Finding ancestors who went to the US.

It’s been a while since I posted here. My apologies for that. My only excuse is that summer seems to have arrived in the UK so I’m enjoying it while I can – it could all go away as quickly as it arrived.

I’m just popping in to share the url of a site which will probably be quite familiar to family historians in the US, but perhaps less so to anyone on the UK. Ellis Island was a major point of entry for people emigrating to the US, and the records are available for free online.

I’m a little bit jealous of this because we don’t have anything similar over here. In fact, it seems that up until quite recently, people could come and go as they pleased – great for them, not so great for the people trying to trace them. And contrary to popular belief, Britain and Ireland were not a homogeneous monoculture in centuries past. There was quite a lot of immigration, it just didn’t get recorded in any formal way.*

Anyhoo, I digress. If you are researching in the UK and/or Ireland, and know your immediate ancestors were local, so to speak, you may still find the Ellis island site useful for locating branches of your extended family who did head off for pastures new. You may even find members of your immediate family who lived in, or visited, the US for a short period before heading for home. Entries usually include their name and age, the name of the ship they sailed on and the port of departure. You can search the database and view records for no cost, but they do ask for a voluntary donation if you find the service useful.

* I’ll write a further post (or series of posts)  about tracing immigrant ancestors in the UK at a later date.

Did your ancestors have green fingers?

I spent this morning working in my garden and while I was out there, my mind wandered and I began to think about allotments. For the uninitiated, an allotment is an area of land which is subdivided into smaller sections which are then rented out to members of the public to use to grow fruit and vegetables, or even keep a few chickens. Most allotments are owned by the local council, but some are in private hands.

Now you may be wondering what all this has to do with genealogy. Well, the provision of allotments goes back a very long way. In their present form they date from the 19th century when land was set aside in towns and cities for the use of working class people who lived in back to back housing with no gardens. They could rent an allotment and use it to grow fresh food to supplement what was probably quite a basic diet. However, the roots (no pun intended) of allotments go back to the days of common land. You can read more about the history here.

I wasn’t sure if any records of allotment holders would exist, but a quick search of the National Archives for the term ‘allotment holders‘ has revealed that, in some cases, they do. Glancing at the results they do seem to be mostly for the early to mid 20th century, but even so, they may help to fill in some gaps in your knowledge of the more recent generations of your family and provide some interesting background information.

Something for the weekend

Here in the UK we are entering into a bank holiday weekend, the second this month. It seems rain has been forecast, this is to be expected. So, if you are stuck indoors this weekend, here are few things to occupy your time.

You could take a look at Project Gutenberg, a database of free books. Unless, your ancestors were highly noted, you probably won’t find anything which mentions them directly – although it’s always possible – but it is still a good place to find historical and geographical information.

Pay a visit to Wikipedia to find free images or maps. The maps seem to be mostly from the US, but other areas are covered too. The images cover a wide range of themes including some posters from World War 2.

Make specialised searches of Google. Not all the options will be of use to family historians, but many will, especially the translated and book searches. Once you have done that, find out how you make your ordinary searches more productive.

Finally, why not add some content to the National Archives wiki, a collaborative effort to provide information which isn’t currently in the archives.

Have a lovely weekend, wherever you are!

Presentment Bills of the Archdeaconry of Nottingham

I have posted about the Presentment Bills of the Archdeaconry of Nottingham before, but only in passing. They are such a fascinating resource that I thought they really deserved a post of their own.

What are they: The presentment bills are a collection of documents created by church wardens in the 16th and 17th centuries detailing the names (and often other information) of people who had broken church law. Typical ‘offences’ would be such things as failing to attend church, failing to have a new baby baptised or indulging in immoral behaviour. As far as I know, all parishes maintained such records, but only Nottingham has created an online catalogue.

Which areas do they cover: The bills cover the Bingham, Retford, Newark and Nottingham deaneries. To find out which area your ancestors lived in try the table on this page.

How can they help: If you happen to have ancestors from Nottinghamshire, there is a good chance you will find some reference to them in these bills. Or, if not your direct ancestors, then members of their extended family. Some entries are quite detailed and will provide more than just a name. I have found spouses and occupations in entries pertaining to my relatives.

Furthermore, they can tell you a little about the kind of people your ancestors were. I discovered one branch of my family were regularly penalised for not attending church. This makes sense. The family were Anabaptist therefore they did not recognise the authority of the Anglican church and were classed as non-Conformists. Another branch received similar penalties, they were recusant Catholics. Of course, if your ancestors were penalised for non-attendance, that does not mean they followed a non-conformist religion. It could simply mean they were not particularly religious at all. Then as now, many people only really felt the need to attend church for ‘hatches, matches and dispatches’ and would have resisted attempts to force them to attend every Sunday.

You can find a longer and more detailed description of the bills here.

Examples: The easiest way to search, is to open the page you want to view and use your computers built in search tool. I clicked on the link for the Bingham Deanery for Easter 1608 and didn’t find any of my relatives listed – they must have been behaving themselves LOL However, there a few interesting entries.

AN/PB 293/2/47 24.9.1603 Wilford
Summer and winter 1603/4
Churchwardens present the following: Joan Stafford, widow, a railer, a scold and an uncharitable liver.
Bound together with other documents from the same series, AN/PB 293/2.

Thankfully I’m not related to Joan – although I do wonder if she really was as unpleasant as that description suggests.

AN/PB 293/2/49 24.9.1603 Shelford
Summer and winter 1603/4
One churchwarden presents the following: Wm Smyth for detaining the surplice from the parish, and for using very uncomely words as ‘turd in the churchwardens teeth’, which was spoken in the church porch.
Bound together with other documents from the same series, AN/PB 293/2.

Not much to add there except to say Mr Smith sounds like a very rude man.

AN/PB 293/2/56 1603 (c) Barnby in the Willows
Summer and winter 1603/4?
Churchwardens present the following: John Burt and Alse Nealer for a common fame that John Burt said that he lay on the bed with the said Alse in the night time; Robert England for a slandering of his neighbour Edmund Ward, saying that he lived upon ’sheefts’ and made a benefit of cavilling with other men, and the said Robert said with slanderous speeches on 10 July last that Edmund Ward had practised this two years to take his house on his head; the said Robert was slandered by Roger Richardson’s wife that he came to her bed and would have lain with her, and that he brought her some plums in his hat.
No place name given; identified as Barnby in the Willows from names of churchwardens.
No date given; found in series of presentment bills from 1603 and 1604.
Bound together with other documents from the same series, AN/PB 293/2.

Trying to seduce a woman with a hat full of plums – it sounds like a scene from a Carry On film LOL I suppose this was the pre-chocolate era so the poor chap would have had to make do with whatever was at hand.

And finally, my favourite entry . . .

AN/PB 294/2/66 7.5.1607 East Markham
Easter 1607
Churchwardens present the following: Elizabeth Cowper for fornication with Thomas Browne, as she says; Nicholas Storke for being absent from church on the Sabbath day and being at bowls; we asked him a reason for his absence and he answered ‘he can reade as much at hoam & that he knoweth our reder for no lawfull minister’, but we know our reader has a licence by one Mr Dodsworth of York for Mr Field’s absence.
Written in another hand above each of the names: ‘emt’.
Written in another hand at side of page: ‘R’.

If I were in Mr Storke’s shoes I think I would have gone bowling rather than spend my Sundays with a bunch of people who felt the need to police my morals LOL

Genealogy Needs You!

Everyone likes to get something for nothing, and that goes for family historians too. Amongst the UK genealogy community websites such as Freecen, Free BMD and Freereg are incredibly popular, and why not? They offer a great starting point for further research and, speaking personally, they have broken down more than one brickwall by providing me with the information to finally locate an elusive ancestor.

While the sites mentioned above do not cost the user anything to use and they are staffed by volunteers, they do cost a lot in terms of time. Each and every entry in a free database was submitted by a volunteer who took the time to transcribe the available documents – which were often hard to read. In my opinion these people are the heroes of genealogy and each and every one of them deserve our thanks. However, we can give them a little more than that. We can help them in their efforts.

All the free online transcription services are calling for volunteers. I suppose it is a case of so many records, so few volunteers. But it doesn’t have to be that way – you can help out. Transcribers aren’t a special breed, they don’t have super powers. They are ordinary people who spend a little time each week transcribing records for the benefit of others. Transcribing isn’t difficult, it is simply a matter of typing the information you see in an entry and uploading. You will be given comprehensive instructions by the project coordinator who will be happy to answer any questions. You won’t be paid, but you will have the satisfaction of knowing you have given a little back for the help you have received.

If you would like to help out, try some of the following links:

• Online Parish Clerks – UK: the home site of the UK OPC project which includes links to all the current county sites.
• Freecen: the volunteer transcription page for the free census project
• Freereg: the volunteer page for the free parish records project
• Free BMD: the volunteer page for the free births, marriage and death records project

If you know of another project which is calling for volunteers please leave a message in the comments.

18 resources for family history beginners

The following post is taken from an email I put together a while ago for a friend who asked about the best places online to start his research without spending too much cash. I know many of the sites listed will be obvious to someone who has been involved in family history research for a while, but if you are just getting started have a browse, I hope you find something useful.

I should say, my family are from the UK and Ireland, and the sites do reflect that, but some will be of use if you are looking in other parts of the world. I’ve included a number of free to use sites, because they can be useful places to start to look especially if you only want to find the details you need to send off for certificates.

• GENUKI is a UK and Ireland family history site full of useful links, mostly organised into counties, then sub-divided. It is a huge site, but worth looking around because it is packed with really helpful stuff. Read their beginners guide before you start, it is long but worthwhile because it is full of advice and tips about things you need to know.
• Cyndi’s List is similar to GENUKI but has an international theme. There is still a lot of British and Irish stuff there, plus a range of other bits and pieces that you may find helpful for example: occupational information.
• UK National Archives is the main repository for records, censuses, military information and pretty much everything else that is, or has been recorded in the UK. You can search for free, but there is a small charge to view most records. The exception is anything held on A2A (linked below).
• Ancestry have some free searches, most you have to pay for, but you can find a lot using the former. At the moment the 1881 census for England and Wales is free, so are all the birth, death and marriage records from 1837 provided by the Free BMD. To search these go here. Remember, the dates given there are only the date of registration, and are divided into quarters. (You can also search this database at the link below, but sometimes it can become very slow due to the amount of traffic it receives.) You will be able to search the actual registrars transcripts, some later ones include such things as the mothers maiden name, or the name of a spouse, but not all. You need to be a subscriber to use these though. Ancestry also have wills, directories indexes from places such as universities and military records. Actually, they seem to add new stuff all the time so it’s probably not possible to include everything here.
• Free BMD is a voluntary project to upload all birth, marriage and death records from 1837. It’s not complete, but more and more data is being added every day. If you find a marriage record using the search on ancestry, Free BMD can be useful for finding the spouse. They list all marriages in a district in that date period, so if you know that Fred Blogs married a Freda you can usually match them up. Even if you don’t know the name of the other person, you can at least narrow it down to a few potential candidates then use other records to find the right one. Once you have located the record you want you can use the link provided to send off for a full copy which will contain a lot more information for example: names of parents on a birth certificate, the name and occupation of fathers on marriage certificates.
• Freecen is a sister project of the Free BMD working to compile a database of census returns from 1841 – 1891. Once again, it’s not complete, but I have found plenty of useful stuff there, and you get to see more info than you would on the Ancestry site which is really useful if you find you have several possibilities but need to see other information to be sure of a match.
• Freereg is a similar project but listing parish returns (baptisms, marriages and burials. Some records are brief with little more than a name and date, others are more detailed and include similar information to civil records.
• UKBMD has lists of local sites some of which have searchable databases. Plus you will find other useful info, some may not seem that important at first but as you progress it is helpful (and interesting) to know about such things as local industries, the location of churches and so on.
• Family Search has a range of records, the 1881 census and a lot of parish records. Just be careful. They also allow their members to edit the database, so check the source. If it is from a parish register or some other official document it should be accurate. However, if it was supplied by a member be wary. Some of this info is wrong. It is free to use, and can be helpful, just make sure you check the source and then double check the data.
• A2A is a database of directories, family documents, maps and other interesting stuff. It doesn’t have any BMDs or census returns, but it is handy. For example you might find a relative who worked in particular trade and want to know more, this would be a good place to look.
• Historical Directories is similar but with an emphasis on trade directories
• There is also BOPCRIS – that has mainly government archives.
• And British History Online is another similar idea, but that allows you to bookmark texts for future reference. This is a great place to look for detailed county histories.
• OldMaps is a good place to get a look at the layout of an area in the past. If you find a street or area that isn’t mention on a modern map, try having a look there.
• Rootsweb has loads of mailing lists and message boards covering areas, surnames, occupations and more. It is worth subscribing to any relevant ones because the members are usually very helpful.
• Rootschat is a family history forum with threads covering England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales and their counties, plus occupations, surnames and other topics. Once again the members are friendly and will try to help you with any questions – in fact Rootschat offers a free look up service. (Both Rootsweb mailing lists and Rootschat are good places to go to learn more about your Irish relatives. I have found the online material to be less than helpful, and it’s been more useful to join a list and find people researching the same names or areas.)
• The 1901 Census Decoder is a free programme which lets you search the 1901 England and Wales census – the idea is you can find all the member of a household before you send of for the record, sometimes people can end up on different pages, so you may not be sure you have found the family you are looking for.
• The Parish Locator programme is also free and you can use it to find all parishes within an area. It also details parishes of different denominations.

That’s all! But if you have any tips or suggestions why not leave them in a comment

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Spotlight on: Clergy of the Church of England Database

If you discover you are descended from an Anglican clergyman, there is an excellent database online which you can use to find out more about your ancestor. The Clergy of the Church of England database is free to search and in many cases the information provided is very detailed.

The link above will take you to the home page, from there click the link marked ‘Database Home’ in the left sidebar and then ‘Search’ on the subsequent page. Type your search into the box provided and if there is a match you will see the results in a list in the left sidebar. You simply click on a name to open up the full results.

I just tried a sample search using the surname ‘Wigmore’. There are four results – all related to me, although, I’m not sure how one chap fits in – opening up the file for my great x 10 grandfather, Gilbert Wigmore, gives me some really useful information about him. For example, it tells me when he graduated from university and which college, when he was ordained, which ranks he held and in which parishes. This is all really useful stuff to know, and a great starting point for further research.

Looking at the dates pertaining to Gilbert, it is quite apparent that he would have served as a rector during the years of the English Civil War – and that opens up a whole new area of research. Which side was he on? Or did he do what many country vicars did, and try to stay out of it? I’m not sure if I will ever be able to answer those questions, but knowing what kind of environment he lived and worked in is very useful and does help to add some background and colour to the simple dates and statistics I already have.

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