Digital Churchyard Mapping Project for the Church of England

The Church of England has launched a new project to map all its churchyards using laser equipment.  They have partnered with surveying company Atlantic Geomatics, who will map Church of England churchyards using backpack-mounted laser scanners, as well as photographing the headstones.  The resulting records will be published on a new website, where they will enable family historians to discover where their ancestors are buried.

Bishop Andrew Rumsey, lead Bishop for church buildings said: “This impressive national project will make a huge difference to those researching family history, as well as easing the administrative burden on parishes.  It will improve management of burial grounds, and make information more fully accessible than ever before, supported by additional services by subscription for those wishing to go further.  It will soon be possible to visit almost any Anglican burial ground in the country and see in real time the location of burial plots. For those researching at distance in the UK or overseas, the digital records will place detailed information from churchyards at their fingertips.”

The project aims to survey the majority of the Church of England’s 19,000 burial grounds by 2028.

The website, which is due to launch in spring 2022, will combine data on burials and biodiversity data on the plants and animals in the churchyards.  It is anticipated the site will provide free to access for Church of England parishes, with additional services available to subscribers. 

After a successful pilot project which mapped the churchyards of All Hallows Church in Kirkburton and Emmanuel Church in Shelley, both in the Diocese of Leeds, the programme has now successfully mapped the churchyard of St Bega in Bassenthwaite in the Diocese of Carlisle.

The live links to the records on these two pilot studies can be found here:

• Kirkburton
• Shelley

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

• Grow your family tree The Who Do You Think You Are? experts share simple tips to help you discover your roots
  
• Who's on Who Do You Think You Are? We look at what you can expect from the long-awaited Series 18
  
• FreeREG How you can search 5.3 million church records online for free
  
• Reader story Danielle Ford's grandparents survived German forced labour camps
  
• British war films How the cinema kept our ancestors going during the Second World War
  
• Plus: The best websites for Scottish ancestry, finding prison records, how to use free transcription software and more

 

Really Useful Podcast Episode 2

 
The Family History Federation has now launched Episode 2 of its new series of Really Useful Podcasts.

This new episode focuses on Identity.  The website describes it :

"Joe Saunders is joined by Dr Penny Walters, lecturer and author on various genealogy topics including ethical dilemmas and the psychology of searching and Yetunde Abiola, family historian and expert on the impact of ancestors' stories on the lives of future generations and the complexities of Caribbean, diaspora and Colonial genealogies.

Identity is a crucial part of family history and can be both a difficult and joyful thing. We discuss race, belonging, ethnicity and DNA as important factors around identity and how important it is we manage expectations, perceptions and how we must understand genealogy within historical context."

So listen in to this new podcast and hear what the experts have to say about Identity.

1921 Census of England and Wales

Genealogy website Find My Past has just announced that they will exclusively launch the much anticipated 1921 Census of England and Wales on 6 January 2022.

This census is significant for several reasons.  Firstly, it is the only interwar census.  The 1931 census was destroyed by fire, and the 1941 census cancelled due to the Second World War.  Secondly, it is the most revealing record set up to that time, being the first to recognise divorce and the first to capture people's full employment details.

The census comprises some 18,235,242 images supplied by The National Archives.  Accessing the census will cost £2.50 for every record transcript and £3.50 for every original image.  For subscribers there will be a 10% discount on any 1921 Census purchases.

The 1921 Census of England and Wales was taken in June 1921 and holds information on every household, vessel, institution and overseas residencies that were part of England and Wales in 1921, plus the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Also included are merchant ships in the waters of England and Wales, all ships of the Royal Navy and army and, for the first time, Royal Air Force units stationed overseas. This includes units on occupation duties following the First World War, or based in territories newly under British administration as a result of the war, such as Mesopotamia (modern Iraq).

A full entry on a standard household schedule will contain:

• Full address of the property
• Names of persons in each household
• Relationship to head of household
• Age (now required as years and completed months, rather than just years as in previous censuses)
• Sex
• “Marriage or Orphanhood”
  - For those aged 15 and over this field recorded if you were single, married, or widowed, and for the first time D was to be recorded for those whose marriage had been dissolved by divorce

  - For those under 15 this recorded if both parents were alive, father dead, mother dead or both dead

  - This field will again show the impact of the First World War with a greater proportion of widows recorded than in 1911, and 730,000 children recorded with “Father dead” versus 260,000 with “Mother dead”
• Place of birth and nationality for those born outside the UK
• Occupation and Employment
  - If in full or part-time education

   

  - Principally for recording those at school or university, but could also include adults taking evening classes

  - For those employed, name and type of employer, otherwise recording “employer”, or “own account”

  - Those out of work are instructed to give their last employer and add “out of work”

  - Place of Work - employer’s address (except for those in private employment such as domestic service
• Number of children or stepchildren under the age of 16
  To be filled in by married men, widowers and widows, a total number followed by a cross in a box for each age that was applicable to a child or stepchild.

Other types of schedule for institutions/prisons, merchant vessels, or the armed forces add some additional questions about function within the institution, and rank or trade rather than occupation for the armed forces. Schedules used in Wales and the Isle of Man include an additional language question, asking if each person spoke Welsh (or Manx), English, or Both, while the armed forces schedule asks additionally if the person can speak Welsh or Gaelic (in addition to English).

From the Papers

Sometimes the detail provided in the newspapers is incredible.  The article below, about the wedding of my great aunt Constance Green in 1923, provides some amazing details.

The dresses worn by the bride and her bridesmaids - who the article tells me were her sisters Nancy and May - are described in detail.  

I know they left the reception by car to catch a train to Cornwall for their honeymoon, and that the bride's travelling dress was Wedgewood blue cloth trimmed with black silk braid and a large Tuscan hat with white lilac and roses.

I know that evening the bride's parents, Mr and Mrs W. P. Green, entertained the employees and members of the choir and church band, with their wives, at a 'substantial supper'. 

Not only does the paper describe the wedding itself, but it lists each gift the bridal couple received on the occasion.

So I know that the bride gave her bridegroom a silver-mounted umbrella and a silver tankard.  The bridegroom gave his bride a diamond and sapphire ring and ostrich feathers.

Major and Mrs Wood gave a dinner service.  Mrs Pole, cut glass vinegar bottles and salt spoons.  Mrs Tremlett, candlesticks.  Miss E. Hall, a cushion.  Miss Ambrose, a photo frame.  The list goes on.

All this detail about the wedding truly fleshes out the occasion in detail I could not imagine finding anywhere else. 

Irish Lives Remembered Issue 54

The latest issue of the free quarterly online Irish Family History magazine 'Irish Lives Remembered' is out now.   The magazine can be downloaded and read on your computer or tablet.

Articles include: 

• Fiona Fitzsimons – HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco makes a Major Donation to Trinity College Dublin to Honour Family Links with the College and with Ireland
• Michael McShane and Catherine Kerr - The Re-Indexed 1821 Census for Cavan is Now Available at Cavantownlands.com
• Maurice Gleeson – Testing Siblings Helps the WATO (“What Are The Odds”) Tool Hone in on Unknown Relationships
• Robert Flanagan Stieglitz – Great-Great-Grandfather Thomas Flanagan, A New Yorker Carved in Stone: The Search for His Parents in Cloonfree, County Roscommon
• Paul MacCotter and Eamonn O’Hanlon – The O’Hanlons of Orior (County Armagh)
• Eamonn P. Kelly – The Goddess and the Horse-Eared King: Brigid and Labhraigh Loingseach – Ancestral Deities of the Leinstermen
• Brigit McCone – The Spiritualized Internationalism of Annie Besant
• Nathan Mannion – John Purroy Mitchel, the “Boy Mayor of New York”
• Book Excerpt – Ancestral Journeys (2021) by Kevin Terry 
• The Genealogical Publishing Company Book Excerpt – The People of Cork 1600 – 1799 (2017) by David Dobson

 

Using the Card Catalogue at Ancestry

When was the last time you looked at the Ancestry card catalogue?  If your answer is "Never" than you may be missing out on a great way to narrow down you searches on the website, and discovering specific sets of records that you may otherwise be missing.

To get to the card catalogue, log into Ancestry (or Ancestry Library Edition if you don't have a subscription) and click on the Search tab at the top of the page, then select the "Card Catalogue".

 

The Card Catalogue is a searchable list of all the record collections available.  Because of the way their databases are titled you can use the title search box to narrow all the resources for a specific place, such as "Victoria, Australia".  You can then browse through the various data sets, click on one which interests you, and conduct a specific search of those records for anything relevant to your family.

 

Using this method, I discovered that Ancestry holds the Victorian asylum records from 1853-1940.  I searched these records and was able to locate the patient records of two of my ancestors who were admitted to asylums shortly before they died.  Both were elderly and suffering from dementia, one in Ararat and one in Kew.  Their records contained details of their admission, family members who admitted them, their doctor's comments on their illness and general health - one even had a photograph attached.  Incredible details to add to my knowledge of each individual.

 

While you are looking at particular datasets on Ancestry, it's a good idea to read the "about" section for more detail. To do this scroll past the search box and you'll see information about where the data came from and more details about what is in that particular resource. 

The 'About' section for the Victorian Asylum Records tells me where the information has come from and what information it might contain.  All fairly straight forward and worth knowing.

 

For other datasets, however, the 'About' detail can give some important information.  For example, the Rate Books 1855-1963 for Victoria, Australia are by no means complete, and the detail makes this clear.  While the list below is not the complete list of Rate Books available, it gives you the general idea that different areas covered different year ranges.  For the complete list, please check the card catalogue yourself.

There is nothing more frustrating than spending your valuable researching time looking for information that is not covered by the database, even though the broad description implied that it was there.  So try checking the description of some of the datasets available on Ancestry to see exactly what they cover - it may explain why you cannot find a records you were expecting to be available.