Wisdom Wednesday: British History Online

The new-to-me site with lots of background information is British History Online at www.british-history.ac.uk, which describes itself as a “digital library containing some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles.” It is a collaboration between the Institute for Historical Research at the University of London and the History of Parliament Trust so it can boast that it has as a primary resource, “the texts of original documents, such as the Journals of the Houses of Commons and Lords, Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, and the Statutes of the Realm. “ This site was mentioned in 26 Sept post because it has digitized the Victoria County History and is strong in maps, gazetteers and dictionaries.

On the left side of the homepage, there are two lists so you can search by top sources and by region. The five top sources listed are - Local history, Historical geography, Urban & metropolitan, Parliamentary, and Ecclesiastical & religious. If you are like me, the location of counties are in England is a bit of a mystery to me. I know that Norfolk is one of the four counties included in the region known as East Anglia.  Therefore, I click on ‘East’ to find a list of resources from the four counties I expected plus Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.
 
The chart below comes from the website. Its strength is that a modern day Brit has divided the UK as he/she was taught in school so we see regions as a native would see regions. Its weakness is that the modern slang for the county names will challenge some of us.

East - The historic counties of Beds, Cambs, Essex, Herts, Hunts, Norfolk and Suffolk

London - The area now covered by the 32 London boroughs. Includes the historic county of Middlesex, and parts of Surrey, Essex and Kent

Midlands - The historic counties of Derbys, Hereford, Leics, Lincs, Northants, Notts, Rutland, Salop, Staffs, Warks and Worcs

North - The historic counties of Cheshire, Cumberland, Durham, Lancs, Northumberland, Westmorland and Yorks

Scotland - The 32 historic counties of Scotland.

South East - Includes the historic counties of Berks, Bucks, Hants, Kent, Oxfords, Surrey and Sussex. Parts of Surrey and Kent are included in the London region

South West - The historic counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucs, Somerset and Wilts

Wales - The 13 historic counties of Wales.

©2012, Susan Lewis Well

Wisdom Wednesday: Websites for Village Histories

Finding the village or city name for your ancestors is critical to UK research. Once you have the place name, you can look at historical maps for research and contemporary maps for travel. Two of the more obvious places are www.maps.google.com and www.maps.familysearch.org. The latter covers England only and was described in an earlier post.  www.genuki.org.uk has maps of the UK with links to county pages that have further links to maps and other information.

Recently, I found www.visionofbritain.org.uk, a free site, with information from the Imperial Gazetteer containing maps and short histories of places in England.  On the site’s home page, there is a box labeled “Find A Place” in the upper left corner.  Enter the name of the village or its post code, and click the ‘search’ button. You will now have a historical map and the description from the Imperial Gazetteer.  I tried Swaffham, Norfolk and Milton Keynes, Bucks with good results.

Wilson, John Marius. Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales. Edinburgh: A Fullarton & Co., 1870-72.

There is a list on the left side of the screen with ‘Location’ highlighted and five more choices for you to explore about this village – Historical Places and Writing; Historical Photographs; Units and Statistics; Related Websites; and Place Names. When I clicked on ‘Related Websites’, I found a link to Victoria County History, an encyclopedia of county histories begun in 1899 and dedicated to Queen Victoria. ”It records England's places and people from earliest times to the present day. Based at the University of London since 1932, the VCH is written by historians working in counties across England.” From the Milton Keynes search results, a click on the VCH link will take you to a site titled ‘British History Online’:

'Parishes : Milton Keynes', A History of the County of Buckingham: Volume 4 (1927), pp. 401-405. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=62605 (This site will take a whole post to describe. Stay tuned.)

©2012, Susan Lewis Well

Map for UK Research

Happy Boxing Day to our blog readers in Canada and the UK.

Before 1837, when you find a person’s marriage and death in a parish but no baptism, what is the next step? The advice hasn’t changed in years – look at records in abutting parishes and if you don’t find them there, keep enlarging the ring outward until you find them. How you carry out this advice has changed dramatically in recent years.

A handy online tool is the map of ‘English Jurisdictions in 1851’ at the site – www.maps.familysearch.org.  On a basic map of England (not Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland) you can select boundary lines for parishes, counties, Civil Registration Districts, Poor Law Unions, diocese, rural deanery, province, hundred, division and probate. When I introduced this site to my UK Special Interest Group last month, one man asked how I would use it. I have to admit that I think it is pretty slick in and of itself and thought it was fun to show that the Poor Law Unions followed the boundaries of the old ‘hundreds’ to a great extent.

Here is an attempt at a more practical use. When you have an ancestor whose BMD records are not all in one parish, this map is helpful by showing the contiguous parishes and by showing the relative distances between parishes. Lists of contiguous parishes have been in print for hundreds of years, but the computer makes this search quick and easy.

For example, Clement Laws was married in Necton, Norfolk in 1851 and buried there on 31 Jul 1772. His age at death was given as ‘about 40’. He was not baptized in the parish.

By a name search on www.familysearch.org, I found a baptism for Clement Laws, son of Clement and Mary Laws 2 Apr 1730 in Wendling, Norfolk. I had no idea where Wendling is, but found it two towns away from Necton using the familysearch.org map. I think I’m onto something here. Although I cannot find a marriage for the parents, Clement and Mary Laws, in Wendling, I did find baptisms for two more children. This is the first time I found the given name, Clement, in Norfolk but in Wendling, there is at least one family with the surname, Clements, so maybe that is how father and son received their unusual first names.

©2011, Susan Lewis Well