We’ve had some exciting news from The National Archives this morning!

They have just made the correspondence between a number of English and Welsh Poor Law Unions available online. If you’ve found any of your ancestors living in workhouses in our census collection, these documents can help you establish what their living conditions were like.

You can search and download the records for free now from The National Archives’ website.

We have just added 8,368 new Dorset marriage records to findmypast.co.uk which cover the years 1560 to 1839.

We’ve done some digging around and have found some unusual names in our Dorset parish records collection.

We found a marriage between Martha Loaring and Samuel Single on 14 October 1750 in Bettiscombe, making Martha a married Single:

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The Dorset baptisms also offered some amusing names: here you can see a record for ‘Love Dear Bedloe’ who was baptised on 27 August 1745 in Dorchester:

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We also found a ‘Fruit Carter’ in the Dorset baptisms, who was baptised on 17 May 1807 in Chickerell:

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The Dorset burial records contain a slightly more sinister discovery: an ‘unknown’ person buried on 8 April 1815 in Abbotsbury. The notes state that the unknown person was ‘found on shore’:

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Search for your ancestors in our parish records - and maybe you’ll even make some weird and wonderful discoveries of your own.

We have just published 277,834 new Thames and Medway parish baptism records on the site for the period 1721 to 1970.

These baptisms are transcriptions, not indexes, and include, among others, such key London historical periphery parishes as those in Brentford, Deptford, Ealing, Greenwich and Rotherhithe.

As well as the Thames-side parishes, the coverage extends down the estuary and the north Kent coast to the Medway towns. This release of records represents the first part of a collection licensed from local specialist Rob Cottrell.

We plan to publish burial records in August and marriage records soon after. In due course, occupational records of Thames watermen and lightermen will also go online at findmypast.co.uk

Search our parish baptisms for your Thames and Medway ancestors.

We’ve just added 184,650 records and 1,003,794 images to our Chelsea Pensioners collection for the period 1760-1854.

This brings the total amount of Chelsea Pensioner records and images on findmypast.co.uk to 691,520 records and 4,200,729 images.

These records are of men pensioned out of the British Army 1760-1913. The connection with ‘Chelsea Pensioners’ is that the pensions were administered through The Royal Hospital at Chelsea.

Remember that these records are free to search, like all the records on findmypast.co.uk. Even if you don’t think that any of your ancestors could have been Chelsea Pensioners, give searching the records a go - your ancestor may have only served in the army for a short time before they were pensioned out.

When you’ve viewed these records you’ll realise how special they are. They help you to build up a picture of your ancestor as they contain detailed descriptions of a soldier’s physical appearance and any distinguishing features, such as tattoos or scars. The records are the next best thing to looking at a photograph of your ancestor; there are usually six or seven records for each soldier.

We’re working in association with The National Archives and in partnership with FamilySearch on this ongoing project. Here’s a full breakdown of which records we’ve already published on the site and which are still to come:

We’ll be releasing records for 1900-1913 shortly.

Search for your ancestors now in our Chelsea Pensioner records.

You can now find the complete records for Lavendon Village, Buckinghamshire, on the 1851 census.

There are a total of 795 records for Lavendon on the census for you to search. The Latter Day Saints provided the data for this update.

Search the 1851 census for your Buckinghamshire ancestors today.

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We have added a total of 204,501 new baptism and burial records for Wiltshire, Manchester and Dorset to findmypast.co.uk.

These records were provided by the Wiltshire Family History Society, the Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society and the Dorset Family History Society.

See the table below for a breakdown of the records:

Visit our parish baptisms and parish burials pages to search these records.

We’ve just added more Chelsea Pensioners British Army Service Records 1883-1900 to our site. There are now 289,783 records for you to search.

We’ll keep you posted on all the new updates we make to these records - you can expect to see plenty more in the coming months.

Search for your military ancestor in our Chelsea Pensioners records today.

We’ve updated our site with new memorial inscriptions for Essex, provided by the Essex Society for Family History. The number of records has increased from 156,930 to 170,875. These records cover the years 1100 to 2007. Visit our parish burials page for more information.

We’ve increased the amount of Chelsea Pensioners British Army Service Records 1883-1900 on our site by around 20,000 so there are now 270,334 records for you to search.

We’ll keep you posted on all the new updates we make to these records - you can expect to see many more in the coming months.

Get searching our Chelsea Pensioners records today.