The Nosey Genealogist

What are and where are the National Archives for the United Kingdom?

The National Archives are in Ruskin Avenue in Kew, Surrey which is just on the southern outskirts of London. They were once called the Public Records Office and you will often see the letters ‘PRO’ used as a short name when doing genealogical research. Today you are just as likely to come across ‘TNA’ in your family history researching online and in the written media.

TNA is where the records of the UK central government are deposited if they are considered worth preserving. What is more it is where the records are kept for the English law courts.

While many people will visit the Kew site of TNA, a great many others will go to its website. The advantage of this if you, like me, live a long way from Surrey, is obvious! Within the TNA website is Documents Online, which will allow a researcher to order documents, some to view online and others to be sent by mail.

www.nationalarchives.gov.uk is a website that is quickly developing into one of the best internet resources for family historians as well as for military historians and others. Perhaps it should be said that it is probably not a good idea to use it to start your family history at the moment as it is huge and requires a lot of getting used to.

If you take a look at the Catalogue, you will find that it is not like a library catalogue. At first it seems to be so very complicated and almost perverse in stopping a researcher from finding what one is looking for. The catalogue’s function is to describe and then list in a hierarchical order, all the records that the TNA hold.

Some people may think that they are looking at a catalogue of documents, but it is actually one of ‘records’ as it would be a task of mammoth proportions to describe all the many documents whose home is at TNA. Individual documents fall into categories, which are called ’series’. Series are arranged by the department of government that created them or, in some cases, were the past custodians of the documents.

So if you are to use this resource you will need to understand how the various arms of government worked in the form of which departments are likely to have created the records and how they would have been organised.

There are about ten million descriptions on the TNA catalogue, but they are not all of the same detail or quality. Some are more detailed, especially if the creating government department gave more importance to the record series than others. In the case of the series that is well detailed, in its description, it may even give the searcher descriptions of the documents! But so many others will give little clue as to what is exactly contained in the series in question.

So what have we learnt here?
The catalogue is not a searchable index of documents held at TNA.
It is a searchable index of records, or more precisely descriptions of records that are arranged hierarchically in up to seven stages.

To order a copy of a document to be posted to you will need a note to be taken of the catalogue reference. This reference is in several parts.

The department code, which is between one and four letters, e.g. War office = WO, Home Office = HO

The series description - a number which can be one to four figures
e.g. HO 102

The piece or item number - e.g.WO364/1000

This actually refers not to a document but to a microfilm reel that contains the documents. Here it is armed forces service records from 1914-1920 and in particular for Soldiers’ Documents and Pension Claims, First World War and being the surnames between Desmond, Michael and Davenport, Harry.

If you want more help with the catalogue then I would take a look here: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/about.asp

I have found a great article called “Q & A on the census” in a back edition of the Family Tree Magazine for January 2008.

It gives some back ground as to why, how and where the census were taken. E.g: Did you know that the first one was in 1801? Most people are aware that we can use the 1841 to 1901 census for genealogical research, but census have, it seems, been taken since 1801 to the present day with the exception of 1941 which fell in the World War II period. But only the returns from 1841 onwards have details that are of any good to family historians. The earlier ones didn’t ask for names of all those in the households.

A useful box on the page gives the dates for the returns that we as family historians use. In 1841 it was the 6th June, while in 1851 the census was taken on the 30th March, then the 7th April for 1861, the 2nd April in 1871, the 3rd April in 1881, 5th April for 1891 and the 31st March in 1901.

How were the census details obtained? This question is answered with the following:

“Registration districts were too large to be covered by a single person so were subdivided into sub-districts and these were again divided  into enumeration districts. In rural areas an enumeration district was the area that could be walked in a day by the person (the enumerator) collecting the schedules. In many instances this would be just one village, whereas a large town would be made up of many enumeration and sub-districts.”

It would seem, from the article, that in the week before the census the enumerator would have delivered to the household the form or schedule and everyone that slept under the roof that particular night would have been included in the return even if it was not their regular home. What was interesting for me was the clarification of the instructions to the enumerators.

No person present was to be left out and those not present were not to be included; which I knew. But what if someone was working over night? Well they were to be included on the census return for the house that they would return to the next morning. This does seem obvious now, but it is good to have it confirmed.

Once the schedules were collected and any not filled out were completed by the enumerator asking questions to gather the correct information, the schedules were copied into the enumerator’s book and these are the documents that we can obtain images of on sites such as ancestry.co.uk or findmypast.com etc. today.

One of the great things about this Family Tree thing is being contacted by others who are descended from common ancestors.

Once I published my first website www.nicholasthorne.info I started to get hits from all over and some of them were ‘cousins’ many times removed.

From my Devon ancestors I exchanged photographs of Captain Henry Thomas Thorne and got to read a typescript of a newspaper article.

From my Scottish ones I have had emails that disputed some of the lines and others that were supportive of the research. But the most fun were the ones that, with a proviso that the further back we went that some error may have crept in, seem to show that we were descended from various European royals and back to Adam and Eve!

Recently I have had pedigrees and photographs of Castles in the Hay Clan all of which is thrilling for somone who lives modestly in a cottage by the sea!

To anyone who is just thinking about setting out on this journey I would echo what Mark Herber in his book ‘Ancestral Trails’ says, don’t be put off by the fact that you think your family may be modest, you just never know what you are going to find.

Mark Herber’s book is available from all good bookshops: http://www.jerseybookshop.co.uk/promotions.htm

I had gone a little way into my paternal line, with loads more to do, when I just thought I would take a quick look at my mother’s ancestry. My mum died a few hours after I was born in the late 1950’s and my maternal grandmother did much to bring me up.

Grandma would mention her father with obvious pride throughout my childhood but I took in very little about him other than he was Scottish. Now that I was researching family history I was interested in finding out more about this great-grandfather of mine, but sadly my grandmother had passed on by this time. An elder cousin was able to furnish me with an extract of a birth registration for Edward A M Hay that had been obtained several years before, from Edinburgh, by my grandmother. The first surprise for me was that this Scotsman, my great-grandfather was born in Tours, France! He was registered, however, as a British Subject as the son of Charles Crossland Hay and Jeanette Whitelaw Wemyss (HAY).

I now used the excellent website www.ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk and quickly found  that the Scottish records were fantastic and so much more accessible than those south of the border where I was slowly trying to find my father’s ancestors. On ScotlandsPeople I could search the Statutory records, Births from 1855 to 2006, marriages 1855-1932 and deaths 1855-2006 and also the Old Parish Records for the births and baptisms 1553-1854 and banns & marriages 1553-1854. What is more, unlike the English parish records, I could buy images of the documents on line to be posted to me at home. I found the bans of marriage for my great-great grandparents and ordered them up so that, a few days later, the envelope from Edinburgh was there on my door mat. I could now see the place of marriage was at Jeanette’s fathers house in Aberdour, Fife in July 1832 and that Charles was living in Auchindenny House in the parish of Lasswade, Midlothian (Edinburgh).

From them I was able to find their parents. All of a sudden I was off at speed tracing the lines backwards in time. Back to the 1630’s in the case of the Hays!

What was a surprise was that I had found my mother’s Scottish line was of gentry stock, with the odd Aristocrat and an Episcopalian Bishop who was Primus of Scotland for good measure, the further back I went. This started to make it easy once I found Key ancestors as the aristocratic families are well documented on the internet and an especially useful site for me was that of www.Stirnet.com

If you are tracing Scottish Family History I wholeheartedly recommend these resources to you.

Once I had the names of places in Scotland that my forbearers came from I made some time in the Summer to take three days out and visit them. I got to see Castles and houses and the sites of ruins and to discover that I am probably a descendent of a Norman called William da Haya, Cupbearer to King Malcolm IV 1154-1164 & King William ‘The Lion’ of Scots 1165-1214.

http://www.nicholasthorne.com/Three%20days%20in%20Scotland-Introduction.html

Its what many of us dream about, being able to say we are the descendent of someone rich and powerful.

If, like me, you have searched for hours to try and find an ancestor’s birth, marriage or death with no luck and wondered if it is something that you have been doing wrong, then just consider the following list that I was introduced to recently while doing a course with Pharos Tutors to make me a better family history researcher.

• Wrong registration district – are you looking in the one that you assume your ancestor should have been registered in? Think about looking in neighbouring districts as they may be found there instead. You may not know, as I didn’t, that early registrars were paid by results and that they were responsible for gathering the information. Later the responsibility was transferred to the public to register births, marriages and deaths.
• Looking in the wrong year. You may have been given the ‘received wisdom’ that great-great grandfather was born in a particular year. Did you know that professional probate researchers, that give evidence in court, will look for a person up to 100 years of age when searching for a death. Will look for a woman’s marriage up to the age of 100! Search up to 25years after marriage for the birth of a child and keep in mind that some people may marry several years after a child was born.
• Wrong name – Could you be looking for the middle name instead of the first? Many people are known by a second name rather than their first so a John Alan Smith may have been called Alan Smith all his life. His name may have been spelt Allan, or Alun so watch out for spelling variations. Be aware that people may be incorrectly indexed or spelt differently. Also they may have reverted to a previous name after the collapse of a marriage.
• Family stories that send you off on a wild goose chase like looking for the handsome Irishman in one branch of my family that all seem to be from Devon, with the exception of a small bit of Cornish that crept in.
• Inconsistent searching. Not recording what you have already done, many of us may hold our hands up to this!
• Simply your ancestor was not registered. This may occur especially in the early years after the introduction of civil registration in 1875 but should be more rare after 1875. In between 1837 and 1875 some districts were under registered.

I hope this helps some of you, it certainly has for me as I have some elusive fore-bearers whom I am still trying to locate using Ancestry and the excellent FreeBMD on the Internet and had lost my way until I did the course and realised that I should think around the problem more than homing in on what and where I thought these ancestors should be.

I was talking to someone recently who asked me to show them how to use Ancestry.co.uk to find their ancestors.

Now, like many people who have done a bit of family history research, I take it for granted that others can find their way around that site and with a few clicks start building their own family tree. It was only when my friend started asking me for a written list of what pages to go to and which things to click on that I realised that, to some, it doesn’t seem that easy.

I decided to use a really useful piece of software that I have on my PC called Camtasia and record the exact pages and the clicks on them that I would make if I was starting out in populating my family tree. My friend now had a short video to watch rather than the written list of pages they had expected. I know it is so much easier to ’show’ than to ‘tell’ and so I got to thinking that if I burned my video onto CDs then maybe others might like to get their hands on them.

I have teamed up with The Printed Word Bookshop www.JerseyBookshop.co.uk to sell this first disc for £12.50 plus postage. If you want a copy just go here:

http://www.jerseybookshop.co.uk/promotions.htm

I have written to The Generations Network who own Ancestry and they have given me permission to use their website in the demonstration so I am ready to go.

When you get hold of a copy and watch the screencast you will see me trace my grandfather in the 1901 census, find his birth in the BMD indexes on Ancestry and more. I may make more of these help videos, so watch out for more information in the future.

I knew that some of my family were from Dartmouth in Devon and when I set out on this search into my ancestors I did a Google search for one of them called Captain Henry Thorne. I was over the moon to find a picture of the captain at the wheel of the Railway Steamer Dolphin. I think the page has been taken down now but at the time it made me do a second search for a family History Society in Dartmouth.

Once I made contact, I then planned a visit and was rewarded by being introduced to cousins descended from the eldest son of my great-great grandfather!

From this I realised that it is well worth trying to contact FHS in the area that your ancestors lived in.

I’m a bit nosey really, that’s what this boils down to. I am fascinated by who my ancestors were and what they got up to so I decided to start researching my family tree several years back now. I had very little to go on especially when I asked my dad if he could remember his grandfather’s name. He thought for a second or two and told me: “We called him grandpa” !

I’ve subsequently found out how to use Ancestry.co.uk and  have become really quite proficient in finding my way round it. I used the full set of UK census back to 1841 and the Birth Marriages and Deaths until I had got myself back 5 generations of Thornes and discovered on the way that we adopted the extra ‘E’ on our surname in-between the 1871 and 1881 census when my great-great grandfather came back to Dartmouth from working in the naval dockyards of Portsmouth. He returned with a wife and I wonder if it was her influence that the extra letter was attached?

When I started on my paternal grandmother’s line I found myself in Plymouth and some problems with misspelling in transcriptions. One of my ancestors seemed to be called Rover! He turned out to be a Robert, I am pleased to say. This branch of my tree impressed me in that they all seemed to be grafters, working their way up from being mostly small businesspeople to one or two of them living on their own means.

When I turned to my mother’s line I was in for quite a surprise…I shall post about them later.

As I tell people about this journey I am always a little surprised at just how much people are interested in Family History, but often tell me that they find they don’t have the time or the knowledge to do the research. I don’t think it is too difficult for the majority and I wonder if I should put down some simple pointers for people to follow.

Now that’s a thought!