From the reign of Henry VIII England swung from Catholicism to Protestantism and back to Catholicism. The Act of Supremacy of 1558 re-established the Church of England’s independence from Rome, while the Act of Uniformity (passed the following year) set the English Book of Common Prayer at the heart of church services and made it a requirement that everyone had to go to church once a week or face a fine. The Church of England had broken away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church.
John Wesley, the theologian who founded the evangelical movement known as Methodism, preaching outside a church.
The term ‘Nonconformist’ derives from just over a century later when more than 2,000 clergymen refused to take the oath after a new Act of Uniformity set out forms of prayers, sacraments and other Church of England rites. This became known as the Great Ejection and created the concept of Nonconformity – the Protestant Christian who did not ‘conform’. Some Nonconformists were viewed as radical separatists, as dissenters, and for many years they were restricted from many spheres of public life. Though Catholics and Jews were Nonconformists, the word is normally used to describe Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers and Methodists, among others.
The Presbyterian Church of Scotland has been recognised as the national church of Scotland since 1690. Although the relationship between Church and State in Scotland is not the same as in England, ‘Nonconformist’ is still used to describe churches that are not part of the Church of Scotland, such as Baptist, Methodist or Catholic. In Scotland, before 1834, Nonconformist ministers could not legally perform marriages as clergymen. After 1834 they could, but only if the banns had first been read in the parish church. Total authority was granted in 1855.
There are pockets and patterns in the distribution of Nonconformist churches. During the mid-seventeenth century the main areas of Quakerism, for example, were Westmorland, Cumberland, north Lancashire, Durham and Yorkshire. Wales, in particular, was dominated by the Methodist Church.
The London Metropolitan Archives has one of the largest collections relating to the history of the Anglo-Jewish community in Britain. These include records of organisations that helped individuals such as the Jewish Temporary Shelter and the Jews Free School. Staying in the capital, Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives has records of a number of Nonconformist churches, including material relating to St George’s German Lutheran Church (records of which have been comprehensively indexed by the Anglo-German Family History Society). St George’s German Lutheran Church, in Alie Street, Whitechapel, is the oldest surviving German Lutheran church in the UK, founded in 1762 by Dietrich Beckman, a wealthy sugar refiner. This area became home to many sugar refiners of German descent and at its height there were an estimated 16,000 German Lutherans in Whitechapel.
Historically, many Nonconformists used their local parish church for registration purposes (even after the Toleration Act of 1689 granted the freedom to worship), but also kept their own registers, particularly for births, baptisms and burials. Between 1754 and 1837 it was illegal to marry anywhere except in a Church of England parish church, unless you were a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers) or Jewish. And after 1837, while people were now allowed to marry in the church of their choice, some organisations still did not keep their own records.
One of the most useful Nonconformist research websites is BMDregisters.co.uk, which has over 8 million BMD records from Quakers (Society of Friends), Methodists, Wesleyans, Baptists, Independents, Protestant Dissenters, Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Unitarians.
Although other commercial players have mass Nonconformist collections, the market leader in this area is TheGenealogist.co.uk. It boasts over 8 million birth/baptism, marriage and burial records drawn from TNA, including material from Quakers (Society of Friends), Methodists, Wesleyans, Baptists, Independents, Protestant Dissenters, Congregationalist, Presbyterians and Unitarians. The data is available via subscription or pay-per-view via TheGenealogist or the official BMDregisters.co.uk site. Meanwhile, Ancestry hosts the likes of the London Nonconformist registers (1694–1921) collection, drawn from its partnership with the London Metropolitan Archives.
Historians trace the earliest church labelled ‘Baptist’ back to 1609 in Amsterdam, with English Separatist John Smyth as its pastor. In short, the Baptists believe baptisms should be performed only for professing believers (rather than infants). The first congregation in the UK was established in London in 1612.
You can search the Protestant Dissenters’ Registry via BMD registers.co.uk/TheGenealogist. This served the congregations of Baptists, Independents and Presbyterians in London and within a 12-mile radius of the capital. However, parents from most parts of the British Isles and even abroad also used the registry. It was started in 1742, with retrospective entries going back to 1716, and continued until 1837.
Baptist Historical Society: baptisthistory.org.uk
Website has a useful family history page, listing some of the most important repositories of Baptist records.
Baptist History & Heritage Society: baptisthistory.org/bhhs/
In Ireland the largest Christian denomination is Roman Catholicism, followed by the Anglican Church of Ireland. Catholic parish registers for the majority of Catholic registers in Ireland were microfilmed in the 1950s and 1960s by the National Library of Ireland. Today digital images from these microfilms are now freely available on the website: registers.nli.ie. Many Church of Ireland registers of baptisms, marriages and burials were destroyed, especially in the fire at PRONI in 1922. Some of the survivors have been digitised and are available via the expanding Anglican Record Project at www.ireland.anglican.org/arp.
After the Reformation in Scotland, the greatly reduced Catholic population was concentrated in three main areas Dumfries-shire and Kirkcudbright, Moray and Aberdeenshire, Inverness-shire and the Western Isles, although Edinburgh and Glasgow also attracted many Irish catholic immigrants.
ScotlandsPeople has Catholic records from all Scottish parishes in existence by 1855 (the start of civil registration) as well as records of the Catholic cemeteries in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Baptismal registers, for example, often record dates of birth as well as baptism, and name, parents’ names (including the mother’s maiden surname), place/parish of residence, father’s occupation, witnesses (occasionally with relationship to the child) and name of the priest.
In England, following the sixteenth-century Act of Uniformity, Catholics who continued to practise their faith, could face fines, imprisonment and persecution. As a result, very few records were maintained during the seventeenth century – it only became commonplace from the mid-nineteenth century. Catholic registers often give more detail than their Anglican counterparts, and you must always remember that, as with other Nonconformists, Catholics frequently appear in Anglican sources.
BMDregisters.co.uk has the TNA material from RG 4 which include births, baptisms, deaths, burials and marriages for some Roman Catholic communities in Dorset, Hampshire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Yorkshire. The majority cover Northumberland. Most Catholic registers, however, remain in the custody of the parish.
Catholic National Library: catholic-library.org.uk
Hosts a vast library and many transcribed mission registers (listing baptisms, confirmations, marriages and deaths).
Catholic Family History Society: www.catholic-history.org.uk/cfhs/ The Society has produced a large number of transcriptions. One randomly picked example is the ‘Registers of the Sardinian Embassy Chapel, London 1772–1841’. This contains transcriptions with indexes of twelve baptismal registers from the Sardinian Chapel in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, known as ‘the Mother Church of the Catholic faith in the Archdiocese of Westminster’. In total the indexes contain over 60,000 names.
Irish Ancestors:
irishtimes.com/ancestor/browse/records/church/catholic/
Commercial site with large database of material and useful parish map of Roman Catholic records.
Manchester & Lancashire FHS:
mlfhs.org.uk/data/catholic_search.php
Has an index to Catholic parish registers for Manchester.
Scottish Catholic Archives: scottishcatholicarchives.org.uk
Catholic Church for England & Wales: catholic-ew.org.uk
Useful for tracking down details of diocesan archives – such as Leeds Diocesan Archives (dioceseofleeds.org.uk/archives/).
The Huguenots were French Protestants who fled persecution after an edict that had allowed some religious freedoms in France was revoked. They arrived in waves during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, establishing communities in England and later Ireland. In 1718 the French Hospital was founded in London, which would become the seat of the Huguenot Society, which began to record the history of Huguenot migration and history.
Many of the refugees were artisans and craftsmen and they established a major weaving industry in and around Spitalfields. There are many French surnames associated with the Huguenots, but also some anglicised their surnames after arriving in Britain.
Again the Huguenot records on BMDregisters/ The Genealogist cover parts of London, Middlesex, Essex, Gloucestershire, Kent, Devon and Norfolk. Until 1754 Huguenots often recorded their marriages in both Huguenot and Church of England registers (although none were recorded in Huguenot registers after that date).
Huguenot Society: huguenotsociety.org.uk
The Society has transcribed and published all of the surviving Huguenot church registers. Indexed publications contain hundreds of names of members of Huguenot congregations and communities. You can search for an ancestor via the microfiche index for the first fifty-nine volumes of the Quarto Series, via individual volume indexes. There’s also huguenotsinireland.com. The Huguenot Library is currently housed at TNA in Kew. You can also read about the new Huguenot Heritage Centre in Rochester.
Huguenot Museum: huguenotmuseum.org
Jewish material is spread across a wide range of archives throughout the UK. The London Metropolitan Archives has an important collection and TNA has lots of references to Jews and Jewish communities, although these are often spread across varied record sorties – such as naturalisation records, for example. Or there’s the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre, which has synagogue registers of births, marriages and deaths, as well as copies of some circumcision registers.
The Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain is the leading light in the area and the website (www.jgsgb.org.uk) has a vast amount of useful information, plus links to important archives, online databases, research tips, news and more. You can also order copies of Marriage Authorisation Certificates for marriages before 1908.
The Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain also leads, with JewishGen, the joint Jewish Communities and Records – United Kingdom project (www.jewishgen.org/JCR-uk/). This aims to record details of all Jewish communities and congregations that have ever existed in the UK, as well as in the Republic of Ireland and Gibraltar. Currently, it boasts 7,000 pages covering over 1,000 Jewish congregations.
It has a huge number of databases, from the Bradford Jewish Cemeteries Database to the Merthyr Tydfil Jewish Community, the Caedraw School Register. There’s also the vast 1851 Anglo-Jewry Database, which covers mainly England, Wales and Scotland, but also Ireland, the Channel Islands and Isle of Man. Most of the 29,000+ entries appear in the 1851 census and represent 90+ per cent of the Jewish population in the British Isles.
JewishGen Family-Finder: www.jewishgen.org/jgff/
Gives surnames and ancestral towns of more than 500,000 entries, by adding your family details it will increase the chances of linking with other researchers looking for the same surname. There’s also the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry, boasting entries from 4,200 cemeteries and burial records in 83 countries.
Scottish Jewish Archives Centre: sjac.org.uk
Founded in 1987 and based in Scotland’s oldest Synagogue – the Garnethill Synagogue in Glasgow. Has synagogue minute books and registers, membership lists, personal papers and photographs. The Archive maintains a collection of Jewish newspapers, which often contain personal announcements.
British-Jewry: www.british-jewry.org.uk
Hosts several databases from the Portsmouth circumcision database to the vast Leeds Database.
Judaica Europeana: www.judaica-europeana.eu
Yad Vashem:
www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/remembrance/names/index.asp
Working to recover the names of the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, and adding them to the Central Database of Holocaust victims.
Jewish Historical Society of England: jhse.org
USC Shoah Foundation: http://sfi.usc.edu
Beth Shalom Holocaust Web Centre: www.ajex.org.uk
Jewish Museum London: jewishmuseum.org.uk
Manchester Jewish Museum: manchesterjewishmuseum.com
Methodism, or the Methodist movement, which actually covers more than one denomination, was born out of the life and teachings of John Wesley (1703–91). Both John and his brother, the hymn writer Charles Wesley, were ordained Anglican clergy. Methodism was organised by chapels at the centre of large ‘circuits’ around which particular ministers would preach, perform baptisms and even marriages (before 1753). The North Lancashire District, for example, currently comprises eighteen circuits of town and country churches.
Methodism also spread to Ireland – the first Methodist society was formed in Dublin in 1746, and John Wesley first visited Ireland the following year. By the time of his death in 1791 Irish Methodist membership numbered over 14,000.
Via BMDregisters you can search Wesleyan Methodist Records from the Wesleyan Methodist Registry, set up in 1818 and continued until 1838. It provided registration of births and baptisms of Wesleyan Methodists throughout England and Wales and elsewhere.
Methodist Historical Society of Ireland:
Maintains an extensive archive relating to Methodism in Ireland, including records of individual churches and journals/periodicals. The website has a useful index of Irish Methodist churches, chapels and preaching houses, as well as guides to records such as Irish Methodist baptismal and marriage records.
My Methodist History: mymethodisthistory.org.uk
Community archive network that encourages users to share photos and stories. There are also sites My Primitive Methodist Ancestors (myprimitivemethodists.org.uk) and My Wesleyan Methodist Ancestors (mywesleyanmethodists.org.uk).
Methodist Central Hall: church.methodist-central-hall.org.uk
Contains the names of over 1 million people who donated a guinea to the Wesleyan Methodist Twentieth Century Fund between 1899 and 1904.
Methodist Archives and Research Centre:
ibrary.manchester.ac.uk/searchresources/guidetospecialcollections/methodist/
Manchester University’s Methodist Archives and Research Centre houses an enormous collection of material relating to the early days of the denomination, and key figures in its foundation and consolidation. It also holds Methodist newspapers and periodicals which can be useful for tracking down ministers’ obituaries. Wesley Historical Society: wesleyhistoricalsociety.org.uk
You can search the Protestant Dissenters’ Registry via BMD registers.co,uk/TheGenealogist. This served the congregations of Baptists, Independents and Presbyterians in London and within a 12-mile radius of the capital. However, parents from most parts of the British Isles and even abroad also used the registry. It was started in 1742, with retrospective entries going back to 1716, and continued until 1837.
Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland:
presbyterianhistoryireland.com
Presbyterian Historical Society: www.history.pcusa.org
Quaker history begins with George Fox who established the Religious Society of Friends in the mid-seventeenth century. Members of the society became known as ‘Quakers’ because some of them trembled during religious experiences. Many Quakers faced persecution and many emigrated to North America.
There were four hierarchical levels of Quaker meetings and registers were originally kept by local or monthly meetings. From 1776 copies were also sent to the quarterly meeting (and these are now held at TNA). The registers were also recorded in ‘digests’, which contain much of the detail of the originals, and are often housed at local record offices and at Friends House – the Quaker headquarters in London. Important online sources available through TheGenealogist are the Quaker BMD registers held by TNA (series RG 6). They include registers, notes and certificates of births, marriages and burials from the years 1578 and 1841.
Quakers kept meticulous registers of births (Quakers did not practise baptism), marriages and deaths, as well as other records related to congregations. Register books began to be kept by Quaker meetings from the late 1650s, but in 1776 their whole registration system was overhauled. So post-1776 birth entries, for example, contain the date of birth, place of birth (locality, parish and county), parents’ names (often with the father’s occupation), the child’s name and names of the witnesses.
Quakers’ refusal to pay tithes led to them being subject to fines and even imprisonment. They were anxious to record these persecutions so books of sufferings were kept by monthly or quarterly meetings, and then recorded in the ‘great book of sufferings’ in London.
Library of the Religious Society of Friends: quaker.org.uk
Has details of the official Library of the Religious Society of Friends.
Quaker FHS: qfhs.co.uk
The Society website is very useful for getting to grips with unique Quaker records. Explains types of records such as minute books, membership lists and digests.
Quaker Archives, Leeds University Library:
library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections
Comprise the Carlton Hill collection (broadly covering Leeds, Bradford, Settle and Knaresborough) and the Clifford Street collection (York and Thirsk areas, as well as Yorkshire-wide material).
Yorkshire Quaker Heritage Project:
www.hull.ac.uk/oldlib/archives/quaker/
● As the refusal to bear arms is central to Quaker beliefs, you may be able to find references to Quakers in the records of Conscientious Objectors, held by TNA.
● Quakers, the Society of Friends, used the Julian Calendar up until March 1752, after which the vast majority of their records adopted the Gregorian Calendar. According to the Julian Calendar, the first day of the new year was 25 March ‘Lady Day’, so a full year would run from 25 March to 24 March.
● Roman Catholic registers were generally not kept before 1778 and many of them are written in Latin. Catholic baptism registers will usually show the names of godparents.
● The Historic Chapels Trust site (www.hct.org.uk) hosts images and information about redundant chapels and places of worship.
Barratt, Nick. Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy, Harper, 2008
Herber, Mark. Ancestral Trails: The Complete Guide to British Genealogy and Family History, The History Press, new edn 2005
Wills can reveal troubled relationships. Cardiff gent Miles Bassett put his pen to paper in the seventeenth century, leaving behind a document that is still preserved within the National Library of Wales’ probate collection.
And [I could put] as little confidence in my crabbed churlish unnatural, heathenish, and unhuman sonne inlawe Leyson Evans and Anne his wife; I never found noe love, shame nor honestie with them. . . . but basenesse and falsehood, knaverie and deceipt in them all, ever unto me . . . they were my greatest Enemies, I had no comfort in anie of them, but trouble & sorrow ever, they sued me in Londone in the Exchequier and in the Comonplease, and in the Marches at Ludlowe, and in the greate Sessions at Cardiff and thus they have vexed me ever of a long time.
The 1627 will and inventory of carpenter Nicholas Perry of ‘New Sarum’ (Salisbury) describes how at a time of plague Perry took refuge in nearby Combe Bissett, and took the opportunity to make a nuncupative will (one dictated rather than written down). He made the will because his son Nicholas had threatened to ‘use his wife hardly’ and throw her out. So, Perry decided to give all his property to his younger son, Anthony. The associated inventory, not surprisingly, includes a lot of ‘timber stuff’.
All this should hopefully encourage you to look into probate sources. Wills can not only offer you insights into a person’s wealth and possessions, but also give a census-like snapshot of a household, with all kinds of relationships revealed, and, if there’s an associate inventory, sometimes give you a virtual room by room tour of the house and belongings. In short, they can contain revealing information that is not available from any other source, and they stretch back to long before the census or civil registration. But they can also be hard to read, fragmentary, full of archaic and technical legalese, and, especially if there is no index or other finding aid, hard to track down.
Where there’s wealth there’s often a will, but not always, and lots of people of more modest means also left wills. Many left unproven wills to avoid legal fees, and even if your ancestor did not leave a will, they may have appeared in someone else’s. According to the useful FamilySearch wiki on the subject of English probate material, it is estimated that ‘courts probated estates (with or without a will) for fewer than 10 percent of English heads of households before 1858. However, as much as one-fourth of the population either left a will or was mentioned in one.’ In Scotland, according to the National Records of Scotland guide to Wills and Testaments, even as late as 1961, only ‘forty three per cent of Scots dying in that year left testamentary evidence of any sort’.
You should investigate what is online, as region to region, collection to collection this varies a great deal. Some archives have detailed research guides, indexes and even digitised material. Should you wish to know more about the aforementioned Miles Bassett, for example, you can explore the document via the National Library of Wales’ wonderful database of free digital images of pre-1858 wills proved in Welsh ecclesiastical courts at www.llgc.org.uk/probate. And you can also view the allied inventory (ref: LL 1680-10) to see what they were all squabbling over.
Scottish testaments from between 1514 and 1925 have been digitised and copies are available through ScotlandsPeople.
In Scotland ‘testament’ is the collective term for documents relating to wills and inventories. After a person died, if there was a will it would be taken to the sheriff courts to be confirmed, producing a document called a ‘testament testamentar’ (a grant of probate). If there was no will a ‘testament dative’ would be drawn up (a letter of administration) which would give power to executors to deal with the estate.
Testaments from between 1514 and 1925 have been digitised and copies are available through ScotlandsPeople, which also contains an index with over 611,000 index entries, each listing surname, forename, title, occupation and place of residence (where known) of the deceased person, the court in which the testament was recorded and the date. Index entries do not include names of executors, trustees, heirs to the estate, date of death or value of the estate.
Before 1823 testaments were recorded in the Commissary Court with jurisdiction over the parish in which the person died. And just as England’s diocesan boundaries won’t match ancient county boundaries, so these court boundaries, which roughly corresponded to medieval dioceses that existed before the Reformation in Scotland, bear no relation to county boundaries. Also, remember that the Edinburgh Commissary Court confirmed testaments for those who owned property in more than one area, and for Scots who died outside Scotland. And from 1824 Sheriff Courts took over responsibility for confirmation of testaments.
There are other sources online. Ancestry, for example, recently issued its National Probate Index – Calendar of Confirmations and Inventories between 1876 and 1936. The National Records of Scotland and ScotlandsPeople websites also have clear and concise guides to wills and testaments in Scotland (the latter going into more detail). In addition, you can view examples of will and associated documents from different areas.
There are lots of technicalities and idiosyncrasies to watch out for, but broadly speaking, prior to 1858, the situation in England and Wales was similar to pre-1824 Scotland in that the Church of England courts handled probate.
There were more than 300 Church probate courts set within a hierarchy – the higher court would handle the probate if the testator owned property in two or more areas. The lowest were the peculiar courts, which had jurisdiction over small areas. Next came archdeaconry courts (divisions within dioceses), bishops’ courts (the highest diocesan courts), prerogative courts and the Prerogative Court of Canterbury – the highest court of all, used for wills of testators who died or owned property outside of England, foreigners who owned property in England, military personnel, persons having property in more than one probate jurisdiction and wealthier individuals.
The National Library of Wales hosts a database of free digital images of pre-1858 wills proved in Welsh ecclesiastical courts at www.llgc.org.uk/probate.
So, to track down probate records you need to try to confirm the parish and year in which your ancestor died, then confirm which court (or courts) had jurisdiction. Then you can look for any surviving indexes and records.
The Nicholas Perry will quoted above, for example, comes from the diocese of Salisbury probate collection preserved at the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre. However, this diocese is much bigger than the county of Wiltshire, meaning the collection also includes wills from Berkshire, Dorset and Devon, as well as Wiltshire. Indeed, the collection includes the 1680 will of Edward Wallis of ‘Stoke next Guildford’ in Surrey, describing him as being of an ‘infirme and crazie body’.
From January 1858 the Principal Probate Registry, a network of civil courts called probate registries, replaced the ecclesiastical probate courts. And you can search the official government index to wills and administrations in England and Wales via the Probate Search website (probatesearch.service.gov.uk/#wills). This includes wills/administrations between 1858 and 1995 (and 1996 to present), as well as an index to soldiers’ wills (1850–1986), and there’s the National Probate Calendar (1858–1966) available via Ancestry.
This facsimile of a 1468 deed was printed in 1876 insomnia cure Memorials of the Family of Scott, of Scot’s Hall in the County of Kent, by James Renat Scott.
Before a will can take effect a grant of probate must be made by a court. And if someone dies without a will, the court can grant letters of administration for the disposal of the estate. Since 1858 grants of probate and administration in Ireland have been made in the Principal and District Registries of the Probate Court (before 1877) or the High Court (after 1877). These are indexed in the calendars of wills and administrations that are held at the National Archives of Ireland. Up to 1917, the calendars cover the whole of Ireland. After 1918 they cover the twenty-six counties in the Republic while indexes covering the six counties of Northern Ireland are at PRONI. The National Archives of Ireland testamentary calendars can be searched online (1858–1920 and 1922–82).
Before 1858 grants of probate and administration were made by the courts of the Church of Ireland (the Prerogative Court and the Diocesan or Consistorial Courts). There are separate indexes of wills and administrations for each court and some indexes have been published – such as the Vicar’s Index to Prerogative Wills, 1536–1810 and the Indexes to Dublin Grant Books and Wills, 1270–1800. Again, you can find more detail via the National Archives of Ireland research guides (nationalarchives.ie).
● There’s a natural assumption that only the more well-to-do left wills, but this is not always the case, and there’s also a chance you may find references to your ancestor in other people’s wills.
● The eldest son in family wills may not actually be mentioned, because he automatically inherited property of the deceased father.
● Technically, a will conveys immovable property to heirs and a testament conveys personal moveable property. But in general the term ‘will’ usually refers to both.
● A ‘codicil’ is a signed addition to a will.
● If someone dies ‘intestate’ (without leaving a will), then you may find ‘Letters of Administration’. This a document that appoints someone to preside over the distribution of the estate. There may also be a letter of administration attached to a will, if the named executor is deceased, unwilling or unable to act.
● Other potential probate sources you may come across include ‘act books’ (accounts of court actions) and ‘bonds’ (written guarantees that a person will perform tasks set by the probate court).
● Very few wills and probate documents survive before around 1400.
● Before 1882 a wife who died before her husband could not make a will except with her husband’s consent or under a marriage settlement created before her marriage.
● Until 1858 the courts of the Church of England proved wills but after this a simpler system of civil probate was introduced.
● On 12 January 1858, the Court of Probate was established in London to prove all wills throughout England and Wales. Until 1870 most women did not make a will as they were not allowed officially to own any property. After 1870 a married woman could make a will and bequeath property settled upon her for her separate use, but only under certain specific circumstances.
● The Civil War disrupted the probate process as Parliament abolished ecclesiastical courts in 1653 (restored in 1661). Wills proved during this period are filed at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury.
● Before 1750 heirs often did not prove wills in order to avoid court costs. Some archives maintain collections of unproved wills.
● Starting in 1796, a tax or death duty was payable on many estates with a certain value. Read more about death or estate duty wills at nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/death-duties-1796-1903-further-research/.
● Until 1833 real property could be ‘entailed’. This specified how property would be inherited in the future. An entail prevented subsequent inheritors from bequeathing the property to anyone except the heirs specified in the original entail.
Find a will: probatesearch.service.gov.uk/#wills
The official government probate search engine. Use this to find wills from January 1858 onwards proved in the Principal Probate Registry, a network of civil courts that replaced the ecclesiastical courts in England and Wales. A name and year of death is required to find wills, which should be ready for download within ten days of order – costing £10. Please note this was Beta testing at the time of writing so the above address may change.
FamilySearch wiki: familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Main_Page
FamilySearch wiki pages concentrating on individual counties often have links to probate records, detailing what survives where.
In addition, you’ll sometimes find links to probate collections that have been digitised and made available here – such as the Cheshire Probate Records, 1492–1940 collection at familysearch.org/search/collection/1589492.
The National Archives: nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/wills-1384-1858/
You can search Discovery for records of Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC) wills in series PROB 11 (1384–1858). These are all registered copy wills – copies of the original probates written into volumes by clerks at the Church courts. Other TNA guides/collections include wills of Royal Navy and Royal Marines personnel (1786–1882) and county court death duty registers and famous wills (1552–1854).
National Archives of Ireland: nationalarchives.ie
Find out more about the National Archives of Ireland’s probate collections. You can search Calendars of Wills and Administrations (1858–1922) and there’s an online database of soldiers’ wills (soldierswills.nationalarchives.ie), as well as a useful research guide with a glossary of legal terms.
ScotlandsPeople: scotlandspeople.gov.uk
Trawl the index to Scottish wills and testaments dating from 1513 to 1901 (listing surname, forename, title, occupation and place of residence), as well as the associated database of soldiers’ wills.
National Library of Wales: llgc.org.uk
Explore 193,000 records of wills proved in the Welsh ecclesiastical courts prior to the introduction of civil probate in 1858. You can either search the entire index, or narrow down by individual courts.
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland:
www.proni.gov.uk/index/search_the_archives.htm
Details of all PRONI’s online probate collections, including Will Calendars – a free index of wills from the district probate registries of Armagh, Belfast and Londonderry (1858–1943).
North East Inheritance Database:
familyrecords.dur.ac.uk/nei/data/
A database of pre-1858 probate records (wills and related documents) covering Northumberland and County Durham. Digital images of the original probate records (including wills and inventories, 1650–1857; copies of wills, 1527–1858; executors’ and administration bonds, 1702–1858) are also available through FamilySearch.
The Gazette: www.thegazette.co.uk/wills-and-probate
Includes wills and probate notices printed in the London, Edinburgh and Belfast gazettes.
Ancestry: search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=1904
Ancestry’s probate collections include important National Probate Calendars.
TheGenealogist: thegenealogist.co.uk
Diamond subscribers can enjoy several useful probate collections including many county wills indexes covering Yorkshire, Staffordshire, London, Leicestershire and more, as well as the PCC indexes and indexes to some Irish and Scottish wills.
England & Wales Published Wills & Probate Indexes, 1300–1858.
Essex Wills: seax.essexcc.gov.uk
Search and access images of Essex probate material held at Essex Record Office.
Wiltshire Wills: www.wshc.eu/our-services/archives.html
Gibson, Jeremy and Else Churchill. Probate Jurisdictions: Where to Look for Wills, Federation of Family History Societies, 2002 (for probate indexes produced since Gibson and Churchill’s guide go towww.dur.ac.uk/a.r.millard/genealogy/probate.php)
Grannum, Karen and Nigel Taylor. Wills and Probate Records: A Guide for Family Historians, The National Archives, 2009
In 1913 Joanna Archer had a child out of wedlock. The father was Ishmael Cummings, a Sierra Leonean doctor and one of several African professionals working at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary, where Joanna was junior matron. Their son, Ivor Cummings, would grow up in Addiscombe, south London, where he suffered prejudice because of the colour of his skin – on one occasion fellow pupils at Whitgift School setting light to his curly hair.
Ivor wished to become a doctor, but social barriers of the time were such that he abandoned those dreams, instead forging a career as a civil servant, becoming a well-known figure in London’s black community. He was working as a civil servant in the Colonial Office when early one morning in June 1948 he was sent to Tilbury Docks. He was there to meet an initial shipload of Jamaicans who were arriving in Britain for the first time aboard the Empire Windrush.
The arrival of the Windrush is a watershed moment in the history of migration to Britain. It wasn’t some obscure event that has since been given greater significance by historians. The day before the ship arrived the London Evening Standard sent out an aeroplane from Croydon Aerodrome to photograph the vessel as she approached. The image and news of the approaching migrants made the front page under the headline: ‘Welcome Home! Evening Standard ’plane greets 400 sons of Empire’.
‘From the air,’ wrote Standard reporter Denise Richards, ‘the Empire Windrush was little different from many of the ships which sail daily, but to four hundred people on board she was the beginning of a new life. . . . The airplane circled for fifteen minutes, and gradually apprehension turned to joy as the passengers realised they were receiving their first welcome to England.’
The Windrush had set off from Kingston, Jamaica on Empire Day, 1948. The majority of the migrants paid £28 to travel to Great Britain, responding to job advertisements that had appeared in local newspapers. Britain was suffering from major post-war labour shortages, and the passenger lists from that first arrival record an array of occupations – welder, carpenter, mechanic, painter, tailor, bookkeeper, farmer and fitter. To begin with many settlers were housed in a deep air raid shelter in Clapham Common, many eventually settling in nearby Brixton as this was the location of the nearest labour exchange.
Souvenir postcards of a sea voyage. This one records RMS Port Royal’s run from Kingston to Bristol, captained by W.R. Rowe.
The arrival of the Windrush is just one chapter in the story of migration in and out of the British Isles and Ireland. Other chapters include the Huguenots, members of the French Protestant Church who left their homes in France to escape religious persecution; there was the forced displacement of the Highland Clearances; and the mass starvation, disease and emigration of the Great Hunger in Ireland.
Trade pulled individuals and families across country borders, from the nineteenth-century Irish navvies who helped build Britain’s railways to employees of the Hudson Bay Company. The East India Company played a vital role in British expansion and control overseas, for hundreds of years employing thousands of traders, administrators, politicians, sailors and soldiers. There were also the ‘assisted’ migrations, such as the Home Children of the later Victorian period, or the Highlands & Islands Emigration Society, which assisted almost 5,000 individuals to leave western Scotland for Australia between 1852 and 1857. And there were forced migrations, the thousands of criminals transported firstly to North America and later to Australia.
Migration sources are complex. To keep things simple, I will first look at records of migrants entering the British Isles, before turning to records of those moving elsewhere.
TNA’s guide to immigration research begins by warning the reader that tracing immigrants can be difficult because many records held there are incomplete, in addition to the fact that some record series only cover certain periods or types of immigrant.
In general, surviving records refer to aliens (a non-citizen of the parent country), ‘denizens’ (a permanent resident, but not a citizen) and the process of naturalisation – when someone from outside the country becomes a legal citizen.
The earliest TNA sources that may potentially include references to foreign subjects and aliens include Chancery records, records of the Exchequer and state papers. Some early lists of people mentioned in the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic (1537–1625) can be searched via British History Online (british-history.ac.uk). Another source is Parliament or patent rolls which contain records of acts of naturalisation and grants of denizations. There are also Treasury in-letters, which contain references to refugees and other foreign people who received annuities, pensions and other payments in return for services rendered to the Crown. (There are indexes to the Calendar of Treasury Papers between 1556 and 1745.)
A great online resource for people researching in this early period is the England’s Immigrants Database at englands immigrants.com. This is a fully searchable database containing over 64,000 names of people known to have migrated to England between 1330 and 1550 – covering the Hundred Years War, the Black Death, the Wars of the Roses and the Reformation.
The situation simplifies after 1793. Mass migration during this period (caused largely by the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars) led to the passing of the Aliens Act of 1793. From then all arriving migrants had to register with the Justice of Peace, providing personal information, which would then be passed to the Aliens Office. The original Aliens Office certificates have not survived (although some indexes have), but original Justice of Peace records relating to arrivals may survive locally at county record offices – normally among quarter sessions material. Hull History Centre, for example, has certificates of arrival of aliens issued at the port between 1793 and 1815.
A second Aliens Act was passed in 1836. Now newly arrived migrants had to sign a certificate of arrival, and these certificates, for arrivals to England and Scotland, are held at TNA in series HO 2. The certificates should record nationality, profession, date of arrival, last country visited and other details. Through Ancestry, thanks to its partnership with TNA, you can search Alien Arrivals (1810–11 and 1826–69) and Aliens’ registration cards (1918–57) covering the London area only.
Another useful and accessible source is not part of migration records as such, but registers kept by settled communities. The non-parochial registers contained within RG 4 and RG 8 at TNA date from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries and are records kept by the French, Dutch, German and Swiss churches in London and elsewhere. These can be searched via BMDregisters.co.uk.
Other important TNA collections include: naturalisation case papers (1789–1934), which can be searched via Discovery; incoming passenger lists (1878–1960, held in BT 26), documenting people arriving from countries outside Europe and the Mediterranean area, available via Ancestry. The latter include details such as name, date of birth and age, ports of departure and arrival, and details of the vessel. Although remember that many of the pre-1890 lists were irregularly destroyed by the Board of Trade. Also available via Ancestry are the naturalisation certificates and declarations of British nationality (1870–1912). These will usually list the immigrant’s name, residence, birthplace, age, parents’ names, name of spouse (if married), occupation and children (if still of dependent age).
The National Archives’ immigration guide leads to all kinds of useful online resources.
Thanks partly to post-war labour shortages between the years 1948 and 1962 there were no restrictions on immigrants from Commonwealth countries, and the British Nationality Act of 1948 made it relatively simple for migrants to obtain citizenship. Certificates of citizenship issued by the Home Office from this period have also survived and can be found at TNA in HO 334.
Before you start your research into a migrant leaving the UK and Ireland, it’s useful to have the name of the ship they travelled on, and the ports of departure and arrival. This is easier said than done and while there are some online resources that can help you find this information, coverage is patchy.
Findmypast, through partnership with TNA, boasts outward passenger lists between 1890 and 1960. These were lists from both UK and Irish ports, recording those travelling to the USA, Canada, India, New Zealand and Australia.
Other important collections include Foreign Office records, such as passport registers and indexes, or, for researching individuals who migrated (or were transported) to Australia, there are the New South Wales original correspondence, entry books and registers (between 1784 and 1900). These contain lists of names of emigrants, settlers and convicts. The website of The National Archives of Australia has more information about emigration to Australia. In addition, details of some 8.9 million free settlers to New South Wales, 1826–1922 can be searched and downloaded online at ancestry.com.au, for a fee. Other Antipodean sources include registers of cabin passengers emigrating to New Zealand (1839–50).
TNA has original correspondence and entry books (1814–71), which can be explored via Discovery, and Land and Emigration Commission papers (1840–94), which include registers of births and deaths of emigrants at sea from 1854 to 1869, lists of ships chartered from 1847 to 1875 and registers of surgeons appointed from 1854 to 1894. You can also search Discovery by name for case histories of all those evacuated by the Children’s Overseas Reception Board during the Second World War.
Another common area of research is child migration. According to TNA, it is estimated that between 1618 and 1967 about 150,000 children were sent to the British colonies and dominions as part of various schemes, mainly to America, Canada and Australia, but also Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), New Zealand, South Africa and the Caribbean. ‘Many of the children were in the care of the voluntary organisations who arranged for their migration. Child emigration peaked from the 1870s until 1914 – about 80,000 children were sent to Canada alone during this period.’ (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/emigration/).
The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1850 allowed Boards of Guardians to send children under 16 overseas. But any records of specific cases are most likely to survive within records held in local archives. Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives’ Poor Law material includes the General Registers of the Poor for Peterhead. One entry concerns 4-year-old Elspet Niddrie, whose dying mother and adult half-sister were unable to care for her. The council decided she should be sent to her aunt, Jane Lemmon (née Niddrie) who had emigrated to America in 1904. The case ends with the Inspector of the Poor writing: ‘Passage paid to Boston USA and sent to Aunt . . . sailed today on Allan Liner Numidian’. (Elspet lived in Massachusetts, went on to marry a bus driver, had four children and died in December 1983.)
There are TNA-held Colonial Office reports on pauper child emigrants resident in Canada (1887–92). These comment on condition, health, character, schooling and church attendance of each child, as well as the children’s own view of their new homes. They also record the union or parish from which they were sent, as well as each child’s name, age and host’s name and address. Remember too that useful information may reside in records of initiatives held by the likes of Dr Barnardo’s Homes, the Overseas Migration Board and the Big Brother emigration scheme.
Away from economic and assisted migrants, there were thousands of forced migrants – namely criminals transported first to North America and later to Australia. This began in 1615, when criminals were first shipped to America or the West Indies, often sent to work on plantations. It is estimated that more than 50,000 English men, women and children were sentenced, crimes ranging from the theft of a handkerchief to highway robbery. One important source for this period is Peter Coldham’s landmark work The Complete Book of Emigrants in Bondage (and via Ancestry you can also access More Emigrants in Bondage, 1614–1775).
After the American Revolution in 1776 convicts had to be sent elsewhere and the first convict ships, known as the First Fleet, arrived in Australia in January 1788. The flow of convicted transportees finally slowed during the 1850s and ceased altogether when the system was abolished in 1868. While the records for this period of transportation are fractured, there are lots of websites with data and information about the history of transportation and how to research individuals. Amateur site Convicts to Australia (members.iinet.net.au/~perthdps/convicts/) has lots of advice, as well as transcribed lists of the First, Second and Third Fleets. The National Archives of Ireland has an online database of Irish convicts transported to Australia, compiled from transportation registers and petitions to government for pardon or commutation of sentence. The wonderful Proceedings of the Old Bailey London 1674–1834 website (oldbaileyonline.org) can be searched by punishment – go to the advanced search and select ‘Transportation’. Also, Australian state records include those of New South Wales’s Convict Indexes to Certificates of Freedom (1823–69).
The wonderful Ellis Island Foundation website, where you can trawl a vast database of more than 51 million passenger records.
These are just some of a vast array of potential sources that may survive. But of course the next step is tracking any record of your ancestor’s arrival in their new home. For this you will need to contact and explore archives overseas. For migration to the USA, for example, there is the likes of the Ellis Island Foundation, which grants access to vast databases of arriving migrants processed at the famous Ellis Island station.
Remember to look out for societies and organisations that focus on your area of interest. The Families In British India Society (fibis.org) has an immense and very useful Wiki, with all kinds of useful advice and data for tracing family members overseas. While the Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild (immigrantships.net) offers transcribed passenger lists that can be searched by port of arrival or departure. British Home Children in Canada (canadian britishhomechildren.weebly.com) has data relating to approximately 118,000 children sent to Canada from the UK under the Child Immigration scheme (1863–1939).
An important website for Irish migration research is Documenting Ireland: Parliament, People & Migration (www.dippam.ac.uk). This is a family of sites that together document Irish migration since the eighteenth century. It includes the ‘Irish Emigration Database’, based on roughly 33,000 documents – including letters, diaries and journals written by migrants, and newspaper material such as advertisements and overseas BMD notices. This really is a fascinating website, where you can spend many hours reading first-hand accounts of individuals starting new lives overseas.
The Ships List: theshipslist.com
Includes passenger lists from across the globe.
Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild: immigrantships.net
Transcribed passenger lists that can be searched by port of arrival or departure.
East India Company Ships: eicships.info/index.html
Information on ships and voyages of the East India Company’s mercantile service.
The National Archives: nationalarchives.gov.uk
There are several research guides to immigration, emigration, travel and relating to specific categories of records, such as naturalisation and passports.
On Their Own, Britain’s Child Migrants: otoweb.cloudapp.net
Child migrants to Canada, Australia and other Commonwealth countries from the 1860s to the 1960s.
England’s Immigrants Database: englandsimmigrants.com
Findmypast: findmypast.co.uk
Some important collections include Passenger Lists leaving UK (1890–1960) and Index to Register of Passport Applications (1851–1903) collections.
Ancestry: ancestry.co.uk
Has Alien Arrivals (1810–11, 1826–69), Incoming passenger lists (1878–1960), Outgoing passenger lists (1890–1960) and Aliens Entry Books (1794–1921).
TheGenealogist: thegenealogist.co.uk
Immigration/emigration collections include passenger lists and naturalisation records.
BMDregisters: bmdregisters.co.uk
Search for births, marriages and deaths on British registered ships and non-parochial registers from French, Dutch, German and Swiss churches.
British Settlers in Argentina and Uruguay: argbrit.org
London Metropolitan Archives: www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/london-metropolitan-archives/Pages/default.aspx
Holds an array of resources relating to migration to London, including records for black and Asian, Irish and French migrants.
Scottish Emigration Database: abdn.ac.uk/emigration/
Records of passengers who embarked from Scottish ports between 1890 and 1960.
The Highland Clearances: highlandclearances.co.uk
Black Cultural Archives: bcaheritage.org.uk
Child Migrants Trust: childmigrantstrust.com
Black Presence in Britain: blackpresence.co.uk
India Office Family Search, British Library: indiafamily.bl.uk/UI/
National Maritime Museum: rmg.co.uk
Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain: jgsgb.org.uk
Huguenot Society: huguenotsociety.org.uk
Families In British India Society: fibis.org
Home to lots of advice for tracing family members overseas, as well as a database of nearly 1,500,000 names and the expanding Fibiwiki at wiki.fibis.org/index.php/Main_Page.
Anglo-German Family History Society: agfhs.org.uk
The National Archives of Ireland: nationalarchives.ie
Documenting Ireland, Parliament, People & Migration: dippam.ac.uk
Family of sites that draws on sources relating to Irish migration and maintains the Irish Emigration Database of letters, diaries and journals written by migrants, as well as newspaper material.
The Mellon Centre for Migration Studies, Ulster American Folk Park: www.qub.ac.uk/cms/
British Home Children in Canada: canadianbritishhomechildren.weebly.com
Library & Archives Canada: bac-lac.gc.ca/eng
Hudson Bay Company Heritage: www.hbcheritage.ca
Ellis Island: libertyellisfoundation.org
Explore the vast database of 51 million+ passenger records as well as the Immigrant Wall of Honor, a permanent exhibit of individual and family names.
Castle Garden: castlegarden.org
The pre-Ellis Island immigrant centre, Castle Garden. This provides a database of 11,000,000 names (1820–92).
US Immigrant Ancestors Project: immigrants.byu.edu
Uses emigration registers to locate information about the birthplaces of immigrants.
The National Archives of America: archives.gov
National Archives of Australia: naa.giv.au
Archives New Zealand: archives.govt.nz
Migration Heritage Australia: migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au
Convicts to Australia: members.iinet.net.au/~perthdps/convicts/
Free databases relating to transportation to Australia, including transcribed lists of the First, Second and Third Fleets.
Legacies of British Slave-ownership: ucl.ac.uk/lbs
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database: slavevoyages.org
Recovered Histories: recoveredhistories.org
Digitised eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature on the transatlantic slave trade.
Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation: www2.hull.ac.uk/fass/wise/about_us.aspx
Global Slavery Index: globalslaveryindex.org
My Slave Ancestors: myslaveancestors.com
● The last known denization was granted in 1873.
● In 1905 a new Aliens Act meant that aliens could only enter the UK at the discretion of the authorities. After 1919 they had to register with the local police.
● The main TNA record series containing information about emigrants and emigration policy are Colonial Office (CO), Home Office (HO), Board of Trade (BT) and Treasury (T).
● If you’re reading about migration you may begin to notice that anything good is the work of ‘settlers’ and ‘pioneers’, anything bad is down to ‘the British’!
● In June 1940 the Children’s Overseas Reception Board was set up to administer offers from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA to care for British children in private homes.
● Evacuation stopped on 17 September 1940 when the SS City of Benares was torpedoed with the loss of seventy-seven children bound for Canada.
● TNA’s Discovery catalogue also lists overseas repositories (discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/find-an-archive). Below the map of the UK you can browse by country name. It usually lists the main national archive and/or library.
Barratt, Nick. Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy, Harper, 2008
Kershaw, Roger. Migration Records: A Guide for Family Historians, The National Archives, 2009
It is common to stumble upon evidence of military service in family archives, from certificates, buttons, caps, uniforms, medals and photographs to the more ephemeral stuff of family legend. My father still dines out on memories of national service: arriving as a fresh-faced youth and being mercilessly taunted for his posh accent. His old army box, labelled in chipped black paint with his rank and regiment, held my toys as a child, and, when I briefly took up coarse fishing, my weights and tackle lived in his khaki army bag.
Step back a generation, and the catalogue to the reel to reel tape collection of my paternal grandfather – full of old Goon Shows and classical radio broadcasts from the 1960s – is neatly noted down in an old Royal Air Force Signal Office Diary, the columns for ‘Watch Times’, ‘Remarks’ and ‘Signatures’ taken up with details of conductors, soloists and broadcast dates. The same grandfather was a carpenter and tinkerer, and I still play his home-made, box-shaped ukulele, constructed from whatever he could find during wartime service in Africa. My maternal grandfather served with the Royal Artillery during the Second World War. He helpfully left a modest home-bound volume of typed wartime memories, including tales of his faithful old dog Gunner Jones and his occasional association with flying ace Douglas Bader (my grandfather, not the dog).
‘He died for freedom and honour’. The memorial plaque for Kenneth Richard Scott.
Indeed, traces of both world wars pepper the walls and bookshelves of my parents’ house. Stumble over the poorly trained spaniel into their smoke-damaged kitchen, and near a wooden owl of my own construction, a painting of hands by middle-sister Kate and a sculpted clay boot by eldest sister Annabel lies a Memorial Plaque. These were issued after the First World War to the next of kin of all British and Empire service personnel killed as a result of the war. The plaques were made of bronze and became popularly known as ‘Dead Man’s Penny’. Explore the bookshelves nearby and with perseverance you will find the name of the same individual, noted down in a wonderful book of signatures compiled at a birthday ball in the early 1900s.
Let’s end our brief tour in the downstairs loo. Here, on the wall next to the throne and the guitar that can’t be tuned, is a picture of what appears to be a military inspection. In fact, it’s the future King George VI being shown a neat row of Barnardo’s children by my great-great-grandfather Sir William Fry. And just along we have a telegram from King Edward VIII (the one who abdicated), congratulating the same great-great-grandfather on his diamond wedding.
All this is meant to serve as an illustration of the kind of clues that may survive in your own archive. From the disparate items above, I can all but confirm my father’s rank and regiment, I can deduce that one grandfather served in the RAF and I have the name of another relation who lost his life in the First World War. As a starting point, it’s not bad. And if you combine all that with the ability to question living relatives, you may well have amassed a good amount of hearsay and more concrete information before you even start delving into official military sources and datasets.
This Royal Air Force Signal Office Diary was commandeered by my paternal grandfather to catalogue his reel to reel tape recordings.
There are plenty of bigger and better books that focus solely on military research for genealogists, or specific periods and conflicts. My aim here is quickly and efficiently to lay out some important facts about the military, list the main twentieth-century collections and draw attention to some of the best and most useful online resources for carrying out research remotely, for learning more about regiments, uniforms, campaign medals and more. The subject is in a sense ‘simple’ as so many important collections are preserved at TNA in Kew. But, in reality, it is rather complicated. With any military research it’s important to try to ascertain when the individual joined.
● The Royal Navy is traditionally the oldest part of the British armed forces, founded during the reign of Henry VIII, and so is known as the ‘Senior Service’.
● The navy divided its men into ratings, the name used for ordinary seaman, and officers. How much information was recorded changed over time, so an important piece of information to try to confirm is when the individual joined.
● Tracing ratings before 1853 can be difficult. One useful free tool is the Trafalgar Ancestors database (nationalarchives.gov.uk/trafalgarancestors/) which lists all those who fought in Nelson’s fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805.
● Ships’ muster and pay books (1667–1878) were essentially crew lists, and are the likeliest place to find references to ratings before 1853. You can search TNA’s Discovery catalogue for muster/pay books from a particular ship.
● Ratings records after 1853 become more detailed. The Royal Navy ratings’ service records (1853–1928) collection is available online via TNA’s website. This comprises more than 700,000 Royal Navy service records for ratings, drawn from continuous service engagement books, registers of seamen’s service and continuous record cards.
● Records of servicemen who joined after 1923 are still held by the navy. Next of kin can request a summary of a service record for an individual who joined after May 1917 from the Ministry of Defence.
● A commissioned officer was someone who became an officer by being awarded a royal commission, usually after passing an examination. These are different from warrant officers. Commissioned officers include admirals, commodores, captains, commanders and lieutenants. Warrant officers include gunners, boatswains, carpenters, ropemakers, chaplains, surgeons and engineers.
● Most nineteenth-century service records include officer’s name and rank, ships they served in as well as dates of entry/discharge from each vessel. Records can also include date of death, birth and next of kin.
● Royal Navy officers’ service records 1756–1931 are online. From series ADM 196, they include records for commissioned officers joining the navy up to 1917 and warrant officers joining up to 1931. You can search for free via Discovery and download for a fee. You can also search officers’ service record cards and files (c. 1880–1950s) and Ancestry has a Commissioned Sea Officers of the Royal Navy database.
● Ancestry has Royal Navy campaign, long service and good conduct medals – this collection includes First World War and Second World War medal and award rolls. Remember, digital microfilm copies of these records are also available to download from TNA free of charge.
● For officers you can also try Navy Lists – official published quarterly lists recording Royal Navy officers on active duty. These include rank, seniority and the ship or establishment in which the officer was serving. These are available from a number of websites, including archive.org (free of charge).
● Just as navy sources for ratings and officers can be found in different places, so there are different sources for army soldiers and officers. Soldier ranks include Private, Lance Corporal, Corporal, Sergeant and Warrant Officer. Officer ranks include Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Colonel, Brigadier and General.
● Always remember that many First World War files were lost or damaged by bombing in 1940.
● With army research it’s important to identify the individual’s military unit. If the soldier died during the world wars you can find this through the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website (cwgc.org).
● Potential army career sources include service records, casualty information, medal records and unit/operational histories. Most service records for soldiers discharged after the beginning of the First World War are with TNA, but some are held by the Ministry of Defence. Army service records for the Second World War are still with the Ministry of Defence. It does have other sources relating to the Second World War, including army casualty lists (in WO 417) which cover officers, other ranks and nurses.
● Findmypast’s important army collections include British Army Service Records (1760–1915), containing records of more than 2 million soldiers. These include ordinary soldiers and officers and were drawn from militia service records, Chelsea Pensioners service’ and discharge records, and Boer War soldiers’ documents from the Imperial Yeomanry. The site also has the 1914–20 Service Records collection, drawn from WO 363 service records and WO 364 pension records.
If you’re missing documentary evidence of an ancestor’s military career, any photographs showing uniform, cap badges or medals can provide vital clues.
● Ancestry’s army collections, also in partnership with TNA, include First World War service Records, pension records and medal rolls. Also, there’s the Military Campaign Medal and Award Rolls (1793–1949) database, which contains lists of more than 2.3 million officers, enlisted personnel and other individuals entitled to medals and awards – although this particular dataset does not include First World War or Second World War medal and award rolls.
● You can search for officers’ service records (1914–22) through TNA’s catalogue. Also, for a fee, you can search campaign medal index cards (1914–20).
● Published Army Lists can also be used to trace officers’ careers. These were published monthly, quarterly and half-yearly. They list active officers and contain details of promotions.
● Records of airmen and officers of the RAF are kept in different places depending on when they served. You can also search some RAF service records via TNA’s Discovery catalogue for free. Individual image downloads cost £3.30.
● The RAF was formed in April 1918 when the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) were amalgamated. TNA’s guide to RAF personnel notes that ‘someone who served in the RFC or RNAS as well as the RAF may have service records in more than one place’. There are also research guides dedicated to both RFC officers/airmen and RNAS officers/ratings, and the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF).
● The RNAS was formed in 1914. You can search and download records of men who served between 1914 and 1918 via nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/royal-naval-air-service-officers-service-records-1906-1918/.
● RAF airmen service records (not officers) between 1912 and 1939 are available on Findmypast. These include details of date/place of birth, physical description, next of kin, promotions, units and medals. The record set contains records of almost 343,000 airmen.
● Findmypast also has officer service records (1912–20), containing records of 101,266 officers, and the RAF 1918 muster roll. The former boasts records of Nobel Prizewinning author William Faulkner and W.E. Johns, creator of the fictional flying ace ‘Biggles’.
● The Battle of Britain Memorial website (battleofbritainmemorial.org) includes a database of all those who were awarded the Battle of Britain clasp.
There were various systems for mustering local forces before a Militia Act of 1757 established formal militia regiments across England and Wales. These were essentially part-time voluntary forces, organised by county and the records of conscription (between 1758 and 1831) serve as a kind of census as every year each parish was supposed to draw up lists of adult males, before holding a ballot to choose who would serve. TNA has a research guide focusing on militia, and the original lists, where they survive, are often at county archives or regimental archives. It’s also worth checking what the family history society in your area of interest has produced – you’ll often find they have published transcribed militia lists.
Many regiments look after their own collections and museums. These archives, usually accessible by appointment, may be maintained at the museum itself, or may have been deposited at the local county record office.
Even if no official regimental archive has been deposited, county archives will almost certainly have some kind of material relating to local military history. The North Yorkshire County Record Office has complete transcripts of returns of men enrolled to serve in the navy c. 1795. These relate to various North Riding wapentakes, but include men originating from all over the country. The Surrey History Centre in Woking shelters the vast Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment archive, spanning four centuries and 45m of shelving, comprising battalion war diaries, private journals, official photograph albums and even recordings of veterans’ reminiscences.
‘Security: Think – Before You Write!!’ These wartime letters contain a useful piece of information – that a relation may have ended the war with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
The museum and archives of the Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment of Yorkshire has unique historical artefacts such as the Amherst Flag, flown above the Citadel at Quebec after the Victory of the British Army led by Lord Amherst, to more practical genealogical sources such as enlistment registers, war diaries (including that of the 15th Leeds Pals Battalion, covering the first day of the Somme), photographs, personal diaries and correspondence (including the letter informing the next of kin that Private Johnson of 2nd Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment, was listed as missing).
The Green Howards Regimental Museum, also in North Yorkshire, has regimental enlistment registers, detailing campaigns, wounds, medals and rewards as well as rank, ‘character’ and cause of discharge. And they have the 19th Foot regimental register of marriages and baptisms (1839–50) and a Yorkshire Regiment Punishment Book (1878–89), showing the record of a private sentenced to imprisonment and hard labour for fraudulent enlistment.
Ephemeral highlights from the Gordon Highlanders Museum in Aberdeen include a postcard sent home from a Japanese POW camp by Lance Corporal Bill Angus, 2nd Battalion, The Gordon Highlanders. The entire 2nd Battalion was captured when Singapore fell to Japanese forces in February 1942. Bill was wounded by shrapnel during the battle and sent to work on the ‘Death Railway’ in Thailand. In addition, they hold the VC awarded to Captain Sir Ernest Beachcroft Beckwith Towse for two separate actions in the Boer War, the second of which blinded him.
These are just a few random examples of what can reside in regimental collections. To see if there are any that might hold information relating to your ancestor’s military career, try the Army Museums website (armymuseums.org.uk). Some museum websites have details of collections and archives, online finding aids and offer research services. Others are a bit more spartan. A great example is the website of the Royal Leicestershire Regiment (royalleicestershireregiment.org.uk), a wonderful digitised regimental archive, where you can search through over 65,000 soldier records dating back to 1688, read associated medals awards and citations, and explore digital copies of regimental journals.
Ancestry: ancestry.co.uk/military
Home to several important TNA collections such as Army Service Records (1914–20) and Naval Officer and Rating Service Records (1802–1919).
Findmypast: search.findmypast.co.uk/search-united-kingdom-records-in-military-armed-forces-and-conflict
Boasts over 12,500,000 British records relating to military service, including Royal Navy & Marine Service Records (1899–1919) and the Royal Navy Officers Medal Roll (1914–20).
Forces War Records: forces-war-records.co.uk
Specialist subscription site which has all kinds of army material that you can explore by conflict/era. Has data relating to the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, Royal Marines and Royal Navy Officers’ Campaign Medal Rolls (1914–20), and a database of Royal Navy/Royal Marines recipients of the 1914 Star Medal. Datasets include RAF Formations List, 1918, Fighter Command Losses, 1940 and Aviators Certificates, 1905–26.
TheGenealogist: thegenealogist.co.uk
Military material includes First World War casualty lists – drawn from weekly/daily War Office lists – and a POW database.
Age of Nelson: ageofnelson.org
Hosts two useful databases – Royal Navy officers in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (1793–1815), and the seamen and marines who fought at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
Anglo-Afghan War: garenewing.co.uk/angloafghanwar/
History of the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–80).
Army Museums: armymuseums.org.uk/ancestor.htm
Register of museums and a general introduction to researching army ancestors.
Australian War Memorial: awm.gov.au
Includes all kinds of material relating to the Australian experience of war, including centenary digitisation project ANZAC Connections and details of personnel serving in pre-First World War conflicts.
Battle of Britain Memorial: battleofbritainmemorial.org
Boer War Roll of Honour: roll-of-honour.com/Boer/
This page details the scope of the Boer Roll of Honour database. The right-hand column leads to details of UK Boer War memorials.
Bomber Command: rafbombercommand.com
History of RAF bomber aircrews, airmen and airwomen during the Second World War.
Bomber History: bomberhistory.co.uk
Has sections telling the stories of 49 Squadron, as well as specific raids and air attacks on British soil.
Britain’s Small Forgotten Wars: britainssmallwars.co.uk
British Battles: britishbattles.com
Has a number of pages covering battles from the period including details of casualties and uniforms.
British Medals Forum: britishmedalforum.com
Covers British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, Indian, South African and all Commonwealth medals.
Commonwealth War Graves Commission: cwgc.org
Searchable database of the 1,700,000 service personnel who died during the two world wars.
Cross & Cockade International: www.crossandcockade.com
The First World War Aviation Historical Society.
Europeana 1914–1918: europeana1914-1918.eu/
Explore letters, diaries, photographs, films, documents and more through this European-wide project.
Fleet Air Arm Archive: fleetairarmarchive.net
Has a Debt of Honour Register, POW database and biographies of decorated officers.
The Gazette: thegazette.co.uk
Officers’ commissions, promotions and appointments were published in the London Gazette. You can also search and browse military awards from MiDs (mentioned in despatches) to the Victoria Cross.
Great War Forum: 1914-1918.invisionzone.com/
Forum dedicated to First World War military research.
History of RAF: rafweb.org
Imperial War Museums, Research: iwm.org.uk/research
Includes guides to tracing individuals from the army, Royal Flying Corps, RAF, Royal Navy and Merchant Navy, POWs and those involved in the home front. It’s been given a real tablet/smartphone makeover of late, with lots of blog-style articles on all kinds of subjects – including the Next of Kin Memorial Plaque (or Dead Man’s Penny) at iwm.org.uk/history/next-of-kin-memorial-plaque-scroll-and-king-s-message.
Indian Mutiny Medal Roll: search.fibis.org/frontis/bin/
Inventory of War Memorials: ukniwm.org.uk
Lives of the First World War: livesofthefirstworldwar.org
The expanding centenary crowdsourcing project ultimately aims to record as many individuals who contributed to the war effort as possible – both overseas and on the home front. Joining, browsing and uploading life stories can all be done for free, but subscribers can access various ‘premium record sets’ (available on Findmypast) and create online communities.
The Long, Long Trail: longlongtrail.co.uk
‘A site all about the soldiers, units, regiments and battles of the British Army of the First World War, and how to research and understand them.’ Its creator, Chris Baker, has a gift for explaining complicated things clearly and simply, and his brainchild is neatly designed in a way that enhances the prose. Also, he really knows his stuff. It’s simply the best place to get to grips with researching a soldier who fought in the First World War. Despite the wealth of useful information here, it never leaves you feeling overwhelmed. If you want to know how regiments, divisions, corps and units functioned, and if you want to know what life was like for soldiers and how to find out more about them, this is the place to go.
Military Archives: militaryarchives.ie
Records of Ireland’s Department of Defence, the Defence Forces and the Army Pensions Board.
Ministry of Defence: www.gov.uk/requests-for-personal-data-and-service-records
Holds records relating to soldiers who served after 1920 (other ranks) and 1922 (officers).
Napoleon Series: napoleon-series.org
Includes the Peninsular Roll Call – an index of officers who served with Wellington’s army. It was originally compiled by Captain Lionel Challis, who began working on the project soon after the First World War. Vast parent website the Napoleon Series was launched in 1995 and boasts articles, images, maps, reviews and lots more.
National Army Museum: national-army-museum.ac.uk
The place to explore army history from 1485 to date. The site has greatly improved in recent years, and you can view sample documents, photographs and prints via the Online Collection.
National Maritime Museum: collections.rmg.co.uk
The Museum’s Collections page, where you can read about and search the Archive/Library catalogue. The site also has lots of permanent and temporary exhibitions – recent examples include the Forgotten Fighters gallery which focuses on lesser known stories of the First World War.
Naval History: naval-history.net
Vast site produced and maintained by a team of specialist contributors, with sections on Royal Navy operations, honours/awards, battles, despatches and more. These include 350,000 pages of transcribed log books from the First World War.
Navy Lists: archive.org/details/nlsnavylists
Useful free resource available via archive.org are the official Navy Lists – these particular volumes scanned from the National Library of Scotland, the earliest dating from 1819 and many dating from the Second World War. You can either explore volumes through your browser or download in various formats. Information included varies but will often feature officers’ dates of seniority, prizes, naval medals and ships/battles.
Operation War Diary: operationwardiary.org
Crowdsourcing project seeking to unlock the hidden stories contained within 1,500,000 million pages of First World War unit war diaries.
Peninsular War: peninsularwar.org
Prisoners of the First World War: grandeguerre.icrc.org
Search International Committee of the Red Cross lists of First World War POWs from both sides of the conflict.
RAF Museum StoryVault: rafmuseumstoryvault.org.uk
RAF’s StoryVault captures stories of ordinary service men and women and also has digitised archives of conflict casualty cards, the 1918 muster roll and 1918 Air Force List. You can find out more about the RAF Museums at Cosford and London via rafmuseum.org.uk. The collections page has photographs, information about medals and uniforms, and you can buy facsimile reprints of various historic documents.
Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachments: redcross.org.uk/ww1
The British Red Cross’s Voluntary Aid Detachment records.
Register of the Anglo-Boer War 1899–1902: casus-belli.co.uk
Hosts the Anglo-Boer War Memorials Project, recording memorials across the world and currently with over 200,000 names.
Royal Army Medical Corps, Wellcome Library: wellcomelibrary.org/collections/digital-collections/royal-army-medical-corps/
Digitised archive covering more than 150 years of military medicine and wartime experiences of the Royal Army Medical Corps. It includes more than 130,000 digitised pages of correspondence, reports, personal field diaries, memoirs, photographs and memorabilia from the Army Medical Services Museum.
Royal Flying Corps 1914-18: airwar1.org.uk
Royal Leicestershire Regiment: royalleicestershireregiment.org.uk
Wonderful example of a digitised regimental archive, where you can search through over 65,000 digitised soldier records dating back to 1688, by name, army number, rank or keyword. Each contains details from the soldier’s military career including unit, period of service and where they served, and more. Photographs and links to associated medals, awards and citations are also displayed. In addition, the archive contains the full digitised Green Tiger regimental journals collection, which has documented all news and events relating to the regiment since 1904.
The Sandhurst Collection: archive.sandhurstcollection.co.uk
The Royal Military Academy’s archives go back to the eighteenth century, and here you can search cadet/staff registers, containing details of almost every officer cadet that attended the Royal Military Academy Woolwich and Royal Military College Sandhurst, recording name, age, date of entry, commissioning date and corps or regiment joined. Searches are free, downloading an image costs £2.99.
Trafalgar Ancestors: apps.nationalarchives.gov.uk/trafalgarancestors/
Alongside research guides to officers and ratings of the era, you can search this TNA database of more than 18,000 individuals who fought in the Battle of Trafalgar – along with service histories/biographical details.
Unit Histories: unithistories.com
Victoria Cross: victoriacross.org.uk
Victorian Wars Forum: victorianwars.com
Waterloo Medal: nmarchive.com/our-data
Hosts the Men of Waterloo database of individuals granted the Waterloo Medal. This was the first true campaign medal as it was all given to all, regardless of rank, and was won by some 39,000 veterans.
Welsh Experience of the First World War: cymru1914.org
Western Front Association: westernfrontassociation.com
World War 1 Naval Combat: worldwar1.co.uk
Brooks, Richard and Matthew Little. Tracing Your Royal Marine Ancestors, Pen & Sword, 2008
Fowler, Simon. Tracing Your Naval Ancestors, Pen & Sword, 2011
Fowler, Simon. Tracing Your Army Ancestors, Pen & Sword, 2013
Fowler, Simon. Tracing Your First World War Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians, Pen & Sword, 2013
Spencer, William. Medals: the Researcher’s Guide, The National Archives, 2008
Tomaselli, Phil. Air Force Lives, Pen & Sword, 2013
Research someone’s employment and you find out how they lived, how they were defined by society and the community around them, about their wealth, status and day-to-day existence. But you should prepare yourself for some legwork: the kind of sources you’re after can be patchy and inconsistent, are often unindexed and, depending on the industry, it is perfectly possible that you will never find any specific reference to your ancestor.
High fliers – the highly trained and well paid – tend to leave behind more of a trail than a transient labourer. You may be able to trace the careers of lawyers, bankers, doctors, nurses and architects from records of further education, examinations or apprenticeships, through to the staff registers of the firms and institutions they joined. For miners, an industry popular with students of Britain’s industrial history, there are whole archives, libraries and museums dedicated to its study, and yet records relating to individual miners can still be hard to find. Skipping sideways to engineering or shipbuilding perhaps and the situation is that most firms were far more likely to have kept records of what they built, rather than the men who built them.
Even if you fail to find any records relating to your ancestor’s life in the factory, field, shop floor, coalface, counter or office, there are always contemporary sources that can help you find out more about what life was like for the average worker in a particular trade at a particular time.
If you have found your ancestor in the census, you will know where they lived and you should know how the enumerator recorded their profession. You’re next step is to find out what documents survive. Is there material held locally? Has it been catalogued? Is there some centralised source or archive relating to the industry in which they worked? If it’s a large company or institution, does it maintain its own archive? Was there any training or system of apprenticeships in the trade? Were there professional associations that your ancestor might have joined? Was there a trade union associated with the industry?
Sources can take many forms, from handwritten documents and ledgers to printed in-company magazines, to uniforms, cap badges and photographs. Sheffield Archives has records of over 100 iron and steel businesses, including material relating to production, finance, sales and marketing, employment records and photographs. You would be very lucky to find a photograph of your ancestor at work, yet any contemporary images can give you unique insights. Sheffield Archives has pictures of the city’s ‘buffer girls’, for example, which reveal how, as they were working with acid, they wore cloth aprons, clogs and headscarfs to work.
As we’re in the area, let’s travel 7 miles north-east to visit Clifton Park Museum. This is home of Rotherham’s Archives and Local Studies Service, where you’ll find Victorian apprenticeship indentures from the Beatson Clark glassworks collection and the Entry and Leaving Service Book from the Guest and Chrimes Brassworks, 1864. Indeed, quickly Google ‘Guest and Chrimes Brassworks’ and the first result (at the time of writing) is the BFI Britain on Film player where you can watch actual footage of workers leaving the Brassworks in 1901 (player.bfi.org.uk/film/watch-workers-leaving-guest-and-chrimes-brassworksrotherham-1901-1901/).
Just a little further north and we can drop in on the Barnsley Museum and Discovery Centre. Here there’s a handwritten 1839 journal detailing the lives of workers at Elsecar Colliery, giving the names of employees, how much coal they extracted and their pay. You’ll also see a lithograph printed to commemorate the 351 men and boys killed by explosions at the Oaks Colliery, Barnsley on 12 and 13 December 1866.
Further north we can visit the Heritage Hub, the Scottish Borders Archive and Local History Centre. Here there’s an 1858 register of constables for Roxburghshire in which you can follow the career of one Archibald Hogarth, recording, among many other things, a minor case of misconduct when he failed to report an unshaven policeman! The Museum of Scottish Lighthouses in Fraserburgh has the visitors’ book from Hoy Low lighthouse in Stromness, bearing the signatures of Robert Louis Stevenson and his father Thomas Stevenson, who was working for the Northern Lighthouse Board. Essex Record Office has registers of mainly female weavers employed at Courtaulds’ silk factory in Halstead (1830–84). Ceredigion Archives in Aberystwyth has a run of material chronicling the rise and fall of Pwll Roman Lead Mine in north Cardiganshire, with monthly running costs and ledgers detailing men employed on particular days of the week, sometimes showing specific jobs they were paid to carry out.
I hope this random list of occupational treasures has captured your enthusiasm for regional archives, local history libraries and museums, and shows the potential for finding enlightening material.
In-company magazines and journals often include details of promotions and appointments, workforce socials and sporting leagues, notices of births, marriages and deaths, and sometimes detailed obituaries. Sheffield Archives holds runs of the Bombshell, for example, which was the official employees’ journal for workers at Firth Brown Steelworks. The archives of confectionery manufacturers Rowntree Mackintosh held at the Borthwick Institute in York includes Cocoa Works Magazine, recording employees on military service during the First World War and those killed in action. And remember that some in-company magazines and trade newspapers survive at centralised archives and libraries such as the British Library.
The Historical Directories of England & Wales website is a really useful free resource. It has digitised trade directories covering England and Wales from the 1760s to the 1910s which you can browse online or download as PDFs.
Agricultural labourers, or ag labs, are notoriously hard to research, but it’s still worth investigating what may have survived. The names of farmers, rural craftsmen and tradesmen may well appear in family and estate collections. They may appear in account books, documenting amounts paid to local workers for products and work, or in records of tenants and rent. The tenants of cottages at the Lilleshall Estate in Shropshire, for example, are recorded in a document of 1836. Here they are listed in alphabetical order, alongside information about the type of property, their occupation, size of family, the state of repair of each property and even ‘habits’ – some are described as ‘industrious’, others as ‘indifferent’.
It’s rare but individual farm collections do also survive. Bedfordshire and Luton Archives has the farm account book for West End Farm, Stevington, showing each labourer’s name, daily occupation and weekly sum paid. Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives has seventeenth- and eighteenth-century account books from Easter Beltie Farm, in which we find details of the ‘fee’ – a verbal contract between farmer and casual labourer for a half-year’s work. In return for his service, John Mitchell was to be given £8 6s. 8d., 2 ells of gray (a type of cloth), two pairs of shoes, one shirt and a pair of trousers. While Shropshire Archives holds an early nineteenth-century farm bailiff’s account of workmen’s time, listing the names and occupations (ploughmen, labourers and carters) of men each day.
Below are some important on and offline resources, some useful for general occupational research, others specific to industries and trades. If the occupation that interests you isn’t here, at the very least it will hopefully encourage you to take a look at what’s out there for you. In general always start by consulting TNA, the National Records of Scotland, the National Library of Wales, PRONI and the National Archives of Ireland websites to check for any relevant research guides. Also, investigate what you can find via the county/borough archive’s online catalogue, or multi-archive catalogues such as TNA’s Discovery or Archives Wales (www.archiveswales.org.uk).
If you have found your ancestor in the census, you should have an occupation. But sometimes this first hurdle can cause problems if it’s an archaic or unfamiliar term. There are several sites with A–Z guides to some old, forgotten occupations.
Dictionary of Old Occupations, by Jane Jewitt: www.familyresearcher.co.uk/glossary/Dictionary-of-Old-Occupations-Index.html
England Occupations, FamilySearch wiki: familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/England_Occupations
Rodney Hall: rmhh.co.uk/occup/index.html
Includes occupations listed in the 1891 census.
ScotlandsPeople: www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/content/help/index.aspx?r=551&430
Similarly the AddressingHistory website offers access to digitised Scottish post office directories, which can be searched by name, place or profession.
Has a list of 1,500 occupations, their definitions and variants.
GenDocs, Ranks, professions, occupations and trades: homepage.ntlworld.com/hitch/gendocs/trades.html
Olive Tree Genealogigy: www.olivetreegenealogy.com/misc/occupations.shtml
Lists medieval and obsolete English terms.
Old Occupations in Scotland: scotsfamily.com/occupations.htm
Trade directories can sometimes be the only potential source left to you of an ancestor’s working life. If they ran a small shop, firm or school, or if they were working craftsmen or artisans their details may appear here. The most established names in trade directories were Kelly’s and Pigot’s, and both become ever more detailed over time. Most commercial sites have digitised directories in their rosters, and in addition several firms offer them on CD-Rom or PDF downloads. You can also access free digitised directories from several online sources.
Historical Directories of England & Wales: specialcollections.le.ac.uk/cdm/landingpage/collection/p16445coll4
A collection of digitised trade directories covering England and Wales from the 1760s to the 1910s. You can browse the directories online or download them as PDFs.
Scottish Post Office Directories: digital.nls.uk/directories/
Free searchable hub to more than 700 digitised directories from the National Library of Scotland.
PRONI Street Directories: streetdirectories.proni.gov.uk
Reproduces directories from Belfast and environs dating from 1819 to 1900.
Library Ireland: libraryireland.com
Includes digitised directories.
Sheffield Directories: sheffieldindexers.com/DirectoriesIndex.html
To become an apprentice, parents/guardians negotiated with a guild’s master craftsman to agree conditions and price, which would then be recorded in an indenture. There were also pauper apprenticeships, arranged specifically by parish-level Overseers of the Poor to remove the child as a financial burden on the parish. And unlike traditional trade apprenticeships, the pauper apprentice indentures were not subject to any duty.
These records normally give name, addresses and trades of the masters, and the names of the apprentices, along with the sum the master received for the apprenticeship. Francis Wainwright was apprenticed to the joiner Henry Pearson of Bilston, Wolverhampton in April 1758. His indenture, which sits within the poor relief material from Condover’s parish records at Shropshire Archives, reveals that he was sent a considerable distance to learn his trade.
Many apprenticeship records survive locally in papers of guilds, businesses, charities, families, individuals and parish collections. The Statute of Apprentices was passed in 1563, and it meant no one who had not served an apprenticeship was allowed to enter a trade. But there was no centralised record of apprentices kept in England and Wales until 1710, when stamp duty was payable on indentures of apprenticeship. The resulting registers of the duty paid are housed at TNA and you can search these apprenticeships via ancestry.co.uk or browse them on digital microfilm. There are also indexes of apprentices from 1710 to 1774 on findmypast.co.uk, which also has London Apprenticeship Abstracts (1442–1850), drawn from records of London livery companies. There are ‘articles of clerkship’ (1756–1874) available via Ancestry – contracts between an apprentice clerk and the attorney or solicitor – and TheGenealogist.co.uk also has a large collection of apprenticeship records.
Workhouses.org:
workhouses.org.uk/education/apprenticeship.shtml
Part of the Children & Education section of the wonderful Workhouse website, detailing the workings of the apprenticeship system.
Apprentices and masters guide:
nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/looking-for-person/apprentice.htm
People in business and trades:
nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/looking-for-person/other-occupations.htm
Trade Union Ancestors: www.unionancestors.co.uk
Estimates that around 5,000 trade unions have existed at one time or another, and that tens of millions of people have been members. It has an A–Z of trade unions, information about membership, a trade-union timeline, a list of major strikes and histories of many individual unions. The site’s creator also runs the wonderful Chartist Ancestors website.
Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick:
www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/
Many records relating to trade unions reside here. The website also has useful information about which union an ancestor from a particular trade or industry is likely to have joined. The site also has a list of commonly searched trades/occupations, adapted from a 1927 dictionary produced by the Ministry of Labour.
Trade Union Membership Registers:
search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-records/britain-trade-union-membership-registers
Findmypast has over 3 million British trade-union records from the Modern Records Centre, including digitised images of the original record books from 26 unions.
The Union Makes Us Strong, TUC History Online: unionhistory.info
People’s History Museum: phm.org.uk/archive-study-centre/
Working Class Movement Library: www.wcml.org.uk
The amount of surviving documentary evidence of cottage industries and rural crafts varies from place to place and industry to industry. But some very useful websites include the following.
ConnectedHistories: connectedhistories.org
This vast search hub gives access to the likes of the Victoria County Histories, providing local histories of parishes and townships, sometimes detailing the fortunes and practices of individual farms.
The Mills Archive: millsarchive.org
Blacksmiths Index: blacksmiths.mygenwebs.com/
This is a ‘Genealogical Index of Blacksmiths’, drawn mainly from UK census data, recording blacksmiths, wheelwrights, farriers and more.
Museum of English Rural Life: reading.ac.uk/merl/
Rural Museums Network: ruralmuseums.ssndevelopment.org
Irish Agricultural Museum: www.irishagrimuseum.ie
National Wool Museum: www.museumwales.ac.uk/wool/
The vast majority of mining records reside at local/county archives. After nationalisation in 1947 you need to look for records from the National Coal Board. There are summary descriptions of the archives available via Discovery (discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/c/F182763).
Scottish Mining: scottishmining.co.uk
Database of more than 22,000 names of those involved in coal, iron and shale mining.
Durham Mining Museum: dmm.org.uk
Mining histories, colliery maps, a Who’s Who, lists of engineers and all kinds of transcribed documents.
Coal Mining History Resource Centre: cmhrc.co.uk
Has the National Database of Mining Deaths dating back to the 1600s.
Welsh Coal Mines: welshcoalmines.co.uk
Database of mines with histories and images.
National Coal Mining Museum: ncm.org.uk
Includes details of the Museum’s reference library.
Scottish Mining Museum: scottishminingmuseum.com
Tyne & Wear Archives Centre: twmuseums.org.uk/tyne-and-wear-archives/catalogue-amp-user-guides/user-guides.html
Essex Police Museum: essex.police.uk/museum/
Has indexes to officers in the Essex County Constabulary from the 1880s to the present day.
British Transport Police History Group: btphg.org.uk
Lists recipients of various honours, decorations and medals.
Staffordshire Name Indexes: www.staffsnameindexes.org.uk
Includes an index to Staffordshire Police Force Registers (1840–1920) and a police disciplinary index (1857–86).
Metropolitan Police Heritage Centre: metpolicehistory.co.uk
Research collections include a 54,000-name database from 1829, Central Records of Service from 1911 and pension cards.
Ancestry: ancestry.co.uk/cs/uk/occupations-alta
Ancestry has the Railway Employment Records (1833–1956) collection produced in association with TNA, mainly drawn from staff registers. It also has some railway company magazines.
Cheshire, Railway Staff Database: archives.cheshire.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=70
A database from Cheshire Archives, drawn from seventeen staff registers from four railway companies.
National Railway Museum: nrm.org.uk
Details of the NRM’s library and archive. There’s an online catalogue and family history advice page.
Railways Archive: railwaysarchive.co.uk
The Registrar General of Shipping and Seamen was responsible for keeping records of merchant seamen and so most material is held in the Board of Trade record series (BT) at TNA. Important maritime collections survive in disparate archives and museums, covering fishermen, whalers, trawlermen and harbour masters. Crew List Index Project: crewlist.org.uk
Huge database of crew lists held in various archives confined to merchant seafarers on British registered ships (1861–1913).
Maritime History Archive: www.mun.ca/mha/
Canadian archive that has lots of material relating to British merchant shipping, including Crew Lists and Agreements (1861–1913).
Welsh Mariners: welshmariners.org.uk
Includes an index of 23,500 Welsh merchant masters, mates and engineers active from 1800 to 1945.
HM Waterguard: hm-waterguard.org.uk
Dedicated to the history, men and work of the Preventive Service of HM Customs & Excise.
Register of Merchant Seamen, Southampton Archives: southampton.gov.uk/libraries-museums/local-family-history/southampton-archives/index-merchant-seamen.aspx
Information about the Central Index Register of Merchant Seamen.
Grimsby Fishermen, North East Lincolnshire Archives: www.nelincs.gov.uk/faqs/archives-kept-north-east-lincolnshire-archives/
Searchable catalogue of 38,000 Grimsby crew lists. Also looks after registers of fishing apprentices.
Hull History Centre: hullhistorycentre.org.uk
Has records of shipping companies, fishing crew lists (1884–1914) and the Sailors’ Children’s Society.
Irish Mariners: irishmariners.ie
Details of over 23,000 Irish-born merchant seamen.
National Maritime Museum: rmg.co.uk/national-maritime-museum
Lloyd’s Marine Collection, Guildhall Library: guildhalllibrarynewsletter.wordpress.com/tag/lloyds-marine-collection/
East India Company, FIBIS Wiki: wiki.fibis.org/index.php/East_India_Company
East India Company Ships: eicships.info/index.html
Trinity House Maritime Museum: trinityhouseleith.org.uk
Coastguards of Yesteryear: coastguardsofyesteryear.org
Spinning the Web: spinningtheweb.org.uk
Cotton Town: cottontown.org
Scottish Textile Heritage Online: scottishtextileheritage.org.uk
Derwent Valley Mills: www.derwentvalleymills.org
The Weaver’s Triangle: www.weaverstriangle.co.uk
The Wellcome Library: wellcomelibrary.org/collections/digital-collections/mental-healthcare/
Involved with several mass-digitisation projects including this Mental Healthcare project, drawing on material from the Library’s own archives as well as partner organisations such as Ticehurst House Hospital and the Retreat in York. Other Wellcome Library material scheduled for digitisation includes the Medical Students’ Register (1882–1910) and the Dentists’ Register (1879–1942).
Hospital Records Database: nationalarchives.gov.uk/hospitalrecords
Provides information about the location of the records of UK hospitals – currently over 2,800 entries.
Wellcome Trust: wellcome.ac.uk
Provides advice aimed at those researching doctors, physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, nurses, midwives and dentists.
Royal Army Medical Corps: wellcomelibrary.org/collections/digital-collections/royal-army-medical-corps/
British Army nurses’ service records: nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/army-nurses-service-records.htm
Search/download First World War British Army nurses’ service records.
Royal College of Physicians, Munks Roll: munksroll.rcplondon.ac.uk
British Optical Association Museum: college-optometrists.org/en/college/museyeum/
Medical Museums: medicalmuseums.org
Lothian Health Services Archives: lhsa.lib.ed.ac.uk
Ancestry: ancestry.co.uk/cs/uk/occupations-alta
Has Electrical Engineers (1871–1930) plus Civil and Mechanical Engineer Records (1820–1930).
I Worked at Raleigh: iworkedatraleigh.com
Home to video clips, stories, photographs and more relating to working life at the bicycle factory in Nottingham.
Tyne & Wear Archives: twmuseums.org.uk
Has an internationally recognised shipbuilding collection.
Institution of Civil Engineers: ice.org.uk/topics/historicalengineering/Archives
Institution of Mechanical Engineers: imeche.org/knowledge/library/archive
Bank of England History: bankofengland.co.uk/about/pages/history/default.aspx
Includes digitised sources and a memorial to staff killed in both world wars.
RBS Heritage Hub: heritagearchives.rbs.com/use-our-archives/your-research/british-banking-history.html
Contains information about all British and Irish banks that became part of RBS.
Lloyds Archives: lloydsbankinggroup.com/our-group/our-heritage/our-archives/
Details of staff records (registers, salary records) and a complete collections index.
HSBC Archives: hsbc.com/about-hsbc/company-history/hsbc-archives
Coutts History: coutts.com/about-us/history/
Lincoln’s Inn Archives: lincolnsinn.org.uk/index.php/library/the-inns-archives
Archive of the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn – one of four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar.
Gray’s Inn Archives: graysinn.org.uk/history/archives
Site provides links to external digitised transcriptions of both the Pension Books and Register of Admissions.
Law Society Corporate Archive: lawsociety.org.uk/support-services/library-services/corporate-archive/
Middle Temple Archives: middletemple.org.uk/about-us/history/
Online sources include Register of Admissions.
Inner Temple Admissions Database: innertemple.org.uk/history/the-archives
Details of the Inner Temple archives including the free Admissions Database (1547–1920).
Law Society’s Solicitors Regulation Authority: sra.org.uk
Maintains a register listing lawyers admitted since 1845.
Clergy of the Church of England Database: theclergydatabase.org.uk
Brings together biographical data of clergymen between 1540 and 1835.
The Cause Papers Database: hrionline.ac.uk/causepapers/
Searchable catalogue of more than 14,000 cause papers relating to cases heard between 1300 and 1858 in the Church courts of the diocese of York.
Crockford’s Clerical Directory: www.crockford.org.uk
Biographical details of more than 27,000 Anglican clergy.
Church of England collection, Lambeth Palace Library: lambethpalacelibrary.org
John Rylands Library: library.manchester.ac.uk/searchresources/guidetospecialcollections/methodist/using/indexofministers/
Online index of Methodist ministers.
John Lewis Memory Store: johnlewismemorystore.org.uk
Memories/photographs from the John Lewis Partnership.
Woolworths Museum: woolworthsmuseum.co.uk
The Sainsbury Archive, Museum of London: archive.museumoflondon.org.uk/sainsburyarchive/
Marks & Spencer Company Archive: marksintime.marksandspencer.com
Guinness Archive Index: guinness-storehouse.com/en/genealogysearch.aspx
Official Guinness Archive index to some 20,000 employees of the St James’s Gate Brewery in Dublin.
Scottish Brewing Archive: archives.gla.ac.uk/sba/default.html
Has an alphabetical list of breweries and associated firms, the records of which are held here.
Brewery History Society: breweryhistory.com
Includes a gazetteer of pre-1940 breweries operating in England.
Pub History Society: pubhistorysociety.co.uk
Warwickshire Victuallers: apps.warwickshire.gov.uk/Victuallersdb/victuallers/indexes
Database of licensed victuallers between 1801 and 1828.
National Brewing Library: brookes.ac.uk/library/speccoll/brewing.html
Lost Pubs Project: closedpubs.co.uk
Beamish Museum: beamish.org.uk
The Stage Archive: archive.thestage.co.uk
Archive of the Stage containing previews/reviews as well as details of actors, theatres and performances.
Author Lloyd: arthurlloyd.co.uk
Music hall site inspired by popular performer Arthur Lloyd (1839–1904).
National Library of Scotland: digital.nls.uk/playbills/
Browse playbills and theatre programmes.
Scottish Theatre Archive: gla.ac.uk/services/specialcollections/collectionsaz/scottishtheatrearchive/
National Fairground Archive: shef.ac.uk/nfa
East London Theatre Archive: elta-project.org
Theatre Collection, University of Bristol: bris.ac.uk/theatrecollection/
Footlight Notes: footlightnotes.tripod.com/index.html
London Music Hall Database: royalholloway.ac.uk/drama/Music-hall/index.asp
Royal College of Music Library & Archive: rcm.ac.uk/library/contactus/archivesandrecords/
British Music Hall Society: britishmusichallsociety.com
London Symphony Orchestra Archive: lso.co.uk/about-the-lso-archive
Scottish Music Hall & Variety Theatre Society: scottishmusichallsociety.webs.com
The National Archives, Business/Company Records: nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/looking-for-subject/business.htm
National Records of Scotland: nrscotland.gov.uk/research/visit-us/scotlandspeople-centre/useful-websites-for-family-history-research/occupations
Occupational research guides, also linking to useful websites such as a Dictionary of Scottish Architects (www.scottisharchitects.org.uk).
Ancestry: ancestry.co.uk/cs/uk/occupations-alta
British Postal Service Appointment Books (1737–1969), Civil Engineer Lists (1818–1930) and Electrical Engineer Lists (1871–1930).
British Telecom Digital Archives: www.digitalarchives.bt.com
British Postal Museum and Archive: www.postalheritage.org.uk
Findmypast: findmypast.co.uk
Also has collections of Thames watermen and lightermen (1688–2010) and the Dental Surgeons Directory (1925).
Scottish Printing Archival Trust: scottishprintarchive.org
Livery Companies: liverycompanies.com
Occupations, Genuki: genuki.org.uk/big/Occupations.html
Business Archives Council of Scotland: www.gla.ac.uk/services/archives/bacs/
Museum of Childhood: vam.ac.uk/moc/
Working Lives Research Institute: workinglives.org
Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum: tolpuddlemartyrs.org.uk
New Lanark World Heritage Site: newlanark.org
Black County Living Museum: www.bclm.co.uk
Ulster Folk & Transport Museum: nmni.com/uftm
Emm, Adele. Tracing Your Trade and Craftsmen Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians, Pen & Sword, 2015
Hawkings, David T. Railway Ancestors, Sutton Publishing, 2008
Tonks, David. My Ancestor Was A Coalminer, Society of Genealogists, 2014
Waters, Colin. A Dictionary of Old Trades, Titles and Occupations, Countryside Books, 2002
Parts of post-Industrial Revolution Britain were overcrowded, poverty-stricken and crime-ridden. While the County Asylums Act 1808 had been introduced to establish a network of institutions to care for people with mental health problems (although many counties failed), still the majority of the responsibility of care for the destitute, disabled, orphaned and abandoned fell on the shoulders of an already overstretched and piecemeal system of local poor relief. In England and Wales this pressure on the parish eventually led to a new network of Poor Law unions, each with its own workhouse.
Generally, the term ‘Poor Law’ can be used to describe the various systems that were in place prior to the creation of the modern welfare state. These are grouped into the Old Poor Law (dating back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth) and the New Poor Law (passed in England and Wales in 1834). In brief, before that date most care of the poor fell on the shoulders of the parish. Therefore, the primary sources for the poverty stricken are parish level, such as settlement certificates and examinations, removal orders and other records of the Overseers of the Poor.
After 1834 this haphazard system was replaced by a system of Poor Law unions, run by an elected board of guardians, which administered workhouses (although workhouses did exist in many areas prior to the creation of the new unions). Records of individual Poor Law unions normally survive at county record offices, while records of the presiding Poor Law Commission survive at TNA.
Similarly, in Ireland a Poor Law Act of 1838 divided the country into 159 Poor Law unions, each with an elected board of guardians to administer relief. So, as in England and Wales, the kind of resources you may find are board of guardian minutes and workhouse registers, which can include names, dates of admission, places of birth or residence, occupations and more. Many survive in county level and national collections.
The situation in Scotland is similar in that following the Reformation the responsibility for the poor fell on the parish, through heritors (local landowners) and the kirk sessions – the Church courts responsible for each parish. There was a parish poor fund, drawn from donations, fines and services. Heritors’ records (where they survive) and kirk session minute books and accounts usually include lists of paupers and relief paid (although often recorded in among all other financial business).
New Poor Law dates from an Act of 1845 when parochial boards were set up in each parish to administer poor relief. The records of parochial boards are generally found in local authority archives. Research gets a lot easier in 1864 when standardised poor relief registers were introduced. The Scottish Poor Relief System also differed from the English one in that parishes did not have to set up their own poorhouse, they just had to be able to provide ‘indoor’ or ‘outdoor’ relief.
You can find out more via National Records of Scotland (nrscotland.gov.uk/research/guides/poor-relief-records), as well as searching the online catalogue for heritors’ and kirk session records. They also hold records of Destitution Boards, set up in the 1840s to deal with widespread poverty in the Highlands following the failure of the potato crop.
London Metropolitan Archives’ Boards of Guardians series of records start around 1830 and include material from workhouses, asylums and special schools. It also holds records from over 100 hospitals, including the former county lunatic asylums of Hanwell, Colney Hatch and Banstead. The East Riding of Yorkshire archives in Beverley have collections relating to the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Offenders for the North and East Ridings (later known as Castle Howard Reformatory School), as well as records of the Yorkshire Catholic Reform School.
Poor Law material can be enlightening, riveting and shocking. Bedfordshire’s surviving Poor Law collections include pauper applications which can give name and age of applicant, wife and children, settlement, description, disability and other details, including names of relatives ‘capable of assisting’. The Kempston Overseers’ account book includes one 1758 entry recording 1s. paid for Ann Jervice’s ‘Wooden Legg’, alongside detailed assessments, boarding out agreements, and miscellaneous receipts for casual wages paid to paupers and sale of paupers’ goods.
Poor Law records can take many forms. At Shropshire Archives there’s a seventeenth-century journal with recipes and remedies kept by one Ann Whittle, which later includes what appear to be poor relief entries. It also has Ludlow Poor Law Union’s ‘clothing deposited book’, recording the clothing that individuals had with them on entering the workhouse. There are also punishment books, documenting offences and punishments – standard punishments include meals of bread and water and picking oakum. Highland Archive Centre has the Inverness Poorhouse Admission Register, recording name, age, status, employment, religious denomination and any disability. A page from the Easter Ross Union Poorhouse Inmates Register from 1897 records a new baby named Victoria Diamond Jubilee.
OTHER RESOURCES
The Workhouse: workhouses.org.uk
An encyclopaedic guide to the workhouse system across Scotland, Wales, Ireland and England, boasting all kinds of background material about how the system developed, the kinds of records it created, as well as detailed illustrated histories of workhouses, searchable by Poor Law location. There’s also a fairly comprehensive list of archives across UK and Ireland that hold Poor Law records. There’s also the sister site childrenshomes.org.uk, which details of orphanages, reformatories and industrial schools.
Poor Law Unions’ Gazette: britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
One of thousands of titles digitised from the British Library’s vast newspaper collections, the Poor Law Unions’ Gazette mainly carried descriptions of men who had left their families.
Surrey Poor Law Unions: exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/indexes/
Surrey History Centre site with various online indexes including the Chertsey Poor Law Union admission and discharge books and Godstone Poor Law Union application and report books.
FamilySearch: familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/England_and_Wales_Poor_Law_Records_1834-1948
FamilySearch’s guide to the Poor Law records of England and Wales includes links to digital collections from Norfolk, Kent and Cheshire.
Ancestry: search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=1557
Has vast Poor Law and Board of Guardian Records from the London Metropolitan Archives, as well as collections from Warwickshire, Dorset and Norfolk.
Findmypast: findmypast.co.uk/articles/world-records/search-all-uk-records/institution-and-organisation—records
Has London Poor Law abstracts, and material from Lincolnshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire and Manchester.
One of the most fascinating free resources available is the Old Bailey Online website – a fully searchable edition of 197,745 criminal trials held at London’s central criminal court.
Waifs and Strays Society: hiddenlives.org.uk
Charitable society that cared for 22,500 children.
London Lives: Crime, Poverty & Social Policy in the Metropolis: londonlives.org
Ragged School Museum: raggedschoolmuseum.org.uk
Foundling Museum: foundlingmuseum.org.uk
Most of us enjoy some black sheepery on our family tree. And if your ancestor was accused or convicted of a crime, there are a host of police records, court records, prison sources and more, where you may be able to find traces. In addition, of course, if the crime was at all sensational it may have been reported in local or national newspapers.
As with many research subjects, identifying where any sources are likely to survive is often a first step. Minor misdemeanours are likely to have been dealt with locally, more serious criminality at higher courts. The Ludlow Borough Collection, for example, includes the Council of the Marches of Wales, which sat at Ludlow Castle. A record dating from March 1621 documents the case of William Webbe, accused of forgery and bribery. He would have been forced to stand in the pillory in Ludlow on market day with a piece of paper, probably worn as a hat, declaring his misdemeanours. The Scottish Borders Archive and Local History Centre has an entry in the Burgh of Jedburgh Council Record, dated 1662, referring to preparations for a witch trial. ‘The counsell ordainit the deacons to namine six of evrie trade to attend the commissioners appoyntit trying and judging of ye witches upon Wednisday nixt.’
Thankfully, there are a number of excellent sources of advice, with lots of sample material, as well as many expanding online databases available through free and commercial hubs. TNA, for example, has guides to convict transportation, prisoners, civil litigants and bankrupts/debtors. You should also try the Crime and Criminals guide at the National Records of Scotland (nrscotland.gov.uk), and it’s allied guide to court records.
Prison records can be enlightening where they survive. Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Records Service has Bedfordshire Quarter Sessions Rolls 1830–1900 and county gaol records. The allied register notes offence, when tried, marks and previous convictions, often with a photograph of each prisoner. TNA has digitised its prisoner photograph albums from Wandsworth Prison from the 1870s, which included physical descriptions, date of birth, crime, sentence, place of conviction and residence after release.
One particularly amazing free resource is the Proceedings of the Old Bailey (www.oldbaileyonline.org), where you can explore transcribed details of 197,745 criminal trials held at London’s central criminal court from 1674 to 1913. You can search by various fields including punishment, filtering results by imprisonment, hard labour, house of correction, Newgate or penal servitude.
When delving into court material it is important to find out in which court a trial was heard: police or magistrates’ court, quarter sessions or assizes, or church courts. Generally, TNA has records of the assizes, while records of quarter sessions/petty sessions held at magistrates’ courts will be at local archives. The National Library of Wales has its Crime & Punishment Database (www.llgc.org.uk/sesiwn_fawr/index_s.htm), where you can search gaol files of the Court of Great Sessions in Wales from 1730 until its abolition in 1830. The Court could try all types of crimes, from petty thefts to high treason.
Another wonderful online resource is the Cause Papers Database, drawn from the Diocese of York collection at (hrionline.ac.uk/causepapers/). This has details of cases heard between 1300 and 1858 in York’s Church courts, which had jurisdiction over cases involving issues of matrimony, defamation, tithe matters, probate and more. Similarly, London Lives (londonlives.org) is a wonderful place to familiarise yourself with the potential sources for researching crime and prison life in the Metropolis (between 1690 and 1800). It has court records from the City of London, Middlesex and Westminster Sessions.
Remember too that if an ancestor died in unexplained circumstances there may have been a coroner’s inquest. Up to 1752 coroners handed records to assize judges, although inquests held from 1860 were filed through the quarter sessions so will generally be at local archives. The Scottish equivalent are Fatal Accident Inquiries which were processed through sheriff courts.
Always have a look at what’s been produced by local archives, family history societies and museums. At the Lancaster Castle website (lancastercastle.com/Archives), for example, there is a complete Convict Database, listing inmates who were tried and sentenced at Lancaster Assizes. While the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies has an online database of prisoners from Aylesbury Gaol. Inveraray Jail (www.inverarayjail.co.uk/the-jails-story/prison-records.aspx) has records for over 4,000 former prisoners.
OTHER RESOURCES
Ancestry: search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=1590
Ancestry’s has digitised TNA criminal registers for England and Wales, which provide dates and locations of court hearings. Other collections include a Bedfordshire Gaol Index (1770–1882), Debtors’ Prison Registers (1734–1862), Birmingham prisoners (1880–1913), Prison Hulk Registers (1802–49) and the Australian Transportation series.
Findmypast: search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-records/crime-prisons-and-punishment
Also has a database drawn from TNA material, including the Home Office calendar of prisoners (1869–1929).
Convict Transportation Registers Database: www.slq.qld.gov.au/resources/family-history/convicts
Information on 123,000 convicts transported to Australia between 1787 and 1867.
Blacksheep Ancestors: blacksheepancestors.com/uk/prisons.shtml
Plymouth Prisoners: plymouth.gov.uk/cemeterymortuaryworkhouse
Scottish Prison Service: sps.gov.uk/Prisons/prisons.aspx
Debtors, Victorian Crime & Punishment: vcp.e2bn.org/justice/page11365-debtors.html
National Records of Scotland: nrscotland.gov.uk/research/research-guides/court-and-legal-records
British Newspaper Archive: britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
Newspaper reports may represent the only surviving account of some cases and inquests.
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland: www.proni.gov.uk/index/search_the_archives/proninames/coroners__inquest__papers_-_whats_available.htm
Records of bastardy usually reside at parish level – they are often grouped together with Poor Law and parish chest material – or among quarter sessions records. The records were primarily concerned with establishing (and so avoiding) responsibility for providing for a bastard child under the Poor Law. If an unmarried woman was expecting a child, parish officials pressured her to reveal the father’s name so the father, not the parish, had financial responsibility for the child’s care. This system produced the bastardy bond (also known as a ‘bond of indemnification’), which was the father’s guarantee of responsibility for the child.
Shropshire Archives holds a bastardy examination from Condover Parish Records, dated 12 January 1795. It reads: ‘Ann Jones met a man whom she did not then and doth not now know dressed in a green coat and had the appearance of a gentleman, in a birch coppy between Frodesley and Chatwell in the said county, and that the said man had then and there carnal knowledge of the body of her the said Ann Jones and that the said man is the father of the child of the said Ann Jones.’
The wonderful London Lives website has a page (www.londonlives.org/static/Bastardy.jsp) focusing on Bastardy Records in the capital, including case studies drawn from surviving records. The website allows you to explore the 1787 bastardy examination dated relating to Margaret Cary, and the birth of her son Richard, held at the Westminster Archives Centre. London Lives includes two long series of examinations for the parishes of St Clement Danes and St Botolph Aldgate covering c. 1740–1800, and a Register of Pauper Settlement and Bastardy Examinations (RD) for St Clement Danes, 1703–7.
Before 1858, a full divorce required a private Act of Parliament – so, as you might expect, this was only available to people with means. It was the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 that enabled couples to obtain a divorce through civil proceedings. It also required a husband to prove his wife’s adultery if he wanted a divorce, while a wife had to prove her husband’s adultery and also that he had either treated her with cruelty, deserted her or committed incest or bigamy. The Herbert Divorce Act of 1937 saw the introduction of new grounds for divorce including adultery, desertion, cruelty and incurable insanity. No petition for divorce could be made in the first three years of marriage, except under exceptional circumstances. The Legal Assistance Plan of 1949 gave legal aid to the less well-off, causing an increase in the number of divorces. The Divorce Reform Act (1969) made the irretrievable breakdown of a marriage the sole ground necessary for a divorce.
You can browse lists of private Acts of Parliament to check for divorces before 1858 (www.legislation.gov.uk/changes/chron-tables/private).
Divorce case files can contain petitions, certificates and copies of the decrees nisi and absolute. The decrees absolute give the names of the petitioner, respondent and (if applicable) co-respondent and the date and place of the marriage.
The Supreme Court and some county courts grant divorces in England and Wales. Historic records of divorce petitions can be searched at TNA. Bigamous marriages were often tried in assize courts and you can research trials in Wales held before 1830 via the National Library of Wales.
TNA’s English and Welsh divorce case files (1858–1914) can be accessed through Ancestry. You can also search for divorce cases via Discovery. You can also request copies of a decree absolute in England and Wales (from 1858 to present), via gov.uk/copy-decree-absolute-final-order.
Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland divorces were (rarely) granted at the Royal Courts of Justice in Belfast or at county court.
To find out more about researching divorce in Scotland you should visit the research guide produced by the National Records of Scotland. As it describes, records of ‘most divorces in Scotland are listed or indexed in some way and are relatively accessible’.
From 1560 the Court of Session, and then from 1563 the Commissary Court of Edinburgh, exercised jurisdiction in divorce and separation cases. Divorce was allowed in Scotland on the grounds of adultery from 1560 and on the grounds of desertion from 1573. Before cruelty became a ground for divorce in 1938, judicial separation was one of the main legal remedies.
According to the NRS guide:
During this period Scottish matrimonial law took on a life of its own and much of the former church or canon law died away. Nevertheless, the effort and expense it took to obtain a divorce, combined with the prevalence of various types of irregular marriage, which ranged in type from the reasonably respectable to the downright dubious, acted together as a strong brake on the numbers of people seeking a formal dissolution of their marriage through the courts.
During the twentieth century the grounds for divorce widened beyond desertion and adultery to include anti-social behaviour, cruelty and non-cohabitation.
From 1830 the Court of Session replaced Edinburgh Commissary Court as the court with exclusive jurisdiction in cases of marriage, divorce and bastardy. From around 1835 (up to 1984) individual divorce cases are listed in the NRS catalogue (nrscotland.gov.uk/research/catalogues-and-indexes).
Earlier divorces can be found in The Commissariot of Edinburgh – Consistorial Processes and Decreets, 1658–1800 (Scottish Record Society, 1909). You can read it online via scottishrecord society.org.uk. Follow the links to Old Series, then scroll down to volume thirty-four, and ‘read online’ leads to a digitised copy on archive.org. Remember that in Scotland a married woman traditionally retained her maiden name, so in the indexes and records she may be designated as ‘Mary Smith, wife of . . . ’.
While there are official adoption records, some of which are available online, many adoptions were informal and so confirming details may prove difficult or impossible. That said, every family historian should keep in mind the history and mechanics of the adoption system, as it can often explain an anomaly in your family tree. A number of social and economic factors may lie behind cases of adoption – the death of a parent (or parents), divorce, an illegitimate birth, desertion or abandonment. Often poverty-stricken parents would seek out adoptive parents in the hope that this would give their child a chance for a better life.
First and foremost, it’s important to know the legal process at the time period you’re researching. And a key event was the Adoption of Children Act of 1926. Prior to this adoptions were usually informal affairs conducted between the child’s parents or guardians and the adoptive parents. Often a child would simply be taken in by other family members, friends or neighbours. Some adoptees would retain their original name, while others might take the family name of the adoptive parents. From 1927 all adoptions had to be approved by magistrates meeting in a Petty Sessions Court and each court maintained a register, which remained closed to public inspection for seventy-five years.
Similarly, in Scotland, before the Adoption of Children (Scotland) Act (1930), adoptions were arranged on a private basis. Since then adoption has been arranged by charitable bodies, local authority social work departments and then ratified by civil courts – mainly local sheriff courts. And the Registrar General for Scotland has maintained the Adopted Children Register since 1930.
Adoptions were also arranged by societies such as the Church of England Children’s Society, which kept records of the adoptions it arranged. Also, there’s a chance of references to adoption cases surviving in Boards of Guardians and parish chest material.
To find out more try www.gov.uk/adoption-records to nrscotland.gov.uk/research/guides/adoption-records.
Higginbotham, Peter. A Grim Almanac of the Workhouse, The History Press, 2013
Higginbotham, Peter. The Workhouse Encyclopedia, The History Press, repr. 2014
Probert, Rebecca. Divorced, Bigamist, Bereaved?, Takeaway Publishing, 2015
Peter Higginbotham’s workhouses.org.uk