Sorry/Not Sorry I'm Not At RootsTech

This week sees the annual RootsTech family history conference, in Salt Lake City, USA, celebrate its tenth anniversary.  If you live (as I do) far too many miles away to contemplate a visit, here are some free ways to get involved and benefit from the speakers and other experts.  The event starts on Wednesday 26th February and runs until Saturday the 29th.

You can join the fun from afar (or wherever you are) by

☙ watching free RootsTech sessions live

☙ keeping up with what’s happening on the RootsTech blog 

☙ catching up with previous events at the video archive 

☙ following Twitter hashtags #RootsTech and #NotAtRootsTech

☙ checking out the official RootsTech Facebook page

Many other blogging genealogists will be at the conference, so look out for their postings on social media.

Killing Off Ancestors From the Comfort of Home, Part 2

In Part 1 I covered death certificates, church death and burial records, interment registers, and monumental inscriptions – all great sources for identifying when and where your forebears died.

Here, in Part 2, I’ll discuss a few more tried and trusted methods of locating your ancestors who have gone to join the choir invisible.

First of all, probate records.  In order for heirs to inherit property, many legal systems require a written record; this is called a will, or a testament in Scots law.  Also included may be an inventory of the deceased’s moveable possessions.

To find testaments or inventories of someone dying in Scotland, search the free index at ScotlandsPeople (1513-1925).  The results provide details of the deceased, such as their occupation or residence, which may help narrow down your search. 

Probate records at the National Archives of Ireland’s website are grouped into three sections: Prerogative and diocesan wills 1596-1858, Calendars of wills and administrations 1858-1922, and Will registers 1858-1900 

In England and Wales, the majority of wills were administered by the Church of England’s Prerogative Court of Canterbury from 1384 to the beginning of 1858.  You can learn about these documents and how to access them online at The National Archives.  Their index is free to use (charges apply if you wish to download a copy of a will, although they are free to view onsite at Kew). 

Probate records from around the world can be found via FamilySearch – tick the “Probate” box and any other options which would help your search.  Images of many records are available, and all are free to view.

At home, you might find funeral-related documents among the family papers: undertakers’ bills, memorial programmes, mourning cards, etc.  Other useful items could include military memorabilia such as telegrams or paybooks.  For British and Commonwealth forces, not only burial locations and photographs but grave registration, headstone, and other documents can be found in individual entries at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s website.

Newspaper family announcements can be a valuable source of information when tracking down deceased relatives, particularly in more recent times when online tributes are becoming popular.

A few examples of these are

• Family Notices 
• Legacy (formerly iAnnounce) 
• Ryerson Index (Australian newspapers) 

For earlier centuries, the official UK government newspaper, the easily-searched Gazette (and its regional editions) carried family and probate notices, as well as military promotions.  PDF images of its pages can be viewed and downloaded.

Also check out my two previous posts on free searchable newspapers:

https://scotsancestors.blogspot.com/2019/05/read-all-about-it.html

https://scotsancestors.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-sensational-and-factual.html

Killing off Ancestors From the Comfort of Home, Part 1

Certificates

Does the oldest member of your clan have a stash of family papers? Maybe you’ve inherited ownership of the documents and photos that your mother carefully collected.  Whichever it is, there are very probably death certificates in amongst them. 

These are the official designation of someone’s demise, although they are notoriously the least accurate kind of certificate, given that the person they refer to isn’t around to correct any errors on them.  Sometimes the relative who registered a death was distressed, misinterpreted what was being asked of them, and didn’t answer the questions correctly - hence the discrepancies with what appears in other documents.  The other possibility is that they just didn’t know the maiden surname of their father’s mother, and either said so, or made one up on the spot to avoid embarrassment.  Awareness of these potential mistakes, coupled with careful research, will allow you to weed out any misinformation.

Burials

A number of sources are used to record when and where someone was buried.  These include church or parish records, interment registers, and graveyard inscriptions. 

Check out the availability of UK church burial or death records using GENUKI or the Online Parish Clerks

and search them using FreeReg.

Faith records from Britain and other countries may be found and searched through

FamilySearch’s Catalog.

Local authorities or other bodies responsible for the upkeep of cemeteries should have records of burials and cremations, or at least be able to direct you to where they are kept.  A quick phone call to your council office can be very useful, even to simply determine which department is in charge: parks, sanitation, public health or whatever.  The website related to the council or even an individual cemetery may provide information about the layout of the grounds, as well as opening hours and contact details for cemetery staff. 

Headstone inscriptions can give details not found anywhere else, although beware the slip of the stonemason’s chisel.  Verify the date(s) on gravestones using other sources where possible.  Again, parish clerk or GENUKI web pages can direct you; they may contain links to online indexes of specific graveyards. 

Contact the family history society for the area you’re interested in to see if they have conducted any cemetery surveys, perhaps publishing their findings in booklet or website format.

And if you’ve already got books of monumental inscriptions on your shelves, why not go through them again, especially if it’s been a while since you consulted them.  I’ve had lots of success with this strategy by matching names found in my recent research with printed gravestone transcriptions that I've owned for years.

Of course there are always the two major free graveyard online resources:

Billion Graves 
and

FindAGrave 

All of the above are not the only free resources for tracking down your family’s deceased members – in the next blog post I’ll share some further tactics to help you locate them.

Free family history worksheets ... and where to find them

This week, I thought it would be useful to share some free family history charts, forms and worksheets to help you plan your research and record what you find, whether you’re visiting a record office or interviewing a relative about their recollections.  

Below are a few websites where you can freely download a variety of document templates specifically designed for use in genealogical research.  You can find many more of these online, but be aware that some websites exist solely to get you to download documents that may harm your computer.  Always check that the site is trustworthy before using its resources.  If you have a subscription to a family history website, it may provide downloadable forms you can use.  

☙ Be sure to check out my tips at the end of the post

for more ideas for creating and using your templates ☙ 

·         FamilySearchWiki: Use appropriate forms  Family group records, pedigree charts, research logs, and the very focused research assessment form.  This helps you to set research goals and then make plans to achieve them. 

·         Irish Genealogy Toolkit: Free family history forms  Individual, family, and multi-generation charts; a relationship calculator for when you can’t figure out how many times removed your cousins are; suggested questions for interviewing relatives; and Irish 1901/1911 census worksheets for good measure.  Note: the Irish census has different column headings from the rest of the UK so for other parts of the British Isles census, use the templates in the next link.

·         FamilySearchWiki: Genealogy research forms  Blank census worksheets – rather than spend money on printing images, copy the information you need from a census page onto one of these Ancestry templates for the UK and North American census returns.  Having a different template for each year is particularly useful when it comes to the British 1841 census.

☙  Draw up your own charts, worksheets and diagrams in a plain notebook for convenience when out and about researching. 

☙  Birth, marriage and death certificates tend to follow the same format throughout the years, within each country.  Blank templates of each of these, with all the column headings pre-printed, would save a lot of time when working at a record office.

☙  Make copies of worksheets (printed or handmade) and store them in a "road trip" ring binder - handy to lean on when copying down a gravestone inscription or war memorial information.  Filing your sheets in polythene punched pockets will keep them safe and dry.

Being prepared with these forms ready to pick up at a 

moment's notice will save you time and frustration later on!

Decipher those difficult documents

As it’s National Handwriting Day today, I thought it would be an ideal opportunity to take a look at some of the online tools available (freely, of course) to help you read old documents that contain unfamiliar writing or language.  Known as palaeography, this is a skill that genealogists will often wish they had kept up.  So even if you’ve already acquired it, check out the resources listed below and refresh your knowledge!

Most of these involve a bit of effort to familiarise yourself with different alphabets and numerals as well as equivalent date, money and measurement systems.  But if you have struggled to interpret antiquated handwriting or words, learning how to approach them will be a great investment of your time and brainpower.

Below are some websites that offer free tutorials and digital images to help you to practice reading documents from the 16th to the 18th centuries.  Because some older types of documents can include Latin words or phrases (or be written entirely in Latin), I’ve included a helpful resource for tackling that, as well as a dictionary of the Scots language, as that can sometimes crop up in documents north of, and around, the Border.

z    National Archives – This short course, "Palaeography: reading old handwriting 1500-1800", contains ten practice documents and a fun ducking stool game.

z    Scottish Handwriting –  If your research takes you back to the 1700s or earlier in Scotland, this website will prove invaluable.  It features online tutorials, coaching, and a problem solver for when you’re really stuck.  

z    University of York – Download the PDF booklet “Reading the Past: 16^th and 17^th century English handwriting”. This is a great introduction to the art of transcribing.  It includes a variety of sample documents to practice with, along with transcripts and explanatory reading notes.

z    FutureLearn – Sign up for a free three-week interactive course in Scottish palaeography.  Teachers from the University of Glasgow provide the written material and present excellent YouTube videos on different aspects of palaeography.  The course also covers some English documents.

z    Learn Medieval Latin – This National Archives guide for beginners takes you through the process of learning essential Latin step by step.

z    Dictionary of the Scots Language – Especially useful with Burns Night in the offing! 

My top tip for developing your palaeography skills is to be patient with yourself.  If you're finding a word or letter impossible to decipher, take a break from it altogether.  When you return to it, you'll be surprised at how suddenly it becomes clear.

Just to make sure you've checked out these resources thoroughly:  What’s a boll? (Hint: not the weevil kind)

Give a Little, Gain a Lot

You may already have benefited from indexed records as you’ve researched your family tree online and perhaps wondered what goes into compiling these time-saving databases.  One way is through the genealogy community getting together and giving just a little time to make free indexes possible. 

For the last few years, Who Do You Think You Are? magazine has sponsored “Transcription Tuesday”, in partnership with several recordkeeping organisations.  Simply put, it involves you reading a digitised original record and typing key pieces of information from it into a spreadsheet or free software, on your computer at home.  Full instructions are given for each project, especially where handwriting or language may present problems for the English reader. 

The results of your participation are then compiled into free-to-search indexes to the records, making them much more accessible and saving time trawling through them looking for names.  These datasets will be made available through the sponsoring organisations.

This year’s Transcription Tuesday takes place on the 4^th of February.  Why not check out the four projects on offer and see which one you’d like to contribute to on the day?  I’ve included details and links below for each project, and added WDYTYA? Magazine’s “difficulty rating” for a bit of context, with a grade of 1 being the easiest.

Stobs Camp Internment Research Centre – to take part in this project, download a spreadsheet from this Google Drive link.  Stobs was a WWI prisoner of war/detention camp in the Scottish Borders and this will be the perfect transcription job for you if you are a military history buff or you can read a bit of German or French.  Graded 3 for difficulty

Royal Navy – this project aims to build a free database of RN ratings and officers from WWI, and it’s being jointly run by The National Archives, the National Maritime Museum, and the Crew List Index Project.  If you would like to work on these records, email crewlists@nationalarchives.gov.uk by 21 January.  Graded 2 for difficulty

Ancestry West Midlands Police Records – this could be the most fiddly project to join as it requires you to have an Ancestry account (you can sign up for free with them) and download special transcription software from their Ancestry World Archives Project page.  The project aims to index constabulary records from the mid-19^th century to the 1940s.  Graded 2 for difficulty.

FamilySearch Parish Registers – including parishes from a variety of English counties, this year’s FamilySearch project covers nonconformist church records.  Sign up at https://www.familysearch.org/indexing/.  After Transcription Tuesday, you can continue indexing with FamilySearch on their wide range of records from around the world.  This is an ideal project if you haven't transcribed or indexed records before.  Graded 1 for difficulty

Transcription Tuesday is a great way to collaborate and give back to the genealogy community.  You could even get together with family or fellow genealogists and hold your own transcription event.  If you use social media, you can share how you're participating on Twitter with the hashtag #TranscriptionTuesday or on Facebook at the WDYTYA Magazine group.

The Sensational and the Factual

Back in May last year, I wrote a post covering a few free online newspaper websites (you can see it here).  The other day I noticed one of the subscription newspaper services promoting their access to the Illustrated London News, and I thought, “That’s odd, I was sure there was a free website for that.”  

And, indeed, there is: John Weedy’s Collection of the ILN from Victorian times to 1973.  Browse his site to experience the sensational and the factual.  Listed for each issue are headlines, sometimes obituaries, fascinating cover pages and other illustrations. You can also choose a specific year to explore using the grid section of the page. 

This led me to revisit the free newspaper sites I have bookmarked on my web browser, some of which I've listed below.  Then as now, journalists wrote and published stories from around the world, so you shouldn’t dismiss searching for your relatives in newspapers from other countries – you could find them mentioned in the last place you’d expect. 

📜 Papers Past – the website of the National Library of New Zealand, which contains not only newspapers but magazines, journals, letters, diaries, and parliamentary papers.  Search using your own terms, or explore by title or region.

📜 Trove –  hosted by the Australian National Library.  I covered this site in last year’s post, and yesterday they posted an appeal for help in correcting the text in their online news collections.  Since much of the indexed text has been interpreted by computer, there are errors that will be obvious to human eyes and easy to edit.  This is a great way to “give back” to the research resources you enjoy at no cost, as it will increase the accuracy of search results.  Learn more about the project here. 

📜 Chronicling America – the United States Library of Congress hosts digitised newspaper images from 1789 to 1963.  These are searchable by keywords, dates and states, or if you know the name of the newspaper, by title.

📜 Old Fulton New York Postcards – despite the name, this low-tech site covers newspapers from the U.S. and Canada for 1795-2007.  Enjoy listening to some vintage radio drama while you search the site, and be sure to peruse the Help page, which also includes a link to let you browse the historical photos and papers that the site holds.

I couldn’t finish this whistle-stop tour of free newspaper collections without mentioning the fantastic services provided by public libraries and archives around the world.  If you like nothing more than leafing through the original newspapers your ancestors would have read, this is a superb option.  Contact your nearest library or record repository to find out about their hard-copy collections.