Research

I am twenty minutes from the nearest Cumbria Archives centre at Barrow-in-Furness; the archive centres at Kendal and Whitehaven are about an hour away, as are the Lancashire archives at Lancaster; Lancashire archives at Preston, and Cumbria archives at Carlisle are each about two hours away, and would be visited only if necessary. I would need to make a charge towards travel time to the more distant centres.

I have access to registers on microfilm from all Furness parishes, and those of the southern part of the former counties of Cumberland and Westmorland, as well as local newspapers, at the Barrow archive centre. Any record(s) of interest which are located can be digitally scanned by the microfilm reader, and the image(s) saved to USB memory stick, without charge by the Centre; I will, of course, charge only for time spent finding them. There is no charge for travel time to Barrow.

At home, I have access to the usual online databases, including all available UK censuses and the indexes to the statutory registers of births, marriages & deaths. Record images from Scotland are only available on a pay-per-view basis; as they cost £1-50GBP each, I have developed strategies, using other online indexes, to avoid buying ‘wrong’ images wherever possible.

I have a large collection of books as PDF files, including most of the published transcriptions of the Furness parishes (and hundreds of others), as well as many other publications, including Heralds’ Visitations, Peerages, Gazetteers, Directories, etc. I also have a smaller collection of physical books on the history, traditions, culture and dialect of Furness and the Lake District.

Methods of research differ around the UK and further afield. These differences are explained more fully in the click-tabs below.

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England and Wales

My research is based on being able to locate two or more of your ancestors in the 1911 census of England & Wales; this is the gateway to earlier records. From these, I will, as a minimum, trace the male-line (i.e. same-surname) ancestry of two of these individuals back to the earliest useful census of 1841.

There were censuses every ten years between 1841 & 1911; I will locate, so far as is possible, all census images which include a male-line ancestor; crop to the relevant entries, and include them in the book, with transcriptions and addresses as given on the census images.

Statutory registration of births, marriages and deaths began in England and Wales in 1837; as far as is possible I will also locate and transcribe into the book all General Register Office Index entries for: marriages of your ancestors, identifying the wives by maiden surname wherever possible; births of their children; their deaths (this can be more difficult); and the early deaths of any of their children which become apparent in the course of research.

Additional records may show up or be sought in the course of research; these might include entries in the 1939 Register, entries in the National Probate Calendar, and/or entries from Parish Registers. These will be included as images where possible, with transcriptions where necessary.

To progress further back in time than the early 1800s, it will be necessary to identify the ‘parish of origin’ of one or more of the ancestors found so far. It is then a matter of chance as to whether or not the registers of the parish are both extant and available. I have online access to many registers as indexes-with-images, transcriptions or indexes, and a large collection of printed-and-published transcriptions in pdf format – but there remain many parishes whose registers are unavailable.

With luck, however, it may be possible to trace a line of your ancestors back through the 1700s and into the 1600s – and even into the late 1500s in some cases. I have identified seven of my own ancestors who were born before 1600.

To progress even further back in time, it will be necessary to identify one of your ancestors, alive in the mid-1600s or earlier, who was also of sufficient importance in their county to have been visited by a Herald of the Royal College of Arms. The job of the College was (and is) to determine who was, and who was not, entitled to bear arms; their Heralds performed ‘Visitations’ of counties, when they recorded the pedigrees of arms-bearing families so that their entitlement could be confirmed (or denied) by the College. I have a large collection of published Herald’s Visitations in pdf format, covering most of the counties of England.

These pedigrees, designed to trace descent from an arms-bearing ancestor, may go back as few as two or three generations, or for hundreds of years. With great good luck, it may be possible to trace your 17th century ancestor back to someone who ‘came over with the Conqueror’ in 1066, or even to a member of a Royal family.

Visitations of North and South Wales also recorded pedigrees, though Welsh notables were as eager to record their descents from native Welsh nobility as from Norman aristocracy; many asserted descent from both. Welsh pedigrees often go back to well before the Norman Conquest, some even to before the Saxon invasions in the Dark Ages. The North Wales ancestry of a client had been traced back to mediaeval Welsh and Norman roots; I extended it to include early Irish, Scottish and Saxon ancestors, including Cerdic, who was King of Wessex in the 500s AD, as well as to the royal families of pre-Norman North and South Wales.

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England and Wales

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Scotland

Similar record-sets are available for Scottish ancestors as for those from England & Wales, though with a couple of significant differences. Censuses were taken as in the rest of the UK; Statutory Registration did not begin in Scotland until 1855; in contrast with the case south of the border, images of the original Register entries are available, albeit with different cut-off dates for each type. The General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) called in all the extant Parish Registers in 1855; images of these are also available.

All the above record-images are exclusively hosted by a National Records of Scotland website on a pay-per-view basis only; sadly, the site’s indexing and search function are much less effective than other sites. Too often, the only way of discovering that an incorrect image has been found is by paying to view it.

Alternative sources offer transcriptions and/or indexes which can help in locating the correct image, or be a more cost-effective substitute. I’d much rather have the image – it’s the closest to the actual record – but, even without buying incorrect images, the cost can prove prohibitive. The birth and death registration images probably offer best value – births frequently include the date & place of the parents’ marriage; and deaths the names of both parents, along with the mother’s maiden surname, sometimes also the burial place.

We’ll need to agree on which images are to be acquired and which substituted by text information – or perhaps set an ‘images budget’ – in advance, as I’ll need to charge you for them at cost.

 

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Scotland

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Ireland

The whole of the island of Ireland was governed from Westminster until 1921; censuses were taken as in Great Britain and Statutory Registration was introduced in 1864 (1845 for Protestant marriages). Unfortunately, with the exception of some fragments from 1851, all censuses prior to 1901 are lost – many were pulped in the 1800s, and the remainder lost in a fire caused by conflict in Dublin in the 1920s.

A Republic of Ireland government website has indexed images of the two remaining censuses (1901 & 1911); the General Register Office of Ireland (GROI) index to births, marriages and deaths is on the same site, with many images already available and more being added. These records cover the whole of the island for dates prior to Independence, and are accessible without charge. Births less than 100 years old; marriages less than 75; and deaths less than 50 are ‘protected’, and the information (other than the index entry) is only available by the purchase of an official extract.

Some Church – Roman Catholic, Church of Ireland and Presbyterian – records are also available from the same site; others are online elsewhere, though not necessarily without charge. As with Church records elsewhere in the British Isles, it’s a matter of chance whether your ancestor’s records are or are not available.
Although all this makes Irish research more difficult, it is still usually possible to trace most families back to the mid-1800s, and some back to the beginning of the century or even earlier.

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Ireland

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Overseas

I have access to a variety of transatlantic and other travel and immigration records, so I’m likely to be able to pick up your ancestor entering or leaving the UK, as well as being able to identify their country of origin or destination.
I have access to all the US Federal censuses, which were taken every ten years from 1790; the most recent currently available dates from 1940. Many States took additional censuses, usually on the five-year mark, and I can access many of them, along with a variety of other US records. I have successfully followed several of my own relatives to, and in, the US at various dates.

A number of Canadian censuses – national and provincial – are available to me, dating between 1825 and 1926; many Canadian censuses are not yet digitised. Various other Canadian records are online, some indexed images, others image-only – these last take more time to locate records of interest, as they have to be searched by browsing through image-by-image. I have successfully traced some of my own relatives to Canada.

Fewer records from other parts of the former British Empire – Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India – are available, though they can still be useful. I have a collection of digitised editions of the (British) Indian Army List, which has been used to successfully illuminate the military career of a client’s English ancestor.

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Overseas

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South Lakes

I live in Furness, a district which now forms the extreme southern tip of Cumbria; it was formerly the most northerly region of Lancashire. I have identified ancestors in all nine of the ancient parishes and many of the chapelries of Furness – and beyond into southern Cumberland and Westmorland and northern Lancashire.

After almost fifteen years of research in the area, I have collected digital copies of most of the available printed-and-published transcripts of the earliest parish registers. I have easy access to the local Cumbria Archives at Barrow-in-Furness, where there are microfilms of most of the more recent registers of southern Cumbria which are as yet unavailable online, along with a variety of other record sets.

The recent (post-1850) industrial history of the area – iron- and steel-working with shipbuilding at Barrow, the satellite ironworks at Askam and Ulverston and across the Duddon at Millom, with the slate quarries at Kirkby and elsewhere – brought many immigrants to the area, and is well-documented and easily researched. Less well-known is that iron-working and slate and copper mining have histories in the area that reach back to the Elizabethan period and beyond. Through my ancestors in each of these industries, I have researched their stories both before and since 1850.

The woodland – predominantly oak – which formerly covered much of the northern half of Furness and beyond had supported a craft industry from ancient times. This industry, in the shape of hoopers, coopers, charcoal-burners, swillers (oak basket-makers), bobbin-turners, gunpowder millers and others – along with the copper and slate miners – became part of the supply chain of the early Industrial Revolution from the later 1700s onwards. Again, the involvement of ancestors has led me to research these industries.

Having combined my own collection with that inherited from my parents, I now have a wide-ranging library of hard copy and digital publications relating to the area, including directories and year-books, histories and photo-histories, dialect dictionaries and more.

The area is predominantly rural (with the exception of the Victorian additions at Barrow, Askam, Millom and elsewhere), with scattered homes and farmsteads, small hamlets and villages, and a few small market towns fairly widely spaced. Many of these settlements are, at least at their hearts, largely unchanged in the past 200 or more years. It’s often possible to pin down an ancestor’s residence to a single house or farmstead, or to one of a small number of houses in a hamlet; I can supply snippets from current and/or Victorian OS maps of these locations. The area has been pretty well photographed over the years, but if a photo of the farm or hamlet cannot be found online, I can visit and photograph the location if required. I have found and photographed the places – mostly farmsteads – where several ancestors lived in the 1700s, and even earlier in a couple of cases.

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South Lakes