Web Watch Extra

In our regular Web Watch feature, YFH magazine tells readers all about the latest family history resources to have appeared online on both free and subscription websites. However, genealogical records are finding their way on to the internet at such a rapid rate that there’s not always room to fit them all into the magazine. So, we’ve created a regular monthly digest with a few extra updates for our forum-savvy readers:

FamilySearch
Four million new digital images have been added to the new-look FamilySearch website. These collections include the first images from South Africa, as well as records from Brazil, Canada, Germany, Guatemala, the Netherlands and the United States. A chart available on Dick Eastman’s Genealogy Blog provides further details of these new online records.

One Name Studies
The Guild of One Name Studies has agreed with FamilySearch that, as of February, upon searching for a surname on the new FamilySearch website, users will find contact details for Guild members who are conducting a One Name Study. Guild members are allowed to opt out of having their contact details made available in this way, however many will be pleased to have the opportunity of expanding their One Name Studies by communicating with other genealogists looking into the same name.

Military Genealogy
The Military Genealogy website has recently passed the 2 million military records mark, now with over 10 different databases covering many wars, including:
World War One Roll of Honour
World War Two Roll of Honour
British Army Service Records
World War One Medal Rolls
Individual Battle Data
Other Wars Casualties Lists
Prisoner of War Records
Royal Marines Databases
Fighter & Bomber Command Losses
Fleet Air Arm Data
RFC/RAF List
RN Losses
Shot at Dawn Database and lots more!

The Genealogist
Over 14 million marriage transcripts have been added to TheGenealogist.co.uk, bringing the total number of records to over 82 million, with the years 1880-2005 now available as a fully searchable database. These transcripts allow users to easily search for either partner and use SmartSearch to see spouses’ names.

One million individual entries have also been added to the Shropshire Parish Records at TheGenealogist.co.uk, giving a total of nearly 1,250,000 individuals now available to Diamond Premium subscribers. Records include baptisms, marriages, marriage banns and burials from 1421 to 1910. 25,000 individuals have been added to the Devon Parish Records bringing the total to over 60,000 individuals with years ranging from 1538 to 2009, while 30,000 individuals have been added to the Worcestershire Parish Records, expanding the coverage to nearly 705,000 individuals, with years ranging from 1544 to 1857.

Plus, TheGenealogist.co.uk now has over 50,000 biographical records for the following Rolls of Honour:
Cambridge University War List 1914-1918
Oxford University Roll of Service
Dulwich College War Record 1914-1919
Glasgow University Roll of Honour 1914-19
Queen's College Oxford 1914-18
Dragon School War Memorial
Balliol College War Memorial
Mill Hill Book of Rememberance and War Record 1914
Sedbergh School Record of War Service 1914-1918
Stonyhurst War Record 1914-1918
Tonbridge School and the Great War of 1914-1919
The Watsonian War Record 1914-1918
Whitgift Grammar School 1914-1919

Scottish Research
Scottish genealogist Chris Paton has announced several interesting online developments for Scottish researchers in his blog in the last month.

The National Library of Scotland now has a new Post Office Directories page on its website. There are 287 directories currently available for 1774-1911, about a third of those digitised for the Internet Archive project, with the rest soon to follow. At the moment they can be browsed or downloaded in PDF format only – a new search facility will follow later this year.

The National Library of Scotland has also launched an application allowing early maps of Scotland to be georeferenced and viewed in 3D as an overlay in Google Earth. Georeferencing allows historic maps to be directly compared to present day satellite imagery. This online project encourages users to help to georeference historical maps in the collection. Also, 18,000 historical maps from the NLS's online collection have also now been made available at the ScotlandsPlaces website.

The Paradox of Medieval Scotland is a new free database compiled from research by the Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh and King's College London, which provides biographical information about all known people in Scotland between 1093 and 1286, as drawn from around 6,000 charters of the time.

Watch Out For…

In addition to the 1916 Prairie Census release and Medals, Honours and Awards mentioned in the Web Watch this issue, Library and Archives Canada announced last month that a new Canadian Families database has been launched, which will be added to over the next few years. It will contain details of baptisms, marriages and burials recorded in a small number of church records held at LAC. It is planning to significantly expand the digital collections held on Collections Canada by 2017, in time for the country's 150th anniverary of Confederation. Within a year it will double the amount of digitised material it makes available, provide the option to purchase digital images from its collections and significantly expand what it makes available through Ancestry.ca. Later this year, Canadians will be able to access digital images of original census documents from 1861 and 1871 as part of this project.

Here are a few extra bits to add to all the recent updates announced in the Web Watch of our February edition (issue 11):

National Wills Index
Origins.net has introduced the British Record Society Probate Collection to its National Wills Index. The BRS probate indexes show the names and dates of several million wills proved across Britain and other probate documents. Spanning four centuries, the indexes show you where to go to find the original documents. Eventually users will be able to order copies of the wills online. There is a list of the counties that are currently available for searching online.

Parish Records
The Northumberland and Durham Family History Society has made available around half a million new parish baptism records and some marriage records for Durham, Yorkshire, Cumberland, Northumberland and Westmorland on findmypast.co.uk, covering 324 parishes for the period 1600–1997. These records are in addition to those described in last issue’s Spotlight on Cumbria and regional On The Web feature. FindMyPast’s collection of Warwickshire baptism records has also expanded by over 150,000 records in the last month, and over 22,000 London docklands baptism records have been added, covering the parishes of St Matthew in Bethnal Green (1799–1819) and St Dunstan in Stepney (1608–1628). This brings the total amount of London docklands baptisms on findmypast.co.uk to 503,711.

Canadian Newspapers
The Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management has digitized a series of historical newspapers and made them available to browse for free online. The earliest paper in the collection dates from 1769.

90 million new online records
FamilySearch has added 90 million new records since the start of 2011, comprising 18 million free digital images and 72 million indexed records from 13 countries. This latest addition is a continuation of FamilySearch’s project to digitize its expansive microfilm collection and increase its indexes by partnering with commercial sites such as Ancestry.com and findmypast.co.uk. For a full list of the records added, see Dick Eastman’s blog.

New York Civil War Soldiers
The New York State Military History Museum and Veterans Research Center is uploading the histories of 360,000 New York Civil War soldiers who served during the American Civil War, 1861–65.

Prolific Scottish genealogy blogger Chris Paton has also announced the following online releases in the past month:

A new Scottish Borders Prison Database has been added to Maxwell Ancestry. The free basic search screen returns name, occupation and residence; age; birthplace; prison and year, and you can then purchase additional info. The company has also made available Dispensary Patient Records from Kelso from 1778–79. This document provides details for over 300 patients and is a sample from a much fuller book, which will be made available through Maxwell Ancestry's shop in due course.

ScotlandsPlaces has added a new free-to-view set of Clock and Watch Tax records from 1797-98, held at the National Archives of Scotland in E326/12. They list the names of clock and watch owners, though only two volumes survive and it seems that a third volume (containing the counties of Midlothian, Moray, Orkney, Peebles, Perth, Renfrew, Ross, Roxburgh, Selkirk, Shetland, Stirling, Sutherland, West Lothian, and Wigtown) is not extant. Also added to the site recently are the Bathymetrical Survey of the Fresh-Water Lochs of Scotland, 1897–1909, Ordnance Survey 1st edition 6-inch mapping, 1843–1882 Ordnance Survey 1st edition 25-inch mapping, 1855–1882 Historical county maps of Scotland, 1580-1928, and Historical town plans, 1580-1919 (all previously available on the National Library of Scotland's website).

Watch Out For …

See findmypast.co.uk’s blog to discover what they have planned for 2011. Digitized copies of the British Library’s national newspaper collections are eagerly anticipated, along with additional records for militia men, merchant seamen, criminals, and an even bigger parish register collection.

Some extra online news updates to add to the March Web Watch (issue 12) - a little later than usual owing to our mammoth preparations for Who Do You Think You Are? Live...

Find My Past
Just days after YFH went to print, findmypast.co.uk announced that they have published 54,722 new Lincolnshire parish marriage records. These span the period 1700 to 1837 and cover a total of 139 parishes. Lincolnshire Family History Society provided findmypast.co.uk with these records, in association with the Federation of Family History Societies.

Society of Genealogists
The SoG has announced that its collections of Bank of England Wills Abstracts is now available online via findmypast.co.uk. Previously only the index to these records was available online and the Society undertook a copy service. Now scanned images of some 60,523 will abstracts for the period 1717–1845 can be viewed online along with the index. The Bank of England Wills index and images will also be published exclusively for SoG members on its website.

Africa Through A Lens
The National Archives have put online thousands of Colonial Office photos via the Africa Through A Lens database, charting more than 100 years of African history since the 1860s. TNA want users to help identify the people, places and events captured on film.

Ancestry.ca
Last month, Ancestry.ca announced the launch of the Beechwood Cemetery Registers, 1873-1990, a collection of more than 115,000 names of those buried in Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa, Canada, between 1873 and 1990. These include five burial ledgers with names indexed from 66,649 internment records. The ledgers also include cremations from 1981 onwards, as well as some individuals who died before 1873 whose remains were later moved to Beechwood.

Established in 1873, Beechwood National Cemetery was built on what was then the outskirts of Ottawa. Today it serves as the National Cemetery of Canada and is the final resting place for Canadian Veterans, War Dead, Governors-General, Prime Ministers and Victoria Cross recipients. Since its inception, it has held the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Memorial Cemetery, a fitting tribute to Canada’s national police service. In 2001, Beechwood became the National Military Cemetery of the Canadian Forces, with gravesites of the men and women who have served in the Canadian military from the Riel Rebellion in 1885 to the current war in Afghanistan. The Cemetery also features Poet’s Hill, where several of Canada’s most prominent poets are buried. Over the past 135 years, Beechwood has also become a final resting place for families and individuals from all walks of life, denominations and cultures. With special sections reserved for various religious and ethno-cultural communities, Beechwood is a reflection of Canada’s multicultural population. As the Chinese Cemetery of Ottawa, it is designed according to Chinese religious principles and offers services in both official languages, as well as three dialects of Chinese.

The indexes are searchable by a combination of name, death date, birth date, birthplace, and parents' names and include 4,730 images. Depending on the year, ledgers may also include last residence, occupation, cause of death, funeral director or undertaker, informant (relative or friend) and informant’s relationship to the deceased.

Genealogy blogger, Chris Paton, has also been making some interesting announcements about online developments for Ireland and Scotland on his Scottish GENES blog:

Two more big developments for Scotland have been announced by Deceased Online. First, it has just struck up an agreement with Scottish Monumental Inscriptions to allow the company to sell its gravestone CDs via the Deceased Online website. Deceased Online has also announced that the next big Scottish release will be for Edinburgh city’s crematorium and Seafield Cemetery, with some 320,000 records expected in the first tranche. These should go online some time in the spring. Also, "There are many other areas where clients have either agreed to go online or the business process is in the final stages and these include major authorities in the northwest, northeast and southwest of England; at least three more London authorities; and important and historical areas of Scotland" - so more to come!

Belfast City Council has now put online a free to access searchable burials database for three key Belfast cemeteries. They are:
Belfast City Cemetery - records from 1869 (including the Jewish, public and Glenalina extension sections)
Roselawn Cemetery - records from 1954
Dundonald Cemetery - records from 1905
You can use the search facility to view, where available, the folllowing information about the deceased:
• full name
• age
• last place of residence
• sex
• date of death
• date of burial
• cemetery they are interred in
• grave section and number
• type of burial, for example, standard earth burial or cremation.

Michael Dun has has added two new datasets to his simply brilliant War of 1812: Privateers web project:
The Register for Letters of Marque against France, 1793-1815 (PDF) - Letters of marque were basically licences issued to merchant vessels allowing them the right to attack and capture enemy vessels. Michael's database has been sourced from two Admiralty collections at The National Archives at Kew, ADM 7/328 (1793-1801) and ADM 7/649 (1803-1815). The records have been ordered by master’s name and vessel name, ands there is also a vessel index.
UK POWs held in the United States during the War of 1812 - Again, sourced from TNA (ADM 103/466) and including the names of some 15,000 army, navy and merchant navy prisoners held in the United States.

Ancestry.co.uk has placed the UK's Dictionary of National Biography online. Volume 21 is missing, so the release contains Vols 1-20 and Vol 22. Alan Stewart's blog has more on the story. It should be noted that many local libraries offer free access to the Oxford DNB via remote online services.

Watch Out For …

TheGenealogist has sent us the following news about their plans for the year:

2011 will be a big year on TheGenealogist with even more parish records, military records, newspapers, rolls of honour, prison records, Australian, American and New Zealand records being added. Of course let's not forget the major launch of the 1911 Census. We have some great releases on TheGenealogist.co.uk this month including new parish records and 6 months of The London Illustrated News, giving you a view of day to day life from the time of your ancestors.

The London Illustrated News has been added to the Diamond Premium subscription, with a growing coverage of this weekly newspaper. They are bookmarked by article and are easily searchable, containing many announcements of Births, Marriages, Deaths, Obituaries, Wills & Bequests. The Illustrated London News was founded in 1842 and was the world's first illustrated weekly newspaper.

26 books have been added to the Nottinghamshire Parish Record collection containing over 300,000 marriages and covering over 150 parishes. Includes a brand new easy to use interface. 12,000 individuals have also been added to the Parish Transcripts for Worcestershire, bringing the total to over 690,000 individuals with years ranging from 1730 to 1849.

TheGenealogist.co.uk has now completed its marriage transcripts from 1837-2005 bringing the total number of records to nearly 100 million. These are available with all Premium and Personal Plus subscriptions as a fully searchable database.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/08/2011 11:08AM by laura@YFH.