More than 53 million England and Wales electoral registers are now searchable at Findmypast. Also new or updated online: Swedish emigration registers and marriage records, Australian newspapers, Queensland seamen and New Zealand vital records.
“Combined with the 1911 census and 1939 Register, today’s release means that Findmypast is now able to provide customers with unrivaled record coverage for early 20th century Britain, allowing them to trace their ancestors across a period of history that has traditionally been problematic for many researchers,” states a press release. (The 1921 census isn’t yet available to researchers; the 1931 census was lost in a fire and 1941 wasn’t taken because of the war.)
According to Findmypast, “Electoral registers are listings of all those registered to vote in a particular area. The lists were created annually to record the names of eligible voters and their reason for eligibility, such as their residence or ownership of a property. Registration for voters in England has been required since 1832 and registers were typically published annually, making electoral registers and excellent resource for tracking ancestors between the census years or for uncovering the history of your home or local area.”
This collection is the result of reprocessing an earlier collection to improve image quality and indexing accuracy, making the records much more searchable. As the press release explains, “For the very first time, the Registers can now be searched accurately by individual names in a similar way to other indexed collections currently available on the Findmypast. Searches will now also cover all of England and Wales and matching records from the registers will feed into hints for all customers with a Findmypast Family tree.”
The electoral register collection isn’t comprehensive for every place and year. Some registers don’t survive and others are still being imaged. According to the site, “holdings are modest to 1885, good from then until 1915 and modest again from 1918 to 1932. It should also be noted that during the First World War compilation of the registers was suspended and was then resumed in 1918.”
Here’s a related collection update: Genealogy giant and subscription site Ancestry.com has updated its database of the 1939 Register for England and Wales. This record set will likely continue to be updated over time, at both Ancestry.com and Findmypast (which first published it), as additional data is released from under privacy restrictions.
Sweden emigration and marriage records
Ancestry.com has published a new collection of Swedish Emigration Registers for 1869-1948. It contains nearly 1.5 million records kept by local police at major ports of embarkation for emigrants who left Sweden to live abroad. According to the collection description, these records “provide details of those who left, where they left from and their intended place of arrival. Many of the passengers traveled beyond the port of arrival, settling in other cities and countries so be sure to check the image for intended destinations to see where they may have eventually established a new home.”
Another Swedish collection has recently been updated at Ancestry.com, too: Sweden, Indexed Marriage Records, 1860-1947. It now contains nearly 6.7 million Swedish-language records from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Sweden. Find both these collections at Ancestry.com: under Search > Catalog, enter “Sweden” as a keyword to bring up all Swedish collections. Or get a little help by clicking on the image above to read a free article on beginning Swedish genealogy research.
Ancestry.com requires a subscription for records access. To view subscription options and get signed up, click here.
Australia and New Zealand record updates
Australia newspapers.Ancestry.com has updated its collection of Australia, Newspaper Vital Notices, 1831-2001, now with more than 2.5 million records. According to the description, “this database contains birth, marriage, and death notices from three Australian Newspapers for the years 1831–2001: The Age, The Sydney Mail, and The Sydney Morning Herald.”
Queensland seamen. Look for Aussie men who went to sea in Findmypast’s collection, Queensland, Seamen 1882-1919. “From this index, you may learn the name of the ship your ancestor worked on….The 19,554 names included in this index were taken from the registers kept by the Harbours and Rivers Department….Each result includes a transcript of the original documents held by the Queensland State Archives.”
New Zealand vital records. Findmypast has added over 62,000 transcripts of baptisms, marriages & burials to its collection of New Zealand vital record indexes. “These civil registration records date back to 1848 and will provide you with all the information you need to order a copy of your ancestor’s original certificate from the NZ government website.”
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Discover your Mayflower ancestors–or more about your family history from around the world–in new and updated genealogy records online. Among them are the Welsh National Book of Remembrance for WWI and various records for Indiana, Massachusetts, Montana, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden and Venezuela. Also: all Missouri adoptees may now order original birth certificates.
United States: Discover Your Mayflower Ancestors
In anticipation of the 2020 commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s voyage, the New England Historic Genealogical Society (aka AmericanAncestors.org) has launched a new website, Mayflower 2020. This interactive website features the world’s first online gathering of Mayflower descendants, along with in-depth information about Mayflower passengers and their family trees, resources for finding Mayflower ancestors, and information on “Mayflower 2020” announcements and events.
The National Library of Wales has published online the Welsh National Book of Remembrance for the First World War. According to the NLW website, the book “contains the names of 35,000 servicemen and women, as well as members of Welsh Regiments, who lost their lives in the First World War. These individuals are listed according to regiment and battalion alongside the names of those who might well have died alongside them.” The original gilded volume contains about 1,100 pages of names, with about 40 names scripted in calligraphy on each page. The commemorative book was created as a “roll of honor” and companion to the Welsh National War Memorial in Cathays Park, Cardiff, which doesn’t include names of the deceased on it. Search or browse the gorgeous volume at the National Library of Wales digital archive.
U.S. state-level genealogy collections
Indiana. Over a million records appear in MyHeritage’s new collection, Indiana Newspapers, 1847-2009. According to MyHeritage, “This collection is a compendium of newspapers published in various cities and towns in the state of Indiana from the 1840s until 2009. Newspapers are an important resource for genealogy and family history research as they contain obituaries and other vital record substitutes such as birth, marriage, and death notices. Additionally, society pages and stories of local interest contain rich information on activities and events in the community and often provide details about the persons involved.”
Massachusetts. New at AmericanAncestors.org is Suffolk County, MA: Probate File Papers, with nearly 22,000 Suffolk County probate cases (1630-1800). According to the site, “The probate cases include wills, guardianships, administrations, and various other types of probate records. The complete Suffolk County File Papers collection will eventually cover cases 1-94,757, which includes all years through 1892. The cases are indexed chronologically, which allows us to present them in sections while digital photography occurs. Photography is expected to continue through 2020. We will add cases as they become available.”
Missouri. A new Missouri law, the Missouri Adoptee Rights Act, now gives all adoptees access to their original birth certificates. Adoptees born prior to 1941 were already eligible to request copies of their original birth certificates as of mid-2016. On January 1, 2018, this right was extended to adoptees born in or after 1941. According to a local news report, the state representative behind the new law, Don Phillips, is himself an adoptee and was among the first to receive a copy of his own certificate when the new rules went into effect recently. If you would like to order a non-certified copy of an original birth certificate from the Missouri Bureau of Vital Records, click here to fill out the online application.
Montana. Ancestry.com has published Montana Birth Records, 1897-1919. The collection includes birth certificates that typically include the following information: name, gender and race of child; date and place of birth; and parents’ names, ages and birthplaces.
Free on FamilySearch: More global genealogical records
FamilySearch is always free, so take a quick peek at the newly-indexed names added to the following collections. Maybe your ancestors’ names have finally appeared!
New Zealand. Nearly a million indexed names have been added to New Zealand, Civil Records Indexes, 1800-1966. Search this index to official government records of births, marriages and deaths. Tip: see the collection description for important information about ordering copies of original records.
Venezuela. Nearly 800,000 indexed names have been added to Venezuela, Archdiocese of Mérida, Catholic Church Records, 1654-2015. These parish or diocesan records include “baptisms, confirmations, parish censuses, marriages, pre-marriage investigations, marriage dispensations, deaths, and indexes.”
Get the most out of FamilySearch.org
Of all the “Genealogy Giants” we cover in-depth here at Genealogy Gems, FamilySearch is the only one that’s totally free. It’s also an enormous site with multiple places to search for your ancestors’ names in old records and even additional resources for finding offsite or even offline records you want. So it’s worth a little investment to learn how to use FamilySearch effectively. For that, we recommend Unofficial Guide to FamilySearch.org by Dana McCullough. In it, you’ll find step-by-step strategies for searching their millions of historical records and family trees, and how to maximize all the site’s valuable resources.
Sunny Morton
Sunny Morton is a Contributing Editor at Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems; her voice is often heard on the Genealogy Gems Podcast and Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast. She’s especially 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 latest favorite reads for the Genealogy Gems Book Club. Sunny is also a Contributing Editor at Family Tree Magazine and the NGS-award-winning Co-Editor of Ohio Genealogy News.
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!
New at Ancestry.com are Boston Catholic records, thanks to a partnership with the New EnglandHistorical Genealogical Society. Also new this week are big updates for the Big Apple with lots of new and updated collections for New York. Additional new collections for the United States, Australia, and New Zealand are highlighted this week.
Boston Catholic Records Now at Ancestry.com
Ancestry and New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) have collaborated to make Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records now available on Ancestry.com. This unique collection includes approximately 10 million names from Massachusetts Catholic records from the late 1700s to the early 1900s.
“The detailed documents in this collection are a critical resource for researchers, historians, and genealogists, especially when secular records are spotty or lost,” said Brenton Simons, President and CEO of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. The records within the bound volumes contain several sacraments of the Catholic Church, including baptism, confirmation, holy communion, marriage, holy orders, and the anointing of the sick.
Big Updates for New York
You can search a free index of New York City marriages, 1908-1929, at Internet Archive, thanks to a “Reclaim the Records” initiative. This is an index to an important set of records originally kept by the New York City Clerk’s Office: “the 1908-1929 application, affidavit, and license for a marriage, a…three-page document that is generally dated a few weeks before the actual marriage took place.” MyHeritage has also just added the New York City Marriage License Index 1908-1929.
You’re likely to spot some famous folks like Humphrey Bogart in this NYC Marriage License Index at MyHeritage!
Also new at Findmypast is an Image Browse collection of New York State Religious Records 1716-1914. The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society transcribed and published religious records of baptisms, marriages, and deaths from dozens of New York State churches of various denominations.
Back over at MyHeritage is a collection of New York Newspapers, 1806-2007 with nearly 2 million pages from various cities and towns throughout the state. Lastly, the Troy Irish Genealogy Society has published Transcriptions from the St. Agnes Cemetery Tombstones in Menands, NY. From the description: “The inscriptions are overwhelmingly of Irish immigrants to the Capital District Region. While some inscriptions merely say “Ireland” a large number are more specific and identify the County in Ireland along with the name of the town and the name of the Parish.”
Additional United States Collections
Illinois. The State of Illinois has repaired and digitized 57 maps that the Illinois National Guard used during World War I. According to the description, “the maps feature the guard’s 33rd division, which was the only distinctly Illinois division that saw active service during the war in France.”
North Carolina. The State Archives of North Carolina has announced the launch of the Brimley Collection Online. Named for Herbert Hutchinson Brimley, the first leader of The North Carolina State Museum of Natural History, this collection of photographs from the late 19th and mid-20th century include people both common and renowned, scenes of cities and towns, rural landscapes and farms, agricultural activities and products, industrial concerns, and more.
Arkansas. More than 200 issues of the Commonwealth College Fortnightly are now searchable online. This newspaper ran from 1926 to 1938 and this digital collection provides a complete record of activity at Arkansas’ historic radical labor school.
Australia & New Zealand Databases
You have to love records that include photographs! Ancestry.com has a new collection for Queensland, Australia, World War I Soldier Portraits, 1914-1918. This unique collection comes from portraits taken at the soldier’s camp at Enoggera, Queensland and published in The Queenslander newspaper until the end of the war in 1918.
A newly digitized archive for New South Wales is now available online. Prisoners in Pictures details the stories of nearly 50,000 prisoners incarcerated in New South Wales between 1870 and 1930. The prisoner stories are told through photography, text, an online catalog, and short films with interviews from archivists such as the one below:
In New Zealand, the Victoria University of Wellington has released a database of 12,000 imperial soldiers who fought in the New Zealand Land Wars of the 1860s. From the description: “The database provides searchable public access to the names, regiments, and dates of service of soldiers who fought in New Zealand. It is the first installment of what will grow into a larger publicly accessible resource.”
Denmark Census Records are new at FamilySearch this week. Other new and updated genealogy records include new vital records for England, Catholic Parish records for Scotland, and various unique collections like WWII records for New Zealand, French Polynesian vital records, and military records and more for the United States.
Denmark Census Records
FamilySearch.org now has Denmark Census collections for the following years: 1860, 1870, 1880, 1890, 1901, & 1906. These indexes (provided by MyHeritage) are totally free to explore at FamilySearch, and the images were provided previously from the National Archives of Denmark.
England Wills & Probate
New at Findmypast is an index of over 229,000 Lancashire Wills & Probate 1457-1858 records. This index of more than 229,000 records will give you details about the type of material available, the probate year, and your ancestor’s occupation and residence.
Also new from Findmypast this week are large records for Herefordshire. You can search indexes for Baptisms starting in the early 1500s, Marriages 1538-1936, Burials spanning four centuries, and Wills 1517-1700.
Scotland: Catholic Parish Records
An extensive collection of browsable Scottish Roman Catholic Parish records is now available at Findmypast. It consists of all eight Scottish dioceses: Aberdeen, Argyll & The Isles, Dunkeld, Galloway, Glasgow, Motherwell, St Andrews & Edinburgh, and Paisley. Records begin as early as 1736 and continue until 1942.
New Zealand WWII Records
The Auckland War Memorial Museum has made over 100,000 WWII records available free online. From a recent press release: “Of the 140,000 New Zealanders dispatched to serve overseas in WWII, 104,000 of them served with the 2NZEF. Auckland Museum is now making these WWII Army personnel records publicly accessible through Online Cenotaph.”
French Polynesia: Vital Records
New this week at FamilySearch: Civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths for French Polynesia, 1843-1999. Original records are located with the Tribunal Civil, Papeete, Tahiti.
United States Military Collections & More
Japanese internment camps. Now available at FamilySearch.org: War Relocation Authority Centers, Final Accountability Rosters, 1942-1946. From the collection description: “Digital images of originals are held by the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. These rosters are alphabetical lists of evacuees housed in relocation centers from 1945-1946. This project was completed in cooperation with Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project.”
Audio recordings. Check out The Great 78 Project! You can listen to this collection of 78rpm records and cylinder recordings released in the early 20th century. These recordings were contributed to Internet Archive by users through the Open Source Audio collection. The Internet Archive has digitized many.
Montana. A new Birth Index 1870-1986 is available at Ancestry.com. The Death Index 1907-2015 has also been updated. These records come from the State of Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services. Copies of the actual certificates may be ordered from the Office of Vital Statistics.
Virginia. Also new at Ancestry.com are Virginia Vital Records, 1660-1923. Indexed information may include primary names and names of family members, as well as birth, marriage, death, and burial information. This collection was indexed by Ancestry World Archives Project contributors.
North Carolina. From the State Archives of North Carolina: New Veterans Oral History Collection Online. “The interviews, conducted since 2015 as audio interviews, are part of the Military Collection’s North Carolina Veterans Oral History Program, whose goal is to capture and provide access to the memories and experiences of the military servicemen and servicewomen from North Carolina, preserving them for the future scholarship.”
Be sure to share this post with your genealogy friends and groups so they can explore these wonderful new collections!
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!
Featured this week are new records for Canada, including the 1851 Canada Census, and BMD for Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Other records include new Irish collections, updated New Zealand birth, marriage, and death collections, new marriage record collections for England, and the launch of the New York State Death Index.
Also at Ancestry this week are new records for Manitoba, Canada. You can search Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials (1834-1959), and keep in mind that some of the records in this collection pre-date Manitoba’s creation as a province, and, as a result, are from locations that do not exist in present-day Manitoba. Some records may also appear in French. You can also explore Manitoba Census Indexes (1832-1856 & 1870).
The 1851 Canada Census is available now at Findmypast. It contains over 1.3 million records and images for Canada West (Ontario) and Canada East (Quebec), New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. This collection is also available at MyHeritage, as well as at the Library and Archives Canada (though their search tools may not be quite as robust).
For fabulous quick tips on Canadian research, take a listen to Lisa’s interview with Claire Banton of the Library and Archives Canada (LAC). Available free on the Genealogy Gems Podcast episode #199.
Irish Military & Bank Records
County Cork. A new database of Irish soldiers is now available online: Deserters, acts of heroism, and IRA murders unearthed. According to the site: “The details of some 2,187 people – soldiers and their families – recorded mainly in the registers of Ballincollig Garrison Chapel have been recovered using the registers of baptisms, marriages and burials between 1810 and 1922 now in the safe custody of the RCB Library, and further research using a variety of additional resources have further unlocked their hidden stories.”
Snippet from a detailed spreadsheet containing information on the 2,187 soldiers and their families recorded in the registers of Ballincollig Garrison Chapel.
Newstalk. The Central Bank of Ireland opens its archives up to the public, including an online catalog. According to a recent article: “The bank says the archives can now be used for public research purposes for the first time. They include a range of materials created and acquired by the bank – such as objects, documents, and ledgers dating from 1786 to 1986.” All materials are open to the public in a dedicated research room, and an online catalog is available to determine what materials may be of interest.
It’s wedding bells for Britain! Findmypast has a new collection of Oxfordshire Marriage Bonds 1634-1849 with over 46,000 records. You can also browse the new British Marriage Licenses 1446-1837 collection, where 15 English counties are represented including London, Lancashire, Suffolk, Exeter, Lincoln, Yorkshire, and more. Lastly, explore the thousands of Fleet marriages in Findmypast’s new collection of England Clandestine Marriages 1667-1754 of over 42,000 records.
United States: Newspapers & More
New York. Ancestry.com has just launched a collection of New York State death indexes 1880 to 1956. Ancestry says that “the collection includes more than 5 million names of people who died in New York State.” This death index is available online elsewhere for free, but Ancestry subscribers will appreciate the convenience of searching it on the site.
Colorado. Colorado Virtual Library: “The Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection recently added four new titles; the Brush Lariat (1884-1885), the Morgan County Republican (1912-1920), the Louisville Times (1942-2007), and the Whitehorn News (1897-1907). These four new titles, added by a longtime CHNC partner and two new partners, join 205 titles of historic Colorado newspapers.”
Florida. The Greater North Miami Historical Society had a collection of historical images. Its historical collection dates back to the 1930s and includes over 4,000 negatives, photographs, and other items. *Only a fraction of the material has been put online and the project continues.
Newspapers(Seattle, WA, Boston, MA, & Washington D.C.)
Accessible Archives has announced the completion of additional titles in its African American Newspapers and Women’s Suffrage collections. The five newspapers are now fully imaged and searchable. These tiles range from mid-19th century to early 20th century.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!
