Opportunities to Learn about English and Welsh Research–Webinars, Online Classes, and the FamilySearch Wiki

Julia Mosman presented a program February 25 on opportunities to learn about English and Welsh research through webinars, online classes, and the FamilySearch wiki. Julia provided an overview of Legacy Family Tree Webinars, FamilySearch online classes, Ancestry Academy, and the FamilySearch wiki.

Brought to you by the developers of Legacy Family Tree genealogy software, Legacy Family Tree Webinars offers a large collection of webinars by well-known genealogists. Genealogists can sign up free to watch live webinar broadcasts–usually two each week. The webinars are recorded, and Legacy makes the recordings available free for about a week after the broadcast. After the free period, the recordings are available to subscribers. At press time, annual subscriptions are available for $49.95, and monthly subscriptions are available for $9.95 per month. English and Welsh webinars in Legacy Family Tree Webinars Library include:

• Kirsty Gray, England and Wales–Rummaging in the Parish Chests (2016).
• Jen Baldwin, Getting to Know Findmypast–Your Source for British and Irish Genealogy (2016)
• Kirsty Gray, Researching Your Ancestors in England and Wales (2015)
• Claire V. Brisson-Banks, The Quest for your English Ancestors (2012).

Upcoming English webinars are

• Kirsty Gray, Tracing Your West Country Ancestors (2 August 2017)
• Brian Donovan, British and Irish Research: the Differences (15 November 2017).

The second group of classes Julia highlighted are the videos and other resources in the FamilySearch Learning Center–more than 20 for England and Wales, including the England Beginning Research Series, Church of England Church Records, England Estate Duty I, II, III, England Nonconformist Church Records, England Online Websites, and more.

The third resource is AncestryAcademy, from Ancestry.com. English videos available there include Exploring Your English Roots on Ancestry and Marriage Mills and Gretna Green.

Another resource is the FamilySearch wiki. The wiki contains more than 85,000 articles on genealogy records, countries, and research strategies. The “England Genealogy” article provides general country information about England, resources for getting started, research tools, links to English records online at FamilySearch, a clickable map linking to articles on English and Welsh counties, and links to wiki articles on record types, background resources (gazetteers, history), ethnic resources (Jewish records), and local resources (archives and libraries, societies, and Family History Centers).

Thank you, Julia, for a great program!

Touring TNA’s Website

At our January 2017 meeting, Lois Abromitis Mackin, Ph.D., gave a tour of the website of The National Archives, the official archive and publisher for the U.K. government–http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/.

The tour highlighted the website’s extensive educational resources and online records of interest to family history researchers.

The educational resources available on the website include

• TNA’s free electronic newsletter. Sign up at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/!
• Blog posts on a variety of topics (http://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/).
• Podcasts and videos (http://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/). Categories include family history, military history, social history, political history, law and order, archivists and archives, and international.
• The Education page (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/). While the primary audience is teachers and students, family historians will find valuable information on the history of time periods from the Middle Ages to the present.  Don’t miss the sections for students on Starting Your Research and Working with Records.
• The Help with Your Research page (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research) is your gateway to a tremendous set of resources.
  • Don’t miss Start Here (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/start-here/) for an overview of the records TNA has, the records TNA doesn’t have, guidance on what is and is not online, and information about archives and how to use them.
  • TNA has an amazing collection of research guides to subjects and records. From the Help with Your Research page, you can access an A-Z index of the guides, or explore categories of guides, including family history, First World War, Second World War, military and maritime, social and cultural history, and more. The value provided by these guides can’t be overstated–each one is a mini-course, with links to related guides.
  • TNA’s Discovery catalog contains more than 32 million detailed descriptions of records held by TNA and more than 2,500 archives across England and Wales, including over 9 million records available for download. Complete with options for advanced search and browse, the catalog page includes extensive, detailed Help resources.
  • Don’t miss TNA’s online tutorials for Reading Old Documents, including Latin and paleography, the Video Guides, and TNA’s guidance on how to cite records and catalogs held by TNA, also on the Help with Your Research page.

Like many archives, TNA is digitizing record collections. Some online collections are available on TNA’s own website, and others are available on the websites of TNA partners, including Ancestry and findmypast. The Online Collections page provides a portal for locating and searching these records. Collections available include many military records; wills; passenger lists; nonconformist and non-parish births, marriages, and deaths; railway records, merchant seamen registers, and more. TNA has also digitized many of their microfilm records covering military and naval records, Foreign Office correspondence, and Home Office correspondence. See their guide to digital microfilm at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/free-online-records-digital-microfilm/.

Time spent exploring TNA’s website offers enormous payoff–improving your knowledge of British records, enhancing your research skills, and finding online and archival records to move your research forward.