Welcome to the Family History Social

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 has released a collection of searchable Early Trade and Residential Directories that cover the years 1816-1839 to help find ancestors in the period before the usable census records begin.

Prior to 1841 all of the U.K. censuses were generally statistical: that is, mainly headcounts, with virtually no personal information such as names recorded and so family history researchers need to turn to a substitute to find out the address where their ancestors had lived. Trade and Residential Directories list names of tradespeople, prominent citizens and in some cases other residents of a town as well.

The City from Bankside by Thomas Miles Richardson, c.1820

Many of these directories will also give a good description of the town or area which can give family historians an interesting insight into the social history of their ancestors’ locality at the time. This information usually includes the main industry, topographical details, communication links with the surrounding towns by stage coach or railway, and details of local administration offices, post offices, the clergy, charities hospitals and schools.

These directory records have been digitised by TheGenealogist and made searchable by name, so they can help researchers to find their ancestors in the Georgian and very early Victorian period.

The early Trade and Residential Directories being released in this batch include volumes that cover the areas of Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cornwall, Derby, Devonshire, Dorsetshire, Durham, Essex, Glasgow, Hampshire, London, Liverpool, Middlesex, Northumberland, Norfolk, Nottinghamshire and Suffolk.

List of Directories in this release:

Derby 1829 History, Gazetteer and Directory; Devonshire 1830 Pigot's Directory; Durham 1828 White's Directory; Essex 1832-1833 Pigot's Directory; Glasgow 1831-1832 Post Office Directory; Lincolnshire 1826/7 Directory; Liverpool 1816 Gore's Directory; London 1816 Post Office Directory; London 1819 Robson's Directory; London 1822 Post Office Directory; London and Provincial 1823-1824 New Commercial Pigot Directory; London 1824 Post Office Directory; London 1826 Post Office Directory; London 1828 Robson's Commercial Directory; London 1829 Robson's Trades Directory; London 1831 Post Office Directory; London 1833 Robson's Directory; London 1836 Post Office Directory; London 1837 Post Office Directory; London 1839 Post Office Directory; Norfolk 1830 Pigot's Directory; Northumberland 1828 White's Directory; Nottinghamshire 1832 White’s Directory; Suffolk 1830 Pigot's Directory.

Find out more about directories and how they can help you research your ancestors on TheGenealogist here:

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/directories/