Women's Suffrage - Free Access of FindmyPast
On Thursday February 1st the British family history website Findmypast in association with The National Archives launched a new online collection of government records that tells the stories of individuals who fought for women’s suffrage. The Suffragette Collection, digitised from original records at Kew, reveals the struggles endured by the movement’s most ardent supporters and highlights the State’s response as it attempted to contain them.
New Suffragette Collection containing over 3,000 police and Home Office records is now available to search online at Findmypast
- This new collection will be completely free to search and explore until International Women’s Day on March 8th
- All UK and Irish census records and civil BMDs are free until February 8th, allowing researchers to learn more about the lives of their female ancestors
Scotlands People
At the beginning of each year Scotlands People add records to their collection – They now cover births up to 1917, marriages up to 1942, and deaths up to 1967.
- Births in Scotland in 1917 were at the lowest number since 1856 as a result of the disruption to family life caused by the continuing conflict in the First World War.
- In 1942, foreign servicemen were stationed in Scotland and the marriage entries record the attraction between these men and local Scottish women.
- If you have any Scottish ancestors or they strayed over the border to get married this is a really useful site. It isn’t free but the initial indexes are and there is quite a bit of information on them. As you need to buy credits you can keep a watch on your spending.
The Genealogist
The Genealogist which is sponsoring the SWAG Fair at Swindon on the 30th June has released more Warwickshire Parish Registers including images to its site. They also released during January over 5 Million passenger records to their U.S.A. records, featuring people that migrated to the U.S.A. between 1834 and 1900 from Germany, Italy and Russia
Ancestry
Ancestry has put on images of the Wiltshire Wills 1530-1858 and I have found the will and probate for my 4 x great grandfather, Abraham DEW, dated 1818 and proved in 1822. He was a broad loom weaver. There are also the wills of two of his sons and I’ve now confirmed that I’m descended from Abraham’s son John through John’s daughter, Elizabeth who is described in John’s Will as “my daughter Betsy who is the wife of William JONES”
Visit to the National Archives
If you are still undecided about going to Kew on April 12th or haven’t been before take a look at this page of the National Archives Site to see if it answers your questions. There is also a section devoted to the first time user which is very clear and should encourage you to make a visit. Many of the documents are available online – for which there is a charge if you do so at home but they are free at the National Archives – it will only cost you the fee for printing.
T.V. Programmes
I have thoroughly enjoyed the BBC programme , A House Through Time. It certainly captured the social changes during that period and highlighted the way in which the industrial revolution, coupled with changes in families, fashion, war, depression and housing all reflected in how the house was used. Episode 1 is still available on Iplayer until Feb 8th and the other episodes for some time after that.
On Tuesday Feb 6th on BBC2 at 8.00pm. another programme starts – 6 episodes of “Back in time for Tea”. Set in the North of England it deals with a working class family. Like Back in time for Dinner (set in London) it features an actual family and starting in 1918 they’ll experience first-hand the lives of previous generations, from the food people ate to the jobs they did and how they kicked back and enjoyed themselves.
Next Meeting
The next meeting of the Society will be considering writing up our family history – the speaker runs a group on Creative writing so it will be interesting to see how far we can go in making the writing of our research lively and exciting without deviating from the facts.
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