The London Illustrated News

TheGenealogist.co.uk has started to release The London Illustrated News for Diamond subscribers. They have added 6 months' worth of the weekly newspaper from 1890 to the site so far with more to follow. They are bookmarked by article and are easily searchable, containing many announcements of Births, Marriages, Deaths, Obituaries, Wills & Bequests.

Birth Transcripts 1973-2005

TheGenealogist.co.uk have now added over 7.6 million birth transcripts, bringing the total number of birth records to over 28 million. They've added these records to a new tool that lets you search across all their Birth, Marriage and Death transcripts with built in SmartSearch technology, automatically showing partner's full name where available, and enabling you to find potential parents from a birth, potential children to a marriage and potential birth records from a death record.

You can now search 9,122,481 new records from the Society of Genealogists on findmypast.co.uk...

Apprentices of Great Britain 
Boyd’s Inhabitants of London & Boyd’s Family Units
Boyd’s London Burials
Boyd’s Marriage Index
Boyd’s 1st Misc Series
Faculty Office Marriage Licence Allegations
Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills Index
St Andrew Holborn Marriage Index
St Leonard’s Shoreditch burials
St Leonard’s Shoreditch workhouse deaths
Teachers’ Registration Council Registers
Trinity House Calendars
Vicar-General Marriage Licence Allegations

There are more new birth, marriage and death records for Derbyshire too...

Amber Valley (Ripley)
Ashbourne
Bakewell
Chesterfield
Erewash (Ilkeston)
High Peak
Mansfield (Notts)
South Derbyshire (Derby)

I was recently nominated for an Ancestor Approved Award by Mike at 'You Don't Choose Your Family'. Many thanks to you, Mike.

This award was created by Leslie Ann Ballou of the Ancestors Live Here blog. Recipients are asked to list ten surprising, humbling or enlightening aspects of their research and to pass it along to ten other bloggers who they feel are doing their ancestors proud.

So here's my starter for ten, with a slight twist...

1. It's official! I'm a genealogy anorak. And to think I was going to trace my family inside 14 days with Ancestry's free trial!
2. My 4 x great-grandfather left over £24,000 in 1860 (getting on for a double millionaire today). Now I need to know, what became of the money?
3. Since taking up blogging, there's been no time for actual research. Duh!!
4. Victorians weren't so straight-laced as they'd like to have made out they were.
5. What did happen to all the money?
6. I simply adore stomping about in wet graveyards with soggy socks and the wrong shoes.
7. And what joy there is waiting for Mr. Postie to deliver that certificate with all the answers, only to leave you with a load more questions.
8. No really, where did the money go? Just kidding! Lol
9. I don't know about enlightening moments, I think I've had my share of senior moments.
10. Now was she my third cousin, three times removed or my second cousin, four times removed? Scrub that, we're related by marriage!

And I'm presenting this award to...

1. Audrey at The Family Recorder
2. Caroline at Caro's Family Chronicles
3. Rosemary at London Roots Research
4. Brian at One Pilot's War
5. Jennifer at Climbing My Family Tree > One Branch at at Time
6. CeCe at Your Genetic Genealogist
7. Lorlee at Dear Annie...
8. Emily at Writing Your Memories
9. Miles at Miles' Genealogy Tips
10. Lidian at The Virtual Dime Museum

FamilySearch have recently added 90 million records and 18 million digital images from 13 countries. There are over 3 million new digital images of U.S. naturalization records included in the update. Findmypast.com's index to the 1881 and 1891 England and Wales censuses and Ancestry.com's indexes for U.S. border crossings from Canada to U.S. and Mexico to U.S. can now be searched free of charge at FamilySearch.org. Full details can be viewed here.

FindMyPast have recently updated their London docklands parish baptisms collection with 22,645 new records. This brings the total amount of London docklands baptisms on findmypast.co.uk to 503,711. Coverage is as follows:

Bermondsey 23,179
Bethnal Green 12,605
Isle of Dogs 7,963
Limehouse 37,961
Mile End 10,376
Millwall 2,408
Newington, Southwark 15,844
Poplar 20,740
Ratcliff 4,783
Shadwell 35,496
Spitalfields 29,035
Stepney 186,560
Stratford 3,500
Wapping 39,796
Whitechapel 73,465

To celebrate Australia Day you can enjoy free, unlimited access to Australia's most comprehensive online collection of Convict records with Ancestry.com.au until 31st January. With free access to over 2.3 million Convict and related records, including passenger lists from the First Fleet and original documents dating back to 1788, Ancestry.com.au can help you discover if there is a convict relative in your family history.

In order to view a free record image, you need to register (which is also free) or to log in.

Click here to find your convict ancestors.

If you have ancestors who lived in London at the turn of the century (that's the 20th century), then you may be interested in the London, England, Land Tax Valuations from 1910 which have just been launched by Ancestry.

This is a collection of land tax valuation rolls in the City of London taken in 1910. The Finance Act 1910 included the taxation in the increase in the value of land and in order to tax the increase the land had to be valued to begin with. These rolls are the baseline valuations of land in the different districts of London. The work was done by the District Valuation Offices of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue. It involved the compilation of field books and maps that listed all property. The Domesday Books that comprise this collection is the summary of this information.

The records contain:

• District/ward
• Residence
• Tax date
• Proprietor name
• Tenant name
• Street
• Description of property
• Yearly rent or value

You can now search 126,967 new parish baptism and marriage records for Durham, Yorkshire, Cumberland, Northumberland and Westmorland on FindMyPast.co.uk.

The Northumberland & Durham Family History Society provided findmypast.co.uk with these records, in association with the Federation of Family History Societies.

The details are as follows:

Type of records: Baptisms
Number of records: 16,383
Years covered: 1773–1959
County covered: Durham
Areas covered: St Andrew, St Helen & St Peter

Type of records: Marriages
Number of records: 110,584
Years covered: 1521–1989
County covered: Durham, Yorkshire, Cumberland, Northumberland, Westmorland
Areas covered: St Andrew, St Helen & St Peter, St Thomas, St Steven, St Paul, Cathedral, St Ignatius, All Saints, Holy Trinity, St Aidan, St Barnabas, St Catherine, St Columba, St Cuthbert, St George, St Hilda, St James, St John, St Margaret, St Mark, St Mary, St Mary-le-Bow, St Mary South Bailey, St Nicholas, St Oswald, Venerable Bede

In addition, FindMyPast.co.uk have compiled a list of 324 parishes which provide 447,108 new baptism records for Durham, Yorkshire, Cumberland, Northumberland and Westmorland which can be viewed here.

FindMyPast.co.uk have just published 154,074 new parish burial records for Warwickshire. The Birmingham and Midland Family History Society provided these records, in association with the Federation of Family History Societies.

The details are as follows:

Type of records: Burials
Number of records: 154,074
Years covered: 1883–2007
County covered: Warwickshire
Areas covered: Key Hill and Warstone Lane

One of the advantages of having your own independent family tree website is that others will often discover it when inputting a simple name search into search engines such as Google – and we all know how rewarding it is when a distant cousin gets in touch or can offer some further information. Having a tree on a commercial site alone (such as Ancestry, Genes Reunited, etc.) will often limit your audience to other users of those particular websites.

This is where GED-GEN comes into its own. What’s GED-GEN I hear you say?


 .....Read more »

ScotlandsPeople are offering all customers who have existing credits in their account the opportunity to re-activate and use the credits at no cost through the use of a voucher code. They are doing this to allow customers who have expired credits to take the opportunity to use them without making a purchase.

All customers who have existing credits can now use the free voucher code festive which will re-set the credit expiry to 90 days in their account. Customers may use this voucher any time until 1.00 pm. on Wednesday 5th January 2011. The voucher may only be used once in each account.

For information on how to use the voucher, click here.