Ancestors on the Margins: tracing misfortunate ancestors in Britain

Every family has them, ancestors who worked on the land. How can we find out more about them, the farms where they worked and the lives that they led? This session covers a range of sources, many of them under-used, which will help to shed light on the working lives of our rural British ancestors.

Wills and probate records can be a great source of understanding of individuals. Who were they, and where were they located? What was their status in their community? What property did they own? Who were the administrators of their estates? Who were their heirs, and what did they inherit? What relationships might they have had with other people? The surviving records of England and Wales span from the 14th century to the present. Learn the history of the records before and after 1858, when civil courts took over probate responsibility from ecclesiastical courts. Learn about research guides to the records and how to read them. This webinar was first released 28 July 2021 on the Genealogy Guys Learn website.

Often viewed as a rural retreat for London residents, Surrey presents unique challenges for genealogical research due to its shifting boundaries over the 19th and 20th centuries. This talk will help you build a solid foundation for exploring your Surrey roots with confidence, guiding you through the complexities of tracing your Surrey ancestry, offering strategies to streamline your research journey. Learn about the essential archives and genealogical sources available, both online and in-person, and gain insights into where to find support from local Family History Societies.

An insight into the wealth of information that is available within newspapers including the British Newspaper Archive and The Gazette as well as hints and tips for getting more out of searching and finding useful articles within the newspapers.

Discover how and where to locate records relating to your Essex and East London Ancestors. Learn about the changes of jurisdictions, and the various depositories that hold the keys to researching your family history. Once one of the seven Kingdoms, Essex and its neighboring East End towns/boroughs are steeped in history - from Tudors hunting in Epping Forest, to the Windrush arriving in the port of Tilbury. Find out how the landscape, particularly the Thames Estuary, played its part in shaping the county and its people. From probate courts to manors, schools to newspapers, a vast array of sources will be covered.

Understand original steps in getting from event - birth, marriage or death to an index; how online services impact searches; how to obtain inexpensive certificates. Access procedures and costs for obtaining birth, marriage and death certificates in England and Wales has changed radically in the last few years. Positively, the reduced costs make it such there is no excuse for not getting all birth and death certificates. Negatively, people are losing sight of what they are actually searching to get the certificate. - Learn the original process of getting from an event to a listing within an index (local or national). - Learn what rules and laws changed the above processes over time. - Understand differences between original and new indexes. - See the impact of which versions of the indexes are being searched by the different online services. - Learn how to purchase, and quickly obtain birth and death certificates. - See the different versions of the certificates that can be currently purchased. - Learn alternatives for obtaining cheaper marriage records.

The county of Hampshire covers over 1 million acres, bordered to the south by the English Channel and includes the Isle of Wight. As one might expect the ancestral roots of the county are widely represented by agricultural workers, but it also has a strong maritime history. This includes not only coastguards, fishermen, and latterly Merchant Navy seafarers, but also the Royal Navy with its Portsmouth dockyard, now home to Nelsons's flagship HMS Victory. Join Gill for a user's guide to online and offline resources, including local archive collections, a guide to boundary changes, and where to search for missing ancestors. Our aim is research enlightenment.

Yorkshire is the largest county in England and was historically divided into three Ridings: West, North and East. Today there are four sub-counties in Yorkshire. The webinar will explain the complexities of parish jurisdictions and county boundary changes to assist in locating the relevant archives, and societies, for researching records and documents. The varied landscape will be explored to provide a background to the main industries which influenced migration in and around Yorkshire.

New record images create the most complete set of records to identify the over 5.5 million soldiers served in the British Army during World War I. This is a large topic, but research has gotten easier during the last couple of years as original resources and indexes have become available online, and new finding aids have been created. This lecture examines what records were destroyed during WWII, what records survived along with how to use the new indexes, online originals and how to interpret them. Plus put the soldier’s actions into battle context.