Search for or list unwanted BMD certificates and other family tree documents
The complete counties of Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland, which comprise 443,204 new records, are now live on 1911census.co.uk. In addition, the Gateshead data, which comprises 84,195 new records, has now been added to Durham. This means that the whole of England is now online and searchable.
The Welsh counties will be added soon.
Newly digitised images, on scotlandspeople.gov.uk, the official Government source of genealogical data for Scotland, of deaths and burials contained in the Old Parish Registers of Scotland (OPRs) have now been made available online.
The OPRs are the records which the Church of Scotland kept of births and baptisms, banns and marriages and deaths and burials for the 300 years before the start of the civil registration system in 1855.
When the office of Registrar General for Scotland was created in 1855, every parish in Scotland was required by law to deliver to the Registrar General all its registers of births and baptisms, banns and marriages and deaths and burials up to and including those for 1855. The earliest surviving entries in the OPRs were created in the 16th century.
“Making available on the internet the images of the Old Parish Register burial and death records dating back to the 16th century marks the completion of the digitisation project begun by the General Register Office for Scotland in 2001,” said Duncan Macniven, Registrar General for Scotland.
ScotlandsPeople holds digital images of Scottish records of births, deaths and marriages dating back to 1553, the open census records from 1841 to 1901, wills and testaments from 1513 to 1901 and Coats of Arms from 1672 to 1907.”
Macniven says that more records will be digitised and placed online in the future.
Prospective students can pay and enroll via the Pharos website – www.pharostutors.com at a price of £23.99 or a discounted price of £19.99 for members of the Society of Genealogists.
The course is suitable for genealogists who have had some experience in family history research in England & Wales but who have found they have been unable to identify where their ancestor might have come from.
The Irish Times Digital Archives is FREE from March 27/09 to April 5/09. It covers the years 1859 to 2009.
Now you can explore London’s rich history through the lives of your ancestors with the launch of these fascinating historical records at Ancestry.co.uk
The records range from the early 1900s all the way back to the 1500s – around 300 years before Civil Registration. So they can help you go beyond Census, Birth, Marriage & Death records. Currently released is Board of Guardians Deaths and Burials collection 1834-1906; and Births and Baptisms 1834-1934.
There are more than 77 million records in total, which will be released regularly over the next year or so. You’ll be able to see records first-hand such as parish records, non-conformist registers, electoral registers, parish poor records, boards of guardians, wills, transportation sessions – and much more. Watch out for more releases soon.
About LMA
London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) is the archive repository for many London-wide organisations and is the largest local authority record office in the UK.
The archives of the City of London Corporation (COL) and the former Greater London Council (GLC), London County Council (LCC), Middlesex County Council (MCC) and their predecessors are held there. LMA also holds records for many religious, public, business, local authority and other organisations based in London. The dates of items that can be found there range from medieval to the present day, and their collections are constantly expanding. At the moment, there are documents to fill around 72 km worth of archives – an enormous amount of information about the capital and its people. This material dates from 1067 to 2006 and is an important part of London life, its past, present and future.
The following announcement was written by RootsMagic, Inc.:
“RootsMagic 4 is the biggest release in our 20-year history of making genealogy software,” said Bruce Buzbee, president. “We’ve updated RootsMagic to work with the latest genealogical technologies available today, while staying true to our mission to make family history easy, accessible, and fun.”
RootsMagic 4 boasts an impressive list of new features including integrated web search, improved SourceWizard for citing sources, sharing events among multiple persons, creating pre-defined groups of persons, person and place mapping, recording DNA tests, and improved navigation and data entry. RootsMagic 4 is also one of the only desktop genealogy programs certified to work with “New FamilySearch”.
Freeing Your Data
“A common request that we hear from people is that they don’t want their data to be trapped in their computer,” said Michael Booth, vice-president of development. “One of the most popular features in RootsMagic 3 is our ‘Shareable CD’ which puts your data and pictures onto a CD or DVD along with a special copy of RootsMagic. You can then give the discs to family and friends and they don’t have to buy or install anything. It’s all there on the disc.”
“We’ve taken that a step further in RootsMagic 4,” explains Booth. “One unique and exciting new feature is ‘RootsMagic To-Go’. It allows you to install RootsMagic onto a USB drive and transfer data between it and your computer. This gives you the freedom to take RootsMagic and your data wherever you go- to work, on vacation, to the library- anywhere.”
Free Trial
A free trial version of RootsMagic 4 is available at http://www.rootsmagic.com. The trial version allows a person to import their data, add information, and play with RootsMagic’s major features without any time limitation. “We’re so excited about this new release, we wanted to give everyone a risk-free option to try it for themselves,” said Buzbee.
Users of other genealogy software products will find it easy to experiment with RootsMagic 4 using their own data. RootsMagic can directly import data from PAF, Family Tree Maker (through 2006), Family Origins, and Legacy Family Tree. It can also read data using the popular GEDCOM format.
Pricing
RootsMagic 4 is available for only $29.95. Existing RootsMagic and Family Origins users may upgrade for only $19.95.
Discount Offer
For the first time in company history, users of other genealogy software programs can receive a competitive upgrade discount. Through May 31, 2009, users of Personal Ancestral File (PAF), Family Tree Maker, Legacy Family Tree, or The Master Genealogist may purchase RootsMagic 4 for only $19.95, saving $10 off of the regular price.
More information about the competitive upgrade can be found at http://www.rootsmagic.com/upgrade.
About RootsMagic, Inc.
For over 20 years, RootsMagic, Inc. has been creating computer software with a special purpose- to unite families. One of our earliest products- the popular “Family Origins” software, introduced thousands of people to the joy and excitement of family history.
That tradition continues today with “RootsMagic”, our award-winning genealogy software which makes researching, organizing, and sharing your family history fun and easy. “Personal Historian” will help you easily write and preserve your life stories. “Family Reunion Organizer” takes the headaches out of planning those important get-togethers. And “Family Atlas” creates beautiful and educational geographic maps of your family history.
For more information, visit www.rootsmagic.com.
The U.S. version of Who Do You Think You Are? will be broadcast in a few weeks. The genealogy-based television program has been scheduled to start on April 20 on NBC.
From producer Lisa Kudrow comes a new series that is unlike anything on U.S. television. Based on the popular BBC documentary series, Who Do You Think You Are? takes viewers on an inspiring and personal journey into the past of America’s best-known celebrities, sharing their emotion and surprise as they uncover stories of heroism, tragedy, love and betrayal that lie at the heart of their family story. At the same time, the series celebrates the making of our great nation and the people who traveled here in search of freedom and opportunity.
The program will explore the family histories of celebrities including Lisa Kudrow, Sarah Jessica Parker and Susan Sarandon.
I wonder whether we’ll be able to see it over here in the UK in due course?
A British historian has stumbled across records from World War One that have been virtually untouched for 90 years.
The records contain the personal details of soldiers who died in the war and may reveal the final resting places of many of them.
You can watch an interview on the BBC website in which Peter Barton shows Robert Hall some of his findings at the Red Cross archive in Geneva at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7940569.stm.
RootsMagic, Inc. announced RootsMagic 4 public beta, the latest version of the award-winning genealogy software which makes researching, organizing, and sharing your family history easy and enjoyable. During the public beta period, all are invited to download and experience the software, free of charge.
RootsMagic 4 beta is available now for free at http://www.rootsmagic.com/preview.
“RootsMagic 4 is the biggest release in our 20-year history of making genealogy software,” said Bruce Buzbee, president. “We’ve updated RootsMagic to work with the latest genealogical technologies available today, while staying true to our mission to make family history easy, accessible, and fun.
RootsMagic 4 boasts an impressive list of new features including integrated web search, improved SourceWizard for citing sources, sharing events among multiple persons, creating pre-defined groups of persons, person and place mapping, recording DNA tests, and improved navigation and data entry. RootsMagic 4 is also one of the only desktop genealogy programs certified to work with “New FamilySearch”.
From Ancestry.com
At the end of January Ancestry.com made 134 million General Records Office (GRO) UK birth records for England and Wales dating from 1837 to 2005 available online for the first time, fully searchable by name, registration date and district. This was done as an update to the existing England & Wales Birth Index collection.
Many of you may be familiar with the previous GRO Birth Index that was indexed by surname range only. A search would produce a list of all pages on which the searched name might appear, but referenced by the first and last name on those pages only. Now, every name in the GRO Birth Index is individually searchable.
The newly updated Birth Index is comprised of only two separate collections instead of the three collections that existed previously. The England & Wales, FreeBMD Birth Index, 1837-1915 includes births registered from 1837 to 1915 and was keyed by FreeBMD, a group of independent volunteers dedicated to transcribing civil registration indexes of birth, marriage and death records for England and Wales.
The second, England & Wales, Birth Index, 1916-2005, includes the birth index from 1916 to 1983, which has been transcribed by Ancestry.com, and the GRO published index from 1984 to 2005. Images of the index are only available up to 1983.
We are currently working to also fully index the GRO Marriage and Death indexes. When complete, more than 250 million individual birth, marriage and death (BMD) records will be searchable. As ‘core’ record sets, this major enhancement to Ancestry’s BMD collection will be of great benefit to all UK family history researchers.
