by Lisa Cooke | Jan 8, 2016 | 01 What's New, Records & databases
Every week, we dig through new genealogy records online and post the “gems” we find here. It’s a long list this week to catch up from our holiday break: which of these records may mention your ancestors?
ALASKA VITAL RECORDS. A new FamilySearch collection includes indexed images of nearly 60,000 Alaskan birth, marriage, divorce and death records dating from 1816-1959.
AUSTRALIA CIVIL REGISTRATIONS. A new browse-only collection of Tasmanian civil registrations (1839-1938) is now online at FamilySearch.org. It includes district registers, counterfoils of marriage certificates and some church records.
BRITISH IN INDIA. Findmypast has published new record collections relating to British overseas travelers, workers and expatriates. The first includes “British people who either lived, worked or travelled in India from as early as 1664 up to 1961 with an index of births, marriages, divorces and deaths compiled by the Society of Genealogists.” There are also new collections from the India Office: births and baptisms and wills and probates.
DIGITAL BOOKS. A new FREE collection of 150,000 digitized books is searchable at MyHeritage.com. Among the titles are family, local and military histories; city and county directories; school and university yearbooks and church and congregational minutes.
ENGLAND PARISH AND ELECTORAL. Significantly-updated indexes of Kent parish registers and registers of electors (both dating to the 1500s!) are now online at FamilySearch, as Lancashire parish records to 1538 and another collection of parish registers back to 1603 that include Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire.
MISSOURI MILITARY. FamilySearch has posted a new browse-only collection with more than 600,000 images of Pre-WWII Adjutant General Enlistment Records for 1900-1941.
SOUTH AFRICA CHURCH. A new collection of Netherdutch Reformed Church of Africa Records (1838-1991) from Pretoria, South Africa is now browsable at FamilySearch. Christening, marriage and membership records are among them.
WALES ELECTORAL REGISTERS. Over 1.6 million indexed names from electoral registers for Glamorgan and West Glamorgan, Wales (1839-1935) are now searchable at FamilySearch.org.
by Lisa Cooke | Dec 4, 2015 | 01 What's New, Australian, British, Immigration, Records & databases, United States
Here’s our weekly roundup of new genealogy records online! Everyone should check out the updates to PERSI at Findmypast. Also, there records of Australia-bound passengers; British watermen; Idaho marriages; and wills for Rhode Island and Staffordshire, England.
AUSTRALIA IMMIGRATION. New at TheGenealogist are over 190,000 indexed records for passengers who departed from Britain and Ireland on early migrant ships to New South Wales in the years between 1828 and 1896. According to a press release, “The transcripts of the latest release uniquely give a family link so you can see spouses and children setting out on their new life. They also reveal details such as which ship they had sailed on, where they were landing, the passenger’s occupation and in the case where the migrant has been assisted to travel out to a job, their employer’s name.”
BRITISH WATERMEN. If any of your ancestors may have worked as watermen in London, their names may appear in several new Findmypast databases:
ENGLAND WILLS. Wills and probate records for Staffordshire, England (1521-1860) are newly searchable on Findmypast. The index includes names, death dates, occupation and next of kin information.
IDAHO MARRIAGES. A marriage index for Idaho (1842-1964, 1975-1996) has been updated at Ancestry. Indexed entries may include “name, spouse’s name, spouse’s gender, marriage date and location, county and state in which the marriage was recorded, residence of bride and groom, and source information.”
PERSI UPDATE. Findmypast has done a quarterly update to the Periodical Source Index (PERSI), a database of thousands of genealogically-relevant articles in journals, magazines and newsletters. According to a release, “35 different publications have either been newly added to the collection or updated with additional coverage….You’ll find fully searchable new articles from states, cities and towns across America….The latest additions include indexes on English, Irish, Australian and Swedish genealogy too.”
RHODE ISLAND WILLS. Ancestry’s collection of Rhode Island wills and probate records (1582-1932) has been updated. It now includes images for probate records from all counties, though some may be missing for various localities or time periods.
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by Lisa Cooke | May 12, 2015 | 01 What's New, British, History, Records & databases
Was your ancestor the lord of an English manor or, more likely, someone who lived and worked in the vicinity of one? Or are you a Downton Abbey fan who would just enjoy reading the old records kept by a grand manor? Then you should know about English manorial records available online and offline.
The Manorial Document Register, an arm of the National Archives (U.K.), manages manorial records and even has put some online. You can search its site by the name of the manor or, if you don’t know it, the name of the parish or county. According to the site, “The records noted in the Manorial Documents Register include court rolls, surveys, maps, terriers, documents and all other documents relating to the boundaries, franchises, wastes, customs or courts of a manor.”
What’s an English manor?
In English history, “A manor is an estate or an agricultural unit of local government, held by a landlord,” explains the FamilySearch wiki. “The residence of the landlord was called the manor house. Those living on the manor were subject to the customs of the manor, a sort of local common law often set by the landlord and which varied from manor to manor. The landlord was referred to as Lord of the Manor, but was not necessarily a titled person….Manors began after the Norman Conquest (1066) and weren’t abolished until a property act of 1922.”
“The people who lived on the manor were either
- Villeins, people who owed allegiance to and were bound to the lord of the manor, or
- Free tenant farmers (may also be known as franklin or yeoman) were not subject to the customs of the manor or the will of the lord.
It is estimated that there were between 25,000 and 65,000 manors in England, compared to the approximately 12,000 to 15,000 parishes.”
How else can I find English manorial records?
Manorial records may also exist elsewhere, like a Harvard University collection in the U.S. that has been partly digitized. It’s worth Googling the name of a parish, manor or county and the phrase “manor records” (“manor* records” will also search for the phrase “manorial records).
The all-new second edition of The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox by Lisa Louise Cooke teaches you how to use search operators like these to find exactly what you’re looking for online (if it’s out there, Google can help you find it!).
