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 the December 2021 issue of Family Tree:

• Dive in an unravel the mysteries in our bumper end-of-year family history quiz.
• Learn how to ‘interview’ your ancestors (yes even those no longer with us) – with professional researcher and blogger Susie Douglas.
• Learn about the diligent folk who have been responsible our birth, marriage and death certificate details since 1837.
• Rachel Bellerby reports on the latest news from the world of family history
• The impact of the Laki eruptions: Wayne Shepheard considers our ancestors and the events of pan-continental environmental catastrophe in the late 1700s
• Tales from the City of the Dead: Drs Anna Maria Barry and Fiona Snailham share stories from Highgate Cemetery – a place where social status could continue, even beyond the grave
• Paul Chiddicks rounds off a memorable year with a selection of stories with a family history festive twist
• Books & Gifts: Ideas to pop on your wish list or treat yourself too
• In the latest installment of Twiglets, Gill Shaw ponders on the poignant question of ‘Who survived to adulthood?’
• DNA advisor Karen Evans comes to the aid of a reader trying to solve a long-standing great-grandfather brickwall
• School records: Simon Wills reports on a selection of education related sources
• Spotlight on: Borders Family History Society has been helping people trace family for 35 years
• Diane Lindsay looks into an ancestor’s eyes and brings them to life in her inimitable way
• Your Questions Answered, Dates for your Diary this November, & Readers’ Letters

Irish Catholic Clergy Database

A new digital archive and database of the Irish clerical population from medieval to modern times has been launched out of Maynooth University's Arts and Humanities Institute. It's called Clericus.ie.

The first phase of the Clericus project focussed on students and faculty of St Patrick's College, Maynooth, historically Ireland's largest seminary and pontifical university.

Now in its second phase, the Clericus research team is expanding the range of the project to include datasets from the early modern period and Irish clergy abroad. Among the newest additions to the database are more than 1,500 Irish clerics who attended the universities of Paris and Toulouse between 1573 and 1792. Similar research will gather data from Lisbon (1587-1850) and Salamanca (1592-1638).

It is anticipated that the database will further expand in the future with more information from a variety of sources.

Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day, once known as Armistice Day, is one of our most important commemorative dates. On 11 November 1918, the guns on the Western Front fell silent, and the armistice with Germany to end the fighting on land, in the air and at sea was signed.

Each year on 11 November we pause as a nation at 11am for one minute of silence to honour all those who have suffered and lost their lives during wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations.

For the second year in a row, Covid will impact our Remembrance Day commemorations around the country and the world, but like ANZAC Day many will still gather to remember and thank those who have served.

A wonderful resource for hosts of a Remembrance Day service, or those commemorating at home, is available from the Department of Veterans Affairs.  Through their ANZAC Portal, they have a free Remembrance Day Kitbag.  It includes the order of service, music, making a speech, the Ode of Remembrance, a brief history, suggestions for a personal commemoration, guidelines to making a paper poppy, and more.

So wherever you are at 11am this morning, take a minute to pause and remember those who have served to protect our freedoms.

Lest We Forget.

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).