Family History and Genealogy

Genealogical Directories and Military Family History

2012-01-30T11:25:00.000-08:00

I've long been a fan of UKBMD, so when Ian and Sharon Hartas launched two new sites, I knew they would be good.

UKGDL stands for UK Genealogical Directories and Lists. There's links to over a thousand sites with maps, photographs, school lists, ships' lists, taxes and tithes, trade directories, voter lists and much more besides

UKMFH stands for UK Military Family History research. Again there's over a thousand links to sites that offer online information in a wide range of categories to help you with your Military Family History research.

New links are added regularly, so it pays to keep coming back.

UKGDL: www.ukgdl.org.uk

UKMFH: www.ukmfh.org.uk

British Newspaper Archive & Genes Reunited

2011-12-26T12:50:00.000-08:00

Platinum subscribers to Genes Reunited can now add the British Newspaper Archive to their annual subscription for an additional £39-95.

No announcement has yet been made by Find My Past about a similar offering for their subscribers.

Find My Past and Genes Reunited are both owned by Bright Solid, who in partnership with the British Library launched The British Newspaper Archive earlier this year.

Having subscribed to the British Newspaper Archive through Genes Reunited I've found the search facilities aren't as good as on the main British Newspaper Archive site which offers Advanced Search facilities like exact phrase and without these words.

This is irritating as I now do the search on: http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
but have to go to Genes Reunited to view the results.

http://www.genealogyblog.com/?p=16048

British Newspaper Archive

2011-11-30T11:33:00.000-08:00

The British Library and BrightSolid have digitized 65 million articles from 4 million newspaper pages published in the UK since 1800 (mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries). More than 650 million articles and 40 million pages are expected to be digitized when the project is completed in 2020.

Pay-per-view or subscription options are available:

£6.95 PPV valid for 48 hours

£29.95 PPV valid for 30 days

£79.95 annual subscription

Web: http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

1911 Census summary books on Ancestry

2010-12-23T06:20:00.000-08:00

Ancestry have now the 1911 England and Wales Census Summary Books on their website here.

The complete set of 1911 Census record images will launch on-line in early 2011, followed by the indexes, which will be made available in sections throughout the remainder 2011.

I see that Amazon are currently selling Family Tree Maker Platinum Edition (with 6 months access to http://www.ancestry.co.uk) for £29.99, see here for details.

Probate Calendar Books for England and Wales

2010-08-11T08:19:00.000-07:00

Official summaries of more than six million wills dating from between 1861 and 1941 have been scanned and uploaded by Ancestry.

The "probate calendar books" for England and Wales do not give a breakdown of individual bequests, but summarise the dead person’s total estate, the date and place of death and – in some cases – the chief recipients.

To search the summaries click here:
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=1904

If you wish to order a copy of a will or grant mentioned in this collection, you can do so for a fee from the Principal Probate Registry at First Avenue House or any district probate registry. You’ll need to provide the full name of the deceased, the date of the grant and the registry where it was issued.

For more information, please visit the Probate Registry’s website:
http://www.hmcourts-service.gov.uk/cms/1226.htm.

Picasa Face Recognition

2010-01-24T07:31:00.000-08:00

Many of us have installed Picasa (the free photo editing software from Google) on our computers, but have you tried the Face Recognition Software it uses?

The latest version uses facial recognition technology to find and group similar faces together across your entire collection of photos. By adding name tags to these groups of faces, new people albums are created.

Click here for more information.

British Newspapers - a new site

2009-06-18T12:33:00.000-07:00

Two million pages of 19th century newspapers have now been digitalised:

http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs

Searches are free, but to see the detailed articles you need to buy either a 24-hour pass for £6.99 allowing you to view up to 100 articles, or a seven-day pass with 200 article views for £9.99.

You can view complete articles from the Penny Illustrated Paper and The Graphic free of charge.

The 1911 census

2009-01-13T07:46:00.000-08:00

The 1911 census is online as from today:

www.1911census.co.uk

Most (but not all) counties are available, see:

http://blog.1911census.co.uk/2009/01/counties-available-on-the-site-at-launch

for details.

It’s not cheap:

£6.95 - 60 credits - £0.12 per credit

£24.95 - 280 credits - £0.09 per credit

£49.95 - 600 credits - £0.08 per credit

Transcripts are 10 credits and original pages are 30 credits.

Eventually the 1911 census will also appear on http://www.findmypast.com/1911census.jsp as part of a subscription package but at present you can only do it using credits.

For married women the census gives:

Years married
Number of children born to present marriage, living and deceased

But you need to see the original page and not the transcript to see this.

Information on infirmity (eg deaf, dumb, blind, lunatic, imbecile etc.) will not be available to view until the census is officially opened in January 2012.

New way to search Family Search

2008-12-27T04:49:00.000-08:00

Have you tried the new way to search Family Search yet?

There's a pilot here:

http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch

which I found very easy to use.

1911 England and Wales Census

2008-12-26T03:42:00.000-08:00

I've enjoyed having a look at the preview of the 1911 census for England and Wales:

http://www.1911census.co.uk.

Unfortunately they've not covered all counties yet, so I'll have to wait before I can find my Yorkshire relatives. It's easy to search but I think it's rather expensive, at around £1 per trancript and £3 per image!

I've currently got a subscription with Ancestry, so am wondering about swopping to Find My Past when they include the 1911 census in their subscription packages.

It's hard when comparing packages to work out who has 100% coverage for the different years and whether thay are using different trancriptions. I think at present Find My Past have yet to complete 1851 and 1901. I've not yet used The Genealogist, which some say has better scans of the 1841 census. Has anyone transcribed the 1881 census other than the Family Search which I gather Ancestry use?

It will be nice when Free Cen increase their coverage....