Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2024 i Family Tree UK

One of the charms of family history is the myriad of fascinating genealogy-related adventures for which it provides the opportunity. There is an endless and utterly absorbing range of research to do, and projects, trips, tutorials, books and more that we can immerse ourselves in as we work to trace the lives of our family members in times’ past. Within the pages of Family Tree we aim to give you useful and fascinating information and inspiration to help you trace your family story in full. There are always so many new things to learn, to do, to enjoy... However, this month there is one thing that we would urge each and every one of you to put to the top of your family history to do list. And it’s this:…

Millions of people around the world use the FamilySearch website, attend the global RootsTech conference and visit a FamilySearch Center around the world – and the year gone by offered genealogists from hundreds of different countries the opportunity to continue their research with free resources. The year 2023 saw an additional 450 million new sources added to FamilySearch’s global online family tree, the largest in the world. The global theme continued with collections expanded for more than 70 different countries, as well as 236 million visits to the FamilySearch website: www.familysearch.org. Another highlight was RootsTech 2023, organised annually by FamilySearch, which returned to an in-person (as well as online) format, with another conference planned for 2024, from 29 February to 2 March (see opposite page). The 2023 event saw attendees…

The digital images of the 1931 Census of Canada were made available by the Libraries and Archives Canada in June 2023. Ancestry and nonprofit FamilySearch subsequently set to work extracting the information written on each enumerated page to create a name-searchable index of over 10 million people whose details are captured within 234,678 pages. Forty questions were asked in this seventh census for Canada (17 questions in the Northwest territories) including name, age, sex, type of housing, and whether that housing was owned or rented. The search facility allows you to search by name, address, birthplace and occupation in order to locate your ancestor. Because images of the original census records are also included, you can easily check all details and ensure that you’ve mined every last clue from the…

The area the society covers is the Kirklees Council administrative area in West Yorkshire which, as well as Huddersfield, includes the towns of Dewsbury, Batley and Holmfirth, and the surrounding districts and villages. With a land area of over 400 square km and a population of around 433,000, it is a mix of typical northern towns and very rural areas. We have our own research room, based in Meltham, a short journey from the centre of Huddersfield, which is open part of every day except Sunday – see our website https://hdfhs. org.uk/contact-us/. We have a large group of volunteers: those who work at our research room – known as The Root Cellar, and those who volunteer ‘out in the field’, recording memorial inscriptions (MIs). The MI team have recently worked…

The chances are that your family history fact-finding trips take you to some interesting places you’d never otherwise have stumbled across. And one thing that many of those places will have in common is a public house. Perhaps you’re drawn to these hostelries to grab a pint and a bite to eat before continuing your travels, but even if a teashop is more to your liking, we’d like to suggest that the pub is worthy of a second look. After all, meeting the locals in a pub can be a good way of getting to know a locality, some of your ancestors could have been regulars at a watering hole The Bell Inn by George Morland (late 1780s) you discover, and one might even have been the landlord. What’s more,…

Why do I not share the same Genetic Communities with my known relatives? Q I’ve included the ethnicity and Genetic Communities from Ancestry’s ‘DNA Compare’ tool so that you can see what I’d expected to find on the DNA communities comparison. The first three matches are related to me via a set of Irish great grandparents as they are descended from siblings of my paternal grandfather and the last two are much closer matches who are related to me via my paternal grandfather. We all share a reasonable percentage of Irish ethnicity but none of them share any of the same Irish Genetic Communities with me. Why would that be the case when we all descend from the same Irish ancestors? Judith Irwin A I suspect your situation is a…

An amazing find An amazing find led to a search for the descendants of a distant sea-faring ancestor who served on: H.M.S. Duke of Wellington (in 1865 when he married) and H.M.S. Royal Oak (on 1871 census). George William Exton was a ‘sick birth attendant’. The ‘find’: on the back of a small envelope – a hand written note (pictured below) which read: Great Granddad George William Exton Born January 5th 1843 owned this smoking cap when he was on board HMS Royal Oak serving in the sick bay around 1868/1870 onwards Only certain people allowed to use these in the Captain’s quarters The note was inside a ‘smoking cap’. They were found tucked into a divan bed base, donated to British Heart Foundation shop in Llandudno, North Wales, probably…

AI Record Finder™ is an interactive, intelligent, free-text chat to help family historians locate relevant historical records about a person of interest in MyHeritage’s database of 20 billion records. The second new feature, AI Biographer™, automatically compiles a narrative about an ancestor’s life using information from historical records that match the person, creating a Wikipedia-like biography. MyHeritage has announced that it is ‘the only service to offer such groundbreaking features for family history, and the first to leverage conversational AI for searching historical records’. The two new features are integrated, allowing MyHeritage users to generate an AI Biograph for ancestors they find using AI Record Finder. AI Biographies may also be generated directly for individuals in family trees on MyHeritage. How does AI Record Finder work? Until now, searching for…

Prior to the Reformations in Britain in 1534 and 1560, it can become significantly harder to make progress in our ancestral research. As can be seen on shows such as Who Do You Think You Are?, however, it may be possible to make a breakthrough back to the medieval era, thanks to a connection into a royal line, a parallel line within the landed classes, or even at the commoners level. The medieval era, also referred to as the ‘Middle Ages’, spans from the mid 5th century departure of the Romans from Britain, to the mid 15th century, prior to the Renaissance. For the earlier phase of this period, we can effectively rule out any meaningful research into our earlier forebears, although we can certainly understand from contemporary and near…

1. GOOGLE MAPS Google.com/maps Place names may have evolved over time, locations may have been developed and road layouts changed since your ancestor’s time, but nonetheless Google Maps makes for a very comprehensive useful starting point when learning about the whereabouts of a new place that you have come across in your family history searches. It’s handy too for planning trips. 2. NATIONAL RECORDS OF SCOTLAND https://maps.nls.uk/ Find more than quarter of a million maps to search, zoom and download on the National Records of Scotland website, which includes coverage across the British Isles. Notable collections: The Ordnance Survey maps (https://maps.nls.uk/os/) are invaluable for family and local history research. Spanning the 1840s to the 1960s, often in extraordinary detail. For instance explore the beautifully informative 1:500 town plans for England:…

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) consultation paper, published 15 December 2023, proposed the digitisation of the England and Wales collection of wills from 12 January 1858 onwards – and the destruction of the will documents after 25 years, citing heavy storage costs as the driver for this move. This proposal to destroy such a collection has met with extreme shock and in many instances horror by the genealogy community, of more below. There is something (or rather four things) that you can do about it however. About the wills collection under threat The records held by HMCTS (His Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service) that the MoJ consultation paper proposes to destroy are records held at the Probate Records Centre in Birmingham, which include probate records for England and Wales from…

Photogenealogy is the art and science of caring for, identifying, enjoying, using, and sharing family history photographs, and then creating a treasured legacy with them. An important part of this rewarding process is scanning printed photos. This can be a lengthy task, but prescanning preparation will make the process more efficient. This preparation includes putting together a photogenealogy tool kit, triaging the prints, and removing prints from their enclosures if appropriate. Slides and negatives require different preparation, not covered in the scope of this article. Tool Kit A photogenealogist’s tool kit includes gloves, face mask, anti-static brush, bulb blower, micro spatula and dental floss. These tools are available from preservation equipment suppliers (see Links, page 57) or well-known online retailers. Basic DIY tools may also be useful, along with a…

Your family photos Jan Johnstone writes: I have two photos I believe to be of my 3x and 2x great-grandfathers, both named Thomas Price. Both photos are large, 310cm x 255cm and 400cm x 295cm, and have been pasted on to a strong card. Neither bear any photographer’s name or the place. My dilemma is: which is Thomas senior and which is Thomas junior? For photo 1, I cannot narrow down the attire closer than 1850-70, so it could be either father or son. Photo 2 is maybe taken in the 1890s when head and shoulders vignette with fading edges were popular, and thus likely to be Thomas junior. Also, handwritten on the back of photo 1 is a message to send the photo to an address where my great-grandfather…

Covering all family history topics and, of course, DNA too, the MyHeritage Wiki is aiming to become the ‘ultimate online encyclopaedia’ for family history – and in order to achieve this aim, welcomes contributions from family historians around the world. Since launch last month, the resource has grown to comprise hundreds of articles covering a wide range of topics, such as researching family history in various countries, leveraging DNA to find new family members, exploring surnames and naming traditions, different kinds of historical records, and more. MyHeritage welcomes applications from anyone who would like to become a contributor and you can find out more at https://bit.ly/myhwiki…

This article will look at some of the most common barriers we encounter when researching our Irish ancestors and offer some potential solutions. When tracing your Irish ancestors, it’s very easy, for instance, to overlook the fact that there is so much material that isn’t online. From land records, probate indexes and many other collections, there are a lot of overlooked resources that might help with your research. FAMILY STORIES Family stories are often the prompt to start us on the journey of researching our family history. These have often been passed down through the generations and may have become distorted and contradictory through the passage of time. This can cause confusion when beginning research into your Irish family history. Before starting the research, take the time to find out…

DNA Discoveries 13-27 March A brand new event featuring webinars & discussion from leading DNA experts Tickets from £15 per talk (£99/£69 for the bundle) Find out more at https://www.family-tree.co.uk/how-to-guides/webinars/dna-discoveries/ DNA Masterclass 3 & 17 April A two-part indepth webinar experience: Tracing Unknown Parentage with Michelle Leonard Tickets £45/40 Find out more at www.family-tree.co.uk/how-to-guides/webinars/ Research Skills Studio 9, 16, 23 & 30 April A 4-week online course to grow your genealogy research skills with Dr Sophie Kay. Includes webinars, group discussions & a digital copy of the accompanying new Research Skills Workbook Tickets £109/69 Find out more at www.family-tree.co.uk…

ONSITE EVENTS Women of the RNLI, from 2 March Created to mark the bicentenary of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), this exhibition celebrates the vital role that women have played in saving lives at sea, highlighting the work and success of women in a variety of roles throughout the RNLI’s 200-year history. The exhibition features a series of 42 photographs by Jack Lowe recently acquired by Royal Museums Greenwich. The portraits of women that volunteer for the RNLI will be displayed alongside their lifeboat station’s corresponding slipway, putting the landscape that these women operate in at the heart of their stories. National Maritime Museum, Romney Road, London SE10 9NF; website: www.rmg.co.uk Family history drop-in, 16 March Get your family history research started with some help from the Green Howards…