Hi, and welcome to this bonus lecture, where I will be giving you tips on Scottish and Irish sources and also a list of other sources to use as you dig deeper into your family's history. And of course, many of the tips I will give here will also help you to break through some of those brick walls with documents that can provide evidence for establishing your direct ancestors. Firstly, let's look at some websites to use if you find that some of your ancestors came from Scotland, Ireland or elsewhere in the British Isles. For Scottish ancestry, you should use this website Scotland's people.gov.uk like ancestry This covers civil registration records, census record and parish registers for Scotland. If you decide you have cottage Shan sisters, you can consider yourself lucky as many of these records have a lot more details on the English and Welsh ones. Also, you can often view birth marriage or death certificates on the website rather than having to order them separately.
These certificates are full of information with births given the details of the parents marriage, marriage records, giving the name of each spouses mother, including her maiden name, and death records giving the name of the parents of node including their marriage. So as you can see, these records are all extremely useful. Now if like me you have any Irish ancestry, this can get a little more difficult. Firstly, the great tragedy of Irish genealogy is that many records including the census records were destroyed in a fire at the public record office in 1922. This can certainly make Irish research before this date, very frustrating. But there are some other records that can be abused.
Look out for the Griffith valuation, which was an assessment of households for poor rates and it's searchable at ancestry. For all other Irish records, I recommend the website shown here, Irish DNA genealogy.ie. Some of you may also find that you have ancestors from the art of man like me, or the channel aliens. Now for next records. I recommend searching the database at the Manx museum's website. I newseum dot i am.
However many records for the Isle of Man can be found on the usual websites. the Channel Islands are not really part of the UK but are under the crown. The most useful website for all the islands is jersey family history.org however, you will probably Find that these records are not generally researchable online, and you may have to apply for someone to undertake the research for you. So now let's have a look at some of the most useful sources and documents you can use to extend your searches. Firstly, one of my favorite sources of information are wills and inventories or probate records. These can be searched for ancestry, the National Archives find my past and also at local record offices.
They can be very useful in establishing family relationships, and can also give you great insights into your ancestors wealth, property, relationships and character. It is quite a complicated area. So look out for my forthcoming course on this subject. Now directories they don't give a huge amount information. But these can be very useful in tracking down some of your ancestors, identifying the correct ones and establishing your ancestors ancestors place in the community. Trade and commercial directories such as Kelly's can usually be found on ancestry and other sites, as can the telephone directories from 1880. land and property records is another big area of research.
If your ancestors owned land, these can be very useful and sometimes established family relationships. The best place to search for these is the National Archives on the local record officers online catalog. They're not usually available to view online. Now if you do find them on the index, but even the National Archives you might find that the information given just on the index result can be enough to establish relationships. But otherwise, you may Need to inquire if you can get a copy. Or you may need to visit a record office to view these newspapers this can be an other really useful source.
Many of them can be searched and viewed at find my path. Or there is another website called British newspaper archive which is also very useful. It's worth searching newspapers if your ancestor particularly was involved in any criminal activity, either as the culprit or the victim. As you may well find reports of these events in local newspapers. And also if your ancestor had some high standing in the community, do look out for no victory around the time of his or her death, as this can give you a lot of information about their life. military records quite another big subject area although World War Two has very little at the moment.
If you do have ancestors involved in World War Two, the only place at the moment you can apply to is the Ministry of Defense and you need to be able to prove that you are a direct descendant of the person to get hold of a person's records. Earlier records many documents including surviving World War One records, some of them were destroyed can be found@ancestry.co.uk and you can also search the National Archives. Another very useful website is the forces war records website. which holds record for World lots of records for While one and previous conflicts, church arts and cemeteries that can be very nice thing to do on a pleasant day to go and mosey around the churchyard of the church where your ancestors were buried, and occasionally you can find very useful information on headstones. However, it can be frustrating. Not all headstones have survived.
Many of them are faded, and many are covered with moss. Before you set out, it's probably a good idea to check whether the local record office holds lists of transcribed Memorial records. Maps, enclosure maps, estate maps and ties maps can also be very useful for finding your land owning or tenant ancestors of the 18th and 19th centuries. You'll need to search the local Record offers for these. And poor law records. I've mentioned this before.
When a parish was required to give parish relief to the local pour, they would often make an inquiry to see whether family had the right to be living in that parish. And so these are known as settlement records. And occasionally a family would be ordered back to the parish they came from and this would be a removal record. These convicts if you if you are lucky enough to find something in these records, they can be extremely useful and full of information. So do search for National Archives or the local parish record offices for the local county record offices rather for these records. Now it is certainly worth searching for apprenticeship Records if your ancestor had a trade occasionally these can give the Father's name.
They can be found at ancestry and at find my past schools, colleges, colleges and universities. schoolbooks and admission records can sometimes be found at the local record office and can give you an insight into your ancestors school life. And lists of college and university students can be found in archives and libraries. Trade and professional records can be worth searching to find out if a company your ancestor worked for holds any records. Also ancestry county record offices and National Archives may hold guild or library records from the 13th century onwards. And poll books and electoral registers.
These are lists of Mahmood voted in parliamentary elections. And they can be seen between 1696 to 1872. And after that the secret ballot came into being. Now electoral registers have been compiled since 1832. And less people are eligible eligible to vote and the addresses don't get in. Before relatively recently, not everybody was eligible to vote.
And before 1818 of course, no women were eligible to vote so you won't find all your ancestors here. Some of these are online. Some are only available for viewing at the county record offices, tax records and tapping various different kinds of tax records over the years such as Windows tax, half tax. These can give little snippets of information about your ancestors generally and what kind of property they lived in. And these can be searched in the National Archives or county record offices and some of these are on ancestry. criminal and court proceedings can be very useful and very interesting if your ancestor got in trouble with the law.
Records can be found in local or central courts, depending on the seriousness of the crime. Some quarter sessions records can be very useful, giving details of the person the nature of the crime and punishment, check ancestry and the National Archives for these find my path. Also immigration and emigration records. You can search passenger lists and other immigration records at ancestry and find my past. Also, these records include convict ships to Australia. So if you are an Australian searching for your English ancestors that is well worth looking at these records on the whole for immigration generally are held at a place of arrival rather than the place of departure.
So if you're looking for ancestors who left the UK, then you're more likely to find records for them at one of the other sites. So for the United States, for example, you'll probably need to look@ancestry.com which will include those records. Well, I hope that has helped to give you some further ideas to explore In your searches, and provide further background information into your family. Some of the sources I have mentioned are fairly complicated subject areas and I am planning to provide more advanced courses that will cover these areas, particularly probate Records, which I'll be working on next. So look out for those. In the meantime, I hope you've enjoyed the course please remember to leave a review and I wish you all the very best with your searches and I hope that you have got started on a long and enjoyable hobby.
If you have any questions about anything I've covered on this course please don't hesitate to ask all the best and I hope to see you in the next course. Bye