THE BEST WEBSITES FOR TRACING YOUR IRISH ANCESTORS
WHO
ISSUE 174 FEBRUARY 2021 £5.25
Transcribe Records Help elp V Vital Projects
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FREE RECORDS ON
ANCESTRY AND
FINDMYPAST We go behind the paywall to reveal the collections that don’t cost a penny
PLUS
Adoption Records Top tips on how to break down this tricky brick wall
Wiltshire Secrets Our expert guide to the county’s records and archives
6DYH 2Q &HUWLÀFDWHV Order birth and death records for less online
‘A twist of fate saved my mother from Auschwitz’ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
Urban Dairies How the nation got fresh milk into the cities
• Find carpenters and joiners • 1821 Irish census online • Uncover local health reports
Welcome Sarah’s T p Tip Prepare in advance for Transcription Tuesday to make the most of our brilliant online event
JON BAUCKHAM PHOTOGRAPHED BY STEVE SAYERS / COVER IMAGE: GETTY IMAGES / A NURSE FROM DR BARNARDO’S BABIES CASTLE, HAWKHURST, KENT, TAKES BABIES FOR A PRAM RIDE, 1930s
Although we will be concentrating our efforts on Tuesday 2 February, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t sign up for projects now and try them in advance (see page 26). And of course, you can continue supporting the four projects after the event. Many Transcription Tuesday volunteers have become long-term transcribers for projects we have featured over the years!
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Editorial
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ne of the great perks of my job is that I get to have a subscription with all of the main genealogy websites, and I think that even if I didn’t have this job, I would subscribe to more than one. However, multiple subscriptions is a luxury that not everyone can afford, so we have put together an article explaining how you can still benefit from the major subscription websites without parting with your hard-earned money (page 16). Don’t forget too that you can often access subscription sites for free at libraries and archives (some are even allowing remote access during lockdown). The reason why many of these records are free is because they were transcribed by volunteers, so if you have ever benefited from a free index, now is the time for you to give back to family history and take part in our next Transcription Tuesday on 2 February. We’ve got a basic guide to the four projects on page 26, but we will be revealing further information about them online and in our free email newsletter (find out how to sign up on page 45). Please share your stories with us via social media using #TranscriptionTuesday, and let’s see if we can make this year’s event the biggest yet. Finally, if you don’t subscribe to our magazine yet, then now’s the time. Turn to page 24 for a fantastic offer. You won’t regret it!
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Q&A Queries
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Jon Bauckham
Michelle Higgs
Gill Rossini
Jon worked on Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine for many years before moving on to BBC History. Now a freelance writer, he shares his tips on free records on page 16.
Medical Office of Health reports featured in David Walliams’ episode of WDYTYA? so we are delighted to have Michelle explain how you can find and use them on page 52.
Gill has been teaching family and social history since 1988, and is currently writing a guide to researching adoptions for family historians. You can read her advice on page 61. 3
CONTENTS FEBRUARY 2021 FEATURES 16 Ancestry & Findmypast
ON THE COVER
Jon Bauckham explains how to make the most of the free records on family history’s biggest subscription sites
26 Transcription Tuesday
ON THE COVER
Rosemary Collins reveals all about the projects we’ve chosen to support in this year’s event on 2 February
68 Urban Dairies
ON THE COVER
Learn how milk reached our city-dwelling forebears
RESEARCH ADVICE 47 Best Websites
ON THE COVER
The key online resources for tracing your Irish ancestors
52 Record Masterclass
ON THE COVER
Uncover fascinating details about your relations’ lives with the reports of the local Medical Officer of Health
55 Ancestors At Work
ON THE COVER
Did anyone in your tree work as a carpenter or joiner?
58 Tech Tips
ON THE COVER
Nick Peers explains how to save money with the General Register Office’s indexes of births and deaths
61 Focus On
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ON THE COVER
How to tackle the challenges of researching adoption
YOUR RESEARCH 28 Reader Story
ON THE COVER
“A twist of fate saved my mother from Auschwitz,” says Debra Barnes whose novel is based on her family’s story
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42 My Family Album Derek Mutch from Derbyshire shares his photographs
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66 Eureka Moment Bill Williams explains how his detective work uncovered his wife’s great grandfather’s adventures in Russia
90 Family Hero Richard Carr celebrates a 3x great grandmother who struck a significant blow for the rights of coal miners
REGULARS
47 68 GETTY IMAGES / UNP/TERI PENGILLEY
6 Letters Your ideas, comments and advice
9 News All of the latest developments and record releases
13 What’s On Don’t forget to register for RootsTech Connect!
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SUBSCRIPTION OFFER
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Subscribe Today And Get A Month’s FREE Trial 14 Wdytya? Magazine Shop Back issues, magazine storage and a wall chart
15 Off The Record The notes written in the margins of parish registers
32 The Big Picture Villagers in Balloch, near Inverness, northern Scotland, travel by horse-drawn carriage, 14 February 1937
35 Q&A Our experts tackle readers’ most frustrating brick walls
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44 Your Projects Celebrating the history of Gatehouse of Fleet in Scotland
50 Gem From The Archive A teenage girl’s autograph book, 1909
73 Around Britain
ON THE COVER
Our expert guide to researching Wiltshire relations
79 The 1821 Census
ON THE COVER
Why this census is unmissable for anyone with Irish kin
87 Behind The Scenes We highlight three key records from Liz Carr’s episode
GUIDE GETTY IMAGES
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83 Books & Digital Picks This month’s family history inspiration
61 whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
86 TV & Radio All the must-see/hear programmes
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Letters Email wdytyaeditorial@immediate.co.uk Write to WDYTYA? Magazine, Eagle House, Colston Avenue, Bristol BS1 4ST
WIN an AncestryDNA test kit from ancestry.co.uk WORTH £79 The writer of our star letter wins an AncestryDNA test worth £79 – so drop us a line and share your thoughts with us.
Seafarers Rescued From The Records
Elizabeth enjoyed Simon Wills’ article in our December issue, which showed how to research shipwrecks
the Columbia River. His death was recorded as 11 December 1900, but the ship was only conclusively recorded as lost several weeks later – in 1901. I also found the records of two of my great grandfather’s brothers – teenage apprentices. One was presumed drowned when his vessel the Innisfallen foundered in the Irish Sea, the other was washed overboard from the Star of Germany near
Surprises From A Service Record
Jane’s father Garfield was in the Territorial Army in his youth
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If, like me, you know family members were too young to have enlisted or been conscripted during the Second World War, you may not be aware that National Service was still in place until 1960. So they may have a service record even if they didn’t serve during the war. d When my father Garfield Williams was 70, our family offered him a parachute jump
the Cape of Good Hope. Fortunately, my great grandfather didn’t follow his family trade, or I might not be here! Elizabeth Carrey, by email EDITOR REPLIES: We’re so glad that Simon’s article helped you to discover the fate of your seafaring forebears. Look out for more invaluable advice from Simon in our ‘Q&A’ section over the coming months…
as a birthday present, to which he replied that he’d had enough of parachute jumping in his lifetime. It wasn’t until he died that I found his Soldier’s Release Book and Certificate of Service. He had been called up and then joined the Territorial Army (TA). I applied to the Ministry of Defence for his record as stated in Rob Clark’s ‘Record Masterclass’ article (December), and was astounded at the wealth of information. Garfield enlisted at Chichester on 7 August 1947 under National Service or peacetime conscription as it was known, which expected all healthy men aged 18–30 to
serve in the armed forces for at least 18 months. On discharge at the end of 1949, my father re-enlisted in the TA for an additional five years until 1955. According to his record, he became a qualified parachutist in 1952. I am so glad that I applied for his service record, as it has helped explain many photographs without date, name or location, and given me a rare glimpse into his early life. Jane Evans, by email EDITOR REPLIES: That’s a very good point, Jane. It’s easy to forget
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Simon Wills’ ‘Focus On’ article about Victorian shipwrecks in the December issue was a huge boost to my research efforts – thank you. I have a hand-drawn family tree of past generations of my father’s family, which included several master mariners. My great grandfather noted “drowned” or “lost” against half a dozen names, some of whom were merely boys. The name of a distant cousin, James Stannus, was annotated “Colombia US, 1901”. Was this the South American country, or the American District of Columbia, or something else? Within an hour of reading the article, I had found James’ name in Findmypast’s ‘British Armed Forces and Overseas Deaths’ list, establishing that he was First Mate on the Andrada of Liverpool, and had discovered newspaper reports of the loss of the ship. It had apparently been blown out to sea off the Pacific North-west coast of America, wreckage being found near the mouth of
STAR LETTER
that National Service was only phased out fairly recently, and that older relatives may well have service records full of interesting details about them.
A Lucky Escape I very much enjoyed the September issue of WDYTYA? Magazine, especially James Hoare’s article about the Blitz. My dad had been posted from Scotland to the Kent/London border at the outbreak of the Second World War, and was walking home one evening at the start of the onslaught when the bombing began. He dived under a hedge as a bomb landed nearby, only to be joined by a sow and all of her piglets, who climbed on top of him! Later on, my parents, who by then were married and living in Bexley, had to take to the shelter during an attack, when my mother remembered that she had left her precious fruit harvest from the garden bottling in the
Medals And Medics Two articles in the November issue – Simon Fowler’s ‘Focus On’ about gallantry awards, and Steve Thompson’s feature on pre-NHS medical provision – particularly interested me, because I have family history links with them. One non-immediate award not mentioned was the Meritorious Service Medal. The regimental diary of the 1st/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry lists seven such awards for excellence in support service roles, such as quartermaster, CQMS Lieberman, and medical orderly, Corporal Goddard, the senior non-commissioned officer of my grandfather Major Summerhayes’ medical team of stretcher-bearers. If you’re lucky, a regimental diary will provide not only the full citation for all of the gallantry medals, but other useful appendices that put the citations into context. Moving on a decade and to pre-NHS medical provision, the daughter of Dr Summerhayes,
@RDodsworth1 joined a Twitter discussion about paying a visit to your relations’ graves on holiday I was pretty ‘happy’ – if that’s the right word – to discover some of my ancestors’ graves in St Mary Cray cemetery as I had heard they had connections with the area.
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old wash-boiler and asked Dad to turn it off. Reluctantly, he left the shelter, and in the moonlight headed for the washhouse, just in time to see a family of hedgehogs crossing the lawn in single file, father first, then the hoglets, followed by their mother to make sure none strayed. It struck him that they were abandoning the garden because of the bombing. My parents moved house shortly afterwards and a week after they left, the property took a direct hit and was destroyed. He always hoped that the hedgehog family’s prudence meant that the animals managed to survive. Scilla Aitchison, by email EDITOR REPLIES: I love your account of the hedgehog family heading for safety in the moonlight, Scilla. Let’s hope that they did survive the later bombardment.
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who accompanied him on his rounds, described the unofficial and largely unrecorded system of barter economy and charity that supplemented the official provision for patients who could
Images from the ‘Focus On’ article that inspired Derek to write in
not afford to pay the medical bills in money, but could spare a chicken, or do plumbing repairs for free. The high fees he charged the rich old ladies whose largely imagined complaints he treated enabled him to assist for free at the birth of poor families’ babies. Derek Turner, by email EDITOR REPLIES: I’m glad you found these topics of interest – and I loved your description of bartering for medical care.
What’s In A Name? I was surprised to see your editor agreeing with Anne Peacock’s letter in the November issue,
Scilla’s mother and father, who survived the Blitz with memories of hedgehogs
suggesting that the marriage of John Walker to James Andrew was an error in the register. While I agree that errors can occur in parish records, I see no reason why this entry should be assumed to be in error because of the use of ‘James’ for a female; as the date of this entry is 1687 there seems to be nothing particularly remarkable in this. I have come across a will written in 1638, in which a father left £40 each to his daughters Ann and James, and EG Withycombe in The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names notes that names that “appear in Latin with feminine endings, eg Philippa, Nichola, Alexandra, Jacoba… were in fact baptised and called Philip, Nicholas, Alexander, James”. To these should be added Johan, the earlier form of John, which was used equally for both sexes, although it was later replaced by the differentiated John/Joan. Withycombe mentions other names commonly used for girls including Gilbert, Aubrey, Basil, Eustace, Giles, Edmund, Simon and Florence. To these names I can add Timothy which – at least in Sussex and Surrey, where my ancestors lived – was used for two girls to every boy before the mid18th century, and Dennis, which was then used much more often for girls than boys.
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Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine is published by Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited
In the 20th century, Shirley, Beverley and Hilary have moved across this invisible gender border leaving some men stranded on the wrong side of the name divide in their later years. In conclusion, name usage and fashions are ever-changing, and when researching ancestors it is important not to be misled by modern usage when apportioning a gender to a name. Julie Martin, by email EDITOR REPLIES: Many thanks for putting me straight on that, Julie – it’s important for us to remember that names we have grown up with as gender-specific were more fluid in the past.
On The Hunt for Missing Siblings I read Sarah Williams’ excellent article ‘Give your research the WDYTYA? treatment’ (December) and wanted to share my thoughts. My nan always said that my grandad had 16 siblings. He died in 1948, so no one could ask him. She was still alive when I started putting together my family tree, but no one thought to ask her.
Issue 174 — February 2021 Editorial Editor Sarah Williams Production editor Seth Burgess Staff writer Rosemary Collins Art editor Robbie Bennie Contributors Lisa Duerden, Claire Vaughan
Advertising Sales Ad manager Sam Jones 0117 300 8145 Ad sales executives Andy Williams 0117 300 8803, Tony Robinson 0117 300 8826 Inserts Laurence Robertson 00 353 876 902208
Marketing Marketing manager Joe Jones
Press And PR Head of PR Dominic Lobley
Production Beverly’s nan, who set her on the trail of her grandfather’s missing siblings
local archives in Hanley and Salford, and found another child who had died young. We found burial records and visited the local cemetery, where an official paced out where the children had been buried (six in one grave), plus Mum’s grandfather. There were four sites in total, with no headstones to mark the graves. We laid a yellow rose on each. On the 1911 census, my great grandfather recorded that 16 children had been born alive, with three still alive. If there was a 17th child, perhaps it was stillborn.
Carol Ann Landsberg praised the BBC One series My Family, the Holocaust and Me with Robert Rinder It was an excellent production, which brought home the horror of what was allowed to happen but was personalised too. Long after Nan died, I asked Mum if she would like me to find out more about her dad’s siblings. Mum only knew about two aunts and her father, so where were the other 14? Their surname was Jones, so not easy to trace. I hired a local genealogist, and I found one child on the 1901 census and the professional researcher found a few more. Sadly, all had died young, mostly under two years old. It seemed an incredibly large loss of children for just one family. Mum and I searched the
Mum is sadly no longer with us, but since her passing the General Register Office has added the maiden names to mothers in its online birth registrations and I have found one more child. In total, I now know the names of 12 children born to my great grandparents. The missing children still elude me, but I’m continuing to look for them. Beverly Thomson, by email EDITOR REPLIES: What a sad story – that is a lot of children to lose. It is sometimes comforting to feel
you have borne witness to family lost before their time. We hope you find the elusive ones.
Lost And Found Thank you so much for the ‘Focus On’ about Victorian shipwrecks and how to find the various records (December). It has enabled me to find a missing sailor who I now know was drowned in 1874. Poor lad was only 20 and had been married two years so he left a young wife, but fortunately no children. I was interested that although there was £1 19s owing to his estate, it does not seem to have been paid. I have another member of the family who I believe was lost in the wreck of the Northfleet. His name appears among the dead but I believe the passenger lists have been lost, so I only have the death list to go on. If only we could go back and pick up the web of information that linked our ancestors together. Did his family know he had been lost? A terrible tragedy, but now I understand that shipwrecks were very common. Thank you for a very informative magazine. Brenda Crowcroft, by email EDITOR REPLIES: I’m glad you found the article useful. Sea travel was clearly a risky business!
YOUR LETTER IN PRINT We reserve the right to edit any letters sent to the magazine. Messages posted to our Facebook wall and tweets sent to us may also appear in print. The choice of star letter is the editor’s and the prize is subject to change.
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News
Rosemary Collins reports on data releases and genealogy news
Westminster records move from Findmypast to Ancestry Digitised images of more than five million parish records from Westminster are now available on family history website Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk), after the City of Westminster Archives Centre’s deal with Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk) elapsed. Findmypast first secured the rights to publish Westminster Archives’ records, including parish registers, Poor Law records and surviving records of the 1821 census for the borough. When the 10-year deal elapsed last year, Westminster Archives signed a new deal with Ancestry, which is now in the process of digitising the records. Findmypast still holds transcriptions of the records, together with National School registers and logbooks and Catholic records from Westminster. The new additions mean that Ancestry, which already had an exclusive deal with London Metropolitan Archives, is the leading resource for tracing forebears in London. Kristian Lafferty, content acquisition manager at Ancestry, said: “We had been talking to Westminster Archives for a while about working with them. Eventually they asked us if we would take on the parish registers from scratch. It makes sense because we have the agreement with the London Metropolitan Archives and there was this patch of London where the records weren’t available on Ancestry.” Ancestry is newly digitising the original records in colour, whereas Findmypast digitised microfiches of the records. This also allows Ancestry to add records that were acquired by the archive since its original deal with Findmypast. Furthermore, Ancestry is creating its own transcription of the records. Lafferty said that the digitisation process had been delayed because of the coronavirus, but now all of the records have been digitised apart from some Poor Law documents. Ancestry added its first tranche of Westminster parish records on 1 August 2020. The records currently consist of 2,516,567 parish records
Ancestry has newly digitised Westminster Archives’ parish registers in colour
(1558 1812); 1,253,090 baptisms (1813 1919); 1,302,722 banns and marriages (1754 1935); and 215,434 burials (1812 1910). The site is scheduled to release Westminster nonconformist records in January 2021, cemetery registers in June, probate records in August, and Poor Law records in January 2022. Other Westminster records Ancestry hopes to acquire in the future include electoral rolls and the 1821 census. The deal does not include the separate records of Westminster Abbey Library, but Lafferty said Ancestry hopes to acquire them at a later date. A spokesperson for Findmypast made the following comment: “We were delighted to be able to bring the Westminster City Archive records to market and were very proud to win the contract to do so, becoming the first to offer these images and associated transcriptions online. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end and, at the end of our 10-year term, we lost the rights to publish the images.”
‘The new additions make Ancestry the leading resource for London forebears’
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NEWS IN BRIEF ScotlandsPeople site gets 1,000 additional maps ScotlandsPeople (scotlandspeople. gov.uk) has added 1,000 more maps and plans to its online collection. The maps date from the mid-16th to the mid-20th century. Among the newly added records are examples by notable Scottish surveyors and engineers, including Thomas Telford (1757–1834) and John Home (1733/4–1809). Among them is Home’s 1774 survey of the mouth of the River Ness, which lists the names of landowners along its banks.
TNA is open for business with more seats for researchers
The National Archives in Kew (TNA; nationalarchives.gov.uk) has reopened with an increased number of seats after the end of the latest lockdown on 2 December. TNA said that it has increased the number of available seats in its reading room, which is now open on Saturdays, as well as Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. This is a 150 per cent increase in reading-room places, although all of them must be booked in advance. It is thought that there were roughly 200 seats available per week in the reading room, after TNA reopened with increased social-distancing measures following the first lockdown in July.
TNA has also increased the daily document-ordering limit from nine to 12, plus three reserves, and introduced a new standby list for reservations. In an email to visitors, TNA also said that it had increased air circulation in the building, in line with government advice that increased ventilation reduces the risk of airborne spread of Covid-19. The email said: “This means that our reading rooms are feeling cooler than normal – you may wish to wear a jumper (or two) if you feel the cold.” It added that the TNA restaurant and shop have now reopened for a limited number of hours each week.
CAN YOU HELP? A Scottish genealogist is appealing for help tracing the families of two men from Paisley, Renfrewshire, who were killed while serving with Bomber Command in the Second World War. The men are Thomas Frame Millar (c1925–1943), who was the son of John Peacock Millar and Helen Webster Kerr, and Robert Johnstone Blake (1915–1944), who was the son of George and Annie Blake and married to Janet Deans Blake. The men are thought to be buried in Maubeuge-Centre Cemetery, France, and a local researcher is now seeking to create a memorial to them and other Allied airmen killed in the area. If you have any information about these men’s surviving relatives, please email Clare Wilson on enquiries@ treehousegenealogy.co.uk or contact Treehouse Genealogy on social media.
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Refuelling a Wellesley bomber, 1940
WW2 RAF record books added to TheGenealogist Family history site TheGenealogist (thegenealogist.co.uk) has added more than 1.8 million Royal Air Force Operations Records Books from the Second World War to its collection. TheGenealogist is in the process of digitising all of the records from series AIR27 at The National Archives in Kew. The books record the movements of different squadrons and include accounts of encounters with the enemy and crashes, as well as the names of pilots and support staff.
ScotlandsPeople improves searching of death records ScotlandsPeople (scotlandspeople. gov.uk) has made its records easier to search by adding the mother’s maiden name to older death records as a search term. Scottish death records, unlike those in England and Wales, often include the deceased’s mother’s maiden name, although this was not routinely included before 1974. However, ScotlandsPeople has now identified more than one million older records from 1855–1883 that do include the maiden name.
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The National Archives reopens with increased number of seats
Findmypast creates new collection of 1.1 million Scottish gravestone records Family history website Findmypast (findmypast. co.uk) has launched a collection of 1.1 million transcribed Scottish cemetery records spanning 1,000 years of history. The records were created in a grassroots project, which saw thousands of volunteers transcribing headstones at their local cemetery and graveyard during the first coronavirus lockdown. They date from 1093 to the present day, and record the final resting place of 600,000 Scots. Myko Clelland, regional licensing and outreach manager at Findmypast, said: “Scotland is a nation of stories, but so many lie forgotten in cemeteries across the country. Through the tireless efforts of local expert volunteers, combined with new technology, these stories can be told for the first time online.” The records cover more than 800 burial sites in 688 parishes (80 per cent of the nation) across all 34 historical Scottish counties. They include such famous burial sites as Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh and Dunfermline Abbey graveyard. Headstone records can reveal your ancestor’s age, date and place of death, the names of other relatives and often touching memorial messages. Included are burial records for some famous figures from Scottish history, such as John Brown (1826–1883), a manservant and personal favourite of Queen Victoria. His gravestone at Crathie Kirkyard in Aberdeenshire reads: “John Brown, personal attendant of Queen Victoria
On This Day 27 January 1933
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It’s a fair coop! Three youths from Thornbury appeared in the magistrates’ court after being caught trying to steal four hens. Police Constable Greenslade told the bench that he’d caught them after following “a trail of feathers and footprints”, according to the Western Daily Press. Despite their fowl deed, the magistrate heard that the three young men – Lloyd Clutterbuck, Charles Smith and Frank Holpis – were otherwise of good character, so they were placed on probation.
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Queen Victoria with her personal attendant John Brown, whose burial record is now available on Findmypast
and in her service 34 y, born Crathienaird 8.12.1826 died Windsor Castle 27.3.1883.” After his death, the Queen wrote to his sister-inlaw Jessie McHardy Brown: “He was the best, truest heart that ever beat.” There is another royal connection with Flora MacDonald (1722–1790), known for helping ‘Bonnie’ Prince Charles Stuart escape British troops after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. She is buried in her family mausoleum in Osmigarry Burial Ground, Kilmuir, Inverness-shire. Her memorial had to be replaced after it was chipped away by tourists in search of souvenirs. The records were transcribed by volunteers from the Moray Burial Ground Research Group and the Scottish Genealogy Society, plus members of a number of family history societies: Aberdeen & North-East Scotland; Caithness; Dumfries & Galloway; East Ayrshire; Highland; Lanarkshire; Tay Valley; and Troon@Ayrshire.
LMA launches database of historic BAME Londoners The London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) has launched a digital database that reveals the lives of Londoners of African, Caribbean, Asian and indigenous heritage going back over 400 years. Switching the Lens (bit.ly/LMA-BAME) is the result of work by LMA staff and volunteers to uncover BAME individuals in the archive’s Anglican parish registers, which began in 2000. The records, which are free to search online, date from 1561–1840 and list over 2,600 individuals. The database includes the 1765 baptism record of former slave Jonathan Strong. Abolitionist lawyer Granville Sharp represented him in a successful legal challenge Switching the Lens uncovers BAME individuals to his enslavement in 1769. 11
1843 The year of the world’s oldest Christmas card, which was put up for sale in December
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Richard Attenborough’s acting debut appears in the latest pages to be digitised by BNA
British Newspaper Archive hits milestone with 40 million pages The British Newspaper Archive (BNA; britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk) has reached its target of digitising 40 million pages held by the British Library within 10 years. BNA was created as a result of an agreement between the British Library and Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk) in November 2011. It met its target ahead of schedule, in the week of its ninth birthday. The most recently digitised pages include the 1931–1949 editions of the Leicester Evening Mail. These include an article from August 1942 reporting on the first stage appearance of actor and director Richard Attenborough, who grew up in Leicester. It notes: “A few hours before he made his appearance on the West End Stage last night Richard Attenborough, the 18-year-old actor in ‘Awake and Sing’ at the Cambridge Theatre, was sworn in by the RAF.” BNA’s collection is also available to ‘Pro’ members of Findmypast.
ScotlandsPeople to publish kirk sessions ScotlandsPeople (scotlandspeople. gov.uk) is set to release Scottish kirk-session records in early 2021. Emma Maxwell of Scottish genealogy business Scottish Indexes (scottishindexes. com) announced the news at the virtual Scottish Indexes ScotlandsPeople plans to publish the records of kirk sessions in early 2021 Conference on 6 December. The records consist of minutes of the disciplinary procedures that ministers and elders of the Presbyterian Church held for parishioners. It is understood that the records will be digitised but not indexed, and will be part of a “gazetteer-based search system” according to the ScotlandsPeople website.
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Olive Buller The First World War nurse was identified after her granddaughter in Canada saw her photograph on an episode of Antiques Roadshow
£500,000 The value of the COVID-19 Archives Fund launched by The National Archives
Society of Antiquaries The society has warned that it may have to sell some of its items to meet the rising cost of rent on its London headquarters
23,272 The number of Northumberland nonconformist records added to familysearch.org
George Wishart, a 16th-century Scottish Protestant reformer, depicted c1860
Database of Scottish clergy launched The results of an international project researching the lives of clergy in 16th- and 17th-century Scotland are now available in the new online database Mapping the Scottish Reformation, which is located at maps.mappingthe scottishreformation.org. The three-year project was a collaboration between historians based at Washington and Lee University in the USA, Newman University in Birmingham, and the University of Edinburgh. The researchers worked to uncover records of Protestant clergymen between 1560 and 1689 – the years of the Scottish Reformation – through resources such as Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, which lists ministers of the Church of Scotland. The result is an online map containing the names and locations of approximately 700 clerics and 400 clergy wives. Project director Prof Michelle D Brock of Washington and Lee University explained: “We created Mapping the Scottish Reformation to provide scholars, students and genealogists with easy access to accurate, comprehensive information on the lives of the Scottish clergy. “We hope that this tool will open up new ways of thinking about the religious, social and political roles of ministers, as individuals and as a group, in early modern Scotland.”
BRITISH NEWSPAPER ARCHIVE / GETTY IMAGES
The number of records from County Kilkenny added to roots ireland.ie
What’s On
Email wdytyaeditorial@immediate.co.uk to feature your upcoming event here
The Workhouse ‘People Palaces’: How The Victorians And Edwardians Looked After The Poor
PICK OF THE MONTH Don’t miss this chance to collaborate with other readers online and open up key records
Transcription Tuesday 2 February e wdytyaeditorial@immediate.co.uk w whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
We hope that as many of you will take part as possible
Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine’s popular annual transcription event returns for the fifth year running. Every year, we encourage our readers to volunteer online and transcribe crucial records for family history research – and, as coronavirus restrictions continue, it’s a great way to challenge yourself and help others while staying at home. For 2021, our four partner projects are transcribing English parish registers with FamilySearch; concentration-camp records with the Arolsen Archives; Post Office worker records with Addressing Health; and Coram Foundling Hospital records with Voices Through Time. For more information, visit whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/transcriptiontuesday – and if you use Twitter, let us know how you’re getting on with #TranscriptionTuesday. Free.
ONLINE Institute Of Heraldic And Genealogical Studies Various dates e registrar@ihgs.ac.uk w ihgs.ac.uk/courselist The IHGS is offering a range of Zoom tutorials, with upcoming topics including ‘Looking at More Military Service Records’ (14 January) and ‘Searching for Your Quaker Ancestors’ (4 February). £10 each.
Gruner examines how Jewish people within Nazi Germany resisted discrimination and violence from the regime. Free.
Exeter In The 1700s 12 January e jferentzi@aol.com w bit.ly/bridport-history-societyevents Dr Todd Gray will discuss the golden years of Exeter’s cloth industry in this talk from Bridport History Society. Free.
Pharos Tutors Various dates t 01440 857602 w pharostutors.com/ coursesmainsd.php Pharos Tutors’ online courses include ‘Discovering Your British Family and Local Community in the Early 20th Century’ (starts 26 January, £49.99); ‘So You Think You Know FamilySearch – a Guided Tour’ (starts 1 February, £41.99); and ‘Introduction to One-Name Studies’ (starts 2 February, £49.99).
'HÀDQFH And Protest: Forgotten Individual Jewish Resistance In Nazi Germany 12 January t 020 7636 7247 w wienerlibrary.co.uk/ Whats-On?item=592 Holocaust historian Prof Wolf
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From Gunner To Guerrilla 13 January t 028 9053 4800 w bit.ly/gunner-barry Gerry White, chair of the Cork Branch of the Western Front Association, discusses IRA leader and former British Army serviceman Tom Barry. Free.
The Butler Family Of Ewart Park 21 January t 01670 624358 w bit.ly/butler-family Northumberland Archives’ online talk will share tales of the Butler family, including suffragist and social reformer Josephine Butler, as well as the St Paul family who built Ewart Park. Free.
Scottish Indexes Conference 30 January w scottishindexes.com The latest virtual Scottish family history conference will include various talks by genealogists and archivists, plus two Q&A sessions. Free – donations welcome.
IN PERSON subject to local coronavirus restrictions
26 January a Dillington House, Ilminster t 01460 258613 w bit.ly/people-palaces This day-long workshop will look at the origins of the workhouse and changing provisions for the poor in the Victorian and Edwardian ages, including local case studies. £58 – also available via Zoom for £35.
Fabric Of The North: Our Northern Heritage Until 31 January a Kirkleatham Museum, Redcar t 01642 479500 w bit.ly/kirkleatham-museumfabric-of-the-north This new exhibition from the British Tapestry Group brings together works by more than 30 weavers to explore the heritage of the north of England. Free.
Departures Until June 2021 a Migration Museum, London e info@migrationmuseum.org w migrationmuseum.org/ exhibitions This exhibition explores 400 years of emigration from Britain, from the Mayflower to the Windrush Generation deportations. Also take a look at the museum’s online exhibition about immigrants’ role in British healthcare (heartofthenation. migrationmuseum.org). Free.
BOOK AHEAD Family Ancestry Starts 20 January t 01656 302302 w www1.bridgend.ac.uk/course/ family-ancestry This 10-week virtual course from Bridgend College covers key aspects of researching your tree, such as ordering birth, marriage and death certificates; census records; pre-1837 resources; and family history societies. Free.
This year, RootsTech is going to be online, global and FREE!
RootsTech Connect 25–27 February w rootstech.org In response to the coronavirus pandemic, FamilySearch has announced that RootsTech, the world’s largest family history show, will take place online this year. There will be classes, keynote speeches, a virtual marketplace featuring ‘stalls’ from companies and societies, and much more. Register now for free.
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OFF THE RECORD Alan Crosby shares his views on family history
In The Margins Alan Crosby uncovers some intriguing scrawls in the margins of parish registers here’s a great book by Steven Hobbs, Gleanings from Wiltshire Parish Registers, which I’m finding fascinating. It’s an anthology of the tremendously varied notes, memoranda and jottings made in registers – usually by the vicar, or rector – in the period 1538–1812. Many are about parish business and administration, but the really intriguing ones are comments made about the people of the parish and their foibles, sins and virtues. Over the years, I’ve copied out many such jottings myself, as I searched parish registers in different parts of the country, although I never did this systematically. They reveal a rich social history. At Redenhall on the southern edge of Norfolk, in the freezing January of 1804, the vicar recorded the burial of “an East India Black, Name unknown, a travelling Pauper taken ill at Harleston & died in the Workhouse aged between 40 & 50”. What story lies behind this? Why was a middle-aged Indian man living as a vagrant in East Anglia in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars? We will never know, but we surely think with compassion of his personal tragedy. Almost any burial register is likely to include
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pitiful records of the lonely deaths of people lost in the snow, drowned in rivers, afflicted by fevers, or starving far from home and very often unknown and anonymous. At Swaffham in mid-Norfolk in May 1791 there died “Adam Owen, a vagrant… he belonged to Dolgotha [Dolgellau] in Merionethshire as far as cou’d be collected from his broken English, aged about 30”. Multiplied across the kingdom, and over the centuries, these sad and forlorn entries are the only markers of the fate of many of our ancestors, the ones who disappear without trace. But the clergy were also anxious to record prodigious feats of longevity and strength. The vicar of Shipdham in Norfolk wrote a memorandum in the register, clearly astonished by the amazing achievement of William Bower, who “was 95 years old in 1726 and dyed at 102 by a fall from his cart after he had loaded it with barley in August 1733. He all along did his own work in all kinds of husbandry.” Such virtue – hard work and long whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
ALAN CROSBY lives in Lancashire and is the editor of The Local Historian
ILLUSTRATION WWW.SUEGENT.COM
‘Dorothy Pitts kept clear from the Taint of Methodism’
living – was thought well worth recording, as was upright and godly behaviour among the young who, as usual, were generally assumed to be feckless and easily led astray. Falling from grace might take strange forms: “Dorothy, daughter of James & Dorothy Pitts, a sober, well disposed young woman aged 17, who kept clear from the Taint of Methodism amidst contagion” (Hempnall, Norfolk, 1790). If only Methodism was the only temptation! The genealogical value of the comments can be great. At Burgh St Peter in Norfolk, in May 1808, William Barnard and Mary Young, both of that parish and single, were married, and made their marks “X” on the register entry. In the corner of the form, in thick black writing, William Boycatt, the rector, scrawled: “PS, soon after the ceremony, I was told that this Wm. Barnard had a wife that was thought to be yet alive & after a little time heard that he told the Parish Clerk that he had a wife alive.” These are Norfolk examples, but everywhere has comparable material. The range of subjects is remarkable. Incumbents often recorded unusual or particularly extreme weather events, and they noted royal visits and political sensations, such as the death of Oliver Cromwell, or the Jacobite risings. Parish activities, details of sermons they themselves preached, complaints against the squire, theft of goods from the church and juicy scandal… all these and much else may be there. Here’s a Wiltshire example to finish (from Hilmarton): “Baptised, 2 Feb 1806, Aaron son of Olivia Draper of Goatacre, who was sold by William Draper her husband in Calne market to James Harper her brother-in-law with whom she now shamefully cohabits.” Brilliant – who wouldn’t want that story in their family history? 15
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whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
Taake Take
YourPick Your Pick of FREE records from Ancestry and Findmypast Jon Bauckham reveals how to harvest ripe research gems gratis on family history’s two biggest subscription websites
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ncestry and Findmypast are the two most popular subscription sites for family historians in the UK, but many researchers will tend to pick one option and stick with it. The rationale behind this decision certainly appears to make sense at first: these websites offer access to many of the same ‘big hitters’ – such as census and birth, marriage and death (BMD) records – so why fork out extra
In fact, it is completely free to sign up as a member (known as a ‘registered guest’ on Ancestry).
Branching Out One of the first tasks that a new user will be prompted to undertake is to simply add a family tree: either by uploading a GEDCOM file or creating one from scratch. On Findmypast, users are guided through the stepby-step process of entering details about themselves, their parents
our y g in z o lld u b p u d n e ld u co ‘You ’ most bothersome brick walls
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cash on a subscription to both? Whatever the reason, this mindset means that you could be missing out on records that can take your research further – a surprising number of which are actually available free of charge. With some careful digging, you could end up bulldozing your most bothersome brick walls. One important myth to dispel about Ancestry and Findmypast is that you have to part with cash to create an account on either site. whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
and their grandparents from the moment that they register. This may seem like a waste of time if you already maintain an active tree elsewhere. However, the key benefit lies in Ancestry and Findmypast’s ‘hint’ facilities, which means that their search algorithms are constantly whirring away in the background. Whenever a website adds a new batch of records and there’s a potential match, the hint system will flag it up, ready for you 17
to check the next time you log in. While more experienced family historians may find that some hints relate to records that they’ve already seen elsewhere, it’s still worth spending time going through the lists to establish if there’s something new and unique.
you can still see hints relating to photos that others have chosen to share publicly. In these cases, the username of the person who has uploaded the photo will be displayed, allowing you to contact them via Ancestry’s messaging facility and find out more (just Findmypast releases new create a new collections every Friday, which message at are sometimes free to access. ancestry.co.uk/
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You can sign up for reminders Another messaging in the ‘Communication important and enter the preferences’ section of reason to have username in the ‘My account’. a tree on both address field). sites is down to the Ancestry also ways in which their displays userhints systems retrieve submitted information information added by other users. for free via its ‘Potential Father’ Although it’s not possible to carry and ‘Potential Mother’ feature – out a manual search of Ancestry’s a special type of hint that gathers collection of public member all of the information about trees without a subscription, a mutual ancestor found in a
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Free Ancestry Collections Here are just some of the datasets that you can search through on Ancestry to help you build your family tree without paying a penny
ADMISSIONS TO BROOKWOOD AND HOLLOWAY MENTAL HOSPITALS, 1867 1900 Record count 11,670 An index to mental-hospital registers held by Surrey History Centre, listing patients’ names, ages and dates of admission.
CORNWALL MILITIA AND SEA FENCIBLES INDEX, 1780 1831 Record count 4,151 Details of local militiamen and naval militia from records at Cornwall Record Office.
ENGLAND AND WALES CRIMINAL REGISTERS, 1791 1892 Record count 1,556,259 An index to records, with some details of sentences, from The National Archives.
FIFE VOTERS LISTS, 1832 1894 Record count 47,875 Eligible voters in Fife, eastern Scotland, courtesy of Fife Library and Archives Service.
IRELAND COURTS MARTIAL FILES, 1916 1922 Record count 1,913 People arrested on suspicion of Irish Nationalist activities after the 1916 Easter Rising.
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Both Ancestry and Findmypast have a useful hints facility
LIVERPOOL CREW LISTS, 1861 1919 Record count 1,064,441 Details of sailors whose ship’s home port was Liverpool. Age and birthplace often included.
REGISTER OF RAILWAY EMPLOYEE INJURIES AND DEATHS, 1911 1915 Record count 3,915 A web-search collection linked to a database on the website railwayaccidents.port.ac.uk.
SLAVE REGISTERS FROM FORMER BRITISH COLONIAL DEPENDENCIES, 1813 1834 Record count 3,178,595 Registers of those who remained “lawfully enslaved” after the slave trade was abolished.
WARWICKSHIRE OCCUPATIONAL AND QUARTER SESSION RECORDS, 1662 1866 Record count 282,680 A mix of records from the Warwickshire quarter sessions, from jurors’ lists to boat owners.
WEST YORKSHIRE ALEHOUSE LICENCES, 1771 1962 Record count 76,239 A West Yorkshire Archive Service collection listing people licensed to serve alcohol, along with the name of their pub.
public member tree. These hints should always be accepted with a degree of caution, but the tool enables you to copy the ancestor’s full details across to your own tree, including the names of any sources the researcher has saved. By contrast, Findmypast does not allow users to manually comb through other people’s trees, whether a subscriber to the site or not. Users can still see individual fragments of other people’s trees, however, in what Findmypast calls ‘tree-to-tree’ hints. With these, you will automatically be presented with information that other users have discovered about mutual ancestors, including any notes that they have written. The user’s name won’t be displayed (and you won’t be able to initiate contact via the ‘message’ button unless you’re a subscriber), but it can still be a helpful way of finding information you may have missed.
Big Hitters So now you have your tree on both websites, which records are free to access? Ancestry has a slight advantage over Findmypast, thanks to its England and Wales civil registration indexes featuring information drawn from the General Register Office’s (GRO’s) own quarterly indexes of BMDs that took place between 1837 and 1915. Although it’s not possible whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
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Helpful Hints
ANCESTRY FINDMYPAST
Military Records Trace the careers of your Army, Navy and RAF ancestors using these free-to-search records
Find out what happened to your forebears in both world wars
to view an image of the page on which the entry appears, the accompanying index will provide the volume and page number required to purchase a copy of the certificate from the GRO’s website (https://www.gro.gov.uk). The free availability of the material on Ancestry stems from
here is incredibly restrictive – researchers are probably better to use Ancestry as a starting point, before returning to the GRO site to purchase the certificates. One major benefit of using the GRO’s own search tool, however, is that it shows the maiden names of children’s mothers prior to
g ‘Ancestry has a long-standin relationship with FreeBMD’ the site’s long relationship with FreeBMD, whose transcribers created the indexes on a voluntary basis. While the same indexes are available for free via freebmd.org. uk, their inclusion in Ancestry’s database makes it easy to attach relevant entries to your tree. It’s worth highlighting that the GRO’s website also offers its own search facility for births and deaths, but the functionality
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September 1911 – a detail that does not appear in the FreeBMD index (and therefore on Ancestry) until after this date. Findmypast’s equivalent collections of civil registration indexes are located behind its paywall, but like Ancestry, the site does provide an index to the 1881 census for England and Wales. This is no coincidence – the fact that both companies offer free access to this particular census index is because it was created as part of a volunteer transcription initiative led by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As they’re technically the same collection, lle the experience of searching the 1881 census index on both Ancestry and Findmypast is broadly r similar, but you may find discrepancies. This can be fi caused a by transcription errors
Both websites offer free access to thousands of military records, but a good place to start is Findmypast. By visiting findmypast.co.uk/page/free-ancestry-records and clicking on ‘Search free military records’, you are taken to a search page that combines five of the site’s most important sets covering this subject. Crucially, this includes De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour, which was compiled during the First World War to commemorate those who had given their lives for Britain and the Commonwealth. More than 25,000 men are profiled within the digitised volumes, and photographs are included for about 7,000 of them. The same default search will scour British Army lists printed during the 19th and early 20th centuries (covering conflicts such as the Crimean War and Boer War), as well as rolls of personnel who served in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. Some slightly more obscure gems found elsewhere on Findmypast include a book of transcriptions naming officers who fought during the Peninsular War of 1808– 1814, and a set of Somerset muster rolls from 1569. Ancestry offers a similar array of free military material (listed at ancestry.co.uk/search/categories/ freeindexacom), such as ‘UK, Electrical Engineer World War I and World War II Rolls of Honour, 1924, 1949’ for men who belonged to the Institute of Electrical Engineers and the Absent Voters’ Lists collection, revealing details of British servicemen and women who needed to vote by proxy or by post while abroad. This covers 1918–1925 and 1939 (a subscription is required to view the images). Although not mentioned in the online list above, one of the most important free sets on Ancestry is ‘UK, British Army World War I Medal Rolls Index Cards, 1914–1920’. Finally, Ancestry hosts a number of military websearch collections (prefaced with ‘Web’), which act as free indexes to records held in third-party databases. Notably, this includes collections linked to The National Archives’ catalogue discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk, where images of the original records can be downloaded.
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Findmypast have to offer, they are just the tip of the iceberg. On Ancestry, there’s a particularly easy way of finding out which records are free across the site, which is by visiting ancestry.co.uk/search/categories/ freeindexacom. Some items are
simply labelled “FREE”, meaning that everything contained within the collection can be viewed without a subscription, whereas others are labelled “FREE INDEX”. This means
Image Collections
Sometimes an old photograph of an event or the village in which your ancestor lived can add some colour to your tree
From Ancestry: Miss Enid Franks was yesterday crowned Queen of the English Riviera at Torquay Carnival
One of Ancestry’s most important image sets is ‘UK, Historical Photographs and Prints, 1704–1989’, which mainly contains pictures from the Hulton Collection – the archive of the photojournalistic magazine Picture Post. From beach scenes to busy factories, here you’ll find a diverse mixture of images documenting British life over the decades. Although a subscription is required to view high-resolution images, you can still see thumbnails, along with supporting caption information. Crucially, these may include the names of any people in the snaps, too (see above). On a smaller scale, Ancestry also has ‘UK, D-Day War Diaries and Photographs’,
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which features pictures taken during the Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944. The enormous ‘Findmypast Photo Collection’ is out of bounds unless you have a subscription or credits, but some users may enjoy exploring the site’s free ‘Dundee & Forfarshire (Angus) Photographic Collection’. This contains over 4,000 images from 1844– 2010 depicting people, places and events. Findmypast also has the ‘World War Two Canadian Photograph Collection’, documenting the day-to-day lives of military personnel. Most of these images are captioned with at least one name, making it an excellent resource for tracking down Canadian troops.
that although you might be able to scroll through a list of results and click through to see a detailed entry in the index, any document images or additional transcriptions remain locked behind Ancestry’s paywall. Unfortunately, there is no way to view a comprehensive list of free collections on Findmypast. This is a deliberate decision: according to the site’s content team, Findmypast’s free offerings can regularly change depending on the contracts it has signed with the organisations that supply them.
Locating Free Gems However, Findmypast does provide a handy page listing a small number of collections that are likely to be free indefinitely, found at findmypast.co.uk/page/freeancestry-records. Divided into five categories, the main collections here can be searched in one go by clicking on ‘Search free records’. This still doesn’t represent the true tally of free collections available on Findmypast, but a more granular approach can help you to track them down. For example, by clicking on ‘Search’ at the top of the page followed by ‘All record sets’, you can search the titles of every single collection within the Findmypast database, using keywords such as a location or occupation. When typing in ‘Oxfordshire’, for instance, I stumbled across the free collection ‘Oxfordshire Marriage Bonds, 1634–1849’. Even if this trial-and-error process displays results from record sets that aren’t free, you may still spot something tantalising that would have otherwise been buried in a wider search. If you feel it could break down a brick wall, you could
Findmypast splits its free offerings into five different categories, including censuses
whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
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within the index, which may have been corrected on the host website. On both sites you’ll need to pay to view the original enumerator pages. Findmypast has a free index to the 1881 census for Scotland, but to see any images you’ll need to visit ScotlandsPeople (scotlands people.gov.uk) and buy credits. Although the 1881 census and civil registration indexes are among the most important free collections that Ancestry and
ANCESTRY FINDMYPAST
The Peterloo Massacre, 1819. Records of witnesses can be found free on Findmypast
purchase pay-as-you-go credits to access it, rather than committing to a full Findmypast subscription.
Rich In Variety As you’ll notice when exploring Ancestry’s list of ‘Free Index Collections’, there is a considerable number of record sets that draw upon material held by UK regional archives. Many of these have been made searchable thanks to Ancestry’s World Archives Project (AWAP), in which
Archives and Local Studies, and Gloucestershire Archives. In the south-east and the north of volunteers index the records England, the two main providers from home (see blogs.ancestry. of AWAP-indexed records are com/worldarchivesproject). Surrey History Centre and Although a subscription is West Yorkshire Archive Ancestry trees can be usually required to view Service respectively. uploaded to Findmypast, images of the original Although Findmypast and vice versa. Go to support. documents, exploring doesn’t offer an equivalent ancestry.co.uk/s/article/ the accompanying initiative to AWAP, it still Uploading-and-Downloadingvolunteer-created provides access to free Trees and findmypast.co.uk/ indexes is free. sets containing material blog/family-tree/uploadRegionally speaking, gleaned from UK archives. family-tree-gedcom. the West Country features Scotland is particularly heavily in the AWAP well represented, thanks to collections, with records from local authorities such as Moray Dorset History Centre, Somerset Council, whose Banffshire and
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10Free Findmypast Collections
A glimpse at some of the fascinating and diverse UK and Irish record sets that are available to explore on Findmypast without paying for a subscription
BRITAIN, PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS, 1830 1923 Record count 31,862 Copies of registers listing members of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
BRITISH & IRISH ROOTS COLLECTION Record count 63,023,456 A ‘mega collection’ detailing people found in smaller North American record sets who hailed from Britain or Ireland.
BRITISH RED CROSS SOCIETY REGISTER OF OVERSEAS VOLUNTEERS, 1914 18
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Record count 243,983 Transcribed index cards of First World War Red Cross volunteers, showing information such as job title and home address.
DEVON WILLS INDEX, 1163 1999 Record count 295,609
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A volunteer-created resource bringing together details of nearly 300,000 Devon wills from hundreds of different sources.
DUNDEE AND FORFARSHIRE ANGUS HEARTH TAX, 1691 Record count 5,824 Transcriptions showing how much money residents had to pay as part of Scotland’s 17th-century hearth (or fireplace) tax.
ENGLAND, MINING DISASTER VICTIMS Record count 18,447 Details of people killed in mining accidents in Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, which have been compiled by Alan Beales.
IRELAND ROMAN CATHOLIC PARISH BAPTISMS Record count 7,395,282 An index to the National Library of Ireland’s vast microfilm collection, with images. The
smaller marriage and burial sets are available for free too.
LIVES OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR, 1914 1918 Record count 458,101 Has details of First World War personnel uploaded by the public as part of Imperial War Museums’ centenary campaign.
PETERLOO WITNESSES AND CASUALTIES, 1819 Record count 1,180 Information collected about people present at the Manchester pro-democracy rally stormed by cavalry on 16 August 1819.
SOUTH RONALDSAY & BURRAY CENSUS, 1821 Record count 2,227 An 1821 record of these two Orkney communities, which – unlike most pre-1841 census returns – lists individuals by name.
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Moray records contain more than 250,000 entries. Aside from records directly supplied by local archives or authorities, both Ancestry and Findmypast contain many free records drawn from the pages of out-of-copyright antiquarian books, university alumni lists and registers of professions.
Search Freemen For Free Findmypast, for example, offers ‘Norfolk, Freemen Of Norwich 1317–1603’, which actually comprises scans of an 1888 volume entitled Calendar of Freemen of Norwich, rather than the original freemen’s roll itself. These types of dataset have only very basic indexes, meaning that your search results will likely direct you to a PDF of the page on which your ancestor’s name was found, rather than a transcription of the details. Both subscription sites also make generous use of free indexes found elsewhere on the internet. While these types of collections can be accessed by visiting the partner organisation’s own website in the first instance, their inclusion within Ancestry’s and Findmypast’s databases means that any matching records will appear as hints in your tree. On Ancestry, the web-search collections are easy to spot – their names are prefaced with the word ‘Web’. The majority of the 300-plus record sets that fall into this category relate to North America, but there are some crucial UK additions too, notably the ‘UK, Burial and Cremation Index, 1576–2014’. The entries here
contain a link to the source entry at the website Deceased Online (deceasedonline.com), where you can pay a small fee to view the image of the full record. Findmypast’s own web-search collections aren’t explicitly labelled as such, but there are plenty of them tucked away, such as ‘Britain, Executions 1606–
‘Lives of the First World War 1914–1918’ is a valuable collection on Findmypast
greatest number of free European E records, with ample coverage from the likes of Germany. You’ll need to bear in mind that many of these documents were written in their native languages, and translations aren’t always provided. Finally, several overseas collections have also been made available for free because of their profound historical significance. Ancestry, for instance, has more than 30 sets related to the Holocaust, indexed thanks to the World Memory Project – a joint initiative led by AWAP and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Meanwhile Findmypast recently decided to make its Royal African Company records free, since they cover the slave trade. There’s a wealth of free collections waiting on Ancestry and Findmypast if you know where to look – and the list will only get longer over time.
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1955’, which features material gathered by the website Black Sheep Ancestors (blacksheep ancestors.com).
Overseas Offerings Further afield, Ancestry and Findmypast’s databases contain vast numbers of free collections from across the globe. Though the companies operate different incarnations of their websites in other territories, these offerings are accessible to users worldwide – no matter which platform they originally registered with. Both sites boast the 1940 US census, as well as thousands of BMD records from the US, Canada and Australia. Ancestry, however, probably offers the
JON BAUCKHAM is a freelance journalist specialising in history. He has previously worked for Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine and BBC History Magazine
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have s n io ct lle co s a e rs ve o l ra ve e ‘S ee ’ fr r fo le b ila va a e d a m n e e b also
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Transcription T U E
S D A Y
2 FEBRUARY 2021 Rosemary Collins reveals all about the four projects we’ve chosen to support, and explains how you can help make this year’s event a bigger success than ever before
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s we bid goodbye and good riddance to 2020, one of the things that was most challenging about the year was the need to find plenty of ways to keep busy at home, while normal life was suspended by the measures to control the spread of the coronavirus. As family historians, we’re fortunate to already have a hobby that’s perfectly suited to social distancing – and since the first lockdown began, many newcomers will have been inspired to search online for the first time and start their own trees. With continued uncertainty about how long coronavirus restrictions will last, it’s the perfect time to bring back our annual online volunteer event, Transcription Tuesday. It’s amazing to think that we’ve now been running the event for five years. Every year, our readers come together from all around the world, power up their computers, and give their time to help transcribe important historic records. For 2021, we’re lucky to be working with four projects that really capture
the range of different stories that you can uncover in your own family tree. As someone whose great grandfather worked for the Post Office, I’m particularly interested in Addressing Health, which explores postal workers’ retirement records. We’re also partnering with the Every Name Counts project to make sure that the names of the millions of victims of Nazi persecution are never forgotten. There are more poignant tales from
or can only spare a few minutes, we’d love you to join us. If you’ve never tried transcribing before, all of these projects have detailed instructions to help you get the hang of it. It’s a unique chance to discover the lives of people who would otherwise be lost to history. Plus, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that your work is helping family historians just like you by making more records available for free online. We always love to hear how our readers are getting on, so please share your experiences, photographs of transcribers at work and any interesting records that you come across via Twitter using the hashtag #TranscriptionTuesday, or on our Facebook group (bit.ly/WDYTYAFBG). In the run-up to the big day, we’ll publish blogs on our website revealing more about the projects and how to take part. We’ll also include updates in our weekly email newsletter (sign up via the ‘Subscribe’ button on our website). We hope that as many of you as possible will join us on 2 February!
the ‘The projects really capture t you a th s e ri o st t n re fe if d f o e g n ra e’ e tr n w o r u o y in r ve co n u n ca history with Voices Through Time, who we’re working with to transcribe records of the abandoned children who found a new life at the Coram Foundling Hospital. Lastly, as ever, we’re teaming up with the genealogical records website FamilySearch to transcribe more Church of England and nonconformist records from its extensive collections. Whether you want to work all day
For full project instructions, please visit
whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/transcriptiontuesday 26
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to transcribe the hospital’s general registers, covering 1741–1880. They show the details
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What Does It Involve? Volunteers are asked
of children admitted to the hospital together with their key movements, including when they left the hospital (for instance if they were apprenticed).
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three-year project by children’s charity Coram to digitise and explore its archive. The Coram Foundling Hospital was established in London in 1739 by Captain Thomas Coram as a home for abandoned children, and its archives record the children who lived in the home over the years.
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How Do I Take Part? You will visit the project homepage on Zooniverse (zooniverse.org), and transcribe the records there. The exact web address will be available nearer the time – check our website for updates.
o long partnership with FamilySearch our ((familysearch.org), the world’s biggest family history website, and helping to transcribe h baptism, marriage and burial records. This b yyear, we’re transcribing marriage records ffrom Hertfordshire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire and Surrey; parish registers from Middlesex; and nonconformist records from Essex, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Lancashire and Northumberland.
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PProject Overview We’re continuing
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FFamilySearch Uncover baptisms, marriages and burials
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Zooniverse: zooniverse.org/projects/dhlbrown/ addressing-health. The records are easy to read either typewritten or handwritten. You will have to translate a series of numbers representing the number of days off and sick days each individual took each year, as well as any other information.
Voices Through Time Reveal the history of the Coram Foundling Hospital Project Overview Voices Through Time is a
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How Do I Take Part? This project is also on
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w workers retired, details of their employment and health histories were sent for approval to the h Treasury. Transcribing the data in the records T
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What Does It Involve? When Post Office W
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will help answer questions such as AT I the age at which people retired and the impact of their work on their health.
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ye research project transcribing the retirement year records of Victorian and Edwardian Post Office re workers now held at the Postal Museum in w London, in order to understand more about the Lo health of the workforce. he
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Project Overview Addressing Health is a threePr
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Addressing Health Discover the health problems of postal workers
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digitised concentration-camp records on the project website (zooniverse.org/projects/ cseidenstuecker/every-name-counts) and
records on the online transcription platform Zooniverse. You will be asked to copy each piece of information from the record into the relevant box on the right. Don’t worry if you can’t speak German – there are detailed explanations.
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What Does It Involve? You will view
How Do I Take Part? You can view the original
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been launched by the Arolsen Archives in Germany, the world’s most comprehensive archive on victims of the Nazi regime. The aim is to ensure that the name of every individual in the documents is recorded and remembered.
TIN transcribe details of each prisoner, such as their prisoner category and camp location, as well as personal information such as their last address.
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Project Overview Every Name Counts has
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Every Name Counts Commemorate victims of Nazi persecution
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TRANSCRIPTION TUESDAY
What Does It Involve? You will view digitised images of baptism, marriage and burial records and transcribe the relevant details, including each individual’s name and age, the date, and the names of other individuals such as their parents or spouse. How Do I Take Part? Simply visit familysearch. org/indexing and choose the project you want to help. You will need to create a free FamilySearch account if you don’t have one already.
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READER STORY A reader shares their discoveries EL
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‘A Twist Of Fate YOUR Saved My Mother From Auschwitz’ OV E R I E
Debra Barnes knew little of her mum Paulette’s wartime experiences until she researched her life and discovered the story of five incredibly brave siblings. Gail Dixon reveals all
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very time I looked in the mirror I saw her, and when I spoke I heard her voice. When I hurt myself and cried I felt her pain, and when I laughed with joy I shared her happiness.” Paulette Szklarz was only six years old when she was separated from her twin Annette, who was arrested by the Nazis and taken to Auschwitz. The pain of losing her must have been unbearable. Paulette survived the war and came to live in Britain where she was adopted by her older cousins. She married Maurice Barnes and they settled in Edgware, Middlesex, where they raised their daughters Caron and Debra.
From Fact To Fiction Paulette and her family’s wartime experiences have inspired Debra so much that she has written a novel based on their lives. The Young Survivors is a tribute to all of the victims of the Nazis, and makes for an especially poignant read in the run-up to International Holocaust Remembrance Day which is held on 27 January, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. “I had a strong sense of Jewish identity while I was growing up,” Debra explains. “We had special Friday night dinners, and attended synagogue on High Holidays. It was a very happy childhood, but there was always something in the background.”
Debra knew that her mum Paulette had been born in France, and that she lost her twin sister during the Holocaust. “We had
Debra’s maternal grandparents Cecile and Traitel with their five children
Traitel holding Paulette and Annette as babies. “We never spoke about the Holocaust when I was a child, because we knew that it would upset Mum. We didn’t read books or watch films about it either. In adulthood I became more curious about Mum’s experience and what had happened to the Szklarz family. It was a challenging subject to raise, however. “Mum was born in 1938, so her memories of wartime were sketchy. She remembered living in an orphanage in Paris, and being sent to a convent where they took Holy Communion. She liked it because she was given something to eat and drink.” Paulette’s older brothers Jacques and Jean survived the war, and emigrated to the USA. They could recall their French childhood in vivid detail. “Uncle Jean visited us, and I interviewed him on camera. Before Uncle Jacques died in 1999 he gave a testimony to the Shoah Foundation (sfi.usc.edu), which provided crucial detail. “I decided to write a novel about the war seen through the eyes of the children. They were there. Who better to tell the world of the Nazi atrocities?” Debra has changed the names and added fictional depth to the relationships, but the novel contains appalling truths. Debra’s grandparents Traitel and Cecile Szklarz were born in
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one black-and-white photograph of Mum’s family in the lounge. It showed my grandmother Cecile Szklarz; my uncles Jacques, Jean and Nathan; and my grandfather
whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
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‘We never spoke about the Holocaust, because we knew it would upset Mum’
READER STORY
Debra Barnes’ Family Tree
Paltiel Rychner
Zysla Sznydler
1860–1936
Died 1944
Traitel Szklarz
Cecile Lea Rychner
1902–1942
1901–1942
Jacques Szklarz
Jean Szklarz
Nathan Szklarz
Annette Szklarz
Maurice Barnes
Paulette Szklarz
1925–1999
Born 1929
1932–1944
1938–1944
Born 1933
1938–2010
Caron Barnes
Debra Barnes
Born 1959
Born 1964
Debra did some of her research at the Wiener Holocaust Library in Bloomsbury, London
whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
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Poland, and moved to France to escape the pogroms. The family had happy times living in the border city of Metz, although the boys suffered some antisemitic bullying from other children. After the Second World War broke out, the whole family was moved away from Metz because of its proximity to the German border. They were allocated a farmhouse near Poitiers, with their grandmother Zysla, an aunt and uncle, and four cousins.
Short-Lived Sanctuary Initially, the children enjoyed rural life despite the growing Nazi threat. In 1940, laws were passed that robbed Jewish people of their human rights. Curfews were introduced, the celebration of religious festivals was banned and Jews were forced to wear the yellow Star of David. Rumours of violence and arrests terrified the closeknit Jewish community. One night in August 1942 the Gestapo, aided by the French police, raided the farmhouse and Traitel was arrested. The children never saw him again. This marked the beginning of several terrifying nocturnal raids that culminated in the arrest of Cecile, Paulette and
Annette. At the age of 17, Jacques was left in sole charge of his two young brothers, Jean and Nathan. In an astonishing act of bravery, Jacques went to the Gestapo
Debra’s friends surprised her with personalised face masks featuring the cover of her novel
Jacques went to the camp, collected his sisters, and saw his mother for the final time. Reluctantly, he agreed for the twins and Nathan to be placed in orphanages in Paris. They were sent away in 1943 by the Union Générale des Israélites de France (UGIF) and lived in an orphanage near Sacré-Cœur, followed by another in Louveciennes. Jean attended a trade school until he, too, was in danger of being arrested. He was given refuge with the Scout Movement and later a new identity in a Catholic school. Jacques worked on a farm in Vichy France and joined the French Resistance in 1944. The boys’ fight for survival and close shaves are both enthralling and humbling to read. By 1944, the Szklarz family had been splintered for two years, so Jacques and Jean knew little about what happened to their younger siblings in the orphanage. There was a gap in the family history at this point. However a chance discovery online led to heart-rending revelations and an emotional reunion for Paulette. “One of my American cousins researched ‘Louveciennes’, and the name of a book appeared,” says Debra. “It was called Je ne vvous oublierai jamais, mes enfants d’Auschwitz, or in English I Will d Never Forget You, My Children N of Auschwitz. o
‘Mum must have carried a terrible burden of guilt, as a surviving twin’ headquarters in Poitiers the following day and argued that at four years old his sisters were too young to be imprisoned. An officer humoured him, and give him a note for their release.
Denise Holstein with her nine charges. In the back row are Annette and Paulette (second and third from left)
“The book was written by Denise Holstein, who was a monitor H iin the orphanage and helped to ccare for Paulette, Annette and Nathan. Mum remembered N Denise, even though she was D only very young at the time.” o The cover of the book, which was published in 1995, has a w picture of Denise with a group of children, including the twins. “It was incredible to show this to Mum, who had never seen a photo of herself at that age.” Paulette contacted Denise, who thought that she must 30
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Orphanage Memories
READER STORY
Resources Find out more about Jewish ancestors and the Holocaust
ASSOCIATION OF JEWISH REFUGEES w ajr.org.uk AJR is a charity that offers support and companionship to Holocaust refugees and their families. It is also building a library of memoirs written by survivors of Nazi persecution.
AUSCHWITZ BIRKENAU MEMORIAL AND MUSEUM w auschwitz.org The museum’s website has a search facility that can help you find ancestors who were imprisoned at Auschwitz.
WIENER HOLOCAUST LIBRARY have died during the war and was thrilled to learn that she was still alive. They arranged to meet at her home in the south of France. “Mum was nervous about the reunion, but Denise was so lovely that she found it a positive experience. Denise told her that, although there was little food in the orphanages, the children were happy there and knew nothing of the horrors taking place outside. It was such a relief to hear that. “Mum knew that she became very ill with measles in July 1944, and was hospitalised in SaintGermain.” Denise’s book revealed the terrible events that followed. On 22 July 1944, the Gestapo arrived at the orphanage and arrested all 34 Jewish children. Denise, Annette, Nathan and their friends were labelled “future terrorists” and sent to Drancy internment camp in Paris. The Gestapo hurried to the hospital to arrest Paulette, but someone from the orphanage must have tipped off the nurses because they hid her just in time. She was sent to a convent and given a new identity as a Catholic. The nuns saved Paulette’s life by shielding her until France whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
was liberated. She remained in the convent for a year until she was reunited with Jacques and Jean via an agency that helped displaced families.
Paulette with Caron (behind) and Debra (on her lap) in New York, c1966
w wienerlibrary.co.uk The library is one of the world’s most extensive archives of the Holocaust and includes eyewitness testimonies, press cuttings and photographs.
Journey To Auschwitz Denise was taken to Auschwitz with Annette, Nathan and the other children on Convoy 77, the last large deportation from Drancy. The Allies liberated Paris just three weeks later. Denise appears in Debra’s novel as the character ‘Jacqueline’, and she gives a first-hand account of the horrific three-day journey to Auschwitz and their arrival in ‘Hell’. Denise was older than the other children, and survived because she was selected for work. Tragically, Annette, Nathan and the orphans of Louveciennes were taken to another unimaginable fate. “Mum must have carried a terrible burden of guilt, being a surviving twin. She also had to endure the loss of her parents and Nathan. She managed incredibly well, but it was all held inside.” Since 2017, Debra has worked for the Association of Jewish Refugees, helping Holocaust
TELL YOUR STORY Share your family story with us and you could appear in the magazine! Please write to us at the address on page 6 or email wdytyaeditorial@ immediate.co.uk
survivors to write their life stories. “The people I work with came to Britain as young refugees or on the Kindertransport, and are very elderly now. It’s vital that we keep their treasured memories alive, and continue to educate people about the Holocaust.” Debra’s book is a loving and powerful tribute to Traitel, Cecile, Nathan and Annette. She has given them back their humanity. “It was very rewarding to write, although difficult as you can imagine,” Debra reveals. “Mum passed away in 2010, and I regret that she can’t read the book. It’s dedicated to the 76,000 French Jews who perished during the war and to Mum, who was an incredible survivor.” The Young Survivors (2020) is published by Duckworth Books (RRP £8.99)
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THE BIG PICTURE
GETTY IMAGES
Celebrating our ancestors caught on camera
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Villagers in Balloch, near Inverness, northern Scotland, travel by horse-drawn carriage, 14 February 1937 For many of the UK’s employees, the daily commute looks a little different these days, involving a walk of a few seconds to and from a kitchen table, or a desk set up in a spare room, rather than catching a train, hopping on a bicycle, or getting into a car and battling the traffic. Fast internet connections, email and instant messaging, and virtual-meeting software make remote-working a viable solution during lockdown, but there have been countless technological hurdles to overcome, and it’s easy to wish for a more traditional way of working. Who knows what these passengers thought, relying on horsepower during a bus strike, but let’s hope that Cupid’s arrow struck on the most romantic day of the year.
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Q&A
Our team of experts offers tips and inspiration Edited By Claire Vaughan
Anthony Adolph
Michelle Higgs
Rebecca Probert
Jayne Shrimpton
is a genealogist, and wrote Tracing Your Aristocratic Ancestors
is the author of Tracing Your Medical Ancestors
is a legal historian and the author of Marriage Law for Genealogists
is a professional dress historian and portrait specialist
Alan Stewart is a family history writer, and author of Grow Your Own Family Tree
Stephen Thomas
Phil Tomaselli
Simon Wills is the
is a genealogist with over 20 years’ experience
is a military family history expert, and wrote Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors
author of Tracing Your Seafaring Ancestors
Why did my ancestors have two weddings 14 years apart? Q
Why would a couple, Joseph Collins and Catherine Johnson, have two marriage certificates, 14 years apart, in the same church – St Bartholomew’s, Edgbaston, Birmingham? There is no evidence of a divorce or that it is a blessing. It is definitely the same couple as the signatures are exactly the same. Raymond Fowler There are many reasons why a couple might go through two marriage ceremonies. Working out the most likely explanation in any given case is a matter of evaluating the facts against what we know about different types of remarriage. We can quickly rule out the second ceremony being the public affirmation of an earlier, more private marriage in light of the time that elapsed between the ceremonies and because both of them took place in the same church.
A
The couple Th l were married i d for f the h second d time i in i 1816
Joseph and Catherine’s first marriage took place at St Bartholomew’s in Edgbaston, Birmingham, in 1802
One explanation could be that some problem had been discovered casting doubt on the validity of the first ceremony. Given that St Bartholomew’s was the parish church, it’s hard to envisage any problems with the marriage’s location or even with who conducted it – bogus vicars were exceedingly rare! There were, however, quite a few highprofile cases around this time that underlined the importance of banns being called in the correct names. If the banns book for the church is available, I would advise checking that banns were called in the same names as recorded on the marriage certificate. While calling banns in the wrong name
did not necessarily invalidate a marriage, some couples did want to make absolutely sure that they were validly married. A further possible explanation is that Joseph Collins’ first wife was still alive at the time of his first marriage to Catherine. It’s worth remembering that anyone seeking to remarry after their first spouse had died would not have needed to produce a death certificate. There were plenty of cases in which people remarried genuinely believing their first spouse was dead, only to discover at a later date that their marriage was in fact void because their first spouse was still alive on the day of the wedding. If there is nothing to suggest any problem with the formalities surrounding the first ceremony, it would be worthwhile making doubly sure of when and where Joseph’s first wife died. Rebecca Probert
HAVE YOU HIT A BRICK WALL? Please email your questions or family photographs to the following address: wdytyaquestions@immediate.co.uk If selected, your query will be answered on these pages. Please note that we receive a large volume of correspondence each month, and cannot reply to each message individually. You are more likely to receive a response if you keep the question and background information concise (no more than 150 words), with a clear goal of enquiry.
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What do the terms mean on service records? A
John James King of the Suffolk Regiment: front row, far right
Q
I have a service record and photograph of my great grandfather John James (Jack) King, who served with the Suffolk Regiment during the First World War. The service records for the 1/4th Suffolks survived, as they remained at the record office in Bury St Edmunds. Trying to understand some of the terms used is quite a challenge, so please could you explain what “frv.s. act (sessions2) 1916” means? Mark Hillman
The document you’ve copied isn’t Jack’s service record, but a very good summation of his war service. His long number, 200014, shows he was a Territorial Force (TF) part-time soldier and his medal rolls and Medal Index Card (on ancestry.co.uk) confirm service in 1/4th Suffolks, a TF battalion. They show he went to France on 8 November 1914, so had been fully trained, and his original regimental number (212) suggests he’d been in the TF for some time – possibly even joining when it was formed in 1908. The line you’re specifically querying says “M S Act (Sessions 2) 1916”, referring to additional clauses added to the 1916 Military Service Act. These automatically extended the service of a soldier, who’d enlisted for a fixed term, to the end of the war. The Regimental Museum website confirms its archive is deposited at Suffolk Record Office in Bury St Edmunds, whose catalogue includes for the 1/4th Battalion “G2 Digests of services and other contemporary narratives”, which I suspect is what you have. Possibly it was inherited from the records of the Suffolk Territorial Association (which ran the TF) long ago. It could also have come from the Ministry of Defence which, about 15 years ago, dispersed many records to regimental museums. I believe these didn’t contain service records, but did include indexes, digests and registers containing details of individuals (such as defaulters and deserters). Other researchers might find it worth checking these museums to see what they hold. The Army Museums Ogilby Trust at armymuseums.org.uk has contact and website details. Phil Tomaselli
Can you help me to track down Eliza Weaden?
Q
I’m searching for my late husband’s great great grandmother, Eliza Weaden, before her 1871 marriage to Abraham Ford. On Eliza’s marriage certificate, her father was Robert Weadon and she was a spinster, but had two sons: Henry Charles (b1865) and George (b1867). There’s an 1861 census entry for a Robert Waden, his
The record of the marriage of Eliza Weadon and Abraham Ford at Holy Trinity in Clifton, Bristol, in 1871
wife Hannah, daughter Eliza (aged 32) and grandson one-month-old Henry C Waden. Could this be her? Gill Weaden
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Check marriage witnesses
The witnesses on a marriage certificate may be family or friends that could provide further leads for your research. 36
I was able to find Eliza’s marriage record on ancestry.co.uk. On this, her surname is written ‘Weadon’, but she signs ‘Weaden’. In 1865, her son Henry Charles is baptised as ‘Waden’, while his brother George’s surname is written ‘Weadon’ two years later. Both baptisms were carried out in the parish of Easton in Gordano, Somerset, and written in the parish register by the same hand. The entry that you found in the 1861 census does, therefore, appear to refer to Eliza and her parents. The ‘Henry C Waden’ in this census is an earlier child of Eliza’s, who was baptised in Easton in Gordano in 1861 as ‘Henry Charles Waden’, but as
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‘Henry Charles Weaden’ was sadly buried there in 1863. On the record of his marriage to Hannah Cooling on 28 April 1823, Eliza’s father Robert’s name was written as ‘Weedon’ and both he and Hannah made their marks, rather than signing the register. Their children Hester (b1824), Elizabeth (b1826), Eliza (b1829), Alfred (b1831) and Charles (b1832) were all baptised as ‘Waden’, although the next child Elijah was baptised (b1834) and buried (b1836) under the surname ‘Weaden’. The Elizabeth baptised in 1826 is listed in the 1851 census as a servant in Bristol under the name ‘Eliza Weedon’ (aged 25), while her sister Eliza is shown as a visitor under the name ‘Elizabeth Weedon’ (aged 20). ‘Elizabeth Whaden’ is shown as the mother of William, baptised in Easton in Gordano in 1846. Alan Stewart
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Q&A
Picture Analysis Who is the baby in this picture? Q
Could you help me date this photo of my great grandmother with a baby? Her eldest daughter was born in 1893, but in the 1891 census she had two boys – one aged four years, the other four months. These boys died – could this be one of them? Janice (Penny) Munden This professional card-mounted studio portrait appears to be a carte de visite (CDV) print, a format fashionable in Britain from 1860, remaining popular until the 1890s. The date of this portrait can be narrowed down to the late 1800s or the
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early 1900s from the mount style. The photograph itself provides an even more precise timeframe of c1888–1892. Your great grandmother is fashionably dressed in a tight-fitting buttoned bodice with narrow sleeves and contrasting skirt displaying a divided front arrangement and fullness around the hips – a formal daytime costume characteristic of the turn of the 1880s/1890s. Her baby, aged about one year, wears the
typical short-sleeved, full-skirted, white baby frock favoured for infants at the crawling or toddling stage. He/she could be of either sex as tiny girls and boys were dressed alike; however, the 1888–1892 date here firmly rules out your great grandmother’s eldest daughter, instead confirming your suspicion that this baby is one of the two boys born in 1887 and late 1890, who sadly died in infancy. Jayne Shrimpton
1DRESS SLEEVES
The slight puff at the shoulders of your great grandmother’s sleeves could imply a date of c1890 or slightly later.
2BROOCHES
High late-Victorian necklines were usually ornamented with a brooch. The circular brooches of the 1880s were gradually superseded by narrow bar brooches during the early 1890s.
1 2
3EVENT
The baby, sitting up but supported carefully behind his back, may well have been photographed around the time of his first birthday – an important occasion worthy of a special portrait.
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4CONTRASTING FABRICS Contrasting velvet and woollen (or mixed cloth) materials, including whole garments, were especially fashionable throughout the 1880s and early 1890s.
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STUDIO PROP
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The shaggy, fur-like rug or throw on which the baby sits was a studio prop first introduced around the beginning of the 1880s, providing a helpful clue for dating the photograph.
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How can I find out where and when my 3x great grandfather George Rintel was born?
Q
I’m trying to find a birth record for my 3x great grandfather, George Rintel. He was born in about 1841 – an estimate from the record of his marriage to Margaret Duffy at St Paul’s, Liverpool, on 24 August 1868. His occupation on the banns was mariner, as was his father’s William. Nikcole Hassell
George isn’t listed in the 1881 crew lists database for British merchant seamen mun.ca/mha/1881/crews1881.php and he’s not in the Merchant Navy apprenticeship records on thegenealogist. co.uk. Neither George nor his father are included in the Merchant Navy occupational records 1835–1857 on findmypast.co.uk, but George may have been too young. George also doesn’t seem to have served with the Royal Navy or its reservists, according to the online service records via The National Archives’ (TNA’s) website. I wonder if the key to this mystery could be the spelling of your ancestor’s surname. Rintel is sometimes a variant on ‘Rintoul’. It’s a Scottish surname, although some Rintouls moved to Ireland, and many people of both nationalities settled or worked in Liverpool. So one avenue to explore is a potential Scottish and/or Irish ancestry via parish and census records from those countries. A quick look at some of these records on findmypast.co.uk and ancestry.co.uk reveals a few potential
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TOP TIP
George Rintel’s daughter Mary Rintel, Nikcole’s great great grandmother, and her husband William ‘Lump Coal Billy’ Reohorn and their oldest child George
candidates for you to investigate further. As you will have already found, there are many variants of this surname, so keep an open mind. Another possibility is that the surname is actually ‘Rentel’, which is of German origin. If your ancestors were of German descent, this might explain their absence from many UK records. There are various collections of German genealogy records online via the main subscription sites, but also some free ones; see thoughtco.com/ german-genealogy-online-1421986. Finally, note that some men lied about their age at marriage for various reasons – and, for example, familysearch.org shows a George Rentoul, son of William and Rose, christened on 30 March 1828 at Shenley, Hertfordshire. Could this be your family? Simon Wills
Variant spellings for surnames is a major contributor to losing people in the records. Keep an open mind and remember that some people changed their name if, for example, their mother remarried or married after an illegitimate birth.
Did my great grandmother really die of typhus?
Q
My great grandmother, Mary Fitzsimons, died on 6 November 1880, aged 34, in Kentish Town, London. The death certificate (below) states the cause was “Typhus Fever, Congestion of Lungs”. She was the mother of seven boys, the youngest born on 12 February 1880. No other family member seems to have been
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affected by typhus. Could it be a mistake? Are there any records that list deaths from typhus in 1880? Coral Simmonds Typhus, also known as ‘spotted fever’ or ‘gaol fever’, was a deadly disease, with the last major epidemic in London occurring in 1861–1869. The Victorians did not know how it n was transmitted, w oonly that it was prevalent in p oovercrowded, insanitary dwellings, where d tthe occupants were often w malnourished. It was not until 1909 that French bacteriologist Charles Nicolle discovered that the human body louse is the
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vector for spreading the bacterium Rickettsia prowazekii that causes typhus. By 1880, typhus was in steep decline in London. You can clearly see evidence of this in the annual Medical Officer of Health (MOH) reports for individual areas of the city, which list numbers of cases and deaths (see this month’s ‘Record Masterclass’ on page 52 for more details of these documents). There were still minor outbreaks, but these were less virulent. Sicker adult patients were admitted to fever hospitals. Although typhus patients had a distinctive ‘mulberry’ rash, misdiagnosis was still possible. Congestion of the lungs was a secondary symptom of the typhus infection, but the term also described bronchopneumonia. It’s possible that Mary was malnourished, or her health was weakened by her numerous pregnancies, making her more susceptible to the disease. Very close contact with her would have been necessary for the children to become infected. If they had caught it, typhus was rarely fatal for the young. In 1884, the mortality rate in children was 5 per cent. Michelle Higgs
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Q&A
Big Question What happened to my wife’s great grandfather, John Hannay, after he was declared bankrupt? Q
My wife’s great grandfather, John Hannay, was born in Dudley c1851. He appears to have had a successful career as a doctor and surgeon, and in 1879 married Elizabeth McEwen in Dudley. In 1880, he was a doctor at Weobley. In 1885, John was living in Lea Cross, Shropshire, in a large country house. That year, a notice appeared in the London Gazette stating his partnership with a Mr Lawson, as Apothecaries and Surgeons, had been dissolved in 1884. Another in 1887 refers to John Hannay as being bankrupt. From 1887 to 1890, he is listed as “travelling” in the medical directory. His name was removed from the Medical Register in 1889. In the 1891 census, his wife Elizabeth (a widow) and daughter Lilian are living with his wife’s parents in Wolverhampton. But what had happened to John? Peter Jones In the 1881 census, John Hannay is a newly qualified and newly married man aged 30. However, his marriage details show a significant age difference. I found these on freereg. org.uk, worth checking first rather than paying the General Register Office (GRO). These reveal he married at St
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Luke’s, Dudley, on 29 April 1879, aged 23, was a physician and son of Hugh Hannay, pawnbroker. His bride was Elizabeth McEwen, age 25, spinster, father James McEwen, an iron master. It seems John may have been born in about 1856 rather than 1851, making previous death searches redundant. Also, we have his father’s name, which allows us to confirm this via censuses. The 1861 census identifies him aged five, and in 1871 he is a boarder in Hurstpierpoint School in Sussex as John Cocker Hannay, aged 15 years. His wife Elizabeth doesn’t appear with their daughter Lilian at her father’s in the 1891 census, but as a (married) nurse in Southport, Lancashire, without John who presumably is still alive. In fact, she does not appear as a widow in her father’s household until the 1901 census. So John Hannay probably died between 1891 and 1901, but where? Searches of England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland registration did not locate a suitable candidate and so I made searches further afield. His entry in the Medical Register said he was “travelling”. The key to finding him was the entry I found for his erstwhile colleague, “Mr Lawson”, who turned out to be William Lawson. In William Lawson’s entry lies the clue to how their paths crossed, as they were both on the medical panel of the
Above: the 1861 census shows John aged five living with his father, a pawnbroker
PETER JONES asked for help to discover what happened to his wife’s down-on-hisluck medical forebear
Below: William Lawson’s revealing entry in the medical directory
Forester’s Club and both had qualified in Scotland, albeit at different universities. In the entries was listed the Nowgong Tea Planter’s Association in India. Is this where the bankrupt and separated young doctor had headed? Lawson had spent some time there. He clearly had contacts who might help a young man whose life was in disarray. Hannay may have turned to Lawson for help, despite their past problems. I searched the India Office family search facility of the British Library, but found no entries. However, ancestry. co.uk has indexed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ compilation of similar records for India and there I discovered the answer. In the ‘India, Select Marriages, 1792–1948’ dataset, I found a marriage on 15 July 1891 in Cawnpore, Bengal, India, between John Hannay, 35, son of Hugh Hannay, and Elizabeth Alice Ethel Noor. In ‘India, Select Deaths and Burials, 1719–1948’ was a record of a death on 3 July 1893, with a burial the day after in Cawnpore, Bengal, India, of John Hannay, male, 38. Cawnpore, now Kanpur, is 125 miles from Nowgong. Did he desert or divorce his wife in England? Certificates for these events should confirm whether this is the correct John Hannay and perhaps answer that question. Steve Thomas
Military Picture Analysis What is the significance of the elephant brooch here?
Q
I found this photograph among some things inherited by my partner’s Scottish aunt. We guess there is some significance to the elephant brooch pinning the subject’s chest plaid. Any information would be welcome! Sylvia Gillies This is a studio photograph of an experienced and long-serving colour sergeant (sergeant-major) in the Dumbartonshire Rifle Volunteer Corps (DVC) taken after 1894 and before 1908. The DVC were part-time soldiers, the unit being formed in 1860. Volunteers were organised into 14 companies across the county and commenced training. For most of the period, their uniform was rifle-green with scarlet collar and cuffs. In 1880, as part of general army reforms, the companies were grouped together as one
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battalion, and in 1881 became a Volunteer Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (A&SH), although they retained much of their independence. They sent Volunteers to the Boer War, 1899–1902. In 1908, the DVC became the 9th Battalion of the A&SH in the Territorial Force and in the First World War served in France from 1915. If you have a possible name for the gentleman, it might be worth searching the South Africa medal rolls on ancestry.co.uk for him, in case he served in the Boer War. Also check in the press, as Volunteers were a favourite subject in local newspapers. The Kirkintilloch Gazette wrote (in 1899) that they were particularly keen on marksmanship and that Sergeant Lawrence of the DVC won the Queen’s Prize at Bisley in 1882. The subject of the photograph has a Bisley award badge for 1882. Could this be your man? He was certainly there… Phil Tomaselli
1CAP
The Glengarry cap (or bonnet) was worn only by Scottish regiments after 1895. The chessboard pattern (in red and white) is unique to the A&SH.
2BROOCH
The plaid brooch clearly shows an elephant and castle (Dunbarton’s coat of arms) and it’s probably on the collar (barely visible) and cap badges. When the DRV became part of the A&SH, they retained the elephant and castle badge.
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3FLAGS
Above his sergeant’s stripes are crossed flags (just visible) making him a colour sergeant.
2
4MEDAL 3
He wears a Volunteer Long Service Medal, created in 1894 for 20 years’ service in the ranks, so the photograph has to have been taken after 1894.
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5
5BADGES
On his sleeves are shooting badges (Volunteers can often be spotted by their many badges). The large ones with crown above are from Bisley rifle competitions and show their year.
6TREWS
The colour sergeant is wearing trews. These were replaced by the kilt when the unit formally became part of the Territorial Force.
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How can I prove that Sir Laurence Fermour de Richards is one of my ancestors?
Q
I’m researching the line of my great grandmother, Priscilla Bray Warne, born in Plymouth in 1844. Via Ancestry, Findmypast and Cornwall Online Parish Clerks, I have been able to establish links back to a Richard James Rickard, born about 1500. On ancestry.co.uk, there are over 500 family trees showing that Sir Laurence Fermour de Richards is the father of Richard James, although none of them shows a source for this. I discovered that Thomas Fermor de Richards (d1485) and Alice were Laurence’s parents. How can I prove this and research the family further? Frank Velander The chart you’ve sent shows your descent from Richard James Rickards of St Enoder, Cornwall, who died in 1557. The St Enoder parish registers go back to 1570, which is much earlier than many. To trace further back, prior to the survival of the parish registers, you could look for earlier wills, manorial records, musters or tax lists for St Enoder that could identify earlier generations of Rickards there. The pedigree you sent claims that Richard Rickards was the son of Lawrence Fermor of Minster Lovell, Oxfordshire, and you have been very sensible to question and investigate this purported connection, found from quite an unreliable, secondary source. I have here Harleian Society volume 5 (the Visitations of Oxfordshire 1566, 1574 and 1634), also available on ancestry.co.uk, which is a generally very reliable secondary source. On page 46 (pictured) is a note summarising the will of ‘Thomas Richards, alias Fermor
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The page from the Harlean l Society’s S i t ’ V Visitations isitation of Oxfor Oxfordshire rdshiire mentioning mentioniing Frank’s ancestor
Senior of Whitney’, proved in 1485, naming children including Laurence. So, as with all families with aliases, Laurence could be surnamed Fermor or Richards, Fermor alias
QUICK TIP
Save on post-1837 marriage records The information you will get on a marriage certificate (price £11) is the same as you will find on a parish register entry so check to see if there are parish records online before ordering.
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Richards (or vice versa) – but never ‘Fermor de Richards’ as the Ancestry pedigree has it. To prove Laurence was Richard’s father, you’d need to find positive proof, from a herald’s visitation pedigree, a mention in family wills not yet examined, a memorial inscription, or other original source. Given the distance from Oxfordshire to Cornwall, and difference between Richards and Rickards, however, it’s far more likely that someone in the past erroneously made this connection without any evidence at all and this ‘fact’ has been repeated, like so many others on Ancestry, without ever being double-checked. Nevertheless, you may yet prove this unlikely connection with further research. Anthony Adolph
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WIN!
£75 PHOTO VOUCHER
My Family Album Send us your favourite images for a chance to win £75 to spend on photo restoration. Here Derek Mutch from Derbyshire shares his photographs, many taken at his mother’s family’s croft in Barthol Chapel, Aberdeenshire
My uncles Charlie, Tom and Billy Rennie, c1923
My mum Nellie’s family the Rennies occupied Flobbets Croft from before 1841 until 1944. The house was owned by various Earls of Aberdeen until my grandfather William bought it in 1919.
arents My grandp n Rennie with
William Rennie
William and Helle their children, pictured c1929.
My grandad was a crofter, and also worked as a ‘postie’ in later years.
Archie Mutch
My father was photographed for this portrait in a studio in 1913.
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Three sisters
My mum Nellie behind Auntie Gladys and Auntie Ella, 1922.
Dressed for schoolGladys in 1931, aged
Here are my uncle Billy and my aunt 13 and 8 respectively; both attended Barthol Chapel School.
Holding the baby
Grandma Hellen with Mabel, Nellie, Charlie, Tom, Billy and Gladys.
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Feeding the hens at Flobbets
Grandma Hellen, Gladys and Mabel in 1932. William had died the previous year. Hellen raised the family, but died in 1933 aged 42.
bel Gladys and Ma ed outside My two aunties photograph Flobbets with the family dog, c1929.
and Nellie Rennie Archie Mutch 1936. They moved out of Flobbets during My parents married in at the croft. the war, ending a century of the Rennie family
Mabel takes charge, c1929
Here are (left to right) the Rennies’ neighbours’ children John Mennie and John Kindness, having fun with Mabel on Flobbets ’ 16 acres of land; my aunt was only four at the time. I wonder where the motorbike ende d up – perhaps one of your readers owns it!
SHARE YOUR FAMILY ALBUM Send us your photographs and you could receive a £75 voucher to spend on photo restoration or colourisation with Image-Restore.co.uk. Email our art editor on robbie.bennie@immediate.co.uk using the subject line “Family Album”. We need between eight and ten good-quality, high-resolution images. Each should be accompanied by a caption of 20–40 words.
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YOUR PROJECTS
Unlocking Gatehouse Rosemary Collins talks to a couple who run a website that celebrates the heritage of Gatehouse of Fleet in Scotland argaret Wright (née Hunter) grew up in n Gatehouse of Fleet, Kirkcudbrightshire,, now in Dumfries and Galloway. She moved back to Gatehouse with her husband Graham after they retired in 2006, where they have dedicated much of their free time to family history. Their research into their roots has led to the creation of the website Gatehouse Folk (gatehouse-folk.org.uk). “For many years Graham and I have been interested in our own family histories,” Margaret explains. “We have often found it helpful to have a local contact in the areas where our ancestors had lived, and we decided that when we retired we would try to help other researchers in this way.” Gatehouse covers two parishes, Girthon and Anwoth, each of which has two graveyards. For their first project, the Wrights photographed and transcribed all of the headstones in both parishes. They shared the records with Jim Bell, of the website Stewartry Monumental Inscriptions (kirkyards.co.uk). He in turn helped the couple to set up their own site. Gatehouse Folk is now a thriving repository, sharing information about the town’s history and the family history resources available; photos and old postcards; and trees for Gatehouse families. With permission from ScotlandsPeople (scotlands people.gov.uk), which holds the census returns for the country, Graham and Margaret transcribed the 1841–1911 census records to correct errors by transcribers less familiar with local people and place names. Copies of their transcriptions are available in Gatehouse Library, Mill on the Fleet, Stewartry Museum, and Dumfries and Galloway Family History Research Centre. The Wrights also transcribed some of the Girthon and Anwoth valuation rolls, which record the proprietor, tenant and rateable value of each property for 1859–1975. In addition, the website holds PDF summaries of the Girthon kirk sessions, held to establish who was responsible for illegitimate children, from 1821 to 1863. There is also a list of the male heads of families in 1834, and an A-to-Z of names in the 1864–1895 Girthon Poor Law register.
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Left to right: Bob McDonald, John McDonald, James Hunter (Margaret’s grandfather), Alex McDonald and John McMurray in the blacksmith’s workshop in Digby Street
As more First World War records became available online, Graham and Margaret began researching the lives of all of the local men who were killed and are commemorated on the Anwoth and Girthon War Memorial. Their stories are now listed on the website, along with details of many who survived. One story Graham and Margaret uncovered was that of the Davidson brothers. James, Peter, Robert and Nelson Davidson were all killed in 1917 in separate incidents. A fifth brother, Wilfred, survived the war and remained in Gatehouse for the rest of his life. He became a successful businessman, and was made the provost of the burgh. The Wrights also marked the 75th anniversary of VE Day on 8 May 2020 by carrying out similar research into the experiences of Gatehouse people in the Second World War, and publishing their details on their website. Their plans for the future include updating the site’s ‘Who Lived Where’ section, which aims to identify who has lived in each house in the town, and working on a new section about Gatehouse artists. “We are proud of what we have achieved so far and all of the feedback has been positive, which makes it all worthwhile,” Margaret says.
ve, ti si o p n e e b s a h ck a b d e fe e ‘All th ’ which makes it all worthwhile
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Share your local history project with us and you could appear in the magazine! Please write to us at the address on page 6 or email rosemary.collins@ immediate.co.uk
Get Involved Gatehouse Folk w gatehouse-folk.org.uk The Wrights are appealing for help identifying local residents in photographs taken by postman William McMurray in the early 20th century. Please also get in touch if you can share photos, stories or family histories by emailing info@gatehouse-folk.org.uk.
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WILLIAM McMURRAY
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BEST WEBSITES
Irish Research
Stopping for a chat in Glenshesk, County Antrim, c1900
Jonathan Scott surveys sources for seeking out your ancestors who lived on the Emerald Isle he destruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland during the Irish Civil War in 1922 still casts a shadow over Irish research, but every year gaps in the historical record are bridged online. Indeed the Beyond 2022 project (beyond2022.ie) is seeking to create a digital replica of the Public Record Office before its destruction, including copies and transcripts of lost material. This month’s sites hold some vast datasets, from long-available census substitutes to civil and parish-level records that have been released since we last covered the topic. A starting point for those trying to fix dates is the civil registration indexes available via Irish Genealogy (see page 48) or FamilySearch (familysearch.org/search/collection/1408347) – this excludes index records for Northern Ireland after its creation in 1922. And it’s worth getting to grips with the Griffith’s Valuation (askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation), which was compiled in the mid-19th century to determine liability for paying rates to support the poor and destitute within each of Ireland’s Poor Law unions.
GETTY IMAGES
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NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF IRELAND w nationalarchives.ie There’s a disconnect between the polished National Archives homepage and its more dated-looking genealogy section, but there’s no denying the value of what’s here. The parent site has helpful guidance to get you started, then genealogy.nationalarchives. ie features dedicated sections offering free access to the surviving census fragments from 1901/1911, as well as substitute sources. You can search raw census data, then view PDF copies of the original documents. Other important collections available free of charge include tithe-applotment books (1823–1837), soldiers’ wills (1914–1918), diocesan and prerogative marriage-licence bonds indexes (1623–1866), shipping agreements and crew lists (1863–1921), and various wills indexes and registers.
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BEST WEBSITES Expert’s Choice John Grenham is the author of Tracing Your Irish Ancestors, 5th Edition (2019)
IRISH GENEALOGY
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF IRELAND w registers.nli.ie This image-only service enables you to browse digitised microfilms of Catholic parish registers covering most parishes across the island of Ireland up to 1880. Just enter the name of a specific parish in the search box, or choose between ‘Show Counties’ and ‘Show Dioceses’ on the map then drill down to a particular parish, before accessing tens or even hundreds of images of specific microfilms. This can be time-consuming if you’re unsure of the details, so you may need to seek out an index first. You can find indexes on findmypast.co.uk and ancestry.co.uk. The parent website nli.ie has lots of guidance and research tools, and you can browse some highlights via sources.nli.ie.
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You can search records for Glendalough, a village nestled among the hills of County Wicklow, on RootsIreland
RootsIreland (rootsireland.ie) is the website of the Irish Family History Foundation (IFHF), the umbrella body for an all-Ireland group of disparate heritage centres that began transcribing parish registers back in the 1980s. These two factors – the IFHF’s highly decentralised structure and the organisation’s origins before the start of the web – have both left their mark. On the positive side, RootsIreland’s transcripts of church registers come from the original records held locally, not the very poor microfilms used by Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk) and Findmypast (findmy past.co.uk). That head start makes them orders of magnitude more accurate, even allowing for sometimes dodgy transcription. The site’s surname variants listing is also much better, tailored to the mind-bending weirdness of Irish surnames. And its search interface (once you get down to county level) is spectacularly flexible, allowing you to base research on anything that appears in state or church birth, marriage and death records including godparents, witnesses, place names and mother’s forename. Many of the website’s transcripts are also much later than those available elsewhere, in some cases reaching well into the 1920s. On the negative side, the site remains transcriptonly, far off the now gold-standard transcript-withimage. The local centres’ independence of each other has also left coverage of some areas patchy. Only 19 of the 48 Catholic parishes of Wexford have records, for example, and there are no Catholic records at all for County Fermanagh. In addition, the site is not good at listing what’s missing. Membership is also expensive, currently costing £148 for a year. But as long as you use it carefully, it’s the only absolutely essential Irish genealogy site.
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w www.irishgenealogy.ie This invaluable website for family historians offers free images and indexes for the country’s civil registration records. At present there are indexes to births (1864–1919), marriages (1845–1944) and deaths (1864–1969), and the coverage in images of original registers is close behind. You can search for a first and last name, a location and a date, then review the list of results and click through to the original images, which should hopefully provide answers to confirm or rule out the individual. The coverage of the church records varies, but includes both Catholic and Church of Ireland registers from Carlow, Cork and Ross, Dublin and Kerry.
IRISH RESEARCH
Go Further Eight more sites for tracing your roots in Ireland
BEYOND 2022 w beyond2022.ie This project aims to create a virtual-reality replica of the Public Record Office of Ireland before its destruction in June 1922.
DIPPAM w dippam.ac.uk The website Documenting Ireland: Parliament, People and Migration (DIPPAM) includes an ‘Irish Emigration Database’ and the oral archive and database ‘Voices of Migration and Return’.
IRISH ANCESTORS w johngrenham.com The responsive website from this month’s expert allows you to find out more about records available for Irish research, as well as providing some powerful mapping tools. Try a simple surname search and you are presented with a map showing numbers and locations of households in the 1850s, as well as heads of households in the 1901 and 1911 census. Alternatively you can use interactive maps to drill down by county and then parish to various types of information, linking to external sources such as askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation. A good starting point is johngrenham. com/browse, which leads to guides to the most important genealogical sources.
EMERALD ANCESTORS w emeraldancestors.com This commercial website boasts over 1.5 million genealogy records for Northern Ireland. Emerald Ancestors also has a useful tool that you can use to identify individual townlands.
GRIFFITH’S VALUATION w askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation This valuation of Irish property was carried out between 1848 and 1864. It’s a source of detailed information about where our ancestors lived in Ireland in the mid-19th century.
IMC DIGITAL EDITIONS w irishmanuscripts.ie/product-category/imcdigital-editions/?action=digitisation_backlist Explore the results of the Irish Manuscripts Commission’s digitisation programme.
IRISH FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY w ifhs.ie This genealogical group was formed in 1984.
MILITARY ARCHIVES
IRISH WAR MEMORIALS w irishwarmemorials.ie Here you can explore a growing database of cross-conflict memorials in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland – one recent addition is a 1798 memorial that stands in Church Street, Granard, County Longford. Each memorial is accompanied by details of its exact location and images, from where you can either search the names recorded, or download a PDF containing a full transcription. The website covers all kinds of memorials, from free-standing monuments such as crosses, obelisks and statues, to plaques and even paper records if they are on display, making it extremely useful even though graves are not included.
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w militaryarchives.ie/en/home This is the official home of the records of the Department of Defence, the Defence Forces and the Army Pensions Board.
PRONI w nidirect.gov.uk The website of the official repository the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland has all sorts of valuable free search tools including directories, cemetery records and tithes.
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GEM FROM THE ARCHIVE
A girl’s autograph book, 1909 Claire Skinner from The Box in Plymouth shares the secret messages of a lively group of teenage girls, written in an Edwardian autograph book Interview By Rosemary Collins he Box, Plymouth’s £46.8 million archive, museum and art gallery space, opened its doors in September 2020. As well as displays celebrating the city’s history, the building is the new home of the former Plymouth and West Devon Record Office, now known as Plymouth Archives, The Box, whose collections are more accessible than ever. Archivist Claire Skinner opens up one of The Box’s documents – an autograph book from over 100 years ago that provides a fascinating chance to hear the voices of teenage girls from the Edwardian era.
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majority of the opinions and autographs date from 1909, when she was only 16, but three records at the end of the book date from 1925.
the opinions and views of a group of young people who might not otherwise have a voice in the archive – diaries and letters from teenagers of
thoughts of a lost age. The questions asked include such general topics as favourite pastimes, authors, artists and musicians, plus more controversial areas such as political views and the roles of men and women. As such it acts like an opinion poll from the early 20th century, giving us valuable insight into feelings and thoughts that are often not captured in official records. From a family history point of view, it is fascinating. For the young people who were friends with Marjory, this might be the only record we have of their favourite pastimes. We learn that they admire Edward VII as “the greatest sovereign in Europe” – although some of them add, playfully, “when he is in my purse!” Several state that they are not interested in politics; others
‘The 1909 entries capture a significant moment just before the First World War’ Why Did You Choose It? I have not come across such an item before in almost 30 years’ experience as an archivist, and I think that it gives a wonderful insight into
this era are relatively rare. The 1909 entries capture a significant moment in time just before the First World War, and reveal the preoccupations and
Tell Me More About The Autograph Book. The book was kept by Marjory Katherine Elizabeth St Aubyn (1893–1987), daughter of the 2nd Baron St Levan, who owned property in Cornwall and Devon. She went on to marry John Parker, the 6th Earl of Morley, of Saltram House, Plymouth. The volume is a small, rectangular, leatherbound volume, with the cover embossed in gold: “The confessions, opinions and autographs of my friends.” It uses pro-forma printed questions that have been filled in by hand by various of Marjory’s friends. The 50
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support Joseph Chamberlain or Arthur Balfour. Their heroes and heroines range from Grace Darling and Joan of Arc to Redvers Buller, a general from Devon who won a Victoria Cross during the Anglo-Zulu War. Their answers are often flippant and tongue in cheek, as you would expect from a group of teenagers – Humpty Dumpty and Three Blind Mice being chosen as favourite poems by more than one person! I can vividly picture the youngsters passing around the book, and having a good giggle at one another’s responses before daringly sharing their own.
What Do The Entries Reveal About Women’s Lives At The Time? Some of the most interesting questions focus on the roles of men and women, probably reflecting the country’s concern with the suffrage question. In 1909 Marion Wallace Dunlop became the
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first imprisoned suffragette to go on hunger strike, so the question of women’s rights was very prominent. The book’s rigid binary questions may sit uneasily with modern sensibilities, but must be seen and understood within their context. In answer to the question “Whom do you consider has the greater brain power – man or woman?”, two thirds of Marjory’s friends say “woman” and a few follow this with “of course!” A couple say “man”, and another three say “equal”. The next question might provide the biggest surprise to a modern audience. When asked “Do you think women should take part in public life?”, only two contributors definitely agree. Two contributors are more ambivalent: Dorothy Easton says “a little”; “CHS” says “yes when no men are left”. The rest are resoundingly opposed, stating: “Certainly not.” Even contributors who think women have far
Visit Us The Box a Tavistock Place, Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AX t 01752 304774 w theboxplymouth.com The research room is open from Tuesday to Saturday, 1.30pm– 4.30pm. To learn how to book a visit, see theboxplymouth.com/ permanent-galleries/the-cottonian-research-room. Bookings are currently restricted to one visit per person per month.
superior brainpower to men still answer “no”! We must never forget that alongside the women (and men) fighting for the vote as suffragists and suffragettes, there was a body of people of both sexes who opposed suffrage for women – I suspect several of Marjory’s friends fell into the latter camp. Obviously her group was from a social elite, and might be more conservative in its political and social views than people from a more diverse background. Tracey Glasspool’s book
Struggle and Suffrage in Plymouth (Pen & Sword, 2019) is worth reading if you’re interested in the topic.
What Other Items Are In Your Collections? We hold the standard local records such as parish registers; records of local government; hospital, prison and workhouse records; education records; records of charities and businesses; and family and estate collections. Our holdings can be searched at https://web.plymouth.gov.uk/ archivescatalogue.
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RECORD MASTERCLASS
0HGLFDO 2IÀFHU 2I +HDOWK 5HSRUWV The annual reports produced by the Medical Officer of Health for a town, city or district can provide fascinating details about where your ancestor lived, says Michelle Higgs ritain’s rapidly expanding Victorian towns and cities were insanitary with overcrowded dwellings, dirty water, and a lack of drainage and sewers. So it is no wonder that they very quickly became hotbeds for such deadly diseases as cholera, smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, typhoid and typhus. The 1848 Public Health Act gave powers to local authorities to establish local boards of health in England and Wales, and to set up water supplies, sewers and public baths. They could also appoint a Medical Officer of Health (MOH) for their area. However, the legislation was only permissive, so local authorities rarely used these powers because of the financial implications. Progress was slow, except in innovative cities such as London and Liverpool. From 1872, it became compulsory for English and Welsh local authorities to employ an MOH. After the 1875 Public Health Act, councils were compelled to make improvements including providing a clean water supply, proper drainage and sewers, and
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clearing slums. In Scotland, there was permissive public health legislation from 1867, although Glasgow and Edinburgh employed MOHs well before this. It became compulsory for county councils to appoint medical officers under the 1889 Local Government (Scotland) Act. Once appointed, the MOH had to produce an annual report for his district. At first, the documents were not standardised and they reflected the personality, interests and expertise of the writer. There were statistics on birth and death rates, infectious and other diseases, and infant mortality, plus information about the general health of the district’s population. The content of the reports changed over time. For example, by the 1930s there was data about how many children with
A mother makes tea in a small slum dwelling in the City of London, 1872
disease? The documents can confirm if there was an epidemic at the time. Perhaps there is a high incidence of children dying young in your family tree. The statistics include the rates of infant mortality in the district
The MOH reports for specific districts can be viewed in local and national archives across the UK, and thousands of documents have also been digitised online. ‘London’s Pulse: Medical Officer of Health Reports 1848– 1972’ is the Wellcome Library’s flagship collection for the capital (wellcomelibrary.org/moh). You can search the reports for a particular word or phrase, such as a street or disease, or simply choose a location to look at. To narrow the search, reduce the date range using the slider and put the search term in quotation
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tuberculosis attended openair schools, and the amount of free milk dispensed.
Using The Reports These reports can help you understand the area in which your forebears lived. Did an ancestor die of an infectious
over the years. The MOH’s remit also included housing and living standards, which is particularly interesting when streets are named. It’s fascinating to see how an area changed over the years, so the reports are useful for local historians as well.
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of infant s te ra e th e d u cl in s ic st ti a st e ‘Th years’ e th r ve o t ic tr is d e th in y lit a mort
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH REPORTS
0HGLFDO 2IÀFHU 2I +HDOWK 5HSRUW The 1895 report of Alexander Blyth, the Medical Officer of Health for St Marylebone in West London, includes this table detailing the population, births and new cases of infectious sickness. The report has been digitised and is available to view for free on the Wellcome Library’s website at wellcomelibrary.org/moh
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1 Local Health Board The reports were compiled for the local health board, partly to gauge where money should be spent on public health.
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2 Parishes Figures for the five different parishes in the sanitary district of St Marylebone are shown for the purposes of comparison.
3 Population
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The Medical Officer of Health used the official census statistics to get an accurate population count across the district.
4 Disease 5
In 1895, the infectious disease with the most cases was scarlatina, followed by erysipelas, a highly contagious skin disease.
5 Typhus 6
There were no cases of typhus in St Marylebone in 1895; the disease was declining in London from the mid-1880s onwards.
6 Removed From Their Homes London had a network of public isolation or fever hospitals where the most infectious patients could receive treatment.
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RECORD MASTERCLASS Workmen deepen the sewage system that runs under London’s Fleet Street, 4 October 1845
RESOURCES Take your research further
CHARLES BOOTH’S LONDON
Thousands of the library’s MOH reports can also be viewed for free via the Internet Archive at archive. org/details/medicalofficerof
Islington, highlights two unvaccinated infants who died from smallpox: a sevenmonth-old boy on Elder Walk and a one-year-old girl on Graham Terrace. After the 1893 Isolation Hospitals Act, the reports may also name people fined for not reporting themselves or their relations for having a notifiable infectious disease, as well as people running ‘nuisance’ workshops or bakeries (ones that might contribute to the spread of disease).
‘More personal information can be found in the reports’ healthreports?tab=collection.
Obviously, the earlier a district appointed an officer, the greater the number of reports. Those for most provincial cities do not start until the 1880s or Remember that boundaries 1890s, and there may changed over time. To find the be gaps in coverage. right district, check any birth, Sometimes, more marriage and death certificates personal information can you might have; the district is be found in the reports. named at the top. For example, the 1860 report for St Mary,
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MICHELLE HIGGS is the author of Tracing Your Medical Ancestors (2011) and Life in the Victorian Hospital (2009)
LONDON MUSEUMS OF HEALTH AND MEDICINE w medicalmuseums.org This is the online hub for the 26 museums in the city where you can uncover the history of medicine.
WELLCOME LIBRARY BLOG w blog.wellcomelibrary.org Although this blog is no longer updated, it includes many interesting posts about London’s public health and the Medical Officer of Health reports.
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marks. You are also able to browse boroughs or a decade of reports at a time. For places outside London (including many in Scotland), navigate to wellcomelibrary.org/ search-the-catalogues. In the search box, key in ‘medical officer of health’ and the town or borough that you’re interested in. You should see a list of reports in date order, most of which are online; you can search within individual reports for specific phrases.
w booth.lse.ac.uk Browse poverty maps and notebooks from researcher and philanthropist Charles Booth’s hugely important survey Inquiry into Life and Labour in London (1886–1903).
ANCESTORS AT WORK
Carpenters Adèle Emm uncovers the lives of our forebears who worked in this highly skilled profession he word ‘carpenter’ derives from the Old French carpentier/ charpentier, from the Latin word carpentarius meaning carriage. Carpenters have traditionally installed rafters, roofs, beams and joists to support a building, while joiners, according to early-19th-century manual The Book of Trades, spent their days
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“fitting various pieces of timber together”. In other words, joiners made and/or fitted windows, doors, wainscoting, picture rails, dados, skirting boards, staircases and floors in domestic interiors. In reality, our ‘chippie’ forebears often combined these jobs, and it’s common to see “carpenter/joiner” as an occupation in census records.
The joiner was the higher skilled, and his handiwork more exposed to the eye. But workers in both trades required a knowledge of geometry, measuring and arithmetic. A village carpenter did jobs for anyone who put work his way, although it goes without saying that poorer neighbourhoods struggled to put food on the table, let alone
A master carpenter works on a skirting for a restored chapel screen in Manchester Cathedral in 1951
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ANCESTORS AT WORK
All At Sea Carpenters living by the coast might go to sea as a ship’s carpenter, whose task according to The Book of Trades was to keep a ship in repair “attending to the stopping of leaks, to caulking, careening, and the like… in time of battle he is to have every thing prepared for repairing, and stopping the breaches, as made
Carpenters were a feisty bunch, and thought nothing of downing tools for better wages and conditions. In March 1876, members of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners of Manchester and Salford held a meeting at the Mechanics’ Institution in Manchester to discuss a demand to increase wages by 1d an hour to 8 d, plus reduce the working week from 52 hours to 49 – conditions already enjoyed in nearby Bolton and Warrington! At that time, the
of ‘Carpenters thought nothing ’ es downing tools for better wag by the enemy’s cannon”. You Amalgamated Society had 1,400 might see an ancestor calling members while a similar union the himself “ship’s carpenter” in one General Union of Carpenters and census but “carpenter” in the Joiners boasted 1,800 members. next, like Folkestone’s Charles Such long hours were normal. Copping (1820–1892). Charles, Since no one was paid for his a journeyman carpenter in 1861, lunch hour, carpenters frequently was fully trained by 1871; in worked a 10-hour shift (half 1881, aged 60, a ship’s carpenter. an hour for lunch) including He was back working on dry land Saturdays. In May 1872 in when he died. Sheffield master carpenters went In a town on strike for a or city, a raise to 6 d an carpenter often hour, making hired himself their pay out to large commensurate contractors to about 32s on building 6d a week; they projects like had already Manchester’s negotiated a new town hall, 50-hour week. constructed The boom in between construction in October 1868 London in the and its grand 1850s–1860s opening in (building the September Embankment, 1877. The main sewer systems contractors and railways, were Messrs among other Clay & Sons Carpenters worked on Manchester Town projects) Hall, seen here in 1877, for several years and Messrs triggered a Smith, who skills shortage, both subcontracted workmen. and construction workers were Carpenters are among the first on constantly striking for better pay. a site and last to leave, and here Training was by apprenticeship, they erected 2.5 acres of roofing, and it was common for a son to wood centring for arches, plus follow his father’s trade. A master the interiors. A workman on such carpenter took on a boy, usually enterprises might be at the same at 14, for four to five years. The site for years. first thing an apprentice did was 56
Knobstick Pejorative word for a strikebreaker, perhaps after the stout stick they carried
£10– 20 The value of a journeyman’s tools c1813
Turkey stone
The whetstone used to sharpen a carpenter’s tools
6am– 6pm The hours worked by a house carpenter
Pine, oak, elm and mahogany The most common types of wood used by a carpenter in the early 19th century
fashion a wooden toolbox that he used throughout his working life, and these often became heirlooms. For example, my grandfather was a railway coach-builder apprenticed at Wolverton Works, Buckinghamshire, for seven years; his toolbox resides in my cellar. In the early 1800s, a carpenter’s tools might be worth as much as £10–20 – an enormous
Go Visit Discover the tools of the trade
AMBERLEY MUSEUM
Underdog Term for the unfortunate sawyer who had to work in a saw pit beneath a huge saw, and was always covered in dust
a New Barn Road, Amberley, Near Arundel, West Sussex BN18 9LT t 01798 831370 w amberleymuseum.co.uk The museum has an impressive collection of carpentry tools – see a gallery at taths.org.uk/toolstrades/amberley-tool-collection. Visits must be booked in advance.
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build or renovate a house. In lean times, a carpenter made the coffins as well.
CARPENTERS
investment compared with how much a journeyman carpenter earned. According to the 1818 edition of The Book of Trades, this was between 3s 6d and 4s 6d a day, equal to 21s (£1 1s) and 27s (£1 7s) for a six-day week. Journeymen were paid by the ‘jour’ (‘day’ in French), with no guaranteed work. However, when you compare his pay with an agricultural labourer’s average weekly wage in 1834 of about 10s, a carpentry indenture was well worth the investment.
Photographic pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot captured this carpenter and his apprentice c1844
working until you dropped. In 1841, Jacob Chandler was a journeyman carpenter in Great Bardfield, Essex. Forty years later, a widower of 73, he was still a carpenter, providing for two spinster daughters. Jacob finally retired 10 years later. At the time of Jacob’s retirement, woodworking tools were still hand-powered. The biggest change for carpenters and joiners was the invention of electrically powered tools. In 1889, Arthur James Arnot and William Blanch Brain patented a drill driven by electric motor. The first portable handheld drill was created in Germany by Wilhelm and Carl Fein (C&E Fein) of Stuttgart. Weighing over 16lb, it was slow, heavy and unwieldy, requiring several men to operate it – but it still became the mainstay for the next two decades. In 1910 in the USA, Duncan Black and Alonzo Decker (now Black and Decker) set up a workshop to improve the C&E Fein drill by adapting the gun trigger from a Colt 45. Their version, patented in 1917, is the father of modern drill design. The Michel Electric Hand Saw was patented by Edmond Michel in 1924; the time and effort to manufacture anything from wood now dramatically reduced. Operators initially suffered from what we now call repetitive strain injury (RSI) and, at a time when safety regulations were less stringent, electrocution.
Resources Take your research further
BOOKS
The Book of Trades, 3rd Edition Richard Griffin & Co, 1837 This edition of this frequently published book includes comprehensive explanations and diagrams of carpentry tools, joints, methods and so on, and can be viewed online for free at bit.ly/ggl-trades-1837.
Tracing Your Trade and Craftsman Ancestors Adèle Emm Pen & Sword, 2015 Adèle’s overview of trades, unions and apprenticeships includes a chapter on the building trades.
WEBSITE
London Lives londonlives.org/static/ CarpentersCompany.jsp You can find information about the London guild the Carpenters’ Company and a reading list on this website dedicated to the social history of the capital.
ADÈLE EMM is an author and writer on social and family history: adeleemm.com
How To Find Your Carpenter Ancestors Union records and trade directories are key sources for researching carpenter relations
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Hazards Of The Job Skills were a buffer against entering the workhouse, but no insurance against accidents or ill health. Tools were sharp. Lack of concentration when tired could result in an accident. If infection set in, then carpenters lost fingers or died from septicaemia. Wood chips in an eye meant blindness, and breathing in sawdust led to respiratory diseases. Hard physical work took its toll on the body and, before the state pension was introduced, no savings meant whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk) has digitised membership books for the General Union of Carpenters and Joiners 1886–1921. Details include members’ names, ages, dates of admission, marital status, contributions made and financial payments received, including money paid as out-of-work benefits. The union’s full archive (1845–1921) is held at the Modern Records Centre, Warwick University, which also has records for similar carpenters’ unions; see warwick.ac.uk/ services/library/mrc/research_guides/family_ history/carpntr. However, not all of these
records have been digitised for genealogical subscription services, or even catalogued. Notices in back issues of the Gazette, free at thegazette.co.uk, provide evidence for bankrupt carpenter ancestors. Articles in local newspapers available via the British Newspaper Archive (britishnewspaperarchive. co.uk) may also name bankrupts. Findmypast holds trade directories too, while Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk) has Leicester University’s digitised directories, which are also available for free at specialcollections.le.ac.uk/ digital/collection/p16445coll4.
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TECH TIPS
SHW US $ *52 AFFRXQW Open your browser and navigate to https://www.gro.gov.uk before clicking the ‘Order certificates online’ link. Next, if this is your first visit, scroll down and click ‘Register as an Individual’ to enter your name, address, email and a secure password. Tick the terms and conditions, then click ‘Submit’.
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Use the GRO’s BMD indexes to save money Nick Peers reveals how to use the GRO’s site to order birth and death records for just £7 he key to unlocking the stories of our ancestors’ lives begins and ends (quite literally) with birth and death records. And for events after 1837, when civil registration was introduced in England and Wales, copies of those records can be ordered from the General Register Office (GRO). Previously, copies of birth, marriage and death records had to be ordered as certificates costing £11, but now you can order uncertified digital copies of birth and death records for just £7 (marriage records still have to be ordered as certificates). The digital copies come as PDF files which are universal, and provide an exact electronic copy of the original document you can print out or attach to your tree. Although sites like freebmd.org.uk offer indexes to the GRO’s records, there is an advantage to using the GRO’s own indexes when searching for births and deaths. Unique to them, they supply the mother’s maiden name for birth records and age of death on death records Be aware that some entries all the way back to 1837, in the BMD indexes may meaning you are less likely be recorded in the quarter to order the wrong record, ause following the event bec saving you even more of a delay in registration. money as well as time.
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SHDUFK TKH *52 IQGH[HV Once signed up, log into the website
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to view the main menu as shown above. If you already have the information you need (name; certificate type; quarter and place of event; plus volume number and page) skip to Step 7; otherwise, click ‘Search the GRO Indexes’.
CKRRVH WKLFK IQGH[ TR SHDUFK At the present time, you can
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search the birth and death indexes only – one advantage of using the GRO birth index is that you can use the mother’s maiden name for all searches, not just those from September 1911 onwards. Choose ‘Birth’ or ‘Death’ to start your search.
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EQWHU WKDW YRX KQRZ First enter the event year (if you’re
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not 100 per cent sure when this was, extend the search up to two years either side of the date). More search fields will appear: names, sex, mother’s surname (if applicable) and so on. Fill in what you can – name, sex and year as a bare minimum – and click ‘Search’.
RHÀQH Results If too many results are returned, try adding extra
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details where you can. If you can’t find your ancestor among the list of results, try searching a different year, or widening the search by removing some of the search fields or loosening the ‘Exact Matches Only’ rule for names.
OUGHU YRXU CHUWLÀFDWH 2U 3') If you find a match, select it
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and you’ll see three buttons indicating the ordering options. The cheapest is PDF (£7 per record) – click this to jump to the ‘Place an Order’ section with the details already filled in. Scroll down checking the details before clicking ‘Submit’. Skip to Step 8.
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OUGHU MDQXDOO\ If you already have the information you need,
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click ‘Place an Order’. Choose ‘England or Wales’, then select the certificate type. Enter the year that the event took place, then fill in the rest of the details from your own research. Choose the ‘PDF’ option, add a personal reference, and click ‘Submit’.
3D\ )RU YRXU 5HFRUG(s) When you reach the basket summary
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screen, review your order. You can order more records or certificates from here, or click ‘Checkout’. Click ‘Confirm’ when prompted, then choose your card type (Mastercard, Visa or Maestro) before entering the required information. Click ‘Make Payment’.
'RZQORDG YRXU 3') 5HFRUG V You’ll be given an estimated
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delivery date for when your PDF(s) will be ready – about a week in most cases. You’ll receive an email when they’re available – log into the website and click ‘My Orders’, then enter your order number or use the date picker to locate and download your PDFs.
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ADOPTION
FOCUS ON
Adoption Researching adoption presents particular challenges for family historians. Gill Rossini explains the records that you need to access
Residents of Dr Barnardo’s Babies Castle, in Hawkhurst, Kent, in the 1930s get some fresh air
iecing together the diverse and tantalising fragments of an adoption frequently involves painstaking research. Until the late 1920s adoptions were largely informal, rarely generating any meaningful paperwork and not enforceable in
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law. Organisations such as children’s homes and adoption societies were
were intra-family adoptions, or ‘stranger’ adoptions, with no paperwork at all.
Adoption of Children Act became law. Adoptions could now be legally recognised and recorded, and the adopted child had the status of a parent’s biological child, although it’s important to note that informal adoptions still continued for years. This
‘From 1 Januar y 1927 adoptions could be legally recognised’
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sometimes short-lived, and their records have not survived; other adoptions
The situation changed significantly on 1 January 1927, when the 1926
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FOCUS ON &HUWLÀFDWH 2I $GRSWLRQ
1
3
2
A child being sent to a children’s home, c1880s
legal process could be supported by intermediaries such as adoption agencies, charities and individuals. Over the decades, the secrecy surrounding legal adoption intensified, and this development eventually led to birth families being entirely shut out. Because pre-1927 adoptions had no legal weight, there was no compulsion on either the birth or the adoptive family to stick to the arrangement. They could end abruptly, creating an unstable environment for the child. Some adoptees were claimed back by their birth parents once they reached working age, while others were returned by their adoptive parents for reasons that may seem hugely trivial, such as the child having the ‘wrong’ hair colour. The only ‘permanent’ arrangements were those that were made by the local board of guardians, who managed poor relief and could foster
out children in their care. Without legal formalities and proper supervision, a child’s origins were soon lost.
How Can I Trace Pre-1927 Adoptions? First, if you suspect that a child was informally adopted into your family, study their name. Do any middle names or changes of surname hint at birth parentage? Also, place of birth on the census may be different to that of other siblings, and variations in surname and relationship to head of household can occur with each census. Family stories may have been passed down of a child’s ‘mother’ actually being the grandmother, while their sister is in fact the biological mother, and so on.
1E
NTRY
This is the identifying entry number in the Adopted Children Register (ACR) that is maintained by the General Register Office (GRO).
to bastardy papers such as affiliation orders, as well as poor-relief records such
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IRTH DETAILS
The inclusion of the time shows that ‘Lynn’ is one of a multiple birth. Only the country is given, to conceal information about her biological origins.
as a place to give birth. From c1900, the Board of Guardians could assume parental rights over a child and organise their foster care. Pauper foster children could be illegitimate or from abjectly poor or neglectful families. Poor-relief and bastardy records are housed
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Second, most adopted or fostered children were illegitimate, which widens the range of useful records
as workhouse admission and birth registers – where the mother resorted to the workhouse infirmary
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‘Some adoptees were claimed back once they reached working age’
ADOPTION
This document is shared with the kind permission of the adopted child mentioned on the certificate. Her name is now different to the one stated here, and her parents have died
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ORENAMES
Adoptive parents taking on children old enough to know their birth forenames often retained them, to minimise disruption to the child.
at county and local archives, and may be available online. Third, search for records of institutions. Hospital records
TOP TIP! An adopted person’s relatives can use an intermediary service to make contact with biological and non-biological relatives, if the adoption took place before 2005.
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4S
URNAME
The only surname on the certificate is that of the adoptive parents – note that there is no mention of the adoptive mother’s own birth surname.
may reveal information about mother and baby, as could the records of mother and baby homes and adoption societies from c1900 onwards. Early examples are the National Adoption Society, the National Children Adoption Association and the British-American Adoption Society. The likes of Dr Barnardo’s and the Waifs and Strays Society
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5C
OURT
The date of the adoption order is given here, plus the court validating the adoption. Counties’ family courts dealt with adoptions in the 1950s.
recorded the fostering of hundreds of children in their care in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, although note that some institutional records are sealed for 100 years for privacy reasons. Finally, local solicitors sometimes drew up private maintenance arrangements between birth parents until such time as the child was adopted or the mother married; these may
6D
ATES
The certificate of adoption, which in this example is dated 19 March 1958, could only be issued after the adoption was recorded in the register.
be deposited in the local archive. Occasionally, a birth father might acknowledge illegitimate offspring in his will, or adoptive parents may refer to the adopted child’s status in their will.
How Can I Trace Adoptions From 1927? First, check the Adopted Children Register. The register is maintained by the General Register 63
FOCUS ON Office (GRO), and contains details of adoptions authorised by order of a court in England or Wales on or after 1 January 1927. The only information available from the Adopted Children Register is a certified copy of an entry – a new ‘certificate of origins’ for the adopted person. To obtain your own adoption certificate, you must be over 18, and apply to the GRO itself (see gov.uk/ adoption-records). Second, the GRO operates an Adoption Contact Register, which shows whether or not an individual wishes to make contact with birth family or a child adopted out of a family. Both parties must consent, or contact cannot go ahead. You must be 18 or over to apply, and have your birth or adoption registered with the GRO. A small fee is charged. Third, track down the birth certificate. If the birth name of the adopted person is known, the original entry can be found in the GRO’s index of birth registrations, and there may be a handwritten note against the entry referring to an adoption. The index is best searched online using subscription websites like Findmypast (findmypast. co.uk). The certificate can then be purchased from
Florence Horsbrugh 1889–1969 This campaigner revolutionised the adoption system and improved the lives of countless children Florence, Baroness Horsbrugh was a dynamic politician and campaigner whose career was devoted to the welfare and protection of the vulnerable. For her dedication as head of the Ministry of Munitions canteen, and for m managing a ‘cooked food bank’ for families in the First World War, she was awarded the MBE BE in 1920. She assisted with arrangements for the evacuation of children in the Second World War, and in 1951 became the first female member of a Conservative cabinet, as minister of education. IIn 1936, Horsbrugh was deemed the perfect choice to chair a parliamentary p a committee to examine the workings of the 1926 Adoption of Children Act, which was raising significant concerns aabout its effectiveness. Through interviewing 65 witnesses, the committee uncovered a sorry mix of neglect, lies, failure to ensure that adoptions were legalised, the use of inappropriate foster parents, and inadequate or missing assessments of adoptive parents. Young children were sent unaccompanied overseas to be adopted by people the societies had not adequately vetted, while others suffered malnourishment or neglect at the hands of adoptive parents or even the staff of adoption societies. Under Horsbrugh’s guidance, the committee recommended that the adoption process be tightened, and that adoptive parents be better scrutinised, with compulsory application forms and checks on health, income and home conditions. Horsbrugh’s Adoption of Children (Regulation) Bill (1938) finally became law in 1943, improving the chances of adopted children enjoying, in her words, “affection, a happy home and a good upbringing”.
the GRO. If you don’t know your birth name or which adoption agency was involved, you must apply to the GRO to request access to your birth records. If you were adopted before 12 November 1975 in England and Wales, you will be asked to meet with an adoption social worker who will have
the information you need to access your birth records. Fourth, the adoptive family could have legal papers relating to the adoption procedure, or letters and other correspondence – perhaps from an adoption agency, a mother and baby home, or a charity such as the Children’s Society.
These might refer to home visits, appraisals and other pre-adoption checks. Also, birth mothers sometimes handed over mementos such as photographs and baptism certificates, and occasionally there are pre-adoption photographs of the child perhaps taken in a foster or children’s home or adoption-
Expert Picks
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Adoption Search Reunion
Ancestry
GHQHUDO 5HJLVWHU 2IÀFH
w www.adoptionsearchreunion.org.uk Set up by the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, this is a key website for tracing birth records and birth/adoptive family.
w ancestry.co.uk The varied records on subscription websites such as Ancestry can help you uncover the background and birth relatives of an adoptee.
w gov.uk/adoption-records The GRO’s website offers advice on accessing the records it holds, including the Contact Register and the Adopted Children Register.
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Gill recommends these three websites to any family historians investigating an adoption
ADOPTION
RESOURCES How you can find out more
BOOKS
The Adoptee’s Guide to DNA Testing Tamar Weinberg Family Tree Books, 2018 Although primarily aimed at the US market, this is a wellbalanced and informative overview of the uses of DNA testing in adoption research.
A Child for Keeps: the History of Adoption in England, 1918–45 Jenny Keating Palgrave Macmillan, 2008 Keating provides a thorough account of the story of adoption before and after the 1926 Act came into effect.
Children at a Dr Barnardo’s home in Woodford Bridge, Essex, in the 1940s eat chocolate bars sent by a US manufacturer
society nursery, which if identified with the date and location can be invaluable. Finally, crucial information can be found in unlikely places. One man, adopted in the 1950s as a child,
used by birth relatives and adopted people to locate each other. An autosomal DNA test can be taken by either gender and may provide matches on both the birth father and mother’s
using social media, DNAtesting match lists, or any other informal search process, tread very carefully. Contacting new relatives is potentially fraught with emotional challenges, and
‘Contacting new relatives is potentially fraught with emotional challenges’ discovered a list of his preadoption foster homes in his GP’s medical records.
Can I Use DNA PURÀOLQJ To Research Adoptions? Absolutely – genetic genealogy is increasingly
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DID YOU KNOW? People who were adopted pre-1927 sometimes revert to, or otherwise include, their original birth name on their marriage certificate, or name their birth father if known.
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sides of the family. Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk/dna) has the largest database of profiles, potentially offering the best chance of a match. Alternative companies include (23andme.com) and FamilyTreeDNA (familytreedna.com).
Should I Use An Intermediary To Contact My ‘New’ Birth Family? If you are searching beyond the remit of government agencies, then no. However, when
the last thing you want to do is upset or alienate the very people who you want to connect with. It is advisable to leave the initial contact to an impartial third party, or use the GRO’s Adoption Contact Register. This particularly applies to pre-1976 adoptees, for whom the birth family is more likely to be an unknown quantity, and where birth parents are likely to be elderly and
A History of Adoption in England and Wales, 1850–1961 Gill Rossini Pen & Sword, 2014 Gill’s book includes a guide to the resources available for researching adoptions. WEBSITES
FORMER CHILDREN’S HOMES w formerchildrenshomes. org.uk Here you will find excellent background information on a wide variety of children’s homes, and guidance on the whereabouts of records.
THE WORKHOUSE w workhouses.org.uk Peter Higginbotham’s site is the ideal place to explore the involvement of the poor-relief authorities in ‘boarding out’, fostering and adoption.
vulnerable. Excellent advice is available through the recommended websites.
GILL ROSSINI is a social and family history researcher who is currently writing her second book on the history of adoption
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EUREKA MOMENT How a reader broke down a research brick wall
‘I Uncovered My Wife’s Great Grandfather’s YOUR Adventures In Russia’ D
IS
C OV E R I E
Cynthia Williams believed that her great grandfather had worked in Russia, and been recognised by the Tsar for his achievement. Her husband Bill has carried out intriguing detective work to discover more about this family legend. By Gail Dixon
D
uring the 19th century, southwest Wales led the world in the coppersmelting industry. Its skilled workers emigrated to the USA, Australia and Chile where major deposits of copper ore had been found. Other Welsh smelters, including Henry Davies, made arduous and dangerous journeys across Europe to take employment in isolated copper works. His descendant’s husband Bill Williams tells us more…
My Brick Wall My wife Cynthia had always believed that her paternal great grandfather Henry Davies had travelled to Russia in the early 1900s to advise on copper smelting. Apparently, the Tsar rewarded his efforts with a pocket watch and a letter of thanks. I was keen to establish the truth.
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Henry was born in 1857 in Conwil, Carmarthenshire. In about 1875 he moved to Burry Port, near Llanelli, and began smelting lead and later copper at Elliot’s Metal Company. He became a highly skilled foreman cupola smelter. This was heavy work in a dangerous environment, surrounded by fumes, sparks and hot molten metals. Henry married Mary David and they had 12 children, including Cynthia’s grandmother Gertrude. Cynthia’s living relations had only limited knowledge of Henry’s journeys to Russia, although it was believed that Elliot’s Metal Company received a request from the Russian government to establish a copper works in Siberia, possibly Yekaterinburg. This was all the information I had to go on, until I saw the collection of memorabilia that Cynthia had inherited about
Henry’s time in Russia. Although treasured, these documents had never been examined properly and it wasn’t until I reviewed them that the true story emerged.
My Eureka Moment BILL WILLIAMS is a retired management consultant born in Anglesey, Wales. He now lives in Lutterworth, Leicestershire
Left: Henry Davies stands in front of a cupola furnace at the copper smelter in Dzansoul, c1906 Centre: Henry’s pocket watch Right: Henry and colleagues at John Williams’ grave
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Henry had journeyed to Russia twice and sent 31 postcards home that he acquired en route to his destination. This helped me to build a timeline of his ventures. The first trip was made in 1903, probably on secondment. A letter of recommendation from Elliot’s Metal Company describes Henry as an “excellent workman in smelting difficult ores”. The journey to Russia would have taken at least a fortnight. An agent of the hiring company would have acted as a translator. However, it was a risky time to travel. Workers’ strikes, peasant unrest and military mutinies were edging the country towards the
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British Passport, 1906
Henry Davies’ passport is a fascinating piece of evidence that reveals more clues about his time in Russia
1F
REEDOM OF MOVEMENT
Passports were not usually required for international travel until 1914. Russia was different, and foreigners were issued with documentation or had their passport stamped upon arrival.
2G
OVERNMENT ISSUE
1 2 3
As is the case to this day, a British passport had to be issued by the Government. Henry’s passport was signed by the office of the foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey.
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3
STEP BACK IN TIME
The red date stamp gives Henry’s arrival as 14 October, which was nine days before the passport was issued in London. This apparent anomaly occurred because Russia was still following the Julian calendar.
4R
USSIAN TEXT
Bill would love to hear from anyone who can decipher the intricate Russian wording on the stamps. Email the magazine if you can offer any help.
1905 revolution. Would Henry have known of the dangers? The belief that he worked in Siberia proved to be out by at least 1,000 miles. His destination was Georgia’s Black Sea coast and the village of Dzansoul (now Murgul in Turkey). The village was high in the Pontic Mountains, 40 miles south of the city of Batoum (now Batumi). A postcard gives the Mattievich & Co smelting works address where Henry worked as a consultant. Finding photographs among the collection was a real coup. One of them depicts Henry standing by the smelter with his Russian counterparts, who were dressed in thick fur hats and coats. The initial venture must have been successful: Henry’s passport and other postcards reveal that he returned to Dzansoul in 1906. This time he was accompanied by his son Samuel and Burry Port colleagues David Rowlands and John Williams. Henry had taken the risk of resigning from his job at Elliot’s to work independently. whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
My Breakthrough One photograph in particular emphasises the dangers that the men were facing. It was taken in January 1907 and shows Henry, Samuel and David standing by a graveside in Russia. John Williams had contracted smallpox and died on 31 December 1906. The Llanelli Mercury reported that John’s death had taken place in Siberia. However, the graveside photograph must have been taken in Dzansoul, not least because if it had been taken in Siberia then it would only show a whiteout. Henry returned to Wales in May 1907 and never ventured back to Russia. He worked as a tin smelter and later in Nobel’s Explosives’ munitions factory near Pembrey. He died of a heart attack at work in 1916. Sadly, I think it’s unlikely Henry was awarded a letter (now lost) and watch by the Tsar, although the watch face has a portrait resembling Alexander II, who was assassinated in 1881. It’s a Hunter piece and has a Swiss silver
Top: this photo of Henry (centre) with his son Samuel (left) and colleague David Rowlands was taken in Russia in 1907
hallmark dated after 1880. It may have been a commemorative piece bestowed with gratitude by Mattievich & Co. It has been so satisfying uncovering the story of these plucky Welshmen, and I couldn’t have done it without my wife’s treasure trove of memorabilia.
Reader Tips What advice does Bill have for someone researching their tree?
HAVE YOU BROKEN THROUGH A BRICK WALL? Share your family story with us and you could appear in the magazine! Please write to us at the address on page 6 or email wdytyaeditorial@ immediate.co.uk
• Try not to accept evidence at face value. Corroborate it with other sources, such as records from the General Register Office (GRO) and parish registers. • Look to see if there are any overlapping online family trees to check findings and possibly find new images of relatives. • Seek out married women’s maiden names. This helps to identify offspring and confirm they belong to the right family.
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An engraving depicting milk vendors in St James’s Park in London, c1880
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URBAN DAIRIES
The
demand for
dairy P icture the scene: a bustling Victorian city ringing to the sound of industry and commerce, the hum and clatter of machinery churning out mass-produced goods interspersed with the distinctive mooing of cows. We’re used to considering 19th-century urban life as characterised by factories, mills and smog, so the presence of large livestock seems decidedly incongruous. Yet strange as it might now seem, city dairies were once a common sight, often situated cheek-by-jowl with residential properties in densely populated areas. Regency London was home to thousands of cattle, and contrasting estimates place 12,000–40,000 dairy cows in the capital by the mid-19th century. This was echoed in cities across the country, with some small urban dairies still operating as recently as the 1980s. Among the many factors that saw the rise of the urban dairy, a key ingredient was a growing appetite for fresh milk. The population in Victorian Britain was both rising dramatically and increasingly urbanised. As tea – served with milk – became increasingly fashionable among
whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
Felix Rowe explains rich and poor, so demand how urban both for the white stuff soared in the dairies cities. In fact, tea was actively delivered promoted by the authorities as a drink for a productive milk to our respectable working class, at a time when ancestors cheap gin was condemned for its in the degenerative effects on society. 19th and Business early 20th Big Hospitals and convalescence centuries homes were big customers, serving milk to patients and infants to help provide sustenance. Annual provisions for the Royal National Hospital on the Isle of Wight in 1880 (which had 160 beds) included 55,048 pints of milk at £400 and a further 28,394 pints produced by the hospital’s farm. Later, the advent of breakfast cereal, again served with milk, maintained demand into the 20th century. Of course unlike cheese, which matures with age, milk is highly perishable. Before railways and improved preservation techniques enabled large quantities to be brought in daily from the neighbouring countryside, time was of the essence. Simply put, milk had to be produced close to where it was to be consumed. 69
British Geographers in 1977, in mid-19th-century London “the idea of a clearcut distinction between urban and rural life had yet to develop”. Dairies were simply an extension of this. Some existing rural dairies on the city fringe were simply absorbed and assimilated into the encroaching urban sprawl. But purpose-built operations sprang up too. At the lower end, a cottage industry might simply consist of a small end-terrace property with a couple of cows
A milkmaid carries pails along Middle Row, St Giles, High Holborn, c1838
Richard Laycock 1771–1834 Why London’s milk-drinkers used to bow down to the king of ‘Cow Town’
No individual epitomises the 1987: “From Tudor times, ‘capitalist cowkeeper’ more Islington had been known completely than Richard as ‘Cow Town’, a Parish of Laycock of Islington. Dairy Farms and ‘the place Born into a family of where groweth creame’.” established goose-farmers, By 1810, the year of his he took over what would stepfather’s death, Laycock become Laycock’s Dairy had built up an empire of on Liverpool Road from his between 500 and 600 cows. stepfather, North London The scale and industrious The milking shed of Laycock’s landowner Daniel Sebbon. approach of Laycock’s Dairy Farm in Highbury The areas of pasture on the operation set him apart, taking city’s northern perimeter had a long and clear cues from the factory system. esteemed heritage of rich pasture and highHe was a successful property developer too, quality dairy produce. As Jill Hetherington building grand addresses around Canonbury, notes in ‘Dairy Farming in Islington in the Early while Laycock Street still bears his name. A Nineteenth Century: the Career of Richard contemporary description of his opulent fiveLaycock’, published in Transactions of the storey house, with marble bath and stainedLondon & Middlesex Archaeological Society in glass windows, suggests he lived like royalty.
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in the yard, or a shop window offering fresh milk direct from the cow round the back. However, economies of scale could be achieved by the enterprising. As Atkins says, producers from traditional farming backgrounds met competition from “the emergence of a class of ‘capitalist’ cowkeepers able to finance milk production on a large scale”.
Inner-City Grazing Throughout the early 19th century, city parks and even football pitches were utilised for grazing. One 1837 account attests that cows at pasture were a regular sight in Central London’s Green Park overlooking Buckingham Palace. Increasingly, with inner-city space at a premium, farmers had to graze their herds further outside the city or resort to permanent incarceration in stall-fed cowhouses – what has been referred to as ‘rudimentary factory farming’. To supplement or even replace pasture, many city dairies relied on ‘brewers’ grains’ – a cheap industrial-waste product, apparently more nutritious than might be supposed. The practice was mirrored in the USA, where urban ‘distillery dairies’ kept cows to eat the spent grains, selling the milk to supplement their brewing income. Despite an apparently symbiotic relationship, malpractice led to public-health whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
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Self-sufficiency within towns was vital. Even London, one of the world’s biggest trade capitals, needed this local supply to sustain daily life. The solution was simple: urban dairies to service the local population. From the off, livestock of all shapes and sizes were a common sight in burgeoning cities, where backyard farming was the norm. As PJ Atkins notes in ‘London’s Intra-Urban Milk Supply, circa 1790–1914’, published in Transactions of the Institute of
URBAN DAIRIES
scares over so-called ‘swill milk’. The demand for milk came at a cost, not least for the cows themselves. City dairies, such as Wright’s Dairy in Chelsea (later to become part of food manufacturer Unigate), traded on their high standards of hygiene and the freshness of their milk – even inviting customers to inspect the premises. However, all too many cattle were routinely kept in squalid conditions, with little exercise or daylight. The more unscrupulous dairies might water
water. Other attempts at cleaning up the business followed. How consistently these measures were enforced is debatable, but increased regulation certainly put some dairies out of business.
Workers outside the Bishop & Son dairy on Blackfriars Road, Southwark, c1900 Below: a dairymaid sells milk in the streets, c1813
Train For Success According to David Taylor’s ‘Growth and Structural Change in the English Dairy Industry, c1860–1930’, published in The Agricultural History Review in 1987: “The advent of the railway was to prove a decisive factor
a trend that continued up until the disruption of the First World War. The cattle “would live in yards, be fed on fresh grass from local parks and even football grounds and many families would also run delivery rounds”. Supposedly, there were some 4,000 dairy cows in the city at the peak. Some residents still remember cows in their neighbourhoods in the 1980s. Elsewhere, Welsh drovers migrated to London from Cardiganshire to set up dairies. Historic shopfronts still exist, such as for the Lloyd & Son Welsh dairy on the corner of Amwell Street in Finsbury. Various other factors played a part in the urban dairy’s demise. Supermarket chains offering low-cost convenience are often cited as killing off local industry. Certainly the big chains may have delivered a decisive blow, but city-produced milk was already in decline countrywide by this point. Atkins marks 1840–1914 as the period of decline for London’s urban dairies. The combination of increasing regulation and
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‘Too many cattle were routinely kept in squalid conditions’ down the milk – a particular concern when the local water supply itself was often unclean. Bouts of cattle disease had a notable effect on the industry from the mid-1840s onwards. The 1842 lifting of a ban on European cattle imports was partially responsible for outbreaks of disease in following years. Many animals were slaughtered in an attempt to stop the spread and minimise losses. Disease nullified the economy of scale achieved in larger operations, and the size of dairies slumped as a result. In 1853, John Simon, the medical officer of health for the city of London, introduced measures regulating the conditions in cowhouses, including drainage, space, ventilation and the supply of whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
in the demise of urban milk production.” He notes that, from the 1860s, the “network opened up the possibility of new, external sources of supply to the everincreasing number of town and city dwellers”. Notwithstanding this underlying trend, other sources from living memory paint a different picture, highlighting regional anomalies. A Sense of Place (asenseofplace.com), a blog sharing memories of Liverpudlian city dairies, suggests – on the contrary – that the railways helped to facilitate, rather than hinder, them. Citing Duncan Scott’s book Urban Cowboys (2010), Ronnie Hughes argues that the increased mobility via rail from the 1860s actually lured farmers from North Yorkshire into the city – 71
Resources Take your research further
BOOKS
The Cowkeeper’s Wish Tracy Kasaboski and Kristen den Hartog Douglas & McIntyre, 2019 Two sisters have researched the moving tale of their Welsh ancestors, who migrated on foot to London with their cattle.
Cows, Cobs & Corner Shops Megan Hayes Y Lolfa, 2018 Hayes tells the story of how Welsh dairy farmers supplied consumers in London.
brick houses or shops – perhaps book-ended by a lean-to shack – might well signal a former dairy. Often this space between the buildings has been filled by recent development. A more obvious clue on a building’s facade is evidence of a wide, high-arched opening the size of a garage door – perhaps now bricked up – where the cows were brought to and from pasture. In some cases, the historic signage still hangs or remains painted on the
Volunteers help to distribute supplies of milk across the country from Paddington Station, London, during the General Strike, 1926
Spotting Urban Dairies Traces of dairies and cowhouses remain today in many city centres and suburbs. Typical of countless former industrial buildings, those that still stand have likely been converted into homes, retail units or office spaces – even art galleries! A seemingly insignificant gap or yard punctuating a terraced row of Victorian red72
brickwork. If you’re lucky, you might spot the telltale ‘bust’ of a cow’s head mounted high above the entrance of the building. Although the cowhouse is long gone, several alternative city farms have sprung up in their absence in the latter half of the 20th century. Notable examples built on former industrial sites with the aim of promoting green values in urban spaces include Spitalfields City Farm, London, and Windmill Hill City Farm, Bristol. With growing calls for reduced food miles and sustainable living, it might not quite be the end of the urban farmer.
Duncan Scott DWS Publications, 2010 Scott provides a fascinating insight into urban dairies. MUSEUMS
MUSEUM OF ENGLISH RURAL LIFE
ust” of “b le a llt te e th t o sp t h ig m u o ‘Y ce’ n a tr n e e th ve o b a d a e h ’s w a co important. Since cheap daily milk was now readily available from the neighbouring countryside, it was simply no longer profitable or even desirable to produce it within the city.
Urban Cowboys
a University of Reading, 6 Redlands Road, Reading RG1 5EX t 0118 378 8660 w merl.reading.ac.uk/ collections/dairy-collection The museum has documents and literature relating to the wider dairy industry. WEBSITES
COWKEEPERS w johnhearfield.com/ Cowkeeping/Cowkpr1.htm This useful introduction to historic cowkeeping in London lists several primary sources.
THE LIBRARY TIME MACHINE
FELIX ROWE writes for various history magazines and edited Tim Taylor’s 2019 book Time Team’s Dig Village
w rbkclocalstudies.wordpress. com/2015/10/08/milk Dave Walker’s blog collates ephemera from the historic milk trade in London.
A SENSE OF PLACE w bit.ly/ASOPCowhouses See photos of former cowhouses hidden in the city of Liverpool.
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a growing desire among the rising middle class for better living standards away from the sensory onslaught of livestock put strain on city cowkeepers. With soaring land rents and growing pressure from developers, space for pasture and cowsheds steadily decreased and the dairies were finally squeezed out. Growing rail networks, improved preservation from pasteurisation and, later, refrigeration made the need for speed and a city location less
Around Britain
Wiltshire Jonathan Scott makes a return visit to Moonraker country
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The village of Castle Combe in Wiltshire, about five miles northwest of Chippenham
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New Ways Of Working Unable to host on-site talks, staff instead created a range of online videos and readings. County librarian Julie Davis turned a talk on the Home Front into
a narrated film, and recorded extracts of her 2016 book From Blackout to Bungalows about how the Second World War and its aftermath affected Wiltshire. Staff used the first lockdown to conduct research on various topics including militia records, the architecture of Salisbury and the Kennet and Avon Canal, while others worked on the ‘Living in Lockdown’ project, collecting
rvice ‘Every aspect of our public se ible’ ss has been made as safe as po diary entries, poems, art, photos etc reflecting local residents’ experience of the pandemic. The Know Your Place website (kypwest.org.uk) contains many layers of mapping and contextual information for Wiltshire and other counties. During lockdown staff have added scanned copies
Wiltshire Through the Ages 1227 Salisbury receives its city charter under the name ‘New Sarum’. Sailsbury doesn’t become its official name until 2009.
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1258 The main body of the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary (better known today as Salisbury Cathedral) is finished.
Frank Reynolds mends a cane chair in Chippenham in May 1931
of tithe awards, giving details of landowners and occupiers plus land use for parishes across the county. They’ve also added more material to Wiltshire Community History (history.wiltshire.gov.uk/ community), a useful council-run website that has parish-by-parish local and social histories. The centre itself has a relatively large, open-plan searchroom and library area, meaning that staff have been able to redesign it for socially distanced research. “Great thought and energy have been put into every aspect of interaction with our visitors, from providing access to computer terminals to handing out map weights, and every aspect of our public service has been made as safe as possible.” The archive now operates an appointments-only system, and all items must be requested a week in advance to enable time to quarantine documents and books. The archive holds parish
baptism, marriage and burial registers from across the county, and all registers up to 1916 have been digitised and indexed on Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk), which also has probate material. A project to digitise nonconformist collections has recently been completed, and the resulting
Historical highlights from the region
1632 Architect Christopher Wren is born in East Knoyle.
1666 Pioneering archaeologist John Aubrey records the first detailed plan of the prehistoric monument Stonehenge.
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ou can discover amazing things in our collections,” says Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre archivist David Plant. “We all have our favourites. The 1604 pedigree of the Seymour family is a colourful joy to behold, an estate plan embellished with a border depicting various real and mythical creatures – plus we have correspondence from the likes of Florence Nightingale, ‘Capability’ Brown, Thomas Hardy and George III. “Recently we acquired a 1626 charter issued by Charles I granting Swindon the right to hold a market, which is a welcome addition to our collections. Also, I’ve recently come across an unusual item in the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry collection dating from the Second Boer War. It’s a piece of material containing a message sent by Sir Godfrey Lagden from Maseru giving instructions to Major White commanding at Ladybrand. What’s particularly unusual is that it was reportedly smuggled in a messenger’s shoe.” Although 2020 was a year of challenges for the county archives, David says that the disruption to normal procedures provided opportunities to try new things.
AROUND BRITAIN
Free Online Records The best free resources for anyone with relations from Wiltshire, including records of quarter sessions, trade directories, and indexes to births, marriages and deaths
Stones at Stonehenge that fell in 1900 are moved back into position on 25 March 1958
Trade Directories
Victoria County History
w bit.ly/specialwiltshire
w history.ac.uk/research/ victoria-county-history/ county-histories-progress/wiltshire
The University of Leicester’s site Special Collections Onli Online ine includes Kelly’s directories for Wiltshire from 1867, 1898, 1903 and 1911, as well as a Pigot’s volume from 1822.
images and indexes will be added to Ancestry as well. As the designated repository for the Diocese of the Bishop of Salisbury, the centre is also home to visitation records (giving details of the moral behaviour of members of the parish), matrimonial records (detailing those parishioners who wished to be married by licence) and records of the church courts (covering local disputes and non-attendance). There are also archives of landed estates, military records, a considerable archive of local newspapers on microfilm, material from quarter sessions, and Wiltshire Council’s own archive – this includes material relating to hospitals, planning applications, wartime records and the constabulary.
Parish Registers
Explore the VCH’s many volumes for Wiltshire.
BMD Indexes w wiltshirebmd.org.uk Volunteers have been working with the local registration service to produce indexes to Wiltshire births, marriages and deaths back to 1837.
w wiltshire-opc.org.uk/ genealogy This volunteer-run website holds transcribed genealogical information from parishes across the county. You need to become a member of the site to access the data, but registration is free.
Records Of Quarter Sessions w wiltshirerecordsociety.org.uk Here you can download digitised copies of the society’s publications, which vary from accounts of parliamentary garrisons, to Wiltshire quarter sessions and a book on tradesmen in 17th-century Wiltshire.
Industrial Records For research into working lives the archive has records relating to the Great Western Railway (GWR); Cow & Gate and Unigate; brewing firms Ushers
and Wadworth; and the Westinghouse Brake and Signal Company. Devizes was known for producing blankets, silk
1841
1843
1938
Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Box Tunnel opens between Bath and Chippenham.
The Great Western Railway opens a works at Swindon.
Archaeologists discover a male skeleton underneath a toppled stone at Avebury. Objects found with the man suggest that he worked as a barbersurgeon in the 14th century.
1918 Sir Cecil Chubb gifts Stonehenge to the nation. GETTY IMAGES / ALAMY
came out of Malmesbury, and Wilton produced carpets, while the centre has records of many of the larger cloth manufacturers
1943 The village of Imber (above) is evacuated to allow training for Operation Overlord.
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LOCAL INDUSTRY
Great Western Railway Did any of your ancestors work on the railways?
Members of a Royal Flying Corps squadron on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, 8 April 1913 Locomotive shells at the GWR works in Swindon, July 1934
TOP TIP!
Wiltshire Surnames
Are any of these in your family tree?
AMOR This name is particularly common
MASLEN Maslen and its variants are derived
in the 1881 census districts of Milton Lilborne, Bromham and Pewsey.
from the medieval personal name Masselin.
CLEVERLY This habitational name is thought
PLANK This surname’s origins may be
to come from Claverley in Shropshire.
topographic or occupational, or an anglicised spelling of the Huguenot name Planque.
GIDDINGS A quarter of all of the Giddings
PONTING This is a topographical name for
recorded in 1891 were living in Wiltshire.
someone who lived near a bridge.
GINGELL This name is thought to be related
SPACKMAN This is another early
to a common Bavarian surname.
medieval name. Its variants include Speakman, Spakeman, Spaxman and Spayman.
HIBBERD The surname Hibberd frequently crops up in and around East Tisbury and Wilton, as well as Basingstoke in Hampshire.
76
The county archive looks after more than 1,700 boxes of GWR material, including personnel and pension records. STEAM, the GWR museum in Swindon, has timetables, photographs, drawings, plans and bound volumes of the company magazine (you can browse images via steampicturelibrary.com). Staff records are also available via an extensive Ancestry collection: ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/1728.
WHATLEY This habitational name comes from Old English words for ‘wheat’ and ‘clearing’.
be back adding new acquisitions to our online catalogue very soon. We are also delighted that in the New Year we will begin an externally funded cataloguing project on the business archives of pioneering rubber manufacturer Spencer Moulton and the business, estate and personal archives of Dr Alex Moulton, an inventor and entrepreneur from Bradford on Avon.” Like all historic counties, there are peculiarities to watch out for. The Archdeaconry of Swindon, for example, transferred to the Diocese of Gloucester and Bristol, meaning Bishops’ Transcripts are in Bristol Archives. And if your ancestor came from Charlton, you may have to check registers for Charlton (near Malmesbury), Charlton (near Pewsey) and even Charlton-All-Saints (in Downton). There are also rich museum collections here, while Swindon Central Library has directories, maps, voters’ lists, journals and an extensive photographic collection, in addition to copies of GWR’s staff magazine. whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
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in Trowbridge and Westbury, the Earls of Radnor of Longford such as Samuel Salter and Co Castle, the Earls of Ailesbury of and A Laverton and Co. Other the Savernake Estate, and the highlights include account Earls of Pembroke of E books from a tailor Wilton House. in Salisbury with “Our capacity the names of ffor cataloguing servants at the collections The diocese extends beyond local stately suffered during the historic county, so probate home Wilton lockdown, material that is held by the House, and because it’s not Wiltshire and Swindon History a carpenter’s something we Centre includes items ledger from can work on originating in Berkshire, Purton that from home,” Devon and Dorset. contains local says David. people’s heights “However, we because he doubled as have just launched an h an undertaker. e-volunteering project to Meanwhile the estate archives put one of our collections of earlycontain significant staffing records 20th-century photographs onto – examples include the archives of Know Your Place, and we hope to
Cricklade • Malmesbury •
WILTSHIRE DIRECTORY
Purton •
Royal Wootton Bassett •
• Swindon
Lyneham •
ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES Bristol Archives a B Bond Warehouse (via Create Centre), Smeaton Road, Bristol BS1 6XN t 0117 922 4224 w bristolmuseums.org.uk/ bristol-archives The Archdeaconry of Swindon transferred to the Diocese of Gloucester and Bristol, so its Bishops’ Transcripts can be found in Bristol.
Historic England Archive a The Engine House, Fire Fly Avenue, Swindon SN2 2EH t 01793 414600 e archive@historicengland.org. uk w historicengland.org.uk/ services-skills/archive-services This archive has over 12 million photos, drawings and reports.
Salisbury Cathedral Archives a Chapter Office, 6 The Close, Salisbury SP1 2EF t 01722 555120 w salisburycathedral.org.uk The records here span 900 years and include minute books, correspondence and deeds.
e heritageadmin@wiltshire.gov. uk w wshc.eu The centre looks after parish registers, probate material, and records of courts, schools, hospitals and businesses, and offers a paid research service. There is also an extensive photograph/print collection of more than 53,000 images. A forthcoming app will offer heritage walks around sites in Salisbury.
Wiltshire And Swindon History Centre a Cocklebury Road, Chippenham SN15 3QN t 01249 705500
whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
• Calne • Marlborough
• Lacock Melksham • • Bradford-on-Avon
• Devizes
Burbage •
Trowbridge • • Upavon • Westbury
Warminster •
GROUPS AND SOCIETIES Wiltshire Family History Society a Unit 3, Bath Road Business Centre, Bath Road, Devizes SN10 1XA t 01380 724379 e society@wiltshirefhs.co.uk w wiltshirefhs.co.uk The society runs branch meetings in Chippenham, Devizes, Malmesbury, Salisbury, Swindon and Westbury. There are various online research aids open to all, with more detail for members.
Amesbury •
•Stourton • Tisbury
This museum’s website includes a surname search tool and transcribed War Diaries.
• Salisbury
w wiltshiremuseum.org.uk The museum’s library and archive include transcripts of parish registers, memorial inscriptions, and electoral registers.
Salisbury Museum Wiltshire Record Society w wiltshirerecordsociety.org.uk You can download many texts published by the society for free.
Swindon Central Library a Regent Circus, Swindon SN1 1QG t 01793 463238 e localstudies@swindon.gov.uk w swindon.gov.uk/info/20026/ libraries/302/local_studies_ local_history_and_genealogy The borough’s local-studies material is on the library’s second floor; browse highlights at flickr. com/photos/swindonlocal. There are also staff newsletters and papers for firms such as Austin Rover, British Rail, Garrard, Great Western Railway, Pressed Steel, Wills Tobacco and Vickers.
Chippenham •
MUSEUMS REME Museum a Prince Philip Barracks, Lyneham, Chippenham SN15 4XX t 01249 894869 e enquiries@rememuseum.org. uk w rememuseum.org.uk The archive at the museum of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers is ordinarily open to the public by appointment. There’s also a research service.
a The King’s House, 65 The Close, Salisbury SP1 2EN t 01722 332151 e museum@salisburymuseum. org.uk w salisburymuseum.org.uk The collections here include material relating to local industry.
STEAM — The Museum Of The Great Western Railway a Fire Fly Avenue, Kemble Drive, Swindon SN2 2EY t 01793 466637 e adminsteam@swindon.gov.uk w steam-museum.org.uk Alongside timetables, photos, drawings and plans, the museum has bound volumes of the Great Western Railway Magazine.
7KH 5LÁHV %HUNVKLUH And Wiltshire Museum
Wiltshire Museum
a The Wardrobe, 58 The Close, Salisbury SP1 2EX t 01722 419419 e curator@thewardrobe.org.uk w thewardrobe.org.uk
a 41 Long Street, Devizes SN10 1NS t 01380 727369 e archive@wiltshiremuseum. org.uk
WEBSITES 0RRQUDNHUV :LOWVKLUH Genealogy And Wiltshire History w moonrakers.org.uk This long-running heritage and family history site is unmissable.
Royal Voluntary Service Archive w bit.ly/rvs-archive The heritage collection in Devizes is currently closed, but staff hope to offer a ‘Virtual Reading Room’ from January 2021.
Wiltshire At War w www.wiltshireatwar.org.uk Find out more about the county’s role in the First World War.
Wiltshire Community History w history.wiltshire.gov.uk/ community This website has information about 261 county communities.
77
The Revolution
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THE CENSUS YEARS
28 MAY
21.1 million The number of people living in the UK, according to the census
George IV’s arrival in Dublin on his Royal visit to Ireland in 1821
THE CENSUS 1821 The third UK census saw the inclusion of Ireland for the first time, and greater demands placed on the enumerators. Jad Adams reveals how they managed or the first time in 1821, Ireland was included in the census. Early attempts to conduct a census there had failed because the process relied on superintendents of the Poor Law or schoolmasters to enumerate the population. Ireland had suffered from wretchedly bad administration; there were no overseers of the poor, and few schoolmasters. After several attempts at enumeration, in order to conduct
F
the 1821 census, the authorities resorted to the law and Ireland’s boards of magistrates were delegated to appoint enumerators; they appointed policemen. However, this was not a happy
minority ruled with laws that assured their ascendancy. Catholics could vote (if otherwise qualified) but could not sit in parliament or hold important civil, judicial or administrative offices under the Crown, or take degrees at Oxford, Cambridge or Durham. This was the case in the whole of the UK, although these restrictive laws were a particular imposition in Ireland where Catholics were in a majority. The more able Catholics, who might have
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‘Ireland had been part of the UK only since 1801, and was a largely hostile country’
whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
situation: magistrates were political appointees, and police officers were mistrusted. Ireland had been part of the UK only since 1801, and was a largely hostile country. A Protestant
79
been encouraged to build up their nation, instead emigrated to places where careers were open to them or became priests. The population was mainly made up of tenant farmers, with little incentive to improve their land which was owned by absentee landlords. Agriculture was too reliant on the single crop of potatoes, which failed periodically. The law was biased against the tenant, so lawlessness became the norm, and was even considered admirable. Most of the population did not respect the UK The average number Government. It was not an easy of legitimate baptised place to be a children per family, census-taker. time that
3.69
If they survived childhood, agriculturalists lived longer
Francis Place 1771–1854 How a radical tailor fough fought ht to im improve the rights of paupers and workers
Franciis Place was born ne Francis near Drury Lane in London, the son of o a sponging-house spongi ing-house owne owner. He went to school to the age oof 14 and always valued educa education as a way of improving th the lot of the poor. He was apprenticed app to a breeches-m breeches-maker, and had early expe experience of radicalism when he led a stri strike. He the then joined the Lond London Corresponding Correspo Society, a group learning from learnin books bo
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that had inspired the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. In 1800 he set up shop as a tailor at 16 Charing Cross, which became a meeting place for radicals. He was friendly with such leading figures as William Godwin, Jeremy Bentham, and James and John Stuart Mill. In 1822 he published Illustrations and Proofs of the Principle of Population in which he controversially proposed that the poor use contraception to reduce poverty. He subsequently successfully worked to repeal the Combination Acts which outlawed trade unions. He also argued for the electoral Reform Bill of 1832, and in 1838 with William Lovett drafted the People’s Charter calling for all men to have the vote.
most desirable”. The clergymen therefore were given the right to act as conciliators between the police and the population. This pleased the clergy and mollified the police, who were prepared to accept divine authority. As if to make up for previous ignorance of the population, the census forms in Ireland recorded more details than were requested elsewhere in the British Isles. The returns asked the names, ages and occupations of everyone; their relationship to the head of the household; and such details as the number of storeys in their homes. The operation found the number of people in Ireland to be 6,801,827. The population was 80–90 per cent rural, or composed of small traders. The population of the largest city, Dublin, was below 250,000.
Lost To The Flames The Irish census returns were burned during a fire at the Public Record Office in Dublin in 1922. Some had already been transcribed, however, and these copies are in the National Archives of Ireland, as are the returns that survived the fire. This first census of the whole of the British Isles showed England had 11,261,437 people, Scotland 2,093,456 and Wales 717,108. The population of Britain had increased by 16–17 per cent since the 1811 census, partly due to the return of soldiers and whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
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population. He circumvented a hostility to at the the enumerators the census was Solving The by contacting taken Irish Mystery Protestant and William Shaw Mason, Catholic clergymen an Irish statistician, had and asking for their laboured for years on the question help. It was therefore under the of the population of Ireland as protection of both Churches secretary to the Commissioners that the census was undertaken. of Public Records. People like Whenever there was a problem, Mason who wished to improve Mason would have a personal the country needed to know more letter sent to the clergymen of the about it. Mason’s long experience district “so as to turn the current taught him to tread gently among of public opinion immediately the sensitivities of the Irish and completely into the channel
THE CENSUS YEARS
1821
Surviving records from the 1821 census for Ireland are more detailed than their counterparts elsewhere ew where in n the UK, UK K, and an nd are freely available online on nlin ne
1
2
3 4
5
6
1 Residence
3 Names Of Inhabitants
the different age categories.
Survival of records for some counties is better than others. This example comes from the townland of Manorland in County Meath. Houses are numbered by the enumerator, but not given any other identifiers.
Most surviving census records from 1821 only name the head of household (some, such as Westminster, only give a surname). In Ireland full names of all the inhabitants were included frequently with relationships.
5 Occupation
2 Storeys
4 Age
The size of properties (whether they had more than one storey) was a simple way to measure someone’s wealth.
The exact age, where known, was given in Ireland. Elsewhere in the UK numerators simply collected the numbers of people in
sailors following the victory over Napoleon at Waterloo. There had also been a reduction in the rate of infant mortality. In this census for the first time enumerators were asked to whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
include the number of males and females in five-year age bands up to 20 years old, and in 10year age-bands after that. Many people had only a general idea of when they were born, so it was
These were given in full in Ireland (rather than just a category), mostly for men, and status for women (for example “widow”).
6 Observations Notes were sometimes added. For example, Alicia Goggan is “here on a visit”.
easier for them to give a loose indication of age. There was a dual objective: census compilers wanted to establish the number of men available to bear arms, and to improve the data for the 81
life-tables that were the basis of insurance schemes.
Resources
Rural Longevity
Learn more about the census
The more detailed enumeration of ages allowed an appreciation of longevity in different areas. Rural Connaught in the west of Ireland had the most centenarians: 104 had passed their 100th birthday among just over one million people. As census scholar Roger Hutchinson notes, “In the whole of the British Isles it appeared that Gaelic-speaking agriculturalists, if they survived high levels of infant mortality, could expect to live the longest lives.” Women were more likely to live to 100 than men. For some superintendents and schoolmasters, compiling the census returns was a bore to be completed with minimal effort. Some enumerators, however, got the bit between their teeth. In the listings for Hendon in Shaftesbury St James, Dorset. London the numbers of windows These were not required by and dogs were noted for each tthe census commissioners, household. This was the but the ‘substantial result of innocent householders’ who h enthusiasm, cconducted the probably eexercise may powered by a have used the h desire to have authority of information on There were roughly half the census matters subject to measure a to tax. a million more women l perceived threat. However, at ta to e than men in th a time of strong Some details population anti-Catholic seem to have been feeling, a darker added just out of purpose seems to interest. In one of the be behind questions surviving records from about the religious persuasion of Hoxay South Ronaldsay on the householders in Marnhull and Orkney Islands the enumerator
500,000
The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker Roger Hutchinson Abacus, 2017 Hutchinson presents a concise guide to the census.
Census Schedules and Listings, 1801–1831 Richard Wall, Matthew Woollard and Beatrice Moring University of Essex, 2012 This introduction includes details of surviving records.
Making Sense of the Census Revisited The 1821 census for South Ronaldsay and Burray, Orkney, is available to view for free on Findmypast. The page above includes a note that Thomas Rosie’s son was “a missionary eaten by Canibals”
Surviving Records Here’s where you can find the records of the 1821 census online
NATIONAL LIST w familyhistory.co.uk/pre1841-census-records
IRELAND w census.nationalarchives.ie/ search
SCOTLAND w bit.ly/nrscotland-guidescensus-pre-1841
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BEDWORTH, WARWICKSHIRE (CD)
MARYLEBONE, LONDON
w bit.ly/nanwfhs-1821bedworth
w bit.ly/fmp-1821-1831marylebone
DARTFORD, KENT
ORKNEY
w bit.ly/fmp-1821-dartfordkent-census
w bit.ly/fmp-1821-orkney
DEVON
SANDAL MAGNA, WAKEFIELD (CD)
w bit.ly/fmp-1821-devon
w bit.ly/chest-1821-sandal
Edward Higgs Institute of Historical Research and TNA, 2005 Higgs explains census records for England and Wales from 1801 to 1901.
felt moved to add beside the name Thomas Rosie, ‘son a missionary eaten by Canibals’ (see above). This additional evidence can only be taken from records that survived, of course. Most of these ‘nominal listings’ compiled before the raw data was sent off to Whitehall were not preserved. Where they do survive, with additional information, they are a treasure trove for historians. A final page for the very thorough (and surviving) listing for Horton in Dorset shows the number of male labourers in the town, the level of wages, the average poor rate per acre, and the level of any allowance for the aged and infirm. The 1801 and 1811 censuses were taken during the long series of wars with France, when people feared taxation or conscription arising from the count. With the conflict over, the 1821 census was more accurate. John Rickman, presiding over the national census, said, “The enumeration of the entire population may be considered complete.” whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
REVIEWS
The latest books on history and genealogy, plus apps, podcasts and websites SOCIAL EQUALITY
Second and third from left: suffragettes Christabel Pankhurst and her mother Emmeline Pankhurst
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A Century Of Female Revolution From Peterloo To Parliament Some of the marchers at the renowned Peterloo political demonstration on 16 August 1819 were wearing the long, g, straight empire-line dresses fashionable in thee period. Such restrictive clothing hardly suggests that they were out to cause trouble for the Establishment, or that they anticipated having to run away from the sabre-wielding Yeomanry (who went on to kill and injure many). Fascinating details such as this encourage the reader of
whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
A Century of Female Revolution to re-examine the arguments about the degree to which the crowd incited the massacre. This is a refreshingly accessible history. The ac author consistently au foregrounds women’s fo contribution to the co debates on suffrage and de rights for the working rig class, showing how these cla were always informed we by the key aspects of 19thcentury politics: the Corn Laws, improvements in public health, the abolition of slavery and the
slave trade, the rise of the labour movement, and much more. The attainment of the vote for many British women just after the First World War did not arise from nowhere: it was the result of (at least) a century-long struggle. This history adroitly joins the dots between women’s less well-publicised sorties into politics – early Female Reform Societies, and contributions to the male-dominated Chartist and trade-union movements – and
Glynis Cooper Pen & Sword, 176 pages, £14.99 better-known elements: the suffragettes, the work undertaken by women during the war, and female MPs in the House of Commons. Cooper explains how each foray by women into the enfranchisement debate helped shape the next, ensuring that the half of the population long deemed “too ruled by emotion and debilitated by menstruation and childbirth to be able to vote with a clear head” were eventually allowed to have their say.
Ruth A Symes is a freelance historian and writer 83
REVIEWS IR
Researching Presbyterian Ancestors In Ireland RESEISARCH H William Roulston Ulster Historical Foundation, 192 pages, £9.99
The Assembly’s College in Belfast, the theological college for the Presbyterian Church, was founded in 1853
Church records are a vital resource for Irish family history research. However, understanding and then navigating the records of the different religious
denominations in Ireland can be challenging. This is particularly true when it comes to the dissenting faiths, such as the Presbyterian Church and its various branches. Commencing with a brief history of the creation and development of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, this book explains the various splits and formation of distinct branches of the faith. There follows a detailed introduction to the records documenting Presbyterian congregations, ministers and the higher governing bodies, which might prove valuable to the genealogist and local historian alike.
Unlike Roulston’s indispensable Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors, his new publication does not contain a comprehensive list of surviving records, but guides the reader to repositories, collections and catalogues tthat should be interrogated for rrelevant material. This book left me feeling eempowered, with a greater understanding of the history u aand organisation of the Church, aand the records that document tthe congregants and ministers. Researching Presbyterian R families in Ireland need not only fa be confined to the traditional b baptismal and marriage registers. b Littered with illuminating extracts from records, Researching Presbyterian Ancestors in Ireland is a detailed and in-depth guide, largely for genealogical research but also for anyone curious about the history of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.
Nicola Morris is director of Timeline (timeline.ie) and vice-president of Accredited Genealogists Ireland
R
YOUR CHANCE TO ASSESS THE LATEST HISTORY AND GENEALOGY BOOKS
Communities Of Resistance Conscience And Dissent In Britain During The First World ld War The term conscientious objector (CO) embraces those who claim exemption from serving in the armed forces on grounds of religion, politics or pacifism. Cyril Pearce’s book may be considered the essential reference work on COs in the First World War in mainly large, English communities. The author points out that while many COs were court-martialled under the 1916 Military Service Act and imprisoned, others were made to take on medical roles and other work of national importance on the roads and land. Surprisingly, after the war had ended some COs were elected under the Labour Party banner and served at national-government level. A bibliography is embodied within the detailed notes located towards the end of the book. The book is compulsive reading, and I felt that it raised questions for further research. For example, did First World War COs
84
CYRIL PEARCE Francis Boutle, 560 pa pages, ages, £30
WW1
COs at Wakefield Work Centre in Yorkshire make their own entertainment
become some of the COs protesting about the Second World War, or were any of the COs protesting about the Second World War offspring of First World War COs?
Andrew Innes, Stevenage
JOIN US… Send us an email if
Andrew has been researching his own and his wife’s family histories for 54 years, and has managed to trace some of their lines as far back as the 1600s
you’d like to join our reviewing panel e wdytyaeditorial@immediate.co.uk
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REVIEWS
DIGITAL PICKS Rosemary Collins highlights three digital resources that caught our eye this month
DOWNLOAD
The National Trust bit.ly/national-trust-zoombackgrounds Free Make your video calls in style with these gorgeous downloadable backdrops from the National Trust. They’ll transport you to rooms in some of the most famous historic properties in the country – from the study at Chartwell, Kent, the family home of Sir Winston Churchill, to Agatha Christie’s library at Greenway, Devon.
VIDEO
The National Archives youtube.com/c/TheNational ArchivesUK/videos Free TNA’s YouTube channel is packed with videos shedding light on the millions of documents it holds, plus interviews with the archivists. The latest video, Images of a Victorian Christmas at The National Archives, uses beautiful historic documents to show how the Christmas customs that we love today developed in Victorian times.
PODCAST
AMANDA J THOMAS
Begin The World Over Again Apple Podcasts/Google Podcasts/Spotify Free This new podcast from Salford’s Working Class Movement Library and theatre company Walk the Plank brings together artists and writers to delve into the stories held within the library’s archives, with such themes as inspiring women, the rise of the welfare state, racism and public access to green spaces.
MEET THE AUTHOR MORGAN JERKINS’ new book Wandering in Strange Lands traces her family history and the roots of African-American culture How did you come to write the book? In the beginning I didn’t want to write about myself. I wanted this broad stroke of talking about African-American customs and traditions through the lens of intergenerational trauma and fear. That was something that was really interesting to me, especially in the age of the Black Lives Matter movement and learning about police surveillance and violence, land displacement, dispossession, and so on and so forth. So I started writing the book, but my editors realised just how distant I was vocally and tonally. You need to have that personal element in there, so that part about my family actually came later. Has the book brought you closer to your roots? When it comes to African-American genealogical research, the work is never done. There’re still things that I’m learning about my family’s history that I didn’t know when I was writing and revising the book. I think what was important about me writing about my family’s history and also trying to trace their migratory paths was that I realised that my affinity was much larger than I thought it was. And it was very healing for me to go back, for example, to Louisiana, which is
where my father’s family is originally from, and to be recognised there. It was like a whole-circle moment. The type of conversations I’m having with family and friends and even strangers about them finding distant family members in my book, or them starting out on doing research of their own, that is what I wanted, and that’s what makes me feel like this work is meant to be done. Why is so much African-American history lost? A lot of our ancestors couldn’t read or write – it was often a death sentence to do that – and so we take our oral history very seriously. But the problem in the mainstream is that written documentation is seen as more veritable than oral history. So what is the truth, the stated or the oral fact? There were some things I knew I could have uncovered if perhaps slavery hadn’t happened, if families weren’t separated all the time, if my people were actually treated as human beings rather than commodities. There were many different parts of my research where I felt like I was going in circles, because I couldn’t find things. I thought it was due to my incapability as a researcher and writer, until I realised that it’s a larger infrastructural problem.
Wandering In Strange Lands: A Daughter Of The Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots By Morgan Jerkins Is Published By HarperCollins (304 pages, £20)
The Nonconformist Revolution
Religious Dissent, Innovation And Rebellion The Nonconformist Revolution is undoubtedly an ambitious work, covering the early 13th to the late 18th century. But it should be said straightaway that it is not designed to help you discover your dissenting ancestors. Baptists, Methodists and a few others are mentioned only in passing. Quakers get a greater look-in, and are suggested as playing a greater part in the overall impact that nonconformity had on society. Many of those attracted to nonconformity were from intelligent middle-class families who were in trades. They
Amanda J Thomas Pen & Sword, 278 pages, £25
NONCONFORMIT turned their energies Y towards business and the emergent technologies. The essential thrust of the book is a discussion about how nonconformists contributed to England’s transformation from a rural to an urban, industrialised population. There are eight Revolutionary Thomas Paine’s house in Lewes pages of family trees in the index. that said, there is a great deal to Overall, the book is very wordy be learnt from this volume about with possibly too much crammed the influence of nonconformists in, and could have benefited on the country’s transition to an from some judicious editing. But urban, manufacturing society.
Paul Blake is the author of Discover Protestant Nonconformity in England & Wales, 2nd Edition (2018) whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com
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TV & RADIO
Jonathan Wright previews upcoming programmes on history and family history
The Dig From Friday 29 January (following a limited cinema release) Netflix
be revealed as a royal grave, perhaps that of Rædwald of East Anglia, c599–c624, and contained some fabulous artefacts. Based on a 2007 novel written by The Dig i tells t ll the th true t story t ry of th the he di discovery iscoveryy of an Anglo-Saxon royal burial site John Preston and at Sutton Hoo. The film’s cast includes Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes directed by Simon Stone from a script by Harlots co-creator and domineering men at the dig, forges Moira Buffini, The Dig takes viewers back friendships with Brown and Pretty. Familiar to these heady days of discovery, albeit with faces rounding out the impressive cast quite a bit of dramatic licence. include Johnny Flynn, Ben Chaplin, Ken Heading the cast, Carey Mulligan stars as Stott and Monica Dolan. Edith Pretty, the landowner who employed To judge by the advance publicity, the Brown, who is played by Ralph Fiennes. Lily narrative of the film will make much of the James takes the role of archaeology student class conflict thrown up by Brown being Peggy Preston who, surrounded by sexist both self-taught and of modest means.
was a golden era, characterised by a new cultural confidence represented by young British Asians attending Bombay Jungle at Soho’s Wag Club, where the dancefloor soundtrack mixed up Bhangra hip-hop, reggae and soul. Then 9/11 took place, and the mood changed.
How The Irish Shaped Britain
Presenter of The Architecture the Railways Built Tim Dunn outside St Pancras
The Architecture The Railways Built January Yesterday Thanks in great part to the sheer enthusiasm of its presenter, transport historian Tim Dunn, The Architecture the Railways Built was one of Yesterday’s breakout hits last year. It’s no surprise, then, that the programme is returning for a second series. As before, the format sees Dunn exploring viaducts, stations and all the other kinds of buildings that owe their existence to the railways, from signal boxes
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to hotels. His destinations include Windsor, Devon, County Durham, Oban in the Highlands, and Leipzig in Germany.
Three Pounds In My Pocket Friday 8 January BBC Radio 4 The series tracing the history of British South Asians returns. Having begun with stories of those who came to the UK in the 1950s and 1960s, Kavita Puri now takes the community’s story on from 1989 through to 2001. For many of those coming of age in these years, the 1990s
Monday 11 January BBC Radio 4 The story of Ireland is often couched in terms of conflict and colonialism, the tale of a nation trying to free itself from influence wielded by those with roots elsewhere in the British Isles. The truth, suggests a new three-part series presented by journalist Fergal Keane, is more complex. It’s not just people who have travelled between Britain’s two largest islands, but ideas and culture. Many of the traits we see as representing Englishness have their roots in Ireland, while Irish migrants and their descendants have, to take just one area of life, deeply influenced the UK’s literature and arts. However, the countries’ relationship could be about to
change dramatically. What will happen now that the Brexit transition period has ended?
Cheating Hitler Sunday 17 January Sky History Part of the channel’s Holocaust Memorial Month, Cheating Hitler sees three Canadian Holocaust survivors tackle unanswered questions. Maxwell wants to know what happened to a baby he saved in a forest in 1943, Helen hopes to uncover more details about her brother’s fate, and Rose retraces the final steps of the woman who saved her life.
Long Lost Family Late January ITV The hugely popular series from WDYTYA? producers Wall to Wall that reunites people with their relatives returns for a 10th outing, once again hosted by Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell. DNA experts, investigators and intermediaries will help those researching their recent family histories, and the reunions promise to be as emotional as ever despite social distancing.
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LARRY HORRICKS/NETFLIX / BROWN BOB PRODUCTIONS/UKTV
In 1939, as war clouds gathered over Europe, archaeological and historical research didn’t simply stop – and certainly not at Sutton Hoo, near Woodbridge in Suffolk. Here, in the months immediately before the Second World War broke out, archaeologist Basil Brown spent the late spring and summer excavating one of a number of burial mounds at a site that has subsequently become world-famous. What he discovered was extraordinary: an Anglo-Saxon ship burial where, although little of the timber had survived, the outline of the craft was so perfectly preserved that it was possible to see its form and to work out how it had been constructed. Even repairs were visible. In itself, this would have been remarkable enough, but the site – where work was ultimately overseen by Cambridge archaeologist Charles Phillips – would also
BEHIND THE SCENES WDYTYA? genealogist Sara Khan reveals celebrity records
Liz Carr The Silent Witness actor investigated her Liverpudlian ancestry, which led her to Ireland. She researched the life of her maternal grandfather John Joseph Hughes, and her paternal 3x great grandfather Bernard ‘Barney’ Ryan
5R\DO Navy Service Record John Joseph Hughes was in the Navy during the First World War. We traced his career using his service record. These can be downloaded from The National Archives’ website; a small charge applies, but it’s free during lockdown: bit.ly/ tna-navy-1914-1919. The record is also in Ancestry’s collection ‘UK, Royal Navy Registers of Seamen’s Services, 1848–1939’: bit.ly/anc-jjhughes.
Series 17, Episode 4 First broadcast 2 November 2020
*ULIÀWK·V 9DOXDWLRQ Liz went to Armagh to learn more about Bernard ‘Barney’ Ryan. We located him using the Griffith’s Valuation for his townland. Many census returns were destroyed in Ireland, but this property valuation from the mid-19th century is a useful census substitute. It can be searched for free at askaboutireland.ie, and Barney’s details are available here: bit.ly/ask-barney.
Scottish Death CHUWLÀFDWH Barney and his family left Ireland after he was involved in an attempted murder in 1852, and we found them in Scotland. Barneyy died in Cumbernauld, Dumbarton, in 1877. Scottish death certificates are available on ScotlandsPeople (scotlandspeople.gov. uk). The indexes can be searched for free, but viewing the certificates incurs a cost. Barney’s death record is located at bit.ly/scotspeoplebarney-death.
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FAMILY HERO A gem from a reader’s family tree
‘Maria Was The Miners’ Heroine’
R
ichard Carr has vivid memories of the coal miners’ strike in the UK in the mid-1980s. “I grew up in a pit village in County Durham,” he reveals. “I remember food collections being held for the striking miners’ families, and throwing snowballs at the ‘scab buses’ that passed our school.” Richard’s childhood experiences echo an earlier episode in his family history, when a Durham mining community became the epicentre of a fight against oppression. The story revolves
grievances centred mainly on pay, conditions and long shifts. The owners of the collieries resented the burgeoning power of the unions, and refused to employ men who became members. Those who went on strike were starved into submission, and could be blacklisted by other collieries. Also, many coal miners lived in tied cottages owned by their employers, which was part of the exploitative ‘bond’ system. If a man went on strike, he could be evicted to make way for a ‘blackleg’ worker. Entire families were made homeless.
Thi 19th-century This 19 h etching hi celebrates l b Ri Richard’s h d’ fforebear b M Maria i Carr’s C ’ stand against the oppression colliery owners inflicted on mining families
RICHARD CARR is a former magazine editor living in County Durham. He has been researching his family tree for three years
p, ca ’s le b a st n co a d ve o m re a ‘Mari e air’ struck him and waved it in th around his 3x great grandparents Thomas Carr and Maria Young, who married in 1824. Thomas was a miner and worked at Friar’s Goose Colliery near Gateshead. A year into his research into his tree, Richard ‘blitzed’ his ancestors’ names at the British Newspaper Archive website (britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk). “I was elated to discover that Maria played a key role in a major incident in the early days of the colliers’ union.” Her fame arose in 1832 following a dramatic event that became known as the Battle of Friar’s Goose. Unrest had been growing for years in the mining communities of north-east England. Workers’ 90
In April 1832, a number of miners at Friar’s Goose refused to sign the bond and went on strike. The colliery owner recruited workers from Westmoreland, and ordered the striking miners to quit their homes by early May. Thirty special constables were drafted in to force the evictions. But miners from other coalfields gathered and began hurling stones at the incoming strike-breakers. The Carrs refused to leave the home they shared with their three children. “The constables tried to drag Maria out of the house. She said that she was ‘unwell’, and sat down. The officers had to carry her out on a chair, whereupon she perked up, removed a constable’s
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cap, struck him over the head and waved it in the air, shouting ‘The union forever!’ ” Following Maria’s battle cry, a riot broke out and gunshots were fired by the constables. Over 40 arrests were made, including Maria who stood trial for riot and assault at the local assize court. She was acquitted, but other protesters were sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour. “The Battle of Friar’s Goose was so important that it was commemorated in an etching, which shows Maria waving the constable’s cap in the air. “Maria kickstarted a defining moment in the history of the miners’ union, which was in its infancy. This was the day that mine owners were finally served notice that the unfair system of bonding was unacceptable.” The Carrs eventually settled 20 miles away in East Hetton, where fortunately Thomas found more work as a miner. Sadly Maria died aged 42 in 1845, after giving birth to her seventh child. “I’d like to tell Maria how proud I am of her,” Richard says. “Of all the relatives I’ve found so far, she is my favourite.” Mining historians hope to create a banner commemorating key moments in union history. They are searching for a photograph to represent Maria, perhaps one of her married daughters Sarah Carter, Margaret Scott or Jane Graham. If you can help, please contact douglassdavid705@gmail.com.
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IMAGE COURTESY OF DAVID TEMPLE
Richard Carr was delighted to discover that his 3x great grandmother struck a significant blow for the rights of coal miners in north-east England, says Gail Dixon
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