If you are researching your family history and in particular your English and Welsh ancestors, then a useful new resource is now available online: the England and Wales National Probate Calendars for the 19th and 20th centuries. These Calendars were previously only available for inspection by making a personal visit to a Probate Registry in [more...]
Land ownership maps are an important resource for researching your ancestors in the United States. The most useful ones for researching your family history were created between 1860 and 1918 when America was being opened up to settlers and the railroads. As the name suggests, the majority of maps were drawn up to show land [more...]
If you are researching your family history, you may be somewhat surprised and perplexed when you come across a parish register, death certificate or coroner’s report which states the cause of death as ‘Visitation of God’ (ex visitacone dei). What does this mean? For centuries, doctors struggled in the darkness over the causes of disease [more...]
You could indeed be a descendent of Charlemagne, but if so, then probably so is everyone else you know (but you don’t have to tell them). Charlemagne was crowned on Christmas Day in the year 800, which endears him to people who have trouble remembering dates. He married Hildegard in 772, and they had at [more...]
In the 1670s a young Scotsman called William Cash sailed to the New World and set up home in Virginia. Nine generations later his direct descendant, country music star Johnny Cash, wanted to explore his ancestry. He crossed the Atlantic in the other direction, to visit the part of Fife once known as the “lands [more...]
The next UK census is to be conducted on 27 March 2011. Already there are many people complaining of the intrusive nature of the questions and indicating they may refuse to provide the information. In the last census of 2001 there were 38 prosecutions for non-compliance, and there were at least 6,000 cases where some [more...]
Ancestry.com is the 600-pound gorilla in the family history field… it simply can’t be ignored, and is, in fact, the richest, deepest source of genealogical information available online. It also costs money! In the neighborhood of $150 for an annual subscription for US ancestor research, and close to $300 for full access to world records. [more...]
Burial Clubs were to be found in 19th century Britain. This was a time of high death rates especially among children, and poor working-class families were fearful that they would be unable to pay for a decent funeral for their loved ones and would have to rely on the local Poor Union to provide a [more...]
You got your musical chops somewhere. But in which branch of the great family tree of your ancestors did the musical talent first make itself known? There are a number of very good sources for searching back several generations or more to find musically talented folk who were part of your family’s heritage. The [more...]
Anyone can research their ancestors going back a generation or two. Just ask grandma! But how about going back, say, six or seven centuries. A new genealogical database will let you do just that, particularly if your family has roots in England, and even more particularly, if one of your ancestors was a medieval soldier. A [more...]
In 1930, Albert Einstein, the famous theoretical physicist, was dividing his time between living in Berlin in a five-storey house at Schöneberg, Haberlandstrasse, 5, then located near Berlin’s zoological garden, and his summer house at Caputh to the south of Berlin. The 1930 Berlin telephone directory lists him as: Einstein Albert Prof. Dr. Univ. -Prof., [more...]
Here are two good sources for you to help you research the Scottish connections in your family tree. The first is The Scotsman archive. The archive provides every issue of the paper from 1817-1950. A whopping 600,000 pages. The newspaper is printed in Edinburgh. In this archive, each paper provides a broad review of Scottish, [more...]
Any visitor to the British and Commonwealth war cemeteries of northern France cannot fail to be moved by the spectacle of row upon row of neat, clean, white gravestones, lined up with military precision with the occasional flower growing between them, surrounded by well-cut and tendered grass. A walk along any of the rows will [more...]
When researching your family tree you may come across a reference in the Victorian census returns, commercial directories or newspapers, to the occupation of beerhouse keeper. Sometimes it is also written as beer house. The Government of the 1820s and 1830s were keen to promote beer drinking instead of spirits, especially gin. Widespread drunkenness through [more...]
Researching your family tree is an interesting hobby, and for some it turns into an obsession with a determination to go back as far as they can. Some people move onto conducting a one-name study on their surname or family name and its variants. In other words, researching people who share the same surname. One-name [more...]
Family history researchers must be always ready to be shocked when they find a ‘skeleton in the cupboard’ while researching their family tree. Thieves, arsonists, bigamists and even murderers can be revealed. In the UK, types of records relating to their criminal past can be many and varied, and found in many different archives including [more...]
Tithe Maps were drawn up in England and Wales following the passing of the Tithe Commutation Act, 1836. The Act changed the ancient method of paying tithes in kind to a rent-charge levied on landowners according to the value of their land. Tithe maps and the accompanying tithe apportionment document can help you research your [more...]
As its name suggests, it was a tax on each hearth in a home in England and Wales. The records of the Hearth Tax are now stored in the National Archives and some County Record Offices in England and Wales, or they are available on micro media. The records are of great use to both [more...]
There are several famous people listed in the American 1880 census. It is interesting to look through the records to get a snap-shot of a moment in their lives. Here is a selection of some. The names are linked to transcripts of the census on familysearch.org. We start with the 19th President of the United [more...]
Researching your family history is enjoyable, but if you’re descended only from agricultural labourers, and perhaps ne’er-do-wells, occasionally it’s interesting to look at the households of the rich and famous. There are several famous people listed in the 1881 census, here is a selection of some of them which are linked to the transcripts of [more...]