Have you noticed that the given names of our eighteenth and nineteenth century English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh ancestors were drawn from a surprisingly small pool? But how small a pool? How common were our ancestors’ given names? More importantly, how rare were the less common names? Lists of the most common 10, 20, 50 or 100 names are surprisingly unhelpful unless they include frequency statistics. For example, Jeremiah, was ranked 26th in England in the 1800s but the most useful information is its frequency; it was carried by only one man in 500. Most villages had fewer than 500 males at that time. This webinar focuses on given name popularities, changes in popularity, and the reasons for such changes. It also covers spelling variants, abbreviations, and diminutives. For example, if you don’t know that Polly was a diminutive of Mary or that Nellie was a diminutive of Ellen and Eleanor and Helen, you might struggle to find entries for your ancestors. Our ancestors’ given names and surnames are the gateways into our family history research. Learning more about their names may prove useful in determining their ancestry or finding other family connections.

There is a long history of concern of support of children conceived outside marriage as these children were more likely to need financial assistance. There were many laws enacted from the 1500s about who was able to claim assistance, how this was provided and the records that needed to be…

Researching your family history in England and Wales has never been easier. Many digitized church records, census records and wills are online. Now that newspapers dating back to the 1600s are online, you can search for a name and find it anywhere in millions of pages instantly. Rick will demonstrate…

Identify the best genealogical resources, original and published, to use for 19th Century research in England. Learn which resources to use to overcome specific genealogical problems and how to cope with the large increase in population that occurred in the 19th Century.

This session will look at research strategies for finding an immigrant ancestor's place of origin, including a historical overview of life in Wales, maps, counties, 1720 and 1833 gazetteer descriptions and the Welsh language.

Learn what original, published and internet sources are available for tracing your “upper crust” ancestors, those who are titled and/or owned land. Prove those connections to Royalty.

England is divided into 40 administrative counties which traditionally were each comprised of various numbers of ecclesiastical parishes. Each parish had its own church that administered to both the spiritual and the secular needs of the community. In 1538, Thomas Cromwell, chief minister of Henry VIII, issued The Second Henrician…

From the comfort of your home (outside the UK), trying to uncover your roots (whether in England, Ireland, Scotland or Wales) can be an extremely challenging task. However, it is far from impossible with a plethora of information available online from books to databases, transcriptions to images, photographs and other…

Civil registration records in England and Wales began in 1837 and can provide extensive information about your ancestors. Learn about these valuable records and how you can access the index to these records on MyHeritage, which allows you to easily procure them from the General Register Office.

Learn what maps, gazetteers and directories are available for researching your ancestors in the British Isles. Learn from examples how to make good use of these tools to find where your ancestors are, what they did, when, where, and why they may have moved.

In this presentation we shall examine the reasons for migration and focus on the individual migration groups coming to the British Isles. The United Kingdom is in an interesting position in that it sits within Europe and yet also has been a focal point of Empire, some of which influenced…

Do you have a British ancestor who served as a soldier or sailor? This webinar will highlight the sources available over the last two centuries both online and offline, including researching at The National Archives (Kew), in local repositories and museums, to add flesh to the bones of your ancestor's…