Website Wednesday - The Early British Census Project

The Early British Census project (EBC) brings the numerous disparate pre-1841 census records into one searchable database. It is designed to help family historians discover their ancestors; offer training for students; and provide data for scholarly research, particularly for local and population studies. The project offers valuable insight into household and occupational structures of early industrial Britain. 

 
There are over 1400 surviving household or individual schedules from the 1801, 1811, 1821, and 1831 censuses. Because the household and individual schedules were never submitted to a central government entity, the original returns remain in dozens of local archives across the UK. These records have never been brought together into one database, most have never been indexed or published, and only occasional returns have been digitized.

EBC brings these various records into one searchable database. When the database is complete, it will likely contain information about approximately 500,000 households.

The first stage of the project is to extract data from, and where possible gather digital images of, the 1801-1831 English censuses. Later stages will capture records from other parts of the British Isles as well as earlier periods.

Student researchers, under faculty supervision, consult the originals, extract parish, household, and individual data, and where possible upload the digital image. The extractions are then verified by a second researcher.

All information was extracted from digital images of original census records. No extractions or transcriptions from other collections or publications were used.

Website Wednesday - Prisoners of the First World War

Millions of First World War prisoner records held by the International Committee of the Red Cross have been uploaded to the web for the first time.

Available for free through a new web portal, the vast collection provides details of people who were held in prisoner of war camps across Europe between 1914-1918.
Created by their captors, the records were submitted to the International Prisoners-of-War Agency, which was set up by the ICRC at the start of the conflict to help restore contact between prisoners and their families at home.
Researchers will generally be able to locate an index card for each individual, providing basic details about their imprisonment and reference numbers for any related documents held elsewhere in the database.
Cards containing tracing requests made by prisoners’ next of kin can also be consulted.
Although all civilian-internee index cards from the ICRC’s archives in Switzerland are now online, roughly 20 per cent of the cards for military prisoners from Belgium, France, the UK and Germany are yet to be digitised.
According to the organisation, the missing records will be steadily uploaded over the next six months, with approximately 5 million index cards representing 2.5 million prisoners of the war available through website by the end of 2014.

In addition, the ICRC has also uploaded a large collection of historic postcards and reports on the conditions in which internees were being held at camps across Europe, Egypt, India, Russia and Japan.

Website Wednesday - the Public Records Office of Victoria

As the State’s archival authority Public Record OfficeVictoria holds records created by Victorian government departments and authorities, the State’s courts, municipalities, schools, public hospitals and other public offices.  The records can date from the establishment of the Port Phillip District in the mid 1830s and include information relating to areas of activity managed or regulated by government such as the administration of justice, immigration, health and welfare, land, education, Indigenous communities, planning, transport, and resource management.

Of the 96 linear kilometres of records held by Public Record Office Victoria, only a small percentage is digitised and available to view online.  Many other records can be viewed in person in the PROV Reading Rooms at the Ballarat Archives Centre or the Victorian Archives Centre, North Melbourne.

Digitised records curently available in the Online Collections include:

•      Passenger lists and immigration

•      Wills and probate

•      Education and teachers

•      Health and welfare

•      Koorie Heritage

•      Land and Property

•      Publicans and hotels

•      Prisoners and convicts

•      Divorce, insolvency and other civil court records

•      Early Colonial administration

•      Maps and plans

Digitisation of the PROV’s records is ongoing, with new records and expanded categories appearing regularly. 

The Wiener Holocaust Library

Based in London, The Wiener Holocaust Library is the world’s oldest and Britain’s largest collection of original archival material on pre-war Jewish life, the Nazi era and the Holocaust, making it a major resource for Jewish family history research.

The Wiener is home to hundreds of thousands of documents, letters, photographs, press cuttings, books, pamphlets, periodicals and unpublished manuscripts and memoirs, posters, artworks, and eyewitness testimonies.

Wiener Digital Collections enables online access to some of the library's most important collections, including documents used in evidence at the Nuremberg Trials, the family papers of Jewish refugees, photos taken at the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, JCIO reports, and responses to Nazism and fascism in Germany, Britain and beyond.  Over 150,000 historic documents and photographs recording the Holocaust and resistance to Nazism have been published online in this new collection.

The Library's founder, Dr Alfred Wiener recognised the Nazi threat early on and campaigned against Nazism in the 1920s and 1930s. After fleeing Germany for Amsterdam in 1933, he founded the Jewish Central Information Office (JCIO) at the request of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Anglo-Jewish Association, collecting information about Nazi persecution. He brought his collection to Britain shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, where it became known as ‘Dr Wiener’s Library’.

Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland

The Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland was created through a five-year State-funded program of research entitled ‘Beyond 2022'.  It is funded by the Government of Ireland under Project Ireland 2040 through the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. 

 Led by researchers at Trinity College Dublin, the program "combines historical investigation, archival discovery, conservation and technical innovation to re-imagine and recreate, through digital technologies, the archive lost on June 30th, 1922, in the opening engagement of the Civil War".

Many genealogists with Irish family history have mourned the loss of records that were the result of the Dublin Records Office fire.  Combined with the destruction of the historic Irish censuses, the loss has made the task of researching Irish ancestors more difficult.

The Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland is an open-access resource, freely and permanently available online to all those interested in Ireland’s history at home and abroad. The website states that "our extensive and growing treasury of digitized records—scattered over space and time, but now reunited on-screen—brings ordinary lives buried in official documents back into the light". 

By 2022, over 70 archives, libraries and societies in Ireland, Britain and the United States have formally joined the enterprise to bring the destroyed Record Treasury back to life. 

Foundling Hospital Archive Free Online

The archives of London’s famous Foundling Hospital are now free to search online.

Almost 100,000 pages of records, containing details of over 20,000 children, have been made available.

The Hospital was founded in 1739 by sea captain Thomas Coram to provide a home for the capital’s many unwanted children, particularly children born to unmarried mothers.

At the time, the name ‘hospital’ meant any place that provided ‘hospitality’, or shelter. Rather than being a hospital in the modern sense, it was a children’s home, where children received care and education before leaving to enter into an apprenticeship at about the age of fourteen. The education was progressive by the standards of the day – both boys and girls were taught to read, girls were later taught to write.  The children were also taught music.

The digitised records fall into the following categories:

• Petitions from mothers and others: 115 volumes, 1762-1881
• Billet Books containing tokens: 203 volumes, 1741-1814
• Admission and baptism registers: 8 volumes, 1741-1885
• Apprenticeship registers: 4 volumes, 1751-1898
• Registers of country nurses and inspectors: 6 volumes, 1749-1812
• Branch Hospital registers: 5 volumes, 1757-1772
• Records claiming children: 21 volumes, 1758-1796
• Committee Minutes: 43 volumes, 1739-1895

 

Churchwardens Accounts of England and Wales

The listings in the Churchwardens' Accounts database feature every known church together with any chapels of ease and private chapels found mentioned in printed books and documents, along with the dedication, diocese, archdeaconry, and deanery of each wherever possible. There is also an indication of the population, taken from the Hearth Tax Returns and an early nineteenth century census. Further information will be added as it is gathered – including bibliographic information for each parish.

The search for surviving churchwardens’ accounts has been carried out by visiting all County Record Offices, Local History Libraries, and a few museums. This includes the Isle of Man and the Isle of Wight but not the Channel Islands although information provided by the Guernsey and Jersey Record Offices is listed in the database. The accounts that have been located, have been examined and each year of survival is listed with, wherever possible, the total expenditure of each year.

Although the main purpose of this website is to give details of original sources, a search has been made for both modern and antiquarian publications with transcripts and extracts from the churchwardens’ accounts. This information is shown on the appropriate parish pages.

A wonderful resource to help locate a significant part of our ancestors' lives.

Irish Genealogy Update

For those with Irish family roots, the following post from IrishGenealogy may be of interest.

The state-managed IrishGenealogy.ie database has received its annual rolling years update. The additions are civil records of Births for the year 1923; Marriages for 1948; and Deaths in 1973.

Disappointingly, register images for deaths recorded from 1864 to 1870 have still not been uploaded; this is the long-awaited update most Irish genealogists would prefer to see.

Here, then, is a summary of the records available, free of charge, at IrishGenealogy.ie:

Births:
1864-1921 – index and register images, all-island
1922-1923 – index and register images, Republic of Ireland only

Marriages:
1845/1864*-1921 – index and register images, all-island
1922-1948 – index and register images, Republic of Ireland only

Deaths:
1864-1870 – index only, all-island
1871-1921 – index and register images, all-island
1922-1973 – index and register images, Republic of Ireland only

Civil BMD records registered in Northern Ireland from 1922 are available online via the General Register Office in Northern Ireland (GRONI), subject to the 100-75-50-year rule. Details.

*Civil registration of non-Catholic marriages started in 1845 across the island. Catholic marriages were added to the civil registers from 1864. 

Posted by Claire Santry, Irish Genealogy News 

Explore Your Genealogy

Explore Your Genealogy is an educational website developed by the Family History Federation that relates to every aspect of tracing your family history, from the very first steps to more complex research.

The main objective of the website is to promote the study and interest in family history (and associated disciplines including local and social history) in a free-to-access, easy-to-navigate website.  New articles and topics are being added regularly. 

Explore Your Genealogy already covers a range of topics, beginning with a section on 'How do I start?"  Further topics include :

• Civil Registration
• Parish Registers
• Family Heirlooms
• Wills
• Graveyards
• Military
• Archives
• DNA
• Poor Law Records
•  Census Records
• And much more

Each topic heading can contain multiple articles containing a wealth of information useful to beginners and experienced researchers alike.  There is always something new to learn!

The Family History Federation also produces the Really Useful Bulletin, which is published monthly and free to all.  The Bulletin will provide information about updates on a regular basis, and past issues can also be viewed on the website.

PROV Researcher Resources

Did you know that the Public Records Office of Victoria (PROV) has its own YouTube channel?  They offer a wealth of videos to help you get the most out of their archives.

From an Open House Tour of the Victorian Archives Centre, to deep dive research, stories within the Archives or how to use the PROV website, there is a wealth of presentations free to view to help you with your research.

Learn to get the most from the PROV website with :

• How to create an account and log in
• How to search and filter
• How to order a record or box to view
• How to order copies
• How to order via Direct Entry
• Order dashboard
• Understanding and researching the public record  collection

The Deep Dive Subject Research tutorials include :

• Correspondence records
• Introduction to researching place
• Introduction to crime research
• Crown Grant records
• Pupil Registers
• Rate records
• Divorce records
• Criminal trials

So take a look to the PROV YouTube channel and get the most out of the records on offer.

Mapping Women's Suffrage

Do you know if any of your ancestors in Britain were Suffragettes?  The new website Mapping Women's Suffrage may hold the answer for you.

 
The Votes for Women campaign was a long and difficult struggle fought by women and men in cities, towns, and villages right across the country. Mapping Women's Suffrage identifies, plots and records, the everyday locations and lives of as many Votes for Women campaigners as possible across England at the height of the suffrage movement in 1911. You can search or click on the suffrage map to find where the campaigners lived, accessing a cache of biographical information, photographs and archive documents about them. 

The suffrage map has been custom built to create user friendly layers of knowledge and learning capturing the whereabouts and the lives of suffrage campaigners and their roles in the votes for women campaign. The map currently enables a range of digitised materials such as photographs, letters and official documents - often scattered across and between different physical and online locations - to be gathered together for each campaigner, centralised and viewed at the place they were living at the time of the government census survey,of 1911. The map also provides tools you can use to filter campaigners on the map by key data about them. This currently includes which suffrage society they supported in 1911, and whether they took part in an organised suffrage boycott of the government census that year. You can also choose whether to view campaigner locations on a current street map, or a historical 1888-1913 Ordinance Survey Map.
 
Each Votes for Women campaigner recorded on the map, is denoted by a circular coloured icon or ‘dot’ at the address where they were living in 1911. The suffrage map recognises the contribution of multiple suffrage organisations – both law-abiding suffragists and law-breaking suffragettes - in winning Votes for Women. Therefore, the map colour codes each campaigner icon on the map by which suffrage society they were most active with at that time - purple for WSPU, red for NUWSS, and so on. You can use the side menu tools on screen, to turn on and off campaigner icons on the map, either by suffrage society, and/or by their stance on the census boycott.

The website is still a work in progress as new data is added and the online database grows, but take a look to learn more about the struggle for women's right to vote, and see if your ancestors were involved in the movement.

Ironclad Sisterhood

The Ironclad Sisterhood has recently been launched by the Society of Australian Genealogists, based on the original research into the lives of convict women by society member Jess Hill. 

Jess Hill was a member and volunteer of the Society of Australian Genealogists from 1964 until her death in 1995. During her time at the Society, Miss Hill worked as a Honorary Library Research Assistant, helping others find ancestors, solve long-held mysteries, and uncover lost details about individuals across the ages. In 1970, she began to collect biographies of women convicts transported to Australia from 1788 to 1818.

She began this work in 1970 – an unusually early time to begin investigating convict ancestors, particularly women convicts. Miss Hill joined a small coterie of passionate Australian historians who demanded that women’s history be taken seriously, and women be understood as historical agents in their own right.

In 2021 Miss Hill’s work was rediscovered and the Ironclad Sisterhood project was launched with hopes to further Miss Hill’s research agenda and build a searchable database of convict women filled with biographical details pulled from multiple different sources.

So if you have female convicts in your family history, or simply want to know more about the lives of the women convicts who helped build the colony of Australia, check out the website and see what it has to offer.

GRO Digital Ordering Update

Some great news for Family History researchers with civil birth and death registration records from selected years are now available as instant-access digital images via the General Register Office (GRO) website.

Civil registration of births, marriages and deaths was introduced in England and Wales in 1837.  Birth records from 1837 to 2021 and death records from 1837 to 1957 and 1984 to 2021 are indexed on the GRO website.

Family historians have previously had the option of ordering records as either a print record for £11 with a GRO index reference supplied, or a PDF for £7. It takes up to four working days for orders to be despatched.

However, the GRO has now launched a scheme for births from 1837 to 1922 and deaths from 1837 to 1887 to be available as digital images.  The digital images currently cost £2.50 each and are available to view immediately after purchase.

The scheme to order digital images is in the beta testing phase, but is publicly available to all registered users of the GRO website.

This makes accessing these records not only quicker but also less expensive, so take advantage of this great service.

 

 

Ireland Reaching Out

Ireland Reaching Out are and international team of volunteers helping people of Irish descent connect with their roots in Ireland.

They offer a free message board where you can ask us a question, a meet and greet service for when you return to your ancestral land, and a page for each civil parish in Ireland where you can share the story of your ancestors.

There are just over 25,000 ancestor profiles added to the site's Chronicles database, which is free to everyone around the world. Via the database you can;  Filter ancestors by County and/or Civil Parish Search for ancestors by surname Filter by place of migration Add new information to any ancestor Chronicle Leave a comment about any ancestor profile that interests you The Ireland Reaching Out website also offers a number of free Irish Family History Research Guides and you can register to receive their email newsletter offering Irish Family History tips and guides.