GRO Increases Certificate Prices

If you are looking to order civil registration records from the General Register Office (GRO), be aware they have increased the price of their records.

The GRO, which holds civil birth, marriage and death records for England and Wales, holds records from 1837, when civil registration was introduced.

Previously, the prices were:

• £2.50 for a digital image (available to download instantly for births from 1837 to 1922 and deaths from 1837 to 1957).
• £7 for a PDF (available for births from 1837 to 1934 and 1984 to 2021 and deaths from 1837 to 1957 and 1984 to 2021, takes up to four working days to despatch).
• £11 for a print certificate with an index reference (includes all marriage certificates).
• £14 for a print certificate without an index reference.

The new prices are:

• £3 for a digital image.
• £8 for a PDF.
• £12.50 for a print certificate with an index reference.
• £16 for a print certificate without an index reference.

Civil registration records are still a vital source of information for family historians, so be aware of these price increases the next time you are planning to order.

 

Traces Magazine

Edition 26 of Australian history and genealogy magazine Traces is now available free online for Campaspe Library members via our subscription to Libby eMagazines.

Inside this month's issue: 

• Heritage news
• Crown Street Women’s Hospital, Sydney
• Astrophysicists tap ancient star knowledge
• The dashed hopes of the Aldershot Smelter
• The twists and turns of Tiwi history
• Farewell to HMAS Australia
• Diving into middies’ journals
• Forgotten heroes of the Australian Voluntary Hospital
• How resilience is vital to your research
• Research tips
• New traditions for future generations
• What’s new online?
• Who was Joe Grey? Investigating an unsolved mystery
• Convict research tips
• Louisa Seddon, New Zealand’s secret ‘queen’
• Broadcasting pronunciation
• Saving the Blood Bros. Store

Week 22 (May 27- June 2): Creativity

This week's theme #52Ancestors is 'Creativity', which has me thinking about all the creative ways we can record and display our family history, and how creative we often need to be to break down the brick walls in our research.

Even with something as basic as a name, we often need to be creative in our research.  From church records to birth, marriage and death registrations, census records to electoral rolls and passenger lists to immigration and naturalization records, many of our favourite sources for family information have been captured with a variety of spellings, handwritings, and abbreviations.  As those historical collections have been digitized and transcribed, modern day technicians have struggled to correctly interpret and preserve an entry from long ago, and subsequently we as researchers must be creative to find them.

If there is one thing I have learnt in my years of researching my family, it is that NO surname, however simple, will EVER be recorded with the same spelling all the time.  When researching, we need to be creative and consider how a name may have been misspelled or incorrectly recorded.  Remember that the clerk creating the record spelled the name the way he felt like spelling it - how it sounded to him at the time.  And frequently he got it wrong.  Sometimes he got it spectacularly wrong!

Abbreviations can also complicate research - William was often abbreviated as Wm, Thomas as Thos or Tom, Patrick as Pat or Patk or Patr, Daniel as Dan or Danl or Danny, Margaret as Maggie, Elizabeth as Beth or Eliza.  When searching for an ancestor, be mindful that an exact search for a given name may unintentionally hide an ancestor from view if the original record or transcription used an abbreviation.

In addition to alternate spellings and abbreviations, another source of name variations comes from errors made during the transcription process.  As people transcribe family history records, they seek to preserve content exactly as it appears in the historical original.  Despite best efforts, errors do occur and names can be unintentionally altered.  Consider how old handwriting may be misinterpreted - both by you and by earlier transcribers or indexers.

Some databases are quite flexible in regards to spelling variations when searching, but they will never cover every possible error and sometimes several searches are necessary to locate an elusive record.  Remember to be creative and keep digging - you never know what you might find - or how it may be spelled!

Who Do You Think You Are Magazine

The latest issue of Who Do You Think You Are magazine is now available free online for Campaspe Library members via our subscription to Libby eMagazines.

Inside this month's issue :  

• D-Day remembered 80 years on, the stories of the men who fought in Operation Overlord
• Surname changes How to identify your ancestors in records
• Clive Myrie The broadcaster on his Caribbean family history
• Reader story Samantha Taylor's ancestors emigrated to the USA and Canada
• Lust in London Prostitution in the capital in the 18th century
• Derbyshire Our complete guide to tracing your ancestry in the county

Week 21 (May 20-26): Nickname

Nicknames, be they diminutives of an existing name, a reflection of a person’s appearance or habits, a childhood name that lingers into adulthood, or given for any other reason, can cause difficulty for us a researchers.

If a person is commonly known by a nickname, for whatever reason, it could be that they will have records under that nickname.  As researchers, if we don’t know what that nickname was – or don’t check for the person under that nickname – we may miss out on finding records.

Many nicknames were based on the person’s actual name, and again we as researchers need to be aware of them and keep them in mind.  For example, if you don’t know that Polly was a diminutive of Mary or that Nellie was a diminutive of Ellen and Eleanor and Helen, you may struggle to find your ancestors’ entries.  Harry for Henry, Bill for William, Fred or Alf for Alfred, Dick for Richard, Charlie or Lottie for Charlotte, Maggie, Meg or Maisie for Margaret.  Elizabeth was another extremely common name with multiple diminutives - Eliza, Liz, Lizzie, Betty, Betsy, Beth, Bessie, Lisbeth, Liza - the list goes on.

A nickname can be so commonly used that the person’s actual name is virtually forgotten.  I have one female ancestor, baptised Elizabeth, who was known throughout her life as Betsy.  This was the name she used in census records, her children's birth/baptism records and on her death certificate and burial record.  The only time I can ever find her referred to as Elizabeth is at her baptism.

So if your ancestor was known by a nickname (and you are aware of it), remember to search for them under both their given name and their nickname.  You never know what you might find.

Family Tree UK Magazine

The latest issue of Family Tree UK magazine is now available free online for Campaspe Library members via our subscription to Libby eMagazines.

Inside this month's issue : 

• What’s on your family history wish list?
• The Shetland FHS monumental inscription project ‘could not have come soon enough’
• 6 million Irish Catholic parish register entries at FamilySearch
• New Chief Executive and Keeper of The National Archives, Kew
• Essex Society for Family History celebrates 50th anniversary
• New Scottish-Australian Convict dataset
• Marriages & maps - combining parish records and 19th-century maps
• Crimean Connection
  
• Update - Retention of Probate Records
• Sneaking up on a Brick Wall
• Top Tips for Interviewing your Relatives
• Death and Taxes - Using the death duty registers
• Tracing Ancestors in the British armed forces in WWII

Really Useful Podcast - Family, Local and Social History

Episode 4 of Series 3 of the Really Useful Podcast is out now! The episode discusses how local and social history are intertwined with family history, and how each can be useful in your family history research.

 
The episode is described on the web page : 

Local and social history are closely linked with family history. They enable us to discover more about our ancestors’ lives, adding detail to core information about life events. Our speakers discuss the value of local and social history and how to incorporate it into our research.

Joe is joined by :

Paul Chiddicks, Family Tree magazine’s Dear Paul and blogger ; 

Natalie Pithers, founder of Genealogy Stories and creator of the Curious Descendants Club, helping you to write and share your ancestors stories, Project and Comms Manager at Society of Genealogists ;

Margaret Roberts, sports historian and editor of the Playing Pasts online sports history magazine, publicity officer for the FHS of Cheshire and Society Liaison Officer for the Federation and part of the A Few Forgotten Women research team.

Week 20 (May 13-19): Taking Care of Business

Finding your ancestor worked for – or better yet owned – a business can be a gold mine of information.  Even knowing an ancestor’s occupation, if not the business they worked for, opens up information that fleshes out their lives, much more that basic dates and places.

The business itself may have left records behind – things such as reports, employee records, and more.  It may not have been big – if your ancestor had a trade or skill, they may have run a small business with just a few others, or even by themselves.

Old newspapers could be a gold mine.  Did the business advertise their services or products?  Did they advertise for employees?  Was the business ever reviewed or reported about?  In the article below my great great grandfather William Pummeroy, who ran his own small business as a plasterer, advertised for a labourer to work for him in the Argus on Wednesday 23 September 1864.

Similarly, my ancestor John Thompson Argent, of Newbridge Mill near Colchester in Essex, England, advertised for a new employee in the Suffolk and Essex Free Press on Thursday 22 June 1865.  Interestingly, the advertisement specifies that the applicant must be able to drive a steam engine, highlighting the direction in which the business must be moving.

Two men, years apart, taking care of business by seeking new employees.

The Family Histories Podcast

Series Seven of The Family Histories Podcast is now ready to be released.

Hosted Andrew Martin, seven genealogy-obsessed guests will once again share how they got hooked on researching their family history, tell us the life story of one of their most fascinating relatives, and finally share one of their own current research brick wall.  

 This series features the following guests ;

• Dave Annal
• Marie Cappart
• Dai Davies
• Scott Fisher
• Jackie Kohnstamm
• Morag Peers
• Todd Lucero Sales

Series Seven begins with ‘The Aunt’ with Jackie Kohnstamm on 7th May 2024.

 

Irish Lives Remembered

The latest issue of the free online magazine Irish Lives Remembered is now available.

In this issue : 

Articles: 

• Mike Feerick - Chuck Feeney: An Appreciation
• Fiona Fitzsimons – Remembering Chuck Feeney: the Entrepreneur Philanthropist’s Longford Lineage
• Cara Eiwanger – The Myth of Irish-American Acceptance in the Mid-nineteenth Century
• Donna Rutherford – A Deep Dive into Ethnicity Estimates
• Rob Flanagan Stieglitz – Case Study: Resolving the Mystery of My Ancestor Thomas Tighe’s Birthdate
• Eamonn P. Kelly – The mysterious Bishop Erc: Saint and Sun God, Part One
• Katharine Simms – Saints and Scholars: the Keenan/O’Keenan Clan and Other Hereditary Historians
• Brigit McCone – Doctoring Dynasties: The Legacy of Irish Medicine in Africa
• Deirdre Powell – The Irish Family Legacy of Mathematical Genius George Boole
• Elizabeth Cowan - “Send you kisses”: Sapphic Revolutionaries, part 2
• Timothy Murtagh – Henrietta Street: From Townhouse to Tenement

Regular columns: 

• Dear Genie - Our Genealogists help you with your research block
• Heritage Highlight - Strokestown Park’s National Famine Museum
• Emerald Roots Interview – Kayleigh Bealin, Research Manager, Eneclann 

Books and Films:

• Four Courts Press Book Excerpt – Medieval Dublin XIX edited by Seán Duffy (2023)
• Four Courts Press Book Excerpt – Marsden Haddock and the Androides by Neil Cronin (2023)
• Genealogical Publishing Company Book Excerpt – A Guide to Irish Parish Registers by Brian Mitchell (1988)