New collections about Great Britain Suffragettes and travelers on the S.S. Great Britain headline this week’s roundup of new genealogy records online. Read here about more new genealogy records for England, Scotland and Ireland: parish records, newspapers and more.
Great Britain Suffragettes Collection free until March 8
In honor of the 100th anniversary of the first phase of women’s suffrage in England, genealogy giant Findmypast.com (together with The National Archives) has launched The Suffragette Collection. This new online collection of government records, digitized from originals at Kew, “reveals the struggles endured by the movement’s most ardent supporters and highlights the State’s response as it attempted to contain them,” says a company press release.
“Researchers can expect to find photographs, cabinet office papers, calendars of prisoners and Home Office papers on suffragette disturbances and prosecutions,” says Findmypast. “The collection also includes an index of women arrested between 1906 and 1914, the official police watch list recording the details of over 1,300 militant suffragettes, reports of prison conditions, force-feeding, police surveillance and much more….The collection brings together the stories of women from all classes who actively supported women’s suffrage, either by attending demonstrations and meetings or opting for militant ‘direct action.’”
Within days of its launch, the collection also added 271 issues of The Suffragette (later The Britannia, 1912-1918). “Edited by Christabel Pankhurst, it was the official organ of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU),” says Findmypast. It reported on “efforts made by the WSPU towards achieving women’s suffrage and detailing their support for the Allies during the Great War.”
S.S. Great Britain travelers and crew
You can now explore a free website with a searchable database of everyone who ever traveled on the S.S. Great Britain, both passengers and crew. Virtual exhibits on the Global Stories website also allow visitors to explore everyday life aboard the ship; what happened when people died, took ill, were hurt, or gave birth; what kinds of entertainment or discipline passengers could expect and more. You can even search departures and arrivals as the ship circumnavigated the globe 32 times and stopped at five continents between 1845 and 1970.
The Newark Advertiser Photo Archive
Thousands of images from The Newark Advertiser (UK) are now searchable online, thanks to volunteers who have been steadily digitizing and uploading images to the free Images from the Past gallery. According to a recent article in The Newark Advertiser, helpers “are working their way through thousands of old photographic negatives, some dating back to the 1940s. Because of their age, some of the negatives are becoming damaged or corroded so it is vital that they are digitized. They are also in a variety of formats, with the earliest on glass. The volunteers have worked through from the 1940s and are now nearing the 1970s.”
Newspapers
The British Newspaper Archive has recently added hundreds of thousands of digitized newspaper pages to current and newly-published titles. Here are some highlights:
- North Star and Farmer’s Chronicle, 1895-1903 and 1905-1911 (NEW title)
- Clifton Society, 1891-1892, 1894-1897, 1899-1916 (nearly 20,000 pages added) (NEW title)
- Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday, 1885-1896 (NEW title)
- Pearson’s Weekly, 1891-1911 (over 25,000 pages added) (NEW title)
- Birmingham Daily Post, 1973, 1979 (nearly 15,000 pages added)
- Neots Chronicle and Advertiser, 1855-1873, 1875-1886
- Shipping and Mercantile Gazette, 1880-1881
- Birmingham Daily Gazette, 1926, 1931
- Lloyd’s List, 1889, 1894, 1896-1897, 1904, 1906-1909 (nearly 40,000 pages added!)
- Northampton Chronicle and Echo, 1880-1882, 1884-1885, 1891, 1893-1894, 1896, 1899-1908, 1910, 1913-1915, 1918 (nearly 25,000 pages added)
- Bristol Daily Post, 1860-1864, 1867-1873, 1875 (nearly 14,000 pages added) (NEW title)
- Clifton and Redland Free Press, 1890-1895, 1898-1910, 1913-1931 (NEW title)
- West Middlesex Herald, 1855-1858, 1860-1861, 1863-1870, 1890-1895 (NEW title)
- Reading Observer, 1897-1898, 1900-1909, 1911-1914, 1921-1924 (over 12,000 pages added)
- Kinross-shire Advertiser, 1850-1852, 1879-1884, 1890, 1892, 1900-1918
- Leicester Herald, 1827-1842 (NEW title)
- The Suffragette, 1912-1918 (NEW title)
- Coventry Evening Telegraph, 1972-1979 (over 140,000 pages added!)
- West Sussex County Times, 1874, 1877-1889, 1891-1892
- Bristol Magpie, 1891, 1903, 1906-1907, 1911
- Horfield and Bishopston Record and Montepelier & District Free Press, 1899-1911, 1913-1931
- Middlesex & Surrey Express, 1887-1888, 1890-1895, 1899-1909 (over 11,000 pages added)
- Croydon Chronicle and East Surrey Advertiser, 1870, 1875-1888, 1890-1892, 1894-1896, 1898-1908, 1911 (more than 14,000 pages added)
- The Clifton & Redland Free Press, 1891-1931
England parish and probate records
The free genealogy giant, FamilySearch.org, has recently added significantly to its collections of England parish records:
- England, Derbyshire, Church of England Parish Registers, 1537-1918: Well over half a million indexed names have been added
- England, Warwickshire, Parish Registers, 1535-1984: More than 1.1 million indexed names have been added
- England, Rutland Parish Registers, 1538-1991: A new collection with over 325,000 indexed names
The subscription-access genealogy giant Ancestry.com recently published the following collections:
- Buckinghamshire, England, Extracted Church of England Parish Records, 1535-1812, a new collection with about 65,000 records.
- Wiltshire, England, Wills and Probate, 1530-1858, a new collection of over 100,000 records.
Findmypast.com has updated its collection of Devon parish records, with over 30,000 new records in Baptisms, nearly 40,000 new records in Banns and nearly 80,000 new records in Marriages, about 31,000 new records in Burials, and all of these records (and more) browsable in its image collection of Devon, Plymouth & West Devon Parish Registers.
More new genealogy records from the British Isles
Ireland. Ancestry.com has published a new collection, Clare, Ireland, Church of Ireland Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1744-1991, with nearly 14,000 indexed records. According to the collection description, “This collection includes baptism, marriage, and burial records from parishes in the County of Clare in Ireland, with dates ranging from 1744 to 1991.”
Scotland. Ancestry.com has published three new collections for Scotland. They are small, but if they mention your ancestors, they’re important!
Start tracing your British Isles genealogy
The British Empire once spanned the globe and had a presence on every continent. Chances are that at some point you will need to extend your research back to the British Isles. Genealogical research in the British Isles has some unique characteristics. Guest blogger Kate Eakman, a Senior Researcher for Legacy Tree Genealogists, clarifies confusing terms and helps you get your research started on solid footing. Click here to read her tips.
About the Author: Sunny Morton
Sunny is a Contributing Editor at Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems; her voice is often heard on the Genealogy Gems Podcast and Premium Podcasts. She’s known for her expertise on the world’s biggest family history websites (she’s the author of Genealogy Giants: Comparing the 4 Major Websites); writing personal and family histories (she also wrote Story of My Life: A Workbook for Preserving Your Legacy); and sharing her favorite reads for the Genealogy Gems Book Club.
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