News

Celebrating the centenary of the R.A.F. with TheGenealogist's records

To find out more about these records, you can read Nick Thorne's Article, Celebrating the centenary of the R.A.F. with TheGenealogist's records.

New Meritorious Service Medal Records

We have released the records of 29,000 individuals who were decorated with the Meritorious Service Medal (MSM). The roll of names for those who were awarded this British honour in the First World War can now be searched on our website. Researchers can look for holders of this medal up to 1920 from within our ever growing military records collection.

These new records released today will allow researchers to:

• See a copy of the image of the Medal Card with the theatre of war where the medal was won
• Details the name, rank, regiment and service/regimental number
• Unique "SmartSearch" links to the comprehensive military records on TheGenealogist.co.uk
• These new records cover British servicemen from The First World War

These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist.

To find out more about these records, you can read Nick Thorne's Article, Finding ancestors awarded the Meritorious Service Medal.

New 1940s Passenger Lists

We have just released 1.4 million Passenger Records covering the 1940s. This expands our Outbound Passenger Lists to over 25 million and forms part of our larger immigration and emigration collection on TheGenealogist. These newly transcribed BT27 images are from The National Archives, and feature passengers who sailed out of United Kingdom in the years between 1940 and 1949.

The passenger lists released today will allow researchers to:

• Discover potential family members travelling together using TheGenealogist's SmartSearch
• Find ancestors sailing to Africa, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and other destinations
• View images of the original passenger list documents
vSee the ages, last address and intended permanent residence
• Fully indexed records allow family historians to search by name, year, country of departure, country of arrival, port of embarkation and port of destination

Researchers who had ancestors that travelled abroad from Britain in the 1940s will find these records a fascinating addition to the vast collection of records on TheGenealogist.

These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist.

New Colour Tithe Maps for Buckinghamshire

We have added Colour Maps for Buckinghamshire to our National Tithe Records collection. With this release, researchers can see the plots owned or occupied by ancestors that lived in this 'home county' at the time of the survey in the 19th century.

These tagged colour maps and their fully searchable tithe schedule records have been digitised in partnership with The National Archives. The collection gives the family history researcher the ability to search by name and keyword (for example parish or county) to look for all levels of society, from large estate owners to occupiers of tiny plots such as a cottage or a cowshed.

You can find out more about this release by reading Nick Thorne's article From Hovels to Manor Houses, Exploring Buckinghamshire Society.

Criminal Records - The hulks MAJOR NEW RELEASE

We have added 651,369 records of convicts from The National Archives' HO 8 documents to our Court & Criminal Records collection. With this release researchers can find the details of ancestors that broke the law and were incarcerated in convict hulks and prisons in the 19th century.

These fully searchable records are from The Home Office: Sworn lists of convicts on board the convict hulks and in the convict prisons (HO 8). They give the family history researcher fascinating facts that include the particulars of age, convictions, sentences, health and behaviour of the convict, as well as which court sentenced them and where they were serving their sentence.

Newspapers From the Last Decade of the Nineteenth Century

We have added over 500 editions of The Illustrated London News to our Newspaper and Magazine collection. This latest release contains newspapers that were published in the 1890s and offers a fascinating insight into your ancestors' lives.

The Illustrated London News is one of a number of newspapers and magazines that are fully searchable by name or keywords by Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist. Not only can this extensive resource add context to your ancestors' lives and times, these newspapers can be used to find out more about people who, for one reason or another, were mentioned in reports from the time.

Nick Thorne's Article "Our Ancestors in the 1890s" takes a look at this fascinating resource.

These new records are available as part of the Diamond Subscription at TheGenealogist.

Over 5 Million U.S.A. Records Released

We have added over 5 Million passenger records to our U.S.A. records, featuring people that migrated to the U.S.A. between 1834 and 1900. The mass movement of people from one country to another isn't a new thing. The motivation can be economic, political upheaval or religious persecution.

The data covers:

• 3,956,780 Germans emigrating to the United States between 1850 and 1897
• 836,122 Italians emigrating to the United States between 1855 and 1900
• 522,638 Russians emigrating to the United States between 1834 and 1897

Most were drawn to the U.S.A. by the attractions of land and religious freedom, after being forced to leave Europe by shortages of land and religious or political oppression.

This release joins the millions of U.S.A. census, death records, trade directories, wills and poll books already available on TheGenealogist