Tracing your family history has become easier than ever as more and more records are being released online.
From big commercial websites to smaller projects, we've put together a handy guide to help you discover the latest datasets for researching your family tree.
This month, Irish Genealogy completes its collection of civil marriage records, Findmypast adds the Royal and Imperial Calendars and more.
Irish Genealogy
What's been added?
All publicly available Irish civil marriage records are now accessible online after Irish Genealogy, the free Irish state family history website, uploaded records covering 1845–1864.
It also added 1919 births, 1944 marriages and 1969 deaths, which became publicly available at the start of 2020 under privacy laws. This means that all open civil records are now available, although 1864–1877 deaths are indexed only.
What can the records tell you?
Irish Genealogy holds both searchable transcripts of the records and images of the original documents, which may provide additional detail. Typically, a civil marriage record includes the date of the marriage; the names, ages, jobs and residences of the husband and wife, as well as whether they were single or widowed; and the names and professions of their fathers.
Where do they come from?
Civil registration was introduced in Ireland for marriages in register offices and non-Catholic church weddings in April 1845, and for all births, marriages and deaths in January 1864.
Findmypast
What's been added?
Findmypast has added a new collection of Royal and Imperial Calendars 1767-1973. The website also announced new collections of Scottish records to mark Burns Night on 25 January, including more than 123,000 Poor Law & Poor Lists records, 30,000 Lanarkshire School Registers and Records, and 352,000 new additions to its collection of Dundee & Forfarshire (Angus) parish records.
What can the records tell you?
The Royal and Imperial Calendars contain more than three million records of employees of all the official departments of state, and branches of public service, the law, the church, national or commercial companies and institutions, and many additional articles of public utility. If your ancestors worked for the developing public sector, these records will help you trace where they were employed and when.
The Poor Law & Poor List records list individuals who fell on hard times and had to apply to their local parochial board for relief. They are transcription only.
The School Registers and Records are transcript only and include the child’s name, school, date of birth, age at registration, residence, last school and their father’s name and occupation.
Where do they come from?
The Royal and Imperial Calendars are scanned from directories held at The National Archives. The Scottish Poor Law records are taken from records held by various local councils, including the Renfrewshire Council ones that are also available on their website (see below). The Lanarkshire School Registers are from Lanarkshire Family History Society.
Other records
My Story is a new website from the Association of Jewish Refugees, launched to mark Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January. It offers a collection of free downloadable e-books containing the memoirs of Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution and Holocaust survivors. Based on oral history interviews, they allow the interviewees to tell the story of the suffering they experienced, their lives after the war and their journeys to seek refuge in the UK.
Renfrewshire County Council has updated the Paisley Poor Law Indexes, adding 15,000 entries dating from 1930 to 1948. The indexes are taken from records at the Renfrewshire Heritage Centre, and list those who applied to the local parochial board for poverty relief.
TheGenealogist has added over 500,000 RAF Operations Records Books, primarily covering the Second World War.
Deceased Online has added records from Uplands Cemetery in Smethwick and Wood Green Cemetery in Wednesbury, held by Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council in the Black Country.
American Ancestors has created a new database of the first fifty years of The Mayflower Quarterly, the official journal of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. There are approximately 5,000 pages and 92,000 searchable names in the database, which dates from 1935 to 1984. Names are free to search, with the full records available to subscribers only.
