Search 38,269 new Lincolnshire parish marriage records for 76,538 people on findmypast.co.uk

You can view the list of parishes and places these records cover (PDF)

The records span the period 1699-1838 and will provide fresh information for those on the hunt for Lincolnshire ancestors.

The Lincolnshire Family History Society provided findmypast.co.uk with these records, in association with the Federation of Family History Societies.

Search Lincolnshire parish marriages now

We’ve just published the ‘infirmity’ column of the 1911 census on findmypast.co.uk. If your ancestors completed this part of their census return, you’ll be able to see fresh information about your family’s illnesses and conditions in 1911.

Under data protection regulations, this potentially sensitive information had to remain hidden until now – we’ve just made it available for the first time.

It’s possible to discover really detailed information about your family’s health. The census image below shows Elizabeth Eleanor Thorp from Yorkshire who is recorded as having ‘one eye removed in 1907 for disease (gout)‘ – click the image to enlarge it.

Click to enlarge

Other examples we’ve found in the infirmity column show that our ancestors weren’t afraid to reveal their quirks and eccentricities: ‘A taste for drink combined with gout’, ’stron and hearty would like to be married’ and ’sound as a bell thank god’.

We have also just revealed any recorded details of children born to women in prison who were aged three or under at the time of the census.

Until 31 January 2012, we’re offering you the chance to view the 1911 census at hugely reduced prices. View a 1911 census original image for 10 credits (previously 30) and a transcript for 5 credits (previously 10).

Any 1911 census images and transcriptions you viewed on findmypast.co.uk from 1 December 2010 will be free to view again. This is because, following feedback from many of you, we made it possible to save the records that you’d already viewed from 1 December 2010. You’ll need to re-view any 1911 census records you looked at before this date. Make sure you take advantage of our reduced prices until 31 January 2012 – why wait?

Search the 1911 census now

As findmypast.co.uk is the only place you can search the official, complete 1911 census, you’ll be thrilled to learn about the latest development which keeps us streets ahead of the competition.

It’s almost time to find out how your ancestors filled in the ‘infirmity‘ column in the 1911 census. On 4 January 2012, the Information Commissioner’s 100 year restriction on publishing this potentially sensitive information is lifted and you can search the 1911 census on findmypast.co.uk for fresh information to add to your family tree.

For the first time, the original census images will show you if your ancestors recorded the details of your family’s illnesses and conditions and the age at which these began. This can provide a revealing insight into the previously censored health of your family in 1911, as well as your ancestors’ views of their relations’ wellbeing.

On the census transcriptions, you’ll also be able to see any recorded details of children born to women in prison who were aged three or under at the time of the census.

4 January 2012 will be the first time that this information is published online and findmypast.co.uk is the only place to view it.

Search the 1911 census now

Today marks the launch of the British Newspaper Archive, where you can search up to 4 million pages of historical newspapers online.

The British Library and brightsolid are working in partnership on this ground-breaking project, which will transform the way that historical newspapers are used to find out about our past. The website offers access to up to 4 million fully searchable pages, featuring more than 200 newspaper titles from every part of the UK and Ireland.

The newspapers - which mainly date from the 19th century, but which include runs dating back to the first half of the 18th century - cover every aspect of local, regional and national news. Thousands of new pages will be added to the collection every day, to reach up to 40 million pages over the next 10 years - this is an unmissable resource for your family history research.

Alongside first-hand accounts of historic events, such as the wedding of Victoria and Albert and the Charge of the Light Brigade, the newspapers also provide numerous rich details about how our ancestors lived. You can search a wealth of material to help your family history research, including family notices, announcements and obituaries. The ability to search by name, location, date and newspaper title means that you can search hundreds of thousands of pages at a time to track down those elusive ancestors.

Findmypast.co.uk’s marketing executive, Amy Sell, has made a fascinating discovery of her own in the archive. She found an article about her great-great-great-grandfather, Richard Howard, who was accused of stealing a pocket watch. We learn Richard’s fate at the end of the article: ‘Verdict: “Not guilty” - this caused much surprise in court.’

As well as adding new and colourful information to her family tree, the article also tells Amy the following about her great-great-great-grandfather:

• His age in 1867 (30)
• His occupation (chimney sweep)
• Where he was from (Hitchin, Hertfordshire)
• His father (Amy’s great-great-great-great-grandfather)’s name (James Howard) and the words he used to describe his son’s character
• Information about her ancestor’s whereabouts in the 1850s - his father said “he has been at Biggleswade for ten years, and works for all the gentry”.

Search the British Newspaper Archive now

Find My Past the TV show is an exciting new 10-part series which unites ordinary members of the public with their ancestors.

Each week, we take three members of the public on a journey to discover how they are related to someone from a significant historical event, by searching the records on findmypast.co.uk. We follow each of them as they uncover who their ancestor is and the part they played in history, before uniting the participants to find out how they are connected.

The show is screened on Thursdays from 20 October 2011 at 9pm on the Yesterday channel, presented by Chris Hollins of BBC Breakfast and Strictly Come Dancing. Each Friday morning, you’ll be able to read all about the previous night’s episode, including which records were used to chart the participants’ family histories.

Find out more on our Find My Past TV show page

Best value in history

At findmypast.co.uk, we’re committed to offering you the best possible value when researching your family tree. That’s why we’ve just reduced the prices of our most popular subscriptions, Full and Foundation.

As an example of the significant amount of money you’ll save, our 12 month Full subscription used to cost you £129.95. With our new prices, you will now pay just £109.95.

For those of you with Explorer and 1911 census subscriptions, we hope you’ll take this opportunity to upgrade to a Full or Foundation subscription at the new reduced prices and enjoy access to more records for less money.

Remember that when you choose a Full subscription, the thousands of new records we add to findmypast.co.uk each month will automatically be included in your subscription.

As before, our existing customers will still pay even lower prices when they renew, thanks to our loyalty discount.

See our reduced prices now

Hello - my name is Ian Tester, and I’m findmypast’s product manager. I wanted to let you know about a fundamental change we’re about to make to the way findmypast.co.uk is organised, which should make it a lot easier for you to find and search the millions of new records we’re adding to the site every month.

Findmypast has grown an awful lot since we last designed the way the records are organised. We’ve added millions of records that don’t fit into the main categories of births, marriages and deaths/census/military/migration/living relatives and, at the moment, they are often either being wedged into a section where they don’t really fit, or being put into specialist records.

This doesn’t make it easy for you to discover and use some of the fantastic historical records that are regularly being provided by our record partners. You’ve probably also noticed that we’ve significantly upped the rate at which we put new records online - and the number of records we are adding each year is increasing all the time.

Ian Tester, findmypast

So the site is already beginning to burst at the seams and there are lots of very exciting new collections on the way that deserve new sections to accommodate them. We’ve spent several months working with our members to find a set of categories that will allow us to make room for the new records and make better sense of the records that are already online. Many thanks to the hundreds of you who have taken the time to complete surveys and participate in research sessions to help get us to this point!

The result of all this hard work is that in the next month, you’ll begin to see some changes to the site. The first one is that the main record categories across the blue navigation bar at the top of the site will all come under a single new category: “Search records”. Within this category, you’ll be able to choose from a range of sub-categories of records, just as you can now. The new sub-categories are very similar to the current ones in many cases, but you’ll notice a few new ones as well.

• Life events (births, marriages and deaths) - this will be very similar to the current BMD section and will continue to contain our millions of parish records
• Census, land & surveys - as well as our best-in-class England & Wales censuses (including our complete 1911 census), this will include fabulous new records, including historical electoral rolls
• Armed forces & conflict - our comprehensive military collections will live here
• Education & work - with fantastic school and merchant marine records on the way, we need a new sub-category. You’ll also find some gems currently buried in the specialist section
• Institutions & organisations - covering workhouses, hospitals and more, you’ll also find some fabulous new court records in future, as well as records that are sprinkled across other sections at the moment
• Travel & migration - is very similar to our current migration section, but has some lovely new international records on the way
• Living relatives & directories - this will give us room to expand the directories that we hold, way beyond the current living relatives directories

These new sections are designed to be as futureproof as possible, so you’ll also notice a few more new sub-categories appear over time as new records come online. A fringe benefit of creating more space on the blue navigation bar at the top of the site is that we’re making room for some very exciting new tools, including what we hope will be one of the best “saved records” tools available.

Obviously it’s hard to imagine these changes before they go live, but let us know if you have any thoughts on this approach.

We’re very excited to be making such a large-scale improvement, especially as it has taken lots of time to test and refine the new sub-categories so that they make sense to our members. Keep your eyes peeled for other improvements in the coming months - there’s a pile of exciting new features in the pipeline, as well an awful lot of exciting new records…

Hello - I’m Ian Tester, the Product Manager for findmypast, and I wanted to let you know about a neat little project we’re in the middle of to make your experience of searching records a little better.

You may have noticed recently that small blue stars have started appearing next to your search results and wondered what’s going on. Usually, seeing stars before your eyes is a matter for concern, but not in this case - this is the first manifestation of our “Saved Records” project.

You’ve been telling us for some time that it would be incredibly useful to have a record of the records that you’ve already viewed to make your research easier. We’ve been thinking of various ways that we could do that for you, and have been beavering away in the background to make the first stage of this happen.

We’ve been making a number of changes behind the scenes for a few months now: the first was to make sure that we recorded the details of every record that you view in our database, against your account. We got this in place last year, meaning that we have been recording your search history since the end of 2010 in a much more structured way than we did before. We’ve also now started showing you which records you have viewed already, by adding a little blue star to your search results to mark the ones you’ve viewed most recently. It currently only shows you a few hundreds of your most recent views, but we’ll be expanding this number over the coming months into the thousands. So when you see a blue star today, that means that of all the records on the page, the records marked  with a blue star are ones that you’ve already had a look at. It works across most of the records on findmypast, with the exception of Living Relatives (but keep your eye on this blog for some more exciting news about living relatives records later in the year).

So what’s next? Well, it’s useful being able to see the records that you’ve already viewed in your search results, but we’ll also be providing you with a dedicated “Saved Records” area where you can see everything you’ve viewed - this will give you an instant insight into the research you’ve been doing recently and will also allow you to add basic notes that you can use later.

After that, we’ll be adding the ability to mark each record with how likely you think it is to be a match for the ancestor you’re actually looking for - we think this will be handy as you’ll instantly be able to ignore records that you’ve looked at and decided aren’t the right ones, and to return to those that you want to mark as possibilities and come back to later. Obviously, we’ll also provide you with tools to let you filter your saved records so you can go back and do more research on them later. You should see all these improvements arrive by the end of the year.

We hope this will make your research that little bit easier! One fringe benefit of Saved Records is that because we now store every record you’ve viewed against your account, there is no danger of being charged twice to view a record you have already seen if you’re a PayAsYouGo customer. And perhaps best of all, your Saved Records will be available even if (heaven forbid) your credits or subscription expires.

Do let us have any feedback or suggestions on how we could make this work better for you or even if you think this would be helpful or not - add a comment below!

Easily find records of your ancestors’ deaths using findmypast.co.uk’s powerful new death records search

Following the transformation of our births and marriages, we have revolutionised how you search for your ancestors’ death records.

When you search, you will be presented with a list of individual names – no more searching through pages of results to see if your ancestors appeared on each page.

You can now search the following records in one go:

• England & Wales deaths 1837-2006
• British nationals died overseas 1818-2005
• British nationals armed forces deaths 1796-2005
• British nationals died at sea 1854-1890

Our new death records search will be especially useful if you’ve previously been unable to find your ancestors’ death records.

Who will you find today?

Today sees the launch of findmypast Ireland, a joint venture between findmypast and Eneclann, the award-winning Irish history and heritage company. Findmypast Ireland will host the most extensive collection of Irish land records available anywhere online and will be a valuable resource for those 80 million people worldwide who claim Irish ancestry.

Findmypast Ireland, which is aimed at those of Irish descent including 13 per cent of the US population, carries the most detailed and thorough collection of Irish records ever seen in one place – over 4 million records. These include land records, directories, wills, obituaries, gravestone inscriptions and marriages.

The earliest records date back to the 13th century (wills) and include several important collections from the 18th century (The Elphin Census 1749 and the 1798 Rebellion records). The collection includes the exclusive publication of the Landed Estates Court records, a crucial resource for the mid- to late-19th century, which includes details of over 500,000 tenants on Irish estates.

Take a look at our infographic about the impact of the Irish

Start searching findmypast Ireland today for your Irish ancestors.