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Over 100,000 new parish burial records just added to the site

Following the 7,000 Lancashire burial records we added to the site yesterday, today we’ve added 100,131 new parish burial records for Lancashire and Cumberland to findmypast.co.uk.

Here’s a breakdown of the new records you can find on the site:

Lancashire: 1725-2005: 87,932 new records

Cumberland: 1813-1999: 12,199 new records

Start searching our parish burial records for your ancestors today.

The Furness Family History Society provided findmypast.co.uk with this data.

Yorkshire Family History Fair competition winners

A big thank you to all of you who came to visit the findmypast stand at last Saturday’s Yorkshire Family History Fair and those of you who entered our competition. We’ve rummaged around in our competition box and randomly picked our winners – drum roll please!

Winner of a 12 month Full subscription: Jillian Cook

Winners of two 6 month Full subscriptions: Karen Bate and Michael Wardman

Congratulations to all of you and we hope you enjoy your subscriptions!

Over 7,000 new Lancashire burial records now on findmypast.co.uk

We have just published over 7,000 Roman Catholic burial records for Pleasington Priory (St Mary & St John the Baptist) in Blackburn, Lancashire on findmypast.co.uk. The dates of the burials cover the period 1899 to 1996.

Most of the records relate to English and Irish Catholics but you can also find some Italian and Polish burials in these records, among others. Additionally, the records include deceased from religious orders, including nuns shown with their true given names as well as their religious names.

You can find out more about Pleasington Priory here.

These records have been kindly supplied by their transcriber Bill Binns.

Search for your ancestors in our parish burial records.

London Lives website now online

A fantastic new resource has just gone online, providing free access to records covering the lives of ‘plebian Londoners’ from 1690-1800.

From today, you can search over 240,000 manuscript and printed pages from eight London archives plus a further 15 datasets at www.londonlives.org. This is a brilliant opportunity to flesh out what you know about your London ancestors’ lives – there are some really fascinating records available and all are very easy to search.

London Lives 1690 to 1800

The London Lives project is a collaboration between the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield and the Higher Education Digitisation Service at the University of Hertfordshire.

How to enter our World Cup widows competition

England are out of the World Cup (booo) which means that our World Cup widows offer has come to an end. We hope you all enjoyed it and found some useful information during your free access.

We set you four competition questions to answer during the offer for a chance to win a digital camera, vouchers for a 12 month Full subscription and other family history prizes. For a chance to win, email your answers to all four questions to casestudies@findmypast.co.uk with ‘World Cup competition’ in the subject line.

Here’s a reminder of the four questions you’ll need to answer:

1. What was the recorded occupation of William Matt, aged 36, living in Easthampstead, Berkshire in the 1911 census?
2. How many first names was Ann Pepper, born in West Derby in the Jan/Feb/Mar quarter of 1883, given?
3. What disability is Chelsea Pensioner Bartholomew Murphy, born in Wexford in 1841, who served in the 36th Reg Of Foot, reported to have?
4. Which ship was Joseph Dugemin a passenger on?

The closing date of the competition is 12 July and there can only be one winner. We’ll pick the winner at random from the entries that contain all of the correct answers – the judge’s decision is final.

We’ll publish the winner on our blog on 13 July along with the answers to all the questions. Good luck!

World Cup widows competition – part four

This afternoon England play Germany which means you can enjoy 90 minutes of free access to findmypast.co.uk between 9am Sunday and 9am Monday (UK time).

Here’s the fourth World Cup widows competition question we’d like you to answer:

Which ship was Joseph Dugemin a passenger on?

Our passenger lists hold the answer.

The prize: a digital camera, vouchers for a year’s Full subscription plus more family history prizes.

When England get knocked out of the tournament we’ll let you know how to enter the competition. Remember that you need to answer all the competition questions correctly to be in with a chance of winning – there’s one question for each England match. You have until 12 July to send us your answers and there can only be one winner. We’ll pick the winner at random from the entries that contain all of the correct answers – the judge’s decision is final.

We’ll publish the winner on our blog on 13 July along with the answers to all the questions. Good luck!

Our next World Cup widows offer is coming very soon!

Make sure you’ve registered on findmypast by midnight Saturday 26 June (UK time) for our next World Cup offer (if you’ve already registered there’s no need to do so again).

As soon as you sign in to the site between 9am Sunday (UK time) and 9am Monday your 90 free minutes will start – so be ready to begin your research then! All you need to know is here: http://www.findmypast.co.uk/world-cup.jsp

Look out for our fourth competition question coming your way on Sunday morning (UK time)!

Credit pricing changes on findmypast.co.uk

From 1 July 2010 we will be simplifying the pricing of our PayAsYouGo records. Currently there are over 10 different price bands for viewing records which can be quite confusing. From July we will have fewer price bands, grouped into multiples of 5 credits, for example, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30.

In most cases the changes will result in a slight increase in credit prices, in some instances there will be a reduction, and some records will stay the same (for example, 1911 census and passenger lists).

Viewing a birth, marriage or death (BMD) result will cost 5 credits instead of 1, but thanks to the full indexing of the BMDs (more information on this coming soon), overall a BMD search will cost you less, as you will need to view far fewer records to find the one you want.

This is the first time we've increased the prices of our records since we launched them, apart from the slight increase in credits to view 1841-1901 census records in April. Our PAYG credits are more flexible than our competitors' offerings. A subscription offers even more flexibility – view your options on our subscriptions page.

A full breakdown of the price change is included below.

May’s competition winner

We’ve picked the winner of our May competition in which we asked you to tell us how many William Shakespeares there are in our Chelsea Pensioners records. At the time we posed the question the correct answer was 3 but interestingly the total crept up to 4 after the release of our latest batch of Chelsea Pensioners records!

That means that any of you who answered with either 3 or 4 were technically correct, so as usual we’ve picked our winner at random from all of these entries. Congratulations go to Susan Wheeler from Loughborough who wins a copy of My Ancestor was in the British Army by Michael J Watts and Christopher T Watts. Happy reading!

Thanks to all of you who entered – look out for June’s competition on our Facebook page this Friday.

Your experiences – passenger list puzzle

Thanks to all of you who sent us your experiences of researching your family tree. We’ve received lots of fascinating stories – read on for Irene Conway in Walmer, Kent’s story:

‘My maternal grandfather George Wilce travelled to Canada in 1903 and was supposed to have died on board the ship he was on but I could find no record of his death. I had looked for several years but drawn a blank each time until a helpful man at the Records Centre, when it was in Islington, found him for me via the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website. I had been looking for an Englishman, who was in fact born in Aberdeen, and found that he had enlisted in Toronto in 1917 in the 48th Highlanders as a Canadian. That’s the background.

I had found a ‘G Wilce’ on findmypast.co.uk’s passenger lists shown as a plumber, single and aged 33 and ignored it as it didn’t fit with what I knew – as did another family history researcher. The man who found the CWGC death record told me to look up Canada collections and this I did. I also checked their passenger lists and it seems that when grandfather left Liverpool (a month after his marriage to my grandmother!) on the ‘Lake Champlain’ he was shown on the passenger list as detailed above; however, on arriving in Canada he was shown as a labourer, single and aged 21.

I sent to Canada for his military record and this was most definitely my grandfather, his record showing his mother as next-of-kin at her address in Woolwich, South-East London which tallied with the copy I have of my grandparents’ marriage certificate.

He didn’t see active service, however, as he died within a few months of landing in England and is buried at Bramshott cemetery in Hampshire – one of apparently 99 Canadian servicemen who died here in England.

When I was a member of a local family history group I was told that passenger lists should show the same information when leaving this country and when arriving at the final destination but obviously there are exceptions to the rule!’

If you have an experience you’d like to share with us and our readers, email casestudies@findmypast.co.uk with ‘My experience’ in the subject line. We look forward to reading your stories!