Wisdom Wednesday: UK Jewish Records-Part One

Every year, the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) sponsors a Jewish Genealogy Month which takes place during the Hebrew month of Cheshvan (17th October to 14th November 2012). It is probably not a coincidence that the Jewish Genealogy Society of Great Britain will hold its annual conference on Saturday, 28 October 2012, at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Maida Vale, London. Clearly, it is the perfect time to talk about UK Jewish records.

The history of the Jewish people in the UK is long, complicated and at times, not very pretty. The records available today are affected by the community’s history. The first Jews came at the invitation of William, the Conqueror, who needed their financial expertise, but the Church put restrictions on their ability to earn a living in other ways, such as trade and agriculture. They were Sephardic Jews, who are from Spain, Portugal and other places in the Mediterranean area. Jews were expelled from England in 1290.

In the 1650s, Oliver Cromwell allowed Jews to return, and a small group of Sephardic Jews were allowed to lease a building for a synagogue and land for a cemetery in London. The congregation still exists and will host the annual conference mentioned above. A fascinating history of the Spanish and Portuguese community is found at www.sandp.org/history.html. For this group, records are written in Portuguese from 1657 to 1819 and then in English. The oldest, 1657 records are for burials.

Ashkenazi Jews from northern Europe spoke Yiddish and began arriving in the 17^th century. There was some friction between the Sephardi and Ashkenazi who opened their first synagogue on Duke Street, London in 1690. Generally, they were poor but reasonably well educated when they arrived.  After 1880, new Ashkenazi immigrants settled in the east end of London and were the driving force in the clothing industry. Jews were in trade and established retail stores in many UK cities, not just London.

The records of the Ashkenazi community are usually handwritten in Hebrew using a person’s Hebrew name. Further complicating matters is the fact that the earlier arrivals were still using patronymic names, such as Rachel bat Ezra. However the records are ‘modern’ enough to make searching worth the effort.

North Americans are probably surprised to note the Sephardic community still intact today in the UK. We have an overwhelming number of Ashkenazi Jews on this side of the Atlantic. Now the Ashkenazim are the majority group in the UK as well.

©2012, Susan Lewis Well

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: News from the FFHS

About a year ago (14 November 2011), I described the website of the Federation of Family History Societies at www.ffhs.org.uk.  That day I subscribed to the FFHS news feed which sends information from their 160 member societies about closings, new hours, and new addresses. What a great way to be in the know especially if you are going on a research trip to the UK. (Note that Scotland has its own Scottish Federation of Family History Societies at www.safhs.org.uk.)

I didn’t know how helpful this would be for travelers until I read a few of their email blasts. I quote below from just this week’s list of closures:

Pembrokeshire Record Office Move

The public search room is no longer available to visitors. 

The Pembrokeshire Record Office is on track to move in to its new home on the former site of Prendergast Junior School in Haverfordwest at the end of this year.

Work preparing for the move has been going on for several months in the background at the Record Office - based in Haverfordwest Castle - while maintaining a public service for historical research. ..

To facilitate the move it will be necessary to close the public search room to visitors temporarily from the early autumn.

It will be ready to open again to the public at the new site early in 2013….

During closure the office will respond to written and telephone enquiries in line with the County Council's policy on dealing with external communications. Any questions concerning the service and, in particular, the temporary closure of the public search room may be directed to:

The Pembrokeshire Record Office,

The Castle,
Haverfordwest,
SA61 2EF.

Tel. 01437 763707; fax 01437 768539; E-mail record.office@pembrokeshire.gov.uk

Gwynedd Archives Service, Caernarfon Record Office, Caernarfon

will be closed from the 8th to the 15th October. Reopens Tuesday 16^th.

www.gwynedd.gov.uk/gwy_doc.asp?cat=3693&doc=12971&Language=1&p=1&c=1

 

Anglesey Archives, Llangefni will be closed for annual stocktake from Monday November 5 - Friday November 9, inclusive. The service will reopen as normal on Monday November 12, 2012.

http://www.gwynedd.gov.uk/gwy_doc.asp?cat=3693&doc=12971&Language=1&p=1&c=1

Perhaps the most important news did not fall in the above category but dealt with changes to the National Archives website:

From this week, Discovery, our new catalogue, will become the primary way to search our collections.

We have now added more browse functionality to Discovery, which means that users can browse our collection by hierarchy or by reference, as requested by many of our users. For a more detailed explanation of using Discovery to browse our collection, read our frequently asked questions.

We want to gather feedback on the new browse feature over the next couple of weeks before we decide when we can switch off the old Catalogue. We want to make sure it's as useful as it can be, so please try it out and let us know what you think - you can browse from any page of Discovery, including search results and descriptions. Please send your feedback to discovery@nationalarchives.gsi.gov.uk.

We will be switching off DocumentsOnline this weekend [29-30 September 2012], along with three other features on our website that have now been replaced by Discovery: Your Archives, Equity Pleadings Database and Person Search. We've integrated the digital document delivery service provided by DocumentsOnline into Discovery, making it easier for users to search our records and download digital copies (where available), all in one place. Discovery also features an image viewer, which means that users can see a low-resolution version of a document before paying to download it.

To get this news directly, go to www.ffha.org.uk and click the button on the right, second from the top. The first button allows you to subscribe to the FFHS Ezine which comes every two months. Older editions of the magazine can be read on the site.

©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

Wisdom Wednesday: Scotland’s People Website

ScotlandsPeople is celebrating its tenth anniversary this month. It is a huge site with over 90 million digital records and images. Even as the staff takes a moment to savor its longevity, there are plans to post records of wills from 1902 to 1925. Congratulations!

I have one Scotsman in my family tree, Andrew Bruce Stewart. If I could find his parents and birthplace I would be one happy genealogist.  ScotlandsPeople is the best website for me to begin my search. Its URL is www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk. Since it is a pay site, The first things I want to know are what is available without paying and how much it will cost to search for my GGgrandfather.

First, I need to log in at the top right of the home page – no payment required. Just under the log in area are five tabs – search the records, about the records, help and resources, FAQs, and features. I click on the ‘about the records’ tab and select ‘records availability’ from the dropdown menu. There is a chart of what indexes and images are available on the website. There are few that are free, but don’t be upset.

ScotlandsPeople is notable because it has indexes and images of most of its records. It has the censuses from 1841–1911. Civil Registration began in 1855, and the site has indexes for birth, marriages and deaths (BMDs) from that date to 2009, which are called the Statutory Registers. Because of privacy laws, the actual images can be viewed as follows: births, 1855-1911; marriages, 1855-1936; deaths, 1855-1961. ScotlandsPeople has indexed records of Church of Scotland, called Old Parish Registers and some catholic church registers beginning in 1553 to 1854. The site has a Valuation Roll from 1915. A segment is called ‘Free Search Records’ and includes wills dating from 1513 to 1901 and coats of arms.

What is Free?

Like many sites, information about the databases, directions for using the site and general genealogy tutorials are free. I found a few interesting things.

There is detailed information about each record group held so click on the “Search the Records” tab and then ‘Old Parish Records’. There you will find a description of the records of the established church, the Church of Scotland. In the 3500 registers that have been deposited are the BMD records, baptisms, banns and burials before 1855. However, “Registration in Church of Scotland's registers was costly and unpopular, so many people did not bother to register events at all.” In the early 19^th century, it was estimated that only 30 percent of the events in urban areas were recorded.

Under the tab ‘Help and Resources’, c lick ‘Getting Started.’ Near the bottom, you will see links to two topics I have posted about before. One is the Scottish Association of Family History Societies at www.safhs.org. It has a list of all the local societies around the country so you can contact or join the one that could be most helpful to you.

The last sentence on the screen states, ‘Handwriting help is available here.’  By clicking on the word ‘here’ you will be taken to a screen titled ‘Handwriting Help’ which is somewhat misnamed because it contains two links, only one about handwriting and the other vocabulary. The first link is to the Dictionary of the Scots Language (Dictionar o the Scots Leid) at www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/index.html.  The following from their website:

“The Dictionary of the Scots Language (DSL) comprises electronic editions of the two major historical dictionaries of the Scots language: the 12-volume Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST) and the 10-volume Scottish National Dictionary (SND). DOST contains information about Scots words in use from the twelfth to the end of the seventeenth centuries (Older Scots); and SND contains information about Scots words in use from 1700 to the 1970s (modern Scots). Together these 22 volumes provide a comprehensive history of Scots, and a New Supplement now (2005) brings the record of the language up to date. These are therefore essential research tools for… historical or literary scholars whose sources are written in Scots…”

The second link is to www.scottishhandwriting.com. There is a one-hour basic tutorial along with three more specific ones in the category ‘tutorial’ in the list on the left of the home screen. Before leaving the main page, you might want to click on ‘this week’s poser’. The one for 5 Sep 2012 is a baptism certificate from Edinburgh which is quite challenging.

What is the cost?

The site runs on credits. You buy credits with your credit card, and when they are used up, you buy more.  The charges are detailed under the ‘About Our Records’ tab; click ‘charges.’

For seven Great Britain pounds (7 GBP), you receive 30 page credits that are good for one year. The Statutory Records, Old Parish Records, Catholic Records and Censuses cost one page credit for an index page with 25 results and five page credits for an actual image. The description of the process of charging for viewing an index page sounds complicated to me, but I haven’t used it yet.  I quote from the Scotlandspeople website:

·         Charges for index-searching are based on the number of pages actually displayed, not on the number of records retrieved.

·         Each time you do a search, you are told how many records have been found; each record refers to a specific event, ie a particular birth/baptism, marriage or death.

·         Before displaying the records, you have the opportunity to re-define, and narrow the search, without displaying the results.

·         If you decide to view these records, they are displayed in pages each containing a maximum of 25 records. One page of results costs 1 credit.

It is free to view the index to wills and coats of arms. Images of wills can be purchased with 10 credits no matter the length. A coat of arms image is 10 GBP per document.

ScotlandsPeople Centre
General Register House
2 Princes Street
Edinburgh
EH1 3YY

A companion website answers questions for those who want to visit the Centre in Edinburgh: www.scotlandspeoplehub.gov.uk

I am going to spend time looking for Andrew Bruce Stewart now. If I find him or have insights on  using ScotlandsPeople, you will hear from me soon.

©2012, Susan Lewis Well

Wisdom Wednesday: Research in Northern Ireland

The Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) has moved to the Titanic Quarter of Belfast. In an effort to revitalize the former shipbuilding area, new housing, offices and a museum about the ship called Titanic Belfast are being developed. The doomed Cunard vessel was built on one of these very docks.

Although the move was in 2011, many books and lists still give the old address while the website remains the same, www.proni.gov.uk

                    2 Titanic Boulevard, Belfast, BT3 9HQ

PRONI can help you flesh out an ancestor's life. They have church records, the 1901 census, wills, national school records, and valuation records, including the famous Griffith’s Valuation.  The church records have the baptisms, marriages and burials before 1864.

On the home page, click on the choice ‘Research Local and Family History.’ (Lower left side with photo) Then click on the highlighted words in paragraph three ‘Your Family Tree series of leaflets’. You will find a list of free pdf files on about 50 topics including ‘Latin Terminology in Roman Catholic Church Records.’ I mention this one because it has translations for Irish/English names not often found on other lists, like Cecil (Caecilius) and Winifred (Winifrida).

However, PRONI is not the place to find Indexes and BMD certificates. Records of events since 1864 are found at the General Register Office of Northern Ireland (GRONI), www.nidirect.gov.uk, 49/55 Chichester Street, Belfast, BT1 4HL. To order a birth certificate online, for example, you will need:

-full name of the child

-date and place of birth

-parents’ names, including the maiden name of the mother

-mother’s address at time of the birth

£14 plus postage

At the GRONI website home page, click on ‘Ordering Certificates’ and follow the instructions.  On the 'Ordering Certificates' main page, click on the phrase ‘Leisure, Home and Community Online’ in the right hand column. A long list should come up with links to other research sites under a subcategory ‘Family and Local History.’ One click will take you to the:

-PRONI Online Records

-PRONI ecatalogue

-National Archives (Kew)

-National Archives of Scotland

-1901 and 1911 Census of Ireland (www.census.nationalarchives.ie/search)

-World War casualties (Commonwealth War Graves Commission)

©2012, Susan Lewis Well

Wisdom Wednesday: Military Bounty Land Records

A few posts ago, I mentioned land given as compensation for military service while describing the Homestead Act that was passed after the U.S. Civil War. Prior to the Civil War, there were bounty lands available for military service. This post will give some resources for colonial America, the Revolution, War of 1812 and the Mexican War.

Bounty land given to encourage and reward military service began as a British practice and was continued by the founding fathers who as early as 1776 had a plan for revolutionary era soldiers and sailors.

Noted genealogist, Lloyd Bockstruck, notes several other reasons for the bounty programs: to gain support for a war, to protect borders, and to encourage settlement. See his full article at www.genealogy.com/24_land.html  Bockstruck may be the leading expert on bounty land programs because he authored two books on the subject of this country's earliest veterans:

     Bounty and Donation Land Grants in Colonial America. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co. 2007.
     Revolutionary War Bounty Land Grants: Awarded by State Governments. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co. 1996.     

Genealogists need to know what records exist so looking first at a general site makes sense. You will find where bounty land applications are filed, and that both the approved and rejected ones were kept. Veterans received a warrant saying they were entitled to the land, but the warrant could be sold or assigned to another person. Many people wanted to stay in their hometown and not go to the frontier.

For a general discussion and good  links to other sites, try one of my favorite fellow bloggers, Kim Powell, at about.com. www.genealogy.about.com/od/records/p/bounty_lands.htm

Ancestry.com has some records online:

-Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application FIles
-U.S.Revolutionary War, Bounty Land Warrants Used by the U.S. Military District of Ohio and Related Papers
-U.S. War Bounty Land Warrants, 1789-1858
-War of 1812 Pension Application Files Index, 1812-1815

Here are the specifics on each early war and eligibility for bounty land:

Revolutionary War

As mentioned above, the Continental Congress in 1776 began passing a series of bills to compensate soldiers with land. They were refined until 1855. All ranks of service men were eligible, and the amount of land changed with their rank. The land was in Ohio.

General info with links is available at the family serach wiki. www.learn/wiki/en/revolutionary_war_pension_records_and_bounty_land_warrants

War of 1812 (1812-1815)

Enabling legislation was passed many times between 1811 and 1855. In summary, only enlistees were eligible for 160 or 320 acres in specified areas of Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas. Warrants could not be assigned. See the Winter issue of "American Ancestors" for more info on the War of 1812:

Deeben, John P. Pension and Bounty-Land Records Relating to Military Service in the War of 1812, "American Ancestors"Winter 2012, Vol.13, no. 1, Boston: NEHGS.

Mexican War (1846-1848)

Congress enacted a law in 1847 to give enlisted men only 40 or 160 acres of land or scrip to locate on any public land. Records for this war are harder to come by but can be found at NARA Record Group 15 (RG15) T317, Index to Mexican War Pension Files.

©2012, Susan Lewis Well