Welcome to the Family History Social

Prisoner Records reveal a criminal lunatic who threatened Queen Victoria and was detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure

TheGenealogist is adding to its Court and Criminal Records collection with the release of almost 700,000 entries for prisoners. Sourced from the HO 8 Registers held by The National Archives, these documents contain records from the years 1821 to 1876. This expands our collection to over 1.3 million individuals covering 1801-1876.

Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey

These Prison Registers give family history researchers details of ancestors who were imprisoned in a number of convict prisons from Broadmoor to the Warrior Convict Hulk. The records reveal the names of prisoners, offences the prisoner had been convicted for, the date of their trial and where they were tried.

Use the quarterly prison registers to:

• Find ancestors guilty of crimes ranging from theft, highway robbery and libel to murder
• Discover the sentences received
• See the age of a prisoner
• Find out where they were sentenced and to which prison they were sent

Read our article, “A child poisoner and a criminal lunatic detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure”.

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2019/ho-8-historic-prisoner-records-reveal-a-child-poisoner-and-a-criminal-lunatic-detained-at-her-majestys-pleasure-1049/

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 maps and field books for the Westminster area into its exciting record set, The Lloyd George Domesday Survey. This new release can be used to find where an ancestor lived in 1910 to 1915 in the area around Westminster. This unique combination of maps and residential data held by The National Archives has been digitised by TheGenealogist so that researchers can locate where an ancestor lived. The maps are large scale and exceptionally detailed with hand annotations that, in the majority of cases, allow family historians to find the exact property in the street.

This release of Lloyd George Domesday Survey records covers Westminster and the area shown above

Researchers often have difficulty using modern maps to find where ancestors lived as road names changed over time, the Blitz saw areas bombed to destruction, developers changed sites out of all resemblance from what had stood there before and lanes and roads were extinguished to build housing estates and office blocks. As these records are linked to the maps from the period this means that you have the ability to find the streets as they existed when the survey was carried out and often pinpoint where the old properties had once been.

• Links properties to extremely detailed ordnance survey maps used in 1910
  
• Shows the original Field book giving a detailed description of the property
  
• Fully searchable by name, parish and street
  

Complementing the maps on TheGenealogist are the accompanying Field Books that will 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 of information on properties to digitise with associated large scale IR121 annotated OS maps.

The release this month covers the civil parishes of Brook, Bryanston Square, Cavendish Square, Church, Conduit, Curzon, Dorset Square, Dover, Great Marlborough, Grosvenor, Hamilton Terrace, Hamlet of Knightsbridge, Hyde Park, Knightsbridge, Lancaster Gate, Liberty Of The Rolls, Maida Vale, Pall Mall, Petty France, Pimlico North, Pimlico South, Portland Place, Portman Square, Queens Park, Regent 1, Regent 2, St Anne Soho, St Clement Danes, St John Westminster, St Martin in the Fields, St Mary Le Strand, St Paul Covent Garden, Westbourne and Westminster. More areas will be released soon for other London Boroughs and the county of Buckinghamshire.

Find out about these land records at: TheGenealogist.co.uk/1910Survey/

You can read TheGenealogist's feature article “Westminster Lloyd George Domesday Survey reveals the American born MP and the Lady with the Lamp” at:

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2018/westminster-lloyd-george-domesday-survey-reveals-the-american-born-mp-and-the-lady-with-the-lamp-1017/

The Union Castle Lines’ Pendennis Castle

TheGenealogist has just released over 4 million BT27 Outbound Passenger List records for the 1950s. These records join the ever expanding suite of Immigration, Emigration, Naturalisation and passenger list resources on TheGenealogist. With the release of this decade of records, researchers can discover ancestors who departed from the UK by ship to destinations across the globe. 

 The fully searchable BT27 records from The National Archives just released will allow researchers to:

 ●     Locate family members making a journey together using TheGenealogist’s SmartSearch. This unique system is able to recognise family members together on the same trip. In this situation it will display a family icon which allows you to view the entire family with one click.

●     Discover people sailing to the USA, Canada, India, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere in the Outgoing Passenger Lists  from the United Kingdom.

●     View images of the original passenger list documents compiled for the Board of Trade's Commercial and Statistical Department and its successors.

●     Discover the ages, occupations and address and where the passenger intended to make their permanent residence.

●     These fully indexed records allow family historians to search by name, year, country of departure, country of arrival, port of embarkation and port of destination.

Those family history researchers with ancestors who sailed from the UK in the 1950’s will welcome this fascinating new release from TheGenealogist, which adds to their current Emigration records that take you back to 1896.

 See their article:

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2018/the-1950s-passenger-lists-discover-celebrity-voyages-972/

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 is releasing the second part of its exciting new record set, The Lloyd George Domesday Survey. This major new release can be used to find where an ancestor lived in 1910 in the area around Barnet, Edgware, Finchley, Friern Barnet, Hendon and Totteridge. This unique combination of maps and residential data, held by The National Archives and being digitised by TheGenealogist, can precisely locate your ancestor’s house on large scale and exceptionally detailed hand annotated maps that indicates the exact property.

Researchers often can’t find where ancestors lived as road names changed over time, the Blitz saw areas bombed to destruction, developers changed sites out of all resemblance from what had stood there before and lanes and roads were extinguished to build estates and office blocks. All this means that searching for where an ancestor lived using a website linked to modern maps can be frustrating when they fail to pinpoint where the old properties had once been.

• TheGenealogist’s new release will link individual properties to extremely detailed ordnance survey maps used in 1910

• Shows the original Field book often giving 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 maps will zoom down to show the individual properties as they existed in 1910

Image of an IR58 Field Book

The Star Hotel, Barnet High Street

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 digitise with associated large scale IR121 annotated OS maps. This second release from TheGenealogist includes these more detailed IR58 Field Books which feature more information about the properties that have been surveyed.

The release this month, covers Barnet, Edgware, Finchley, Friern Barnet, Hendon and Totteridge, just to the south of Hertfordshire. These join the City of London and Paddington Index and maps already released. More areas are coming soon for other London Boroughs and the county of Buckinghamshire.

Find out more at: TheGenealogist.co.uk/1910Survey/ where you can read about how the Lloyd George Domesday Survey finds the Baronet of Barnet:

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2018/lloyd-george-domesday-survey-finds-the-baronet-of-barnet-906/

Mark Bayley, Head of Development at TheGenealogist says:

“With our English & Welsh Tithe Map collection, we’ve become known for our map based records and this new collection makes a fantastic later addition. The maps show an incredible amount of detail, allowing you to zoom right in on the hand annotated property. The records that go with these maps are just as detailed, allowing you to find out all manner of information about your ancestral home.”

The National Archives issued the following statement:

“The Lloyd George ‘Domesday Records’ form essentially a census of property for Edwardian England and Wales. The innovative linking of individually searchable property data with associated annotated Ordnance Survey maps will be of huge value to family and local historians alike.”

To find out more about these records, you can visit our informative record collection page at

TheGenealogist.co.uk/1910Survey/

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 added to its Parish Records collections with a second batch of Warwickshire registers in an ongoing project with the Warwickshire County Record Office. These newly transcribed records are linked to high quality images of the original parish register pages.

• Over 1,270,000 individuals added to the Parish Records for Warwickshire
• High quality transcripts with original images of the registers
• Additional information such as Witnesses, Father’s Name and Profession have been transcribed where given
• Released in association with Warwickshire County Record Office
• This brings our total for Warwickshire Parish Records to over two million
• Fully searchable parish records with images enable researchers to find ancestors’ baptisms, marriages and burials

Parish register for Emscote (All Saints) Warwickshire 1868

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

Read TheGenealogist’s article that reveals how a Warwickshire marriage was key to the career of an 18th century tragic actress: https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2018/warwickshire-parish-records-reveal-the-marriage-of-an-18th-century-tragedienne-800/

This week TheGenealogist has expanded its growing headstone and war memorial record collections with some interesting new additions to both. The headstone records cover 53 new cemeteries and the various war memorials are from Australia, Britain, Canada and the USA.

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/

  Anthony Eden, Earl of Avon’s grave in Alvediston, Wiltshire on TheGenealogist

The headstone for the Earl of Avon, Anthony Eden, is included in this release. This politician served three periods as British Foreign Secretary and then succeeded Winston Churchill as Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957. He is laid to rest at Alvediston in Wiltshire.

Anthony Eden, Earl of Avon’s grave in Alvediston, Wiltshire on TheGenealogist

Also published online this week are an additional 64,920 War Memorial records which include a complete roll of honour for both WW1 and WW2 for Shetland, with men's units and the Shetland village in which they had resided. There are other war memorials in this release that cover the country including the Abercarn Tinplaters Memorial Institute in Wales. There are plaques and monuments in Bedford, Bolton, Lancashire, London, Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Warwickshire and even further afield in Canada, Western Australia and the USA. One of the Canadian memorials is a fascinating, but sadly very worn, WW2 memorial from Calgary in Canada that names 227 aircrew from Australia and New Zealand who died while training in Calgary, revealing just how dangerous WW2 aviation was.

War Memorial at Battery Park, New York, USA, on TheGenealogist

From the USA TheGenealogist has uploaded some WW1 and WW2 war memorials from New York, including a fine one in Battery Park. This is a roll of those men and women who lost their lives in the Atlantic coastal waters in WW2 and had no known grave as a result of U-boat action. The war memorial gives researchers the ranks, units and the US state from which they had come, and the shockingly large number of Americans included is a salutary lesson when in Britain we are often only aware of our own countrymen/women who died at sea from enemy action against the convoys.

Lastly there are a number of Boer War memorials - for example the tribute within Blackpool Town Hall that commemorates the 74 Blackpool men who volunteered to join various units for service in South Africa.

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

To find out more about the UKIndexer volunteer project, you can read the following article:

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2018/family-history-can-be-a-rewarding-hobby-790/

TheGenealogist has released the records of 29,000 individuals who were decorated with the Meritorious Service Medal (MSM). The roll of names for those who were awarded this British honour in the First World War have been released by TheGenealogist. Researchers can now look for holders of this medal up to 1920 from within their ever growing military records collection.

• See a copy of the image of the Medal Card with the theatre of war where the medal was won
• Details the name, rank, regiment and service number
• Unique “SmartSearch” links to the comprehensive military records on TheGenealogist.co.uk
• These new records cover British servicemen from The First World War

The medal was first awarded in 1845 to non-commissioned officers in the British Army who had a record of long service in the forces. Given originally for long service of at least 20 years to servicemen who were of irreproachable character and already held the Long Service and Good Conduct Medal of their service, the First World War saw it awarded to those who performed acts of non-combatant gallantry in the performance of their military duty. In the second case the bravery was not necessarily while the serviceman was on active service and may have been in the saving or attempted saving of the life of an officer or an enlisted soldier.

Family history researchers searching for ancestors who had been awarded the Meritorious Service Medal in the First World War will be able to find their forebears in this new addition to the military collection of records on TheGenealogist.

Meritorious Service Medal (MSM)

Read TheGenealogist’s article on a First World War NCO awarded his medal ‘For exceptionally good work’ operating night and day to keep the RFC’s aeroplanes at El Hammam flying:

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2018/finding-ancestors-awarded-the-meritorious-service-medal-768/

The RMS Mauretania; from TheGenealogist’s Image Archive

TheGenealogist has just released 1.4 million Passenger Records covering the 1940s. This expands our Outbound Passenger Lists to over 25 million and form part of their larger immigration and emigration collection on TheGenealogist. The new records feature passengers who sailed out of United Kingdom in the years between 1940 and 1949 these newly transcribed BT27 images are from The National Archives. The passenger lists released today will allow researchers to:

• Discover potential family members travelling together using TheGenealogist’s SmartSearch
• Find ancestors sailing to Africa, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and other destinations
• View images of the original passenger list documents
• See the ages, last address and intended permanent residence
• Fully indexed records allow family historians to search by name, year, country of departure, country of arrival, port of embarkation and port of destination

Researchers who had ancestors that travelled abroad from Britain in the 1940’s will find these records a fascinating addition to the vast collection of records on TheGenealogist.

Read their article on the new records here: https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2018/1940s-passenger-lists-reveal-evacuated-children-war-brides-and-service-personel-crossing-the-atlantic-758/

TheGenealogist has added Colour Tithe Maps from The National Archives to their National Tithe Records collection. With this release researchers can see the plots owned or occupied by ancestors that lived in this ‘home county’ at the time of the survey in the 19th century.

The new data includes:

• Over 40,000 Plots of Land covering the years from 1837 to 1855 with some much later plans of altered apportionments
• Joining the apportionment record books and the previously published greyscale maps

These tagged colour maps and their fully searchable tithe schedule records are from those held at The National Archives. The 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 TheGenealogist’s article: https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2018/buckinghamshires-colour-tithe-maps-online-748/

TheGenealogist has added over 500 further editions of the weekly publication The Illustrated London News to their Newspaper and Magazine collection. The latest collection is of newspapers that were published in the 1890s and offer a fascinating insight into your ancestors lives.

The Illustrated London News is one of a number of newspapers and magazines that are fully searchable by name or keywords by Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist. Not only can this extensive resource add context to your ancestors’ lives and times, these newspapers can be used to find out more about people who were mentioned in reports from the time. As well as notices for baptisms, marriages and deaths, there are also wills, crimes and court cases, plus the political stories of the time. Read their article that looks at the news of 1890s and the world in which your ancestors lived:   https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2018/our-ancestors-in-the-1890s-reported-by-the-illustrated-london-news-734/