It was a busy year for TheGenealogist in 2013, with over 100 million records added and other major transcription projects reaching completion. With more satisfied subscribers keen to delve further into their family history, TheGenealogist rose to the challenge! A tremendous number of new and unique records were added and other extra features for users are now available there’s never been a better time to take advantage of the wealth of easy to find records on TheGenealogist.
What extra resources did we add to TheGenealogist in 2013?
BMDs
The early months of 2013 saw the completion of two major projects. The BMD (Birth, Marriage & Death) Transcription project (1/3 Billion Records) as we finally completed over 57 million death records and added them to the unique SmartSearch feature, allowing people to quickly search through a person’s life events.
Census
Another major project now fully online was the 1911 Census. Containing over 36 million records, you can discover your ancestors and their census record in fantastic high resolution for added clarity. See their actual handwriting and sometimes humorous comments.
Wills
The Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills Collection with images (covering over a million recordsthroughout the whole of the South of England and Wales) was also completed giving us an insight into who our ancestors favoured and what they were worth!
More Parish Records
Parish records are a valuable resource for the family historian and we’ve continued to regularly add more to our collection. There were millions of records added in 2013in many counties including Lancashire, Worcestershire, Devon, Essex and many more around the country. We even uncovered the highwayman Dick Turpin in our Essex records!
Military Records
With the centenary of the outbreak of The First World War in 2014, TheGenealogist has been busy extending the amount of military records we have available, as more people take an interest in researching what their ancestors did in The Great War. We added the first stage of the War Office Casualty Lists (which contains over 600,000 records) and the very comprehensive Rolls of Honour which give an insight into an ancestors’ military service, often with tributes from their comrades.
The Rolls of Honour cover occupations such as lawyers, teachers, artists, engineers (including the officers pictured) along with rolls of honour from Schools, Colleges and Universitys (listing past students who fell in battle). Published Rolls of Honour such as De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour are also included.
The major naval battle of the war, the ‘Battle of Jutland’ is also significantly covered, with a list of over 7,000 naval men killed or wounded in this inconclusive battle, now available online.
Moving from World War One to World War Two saw the release this year of the ‘Dambuster Records’ online, with the operational records of 617 Squadron on this daring raid.
Continuing the military record theme, in 2013, TheGenealogist embarked upon the ‘War Memorials’ project. With over 120,000 recordsalready added from the Boer War to the modern day conflict in Northern Ireland. These come complete with photos of the war memorial and are linked in with Google Street View to show you exactly where your war hero ancestor is commemorated.
Criminal Records
In the mid part of 2013, over 90,000 Criminal Recordsfrom The National Archives were added between 1782 and 1892. The records also uniquely cover prisoners that were pardoned and those classed as ‘criminal lunatics’. If you know of an ancestor who may have been the ‘black sheep’ of the family, they may just turn up in this collection!
Naturalisation or Denization Records
Did your ancestor move to Britain from abroad and settle here like food critic Egon Ronay (pictured) or Nobel Prize Winner Elias Canetti? If so, they would have gone down the Naturalisation or Denization route for British citizenship. TheGenealogist, in 2013, added over 150,000 unique records ranging from 1609 to 1960, bringing the full total to over 350,000 records. It’s a useful set of records and may include that mysterious ancestor you can’t locate and help you break down a brick wall in your research.
Access Over a Billion Records
Try a four-month Diamond subscription and we’ll apply a lifetime discount making it just £44.95 (standard price £64.95). You’ll gain access to all of our exclusive record collections and unique search tools (Along with Censuses, BMDs, Wills and more), providing you with the best resources online to discover your family history story.
We’ll also give you a free 12-month subscription to Discover Your Ancestors online magazine (worth £24.99), so you can read more great Family History research articles like this!
New Occupational Records in 2013
Discovering our ancestors by their occupations was an area well covered by TheGenealogist in 2013. With a number of different record sets added, we can find out so much more about our ancestors and look at their working lives. Firstly, over a million Apprenticeship Recordswere added in 2013.
The records give name, address and trade of the masters and details of the apprentices. Other occupational records added in 2013 include ‘The Railway Workers Collection’ of 1.5 million workersinvolved in the railway industry and more specifically, a set of records of Cornish Railwaymen from the time of the take-over by the Great Western Railway Company in June 1889.
Was your ancestor a sailor? They may feature in the ‘Ships Crew’ Lists of over 439,000 Royal Navy and Merchant Seaman recordsfrom 1851 to 1911. The full crew list is displayed in the records added on TheGenealogist.
Another significant collection added was the ‘Pilot Records’. Taken from the governing body for aviators at the time, The Royal Aero Club and its Yearbooks, it’s a valuable source for those tracing an ancestor who was involved in the early years of aviation, featuring a number of biographies. The records from the book ‘Who’s Who in Aviation, 1918’ were also released, covering The Great War, which will interest those with ancestors who fought in the Royal Flying Corps or the Royal Air Force as it became. The records also list Samuel F. Cody, showman and aviation pioneer who featured in the John Simpson episode of BBC TVs ‘Who Do You think You Are?’
Continuing the theme of specialist records, TheGenealogist has added even more records from Directories to help researchers discover those valuable nuggets of information from before, in-between and after the currently available census records. They can be a great resource for tracking down an ancestor and we’ve added a number of Kelly’s Directories from the late 1800s and early 1900s now online to access.
Image Archive – bringing your research to life
Another exciting project for 2013 was the introduction of the Image Archive. With thousands of images added and many more to follow, the Image Archive offers a window into the world of our ancestors. All fully searchable, look at historic, military and social images viewing how life was like.
See famous landmarks, how our ancestors used to work and what recreational pastimes they enjoyed. Images are available of scenes from the UK and internationally. It’s free to search for everyone and Diamond subscribers have free access to a high resolution download. Take a look at how our ancestors lived!
As well as a wealth of new record sets, TheGenealogist is faster than ever and more reliable, with the addition of new Server Centres. Find the records you need with ‘sub second’ searches and you can also access the site from the new www.TheGenealogist.com as well as www.TheGenealogist.co.uk .
We’re pleased with our achievements so far but for 2014 we have even higher sights set. This year will see even more great record sets to access, improvements to the website and a new family tree app!
With some major announcements of new records coming very soon, just watch this space!