 

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!

These records cover wanted persons, absentees and deserter records in TheGenealogist’s latest release

Over 56,000 individuals and 20,802 further aliases from The Police Gazette have been released by TheGenealogist covering the years 1901, 1911, 1921 and 1931 and are now available to Diamond subscribers in their Court and Criminal Records Collection.

Searchable by name, alias, offence among other keywords, these records have been transcribed by volunteers from UKIndexer to provide an effective resource for discovering descriptions of our wayward ancestors.

MEPO 6 on TheGenealogist includes the Police Gazette for 1901, 1911, 1921 and 1931

These newly released Police Gazette records (sometimes known to researchers by its historic name of Hue and Cry) are a part of the MEPO 6 criminal records on TheGenealogist that also include Habitual Criminals Registers and Miscellaneous Papers.

The images of the pages from the Police Gazette publication on TheGenealogist were originally published by the Metropolitan Police and circulated to Police forces in the British Isles. They include a number of portraits of the offenders and always give descriptive written details of the individuals. Expect to see the names of persons charged who were known but not in custody, and also the description of those who were not known, their appearance, dress, and every other mark of identity that could help identify the person. Also included in the Police Gazette were the names of accomplices and accessories, with every other particular that may lead to the apprehension of the individuals. 

Wanted for Theft and Desertion

Sections of the Police Gazette were devoted to “Deserters and Absentees” from the military and those “Discharged for Misconduct”. These provide interesting details about ancestors missing from the Army and the Navy. As an example we can find Albert Eyre, 45, a Colour-sergeant in the 1st Battalion Royal Rifles Reserve Regiment. He appears firstly in the alphabetical list on the front page of “Deserters and Absentees from Her Majesty’s Service” in January 1901.

Albert Eyre in the portraits of persons wanted and list of Deserters and Absentees from the Police Gazette 

Eyre then warrants several mentions, including a photograph of him, on the inside pages of subsequent editions. He had by then also become wanted, along with a female accomplice, by Portsmouth Police for “Stealing a considerable amount of Money.” The fugitive was described as: age 45, height 5 ft. 5 in., complexion sallow, hair brown, moustache and imperial dark, eyes grey; dress, black overcoat, dark suit, grey cap.

We can read that he had left Portsmouth accompanied by an unnamed woman whose unflattering description is also published: age 23 (looks older) height 5ft. 5 in., stout build, complexion sallow, hair (short) dyed auburn colour, 1 front tooth deficient.

TheGenealogist has an extensive Court and Criminal Records collection that can be used to discover trouble-making ancestors that include the MEPO 6 records that embrace Registers of Criminals as defined by sections 5-8 of the Prevention of Crimes Act 1871, with examples of the Police Gazettes. 

Read TheGenealogist’s featured article where a search of the MEPO 6 Criminal Records discovers female gang leaders known as the Queen of the Forties: https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2023/the-queens-of-the-forties-1683/ 

Five Welsh counties Tithe Maps are now georeferenced to modern and historic maps

TheGenealogist has linked the tithe maps for the Welsh counties of Brecknockshire, Cardiganshire, Denbighshire, Flintshire and Monmouthshire to the Map Explorer™. For the first time TheGenealogist’s subscribers are now able to use these Welsh tithe maps, georeferenced to a variety of historic and modern maps. This will allow the researcher to see how the area has developed from Victorian times through to modern day.

General View Ebbw Vale

The tithe survey came about as a result of the Tithe Commutation Act 1836 designed to change tithes from a payment in kind to a monetary payment. These records are useful for researchers in that they record the names of owners and occupiers, from all levels of society at this time, and give details and value of their holdings. 

Originally tithes were made in kind (crops, wool, milk, young stock, etc.) and were collected mostly for the support of the parish church and its clergy. Generally representing a tenth of the yearly production from cultivation or stock rearing, almost all Welsh parishes were subject to this levy at this time.  

With Map Explorer™ researchers have the ability to display a variety of historical and modern maps so that family, social and house historians are able to view the same plot of land throughout time. Often this will reveal a landscape that has completely changed over the years, as we discover in this week's case study of a house developed in Victorian times. 

• Total of 421,260 georeferenced tithe plots join those already released for England
• 570 georeferenced maps have been added in this release 
• Map Explorer™ now has a total of 5,630,801 georeferenced plots linking to Tithe records across 12,374 total georeferenced Tithe maps
  

See TheGenealogist’s article: Tracing a House in the Monmouthshire tithes to modern day https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2023/tracing-a-house-in-the-monmouthshire-tithes-to-modern-day-1678/ 

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.co.uk has just added over 342,500 new records to the 1939 Register for England and Wales. Researchers can now see all people born in 1922 opened under the 100 year rule along with those who have passed away since the last release. 

TheGenealogist’s version of the 1939 Register is matched to its powerful mapping tool, Map Explorer™ so that researchers can 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. With its SmartSearch family historians can discover even more from the records in the 1939 Register not just where their ancestors were living as the Second World War began in Britain, but potential birth and death records.

Sir Christopher Lee in the 1939 Register as a 17 year old

TheGenealogist’s unique and powerful search tools and SmartSearch technology offers a hugely flexible way to look for your ancestors at this time. Searching the 1939 Register on TheGenealogist also 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 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.

Having discovered a record in the 1939 Register, TheGenealogist then gives its subscribers the ability to click on the street name and so 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 342,543 newly opened records from the 1939 Register, linked to the detailed mapping tool on TheGenealogist, is a tremendous way for family historians to discover where their forebears lived in September 1939.

See TheGenealogist’s article: The “Count” and the Contessa found in the 1939 Register

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2023/the-count-and-the-contessa-found-in-the-1939-register-1661/ 

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!

Press Release from TheGenealogist.co.uk:

TheGenealogist has today released 371,400 Kildare Catholic Parish Registers covering 323,923 records of baptisms, 46,914 marriages and 563 burials to make it easier for its Diamond subscribers to discover their Irish ancestors from this eastern part of Ireland.

Also released at this time are more than 29,000 individuals recorded as Irish Tithe Defaulters. These records from 1831 can be a useful stand-in for the 1831 Irish census which was almost completely destroyed in 1922. 

The Irish Anti Tithe Agitation The Affray at Carrickshock, 1831

Tithes were levied on all occupiers of agricultural land, no matter what their religion was and the Roman Catholic population of Ireland particularly resented paying these tithes to the Church of Ireland (the Established Church) on top of often supporting their own priests. Refusal to pay the tithes came to a head in the years 1831 to 1832, beginning what is known as the ‘Tithe War’ in Ireland.

To alleviate the Church of Ireland’s shortfall The Clergy Relief Fund was established in 1832 by the Recovery of Tithes (Ireland) Act 1832. This provided the affected clergy compensation in return for providing the government with the names of the defaulters.

Many of the non-payers named were ordinary folk such as labourers, farmers and widows who would most likely have been Roman Catholics and so not part of the congregation at their local Church of Ireland parish church, but surprisingly there are also Magistrates, Peers of the Realm and even Knights.

These new releases, now available to all Gold and Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist will be a welcome resource for those family historians wanting to research their Irish ancestry.

Read TheGenealogist’s featured article: Can’t Pay or Won’t Pay – The Tithe Defaulters

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2023/cant-pay-or-wont-pay--the-tithe-defaulters-1651/ 

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!

As we prepare to remember our fallen hereos from the World Wars and other conflicts on Remembrance Day this weekend, TheGenealogist has released a collection of war memorials for soldiers that had served in the First World War. Comprising of details for men who had been born in Ireland as well as in England, Scotland and Wales with connections with the island of Ireland.

With almost 50,000 records that were originally compiled by the Committee of the Irish National War Memorial and published in 1923. Assembled at the time by Miss Eva C. Barnard, secretary to the Irish National War Memorial Committee and printed under the direction and personal supervision of George Roberts they are presented with attractive decorative borders designed by Harry Clarke.

This eight volume set of Ireland's memorial records, 1914-1918, was published in 1923 for the Committee of the Irish National War Memorial. Each entry gives name, regiment, rank, date and place of death, sometimes date of birth and next of kin.

Read TheGenealogist’s feature article: Remembering the Fallen

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/remembering-the-fallen-1633/

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 launches fully searchable copies of The Times, to join its ever growing Newspapers and Magazines Collection. This release sees 3,129 editions from the 1870s decade join the many other newspaper publications already available to search on TheGenealogist. Keep a look out for further decades to be released in the coming months of this famous name-rich newspaper of record. 

The Thunderer, as it was nicknamed, like many other newspapers carried Birth, Marriage and Death announcements and so is a great resource for finding details of our ancestors and where they lived.

Discovering our forebears recorded in this newspaper may surprise some researchers. Inclusion in its pages may be because our ancestor was the victim or a witness to a crime. They may have worked as a police officer, lawyer or been a member of the court that had been a part of a legal case reported on by The Times. 

Some ancestors may have warranted their name in print in this hallowed publication on being newly qualified and joining a professional body, for example The Royal College of Surgeons.

But it is not just the great and the good that appear in The Times as all sorts appear in its pages. For example the parties to divorce cases are ordinary people from across the country. You can read who was the petitioner, respondent and co-respondent, giving a researcher some useful information. Often included is the county in which the couple had lived and an occupation for the man. 

For example, in the edition for Friday 10 June 1870 is a case where a man’s wife had left home to live with another. We discover that the petitioner was employed “at some works at Burslem, in Staffordshire'' while the co-respondent in the case was a grocer’s assistant. 

Read TheGenealogist’s article: Times Past https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/times-past-1629/ 

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!

NEWS – TheGenealogist has sent out this Press Release today:

This major milestone means that the whole Greater London Area is now searchable by name, address or location.

TheGenealogist has today confirmed that The Lloyd George Domesday Survey is now complete for all of the Greater London boroughs, as well as for North Buckinghamshire. 

Over 1.6 Million records are now searchable, with 118,437 records in this latest tranche. 

This is a key resource for those researching London in the Edwardian period.

This latest release completes the IR58 Valuation Record Offices records for London. You can now research into and discover detailed information on the houses your ancestors occupied in the capital between 1910 and 1915.

Mark Bayley, Head of Content for TheGenelaogist said: 

“This is great news for family historians, local historians and those researching house histories. These records are linked to our powerful Map Explorer interface so you can see your ancestor’s home pinned on a contemporary map and discover where they went to work, school, church or even find their local watering hole!”

You can find out more about these records at https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/lloyd-george-domesday/ or come along to The Family History Show, London this Saturday (24th September), where both Mark Bayley and Nick Barratt the well known Researcher, Academic and TV presenter will be discussing the records amongst many others. You can buy tickets ahead of the day at a discounted price here: https://thefamilyhistoryshow.com/london/tickets/ 

The original IR58 records were collected by the Inland Revenue for their Valuation Office Survey, referred to as the Lloyd George Domesday Survey after the Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer of the time. Safely stored at The National Archives they have been transcribed and digitised by TheGenealogist. The resulting crisp and clear page images of the field books, with details of the surveyors’ reports, are linked to zoomable large scale OS maps used at the time. Each plot on a road is identified on the map; this allows Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist to find their ancestors’ house location in a street and then explore the neighbourhood.

Many of the field books in this collection are extremely detailed in the descriptions of the houses and will give the researcher a fascinating insight into the size and the state of repair of the property in which their ancestors had lived.

TheGenealogist now intends to extend this important dataset out into the rest of the country in future releases.

Read our article: Snapshot of Edwardian London revealed in Land Tax Records  https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/snapshot-of-edwardian-london-revealed-in-land-tax-records-1616/ 

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 International Headstone Collection at TheGenealogist has been boosted with 100,000 new records, bringing the total to nearly 400,000 records in the collection available for all Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist to search. 

Included are some extremely interesting memorials that allow researchers to see details about ancestors that have been immortalised on gravestones. These inscriptions can provide the family historian with useful information about the deceased and their family as commemorated in various churches and cemeteries. 

The headstone records released cover various burial places and include, at Mells St Andrew, Somerset - Siegfried Sasson, Ronald Arbuthnot Knox a translater of the Bible and some members of the Bonham Carter family and the Asquith family.

In St Peter’s Churchyard, Bournemouth, is the grave of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. She was the widow of the Romantic Poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was cremated in Italy – though some of his mortal remains are reputedly also interred in this grave having been buried along with their son Sir Percy Florence Shelley.

[Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the author of Frankenstein grave at St Peter’s Bournemouth]

The Headstones Collection is also a record layer on TheGenealogist’s powerful Map Explorer™ with its ability to look into the area surrounding the location of the churchyard or cemetery. With its different historical and modern georeferenced maps, the researcher can discover the area and see the neighbourhood’s streets where the deceased ancestor may have lived, worked and played.

The International Headstone Collection is an ongoing project where every stone photographed or transcribed earns volunteers credits, which they can spend on subscriptions at TheGenealogist.co.uk or products from GenealogySupplies.com. If you would like to join, you can find out more about the scheme at: https://ukindexer.co.uk/headstone/

Read TheGenealogist’s article: The horror author with the heart of a poet

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/the-horror-author-with-the-heart-of-a-poet-1610/ 

TheGenealogist has been praised for its innovative tools that allow you to discover exactly where your ancestors lived, using Map Explorer™. This innovative feature has now been added to Gold and Starter level subscriptions.

Home of Joseph Chamberlain (father of the WW2 prime minister) found on the 1891 census in Map Explorer™  

Census pins identify properties on Map Explorer™ 

Image Archive records located on Map Explorer™ 

From today, a significant number of databases including the 1891, 1901 and 1911 census, plus TheGenealogist’s Image Archive pictures and along with the Domesday Book 1086, are now available with pins on georeferenced maps in Map Explorer™. This makes  Starter & Gold Subscriptions powerful resources for researchers to see where their forebears lived, as well as to investigate the neighbourhood and surrounding area. Accessing Map Explorer™ on a mobile allows researchers to walk in the footsteps of ancestors and discover where homes, schools, places of work and other buildings may once have stood but have now disappeared. 

This interface will place a pin on the house using historical data to identify its location where possible or if not, the street or parish on an appropriate map of the area connected to the record. As this resource makes use of a number of historical and modern maps matching the same precise coordinates, Starter & Gold subscribers are in a much better position to see where their ancestors had once lived even if the area has now changed.

To find out what’s included in the discounted Starter and Gold subscriptions go to www.thegenealogist.co.uk/PRTGAUG22

To read about using the Census collection, Image Archive and Domesday Book 1086 linked to mapping for an area recently in the news see our article: Mapping the records from a PM’s house to the Conqueror’s Manor

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/mapping-the-records-from-a-pms-house-to-the-conquerors-manor-1604/