Blog
Archive for May, 2009
We are changing email address – please update your address books
We are in the process of changing our email system, and you will shortly begin to see emails coming from mail@mail.findmypast.com (as well as email@email.findmypast.com – which will shortly be retired).
To make sure that our email always reaches you safely, please add mail@mail.findmypast.com to your address book or list of safe addresses within your email programme.
1851 census – Lancashire double page issue
Due to a scanning issue, some of the 1851 census images for Lancashire are displaying double pages – one above the other. Effectively all this means is that you may also receive the next or previous census page to the one you’ve opted to view.
As these images contain two census pages instead of one, the file sizes are larger and may therefore be slow to load.
Please bear with us – the fault will be fixed soon.
1851 census – Lancashire added
The county of Lancashire, comprising 1.6 million records, has been added to the 1851 census. These records come freshly transcribed from a new set of images, so if you’ve failed to find your ancestors on the 1851 census elsewhere, then you may just find them among these accurately transcribed new findmypast.com records.
Search for your ancestors in the 1851 census now
Coming in the next month: unfilmed 1851 records online exclusively at findmypast.com
A short time after the 1851 census records go live, findmypast.com will add transcriptions and reconstructed images for around 160,000 individuals from severely damaged pages. They have been made available for the first time online at findmypast.com after a 14 year project to transcribe the original records by the Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society (MLFHS).
The records for the Manchester, Chorlton, Salford, Oldham and Ashton-Under-Lyne registration districts were water damaged many years ago when the storage area they were kept in flooded. Some were so badly affected that no writing at all was visible and many were too fragile to be scanned.
Image courtesy of Ray Hulley, Co-ordinator of the 1851 unfilmed census project.
In 1991 a small team of London-based volunteers from the MLFHS began the painstaking process of transcribing the records, which were held at the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane. As the documents were too fragile to withstand the glare of artificial light, the volunteers had to rely on natural daylight to read them.
Invisible text revealed
After The National Archives was established in Kew in 1997, the project was transferred and with the expertise and support of the conservation department there, the team made considerable advances in the recovery of the missing text. Using the latest ultraviolet equipment the team were able to see writing that had not been visible with natural daylight, and to re-examine documents that had already been transcribed to recover text that was invisible to the naked eye.
The transcribers followed a policy of ‘faithfulness to the original’ in accordance with best transcription practice, and words were only transcribed as far as they were legible – in many cases only parts of names or other details could be deciphered. In some cases street directories and rate books were used to confirm that names had been interpreted correctly, but the transcribers resisted the temptation to fill in information that they felt ‘should’ have been there.
The reconstructed image follows the same layout as the original, and as with other census images contains not just the information from the household, but the neighbouring houses as well.
Thanks to the statistical information that had been generated before the books were damaged, the transcription team knew that data from 217,717 individuals was missing. The team managed to retrieve 82 per cent of this data. We’re sure that you will agree that this is an impressive achievement, which would not have been possible without the immense dedication of Ray Hulley, the project leader, and his team of volunteers from the Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society.
Help save records from being lost forever! Get involved with a project
Dedicated family historians up and down the country are working on other projects to make records like these available to family historians in Britain and around the world. If you would like to get involved with a project like this one you should contact the Federation of Family History Societies who will be able to give you information on your local family history society, as well as projects up and down the country.
1851 census – Lancashire added
The county of Lancashire, comprising 1.6 million records, has been added to the 1851 census. These records come freshly transcribed from a new set of images, so if you’ve failed to find your ancestors on the 1851 census elsewhere, then you may just find them among these accurately transcribed new findmypast.com records.
Search for your ancestors in the 1851 census now
Coming in the next month: unfilmed 1851 records online exclusively at findmypast.com
A short time after the 1851 census records go live, findmypast.com will add transcriptions and reconstructed images for around 160,000 individuals from severely damaged pages. They have been made available for the first time online at findmypast.com after a 14 year project to transcribe the original records by the Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society (MLFHS).
The records for the Manchester, Chorlton, Salford, Oldham and Ashton-Under-Lyne registration districts were water damaged many years ago when the storage area they were kept in flooded. Some were so badly affected that no writing at all was visible and many were too fragile to be scanned.
Image courtesy of Ray Hulley, Co-ordinator of the 1851 unfilmed census project.
In 1991 a small team of London-based volunteers from the MLFHS began the painstaking process of transcribing the records, which were held at the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane. As the documents were too fragile to withstand the glare of artificial light, the volunteers had to rely on natural daylight to read them.
Invisible text revealed
After The National Archives was established in Kew in 1997, the project was transferred and with the expertise and support of the conservation department there, the team made considerable advances in the recovery of the missing text. Using the latest ultraviolet equipment the team were able to see writing that had not been visible with natural daylight, and to re-examine documents that had already been transcribed to recover text that was invisible to the naked eye.
The transcribers followed a policy of ‘faithfulness to the original’ in accordance with best transcription practice, and words were only transcribed as far as they were legible – in many cases only parts of names or other details could be deciphered. In some cases street directories and rate books were used to confirm that names had been interpreted correctly, but the transcribers resisted the temptation to fill in information that they felt ‘should’ have been there.
The reconstructed image follows the same layout as the original, and as with other census images contains not just the information from the household, but the neighbouring houses as well.
Thanks to the statistical information that had been generated before the books were damaged, the transcription team knew that data from 217,717 individuals was missing. The team managed to retrieve 82 per cent of this data. We’re sure that you will agree that this is an impressive achievement, which would not have been possible without the immense dedication of Ray Hulley, the project leader, and his team of volunteers from the Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society.
Help save records from being lost forever! Get involved with a project
Dedicated family historians up and down the country are working on other projects to make records like these available to family historians in Britain and around the world. If you would like to get involved with a project like this one you should contact the Federation of Family History Societies who will be able to give you information on your local family history society, as well as projects up and down the country.
New parish records
We’ve just added over 59,000 new parish records for the period 1633 to 1930, which include baptisms, marriages, and burials.
The new additions are:
- Montgomeryshire baptisms, marriages, and burials (various parishes)
- Dorset burials (various parishes)
- Brayton, St Wilfred burials
- Wrightington baptisms, marriages, and burials
- Wrightington confirmations and Wrightington first communicants (found under FFHS other records)
With over 23.4 million baptisms, marriages and burials dating from 1538, our Parish Records Collection is one of the largest and most comprehensive online repositories of parish records.
Search for your ancestors in our Parish Records Collection now
4.5 million new 1901 census records
The county of Lancashire, comprising over 4.5 million records, has been added to the 1901 census. As ever, each of these records comes newly transcribed from a set of freshly scanned high-quality images.
Find your Lancastrian ancestors in the 1901 census now
Lancashire in 1901
In 1901 Lancashire encompassed several hundred mill towns and collieries, which had sprung up during the industrial revolution. The seaside town of Blackpool had become a magnet for holidaymakers and particularly for residents of Lancashire’s mill towns, who flocked to Blackpool for wakes weeks: the week-long summer breaks when the cotton mills of a particular town would close.
A Lancashire soprano
Among the famous Lancastrians found on the 1901 census is Eva Turner, who would make her name as an opera singer and received a DBE in 1962. On the 1901 census she is nine years old and living in Oldham with her parents and brother. Her father, Charles, is listed as an engine driver at a cotton mill (click image to enlarge):
Ship's crew lists added
We’ve just added records for 270,000 British merchant-ship’s crew members for the period 1861-1913. These records are indexes to original crew-list documents, which hold the employment details of these men and women. Altogether they reference around 30,000 lists.
Original crew-list documents are not online, but if you find an ancestor listed, you can order the relevant document from the repositories that store them around the country and in Canada. Full details on how to locate the original crew-list documents are found on the crew lists search page.
Please bear in mind that the online indexes represent only a fraction of the records available. Many have not yet been transcribed.
Find your seafaring ancestors on the crew lists now
Ship’s crew lists added
We’ve just added records for 270,000 British merchant-ship’s crew members for the period 1861-1913. These records are indexes to original crew-list documents, which hold the employment details of these men and women. Altogether they reference around 30,000 lists.
Original crew-list documents are not online, but if you find an ancestor listed, you can order the relevant document from the repositories that store them around the country and in Canada. Full details on how to locate the original crew-list documents are found on the crew lists search page.
Please bear in mind that the online indexes represent only a fraction of the records available. Many have not yet been transcribed.
Find your seafaring ancestors on the crew lists now