Monthly Archives: May 2021
Family History Friday: Nonconformist records
Having recently looked at possible places to search for Catholic and Jewish records, we thought we’d turn our attention this week to Nonconformist records. Whilst Catholics and Jews are sometimes referred to as nonconformists, the term is usually used for the non-Anglican Protestant denominations for example Methodists, Baptists and Quakers.
Most post-1837 nonconformist registers are kept in local record offices. Some nonconformist chapels did have their own burial grounds and many nonconformist burial registers are still kept at the burial grounds themselves.
BMD Registers
Non Conformist BMD Register Search | BmdRegisters
Records of birth, baptisms, marriage, death and burial taken from non-parish sources can be found here and include those for Methodists, Wesleyans, Baptists, Independents, Protestant Dissenters, Congregationalist, Presbyterians, Unitarians, Quakers (Society of Friends), Dissenters and Russian Orthodox. Maternity Records. Overseas Records. Early Birth Registers plus various other BMD records. As it’s the official TNA (The National Archives) partnership site with The Genealogist it is a pay to view site, but if you already subscribe to The Genealogist then you’ll find the same information is on that website as well.
Ancestry
London, England, Non-conformist Registers, 1694-1931 | Ancestry® (ancestrylibraryedition.co.uk)
Amongst their large collection of nonconformist records is this one, which contains baptism, marriage, and burial registers from 1694-1931 for many Non-Conformist churches in the greater London area.
Find My Past
England & Wales Non-Conformist Births and Baptisms | findmypast.co.uk
There are more than 1.5 million non-conformist records available and more than 50 denominations are covered in the records; some of which existed only briefly and are no longer practiced today.
My Methodist History
My Methodist History | Telling the story of the people called Methodist
This site encourages people to share photographs, stories, memories and research about anything to do with the Methodist Church since the various strands joined together in 1932. There are links from this page to other related sites My Primitive Methodists My Primitive Methodists | Sharing stories, photos, memories and research , My Wesleyan Methodists My Wesleyan Methodists | Sharing stories, photos, memories and research and My United Methodists My United Methodists | Sharing Methodist family history, memorabilia and research .
Quaker Archives, Leeds University Library
Quaker Collections | Special Collections | Library | University of Leeds
The University Library is the main repository for Yorkshire Quaker Archives. The two main collections of Quaker records are the Carlton Hill Collection and the Clifford Street Collection. Carlton Hill broadly covers the Leeds, Bradford, Settle and Knaresborough areas; Clifford Street the York and Thirsk areas, as well as records for Yorkshire as a whole.
Quaker Family History Society
Index (qfhs.co.uk)
The Quaker Family History Society was formed in 1993 and is a member of the Federation of Family History Societies. Their aim is to encourage and assist anyone interested in tracing the history of Quaker families in the British Isles. They are based in Britain, so do not claim any expertise on the history of Quakers outside Britain. Included in the site is a very useful county table which helps you to locate meeting records.
Quakers in Britain
Search the catalogue | Quakers in Britain
included in the online catalogue are over 1000 manuscript collections and personal papers of Quakers and Quaker families, such as the diaries of Elizabeth Fry
Baptist History and Heritage Society
Baptist History & Heritage Society – Just another WordPress site (thebhhs.org)
An organization of Baptist historians and other individuals and partner institutions committed to communicating the story of Baptists through the study, interpretation, publication, and advocacy of Baptist history.
Baptist Historical Society
Baptist Historical Society – helping British Baptists understand their heritage and history. (baptisthistory.org.uk)
This site aims to help British Baptists understand their heritage and history and provides an opportunity for those who wish to study the life of Baptist churches, and people.
Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland
Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland (presbyterianhistoryireland.com)
Founded in 1907 the object of the Society is to explore and promote an understanding of the history of Presbyterianism in Ireland. This is achieved by various means, including the collection and preservation of historic materials and records of these churches.
Family History Friday: Textile workers
The textile industry was one of the main industries which drove the Industrial Revolution and high quality textiles made in the main districts, the Midlands, the north-west of England and the Clyde Valley in Scotland, were sent across the world. You’ll find plenty of records about firms but you may also be able to find factory wage books or union membership records which will include your ancestors’ names. We’ve also included places to visit which are currently still closed but hopefully will soon reopen fully to the public.
Spinning the Web
Spinning the web – the story of the cotton industry | open.conted.ox.ac.uk (beta)
A very useful, if somewhat dated site, which brings together some 20,000 items from the libraries, museums and archives of North West England which tell the story of the Lancashire Cotton Industry. Users can search the collection or explore a series of themes: an account of the period 1760 to the present day; the impact of cotton on villages, towns and cities; living and working in the mills; how cotton was made and sold; and the uses of cotton in clothing and other products.
Cotton Town
Cotton Town
If you happen to have ancestors who worked in the cotton industry in Blackburn with Darwen, then we highly recommend this site, which provides a wealth of information for example the “Handloom Era” focuses on the living and working conditions experienced by the weavers and spinners of Blackburn and Darwen. It explains about the machinery they used, the good and the bad times, and the decline of the “Handloom Era”. It also gives a comprehensive list of hand loom weavers’ cottages in Blackburn and Darwen, some of which are still occupied in the 21st century.
If your ancestors lived in this area but weren’t connected to the cotton industry, we’d still recommend that you visit this site as it also gives much information about other industries in the town and general life in the area with sections on Health & Welfare, Housing and Shops & Markets.
University of Manchester Library
Special Collections (The University of Manchester Library)
Major sources for the textile industry include the archives of Samuel Oldknow, McConnel & Kennedy, Sun Mill, Rylands & Sons, W.M. Christy & Sons, and the Fielden Brothers of Todmorden, and also the Greater Manchester Mill Survey Archive, which contains information on all textile mills still extant in the county during the 1980s.
Cotton Factory Times
Cotton Factory Times in British Newspaper Archive
This is an extremely recent addition to the British Newspaper Archive and well worth exploring. The blog gives further information (Cotton Factory Times | The British Newspaper Archive Blog). It was first published on the 16 January 1885 and was the brainchild of newspaper owner John Andrew, who ran the Ashton Evening Reporter. It was his aim to sell more newspapers to workers at the local cotton factories in Lancashire and Cheshire, and to do that he believed he needed to create a newspaper aimed solely at this demographic. So what could you find within the pages of this organ of the cotton factory workers? Well, there were sections including ‘Notes from the Factories,’ ‘Thoughts on Home Life,’ and ‘Voices from the Spindle and the Loom.’ All these sections combine to paint a vivid picture of what daily life was like at the cotton factories, from reports of accidents to reports of dismissals (one poor woman was dismissed for being fifteen minutes late!).
Quarry Bank Mill
Quarry Bank | National Trust
Over the past four years Quarry Bank has been at the centre of one of the largest projects in the National Trust’s history. New areas have been restored and for the first time ever visitors can now explore the complete industrial heritage site at Quarry Bank, once one of the largest cotton manufacturing businesses in Britain, on the edge of the first industrial city in the world.
Queen Street Textile Mill Museum, Burnley
Queen Street Mill Textile Museum – Lancashire County Council
Queen Street Mill is a former weaving mill in Harle Syke, a suburb to the north-east of Burnley, Lancashire, that is a Grade I listed building. It was built in 1894 for the Queen Street Manufacturing Company and is now a museum.
Scottish Textile Heritage
History of textiles: Scottish textile heritage – Archives Hub (jisc.ac.uk)
The project which led to the creation of this site sought to map Scottish textile collections found in archives and museums. It includes the archives of many companies, organisations and individuals connected to the industry. Companies include Paisley thread manufacturers J & P Coats Ltd, Dundee jute firms such as Sidlaw Industries and Scottish Borders tweed firms Blenkhorn Richardson and Bernat Klein. There are also examples of trade and employers associations such as the Govan Weavers and the national Association of Scottish Woollen Manufacturers.
The project has also developed an image gallery of over 400 textile objects and a series of online resources including short essays, bibliographies, gazetteer maps and a glossary of Scottish textile terms.
New Lanark World Heritage Site
Home – New Lanark Visitor Centre
New Lanark World Heritage Site is a unique 18th century Mill Village sitting alongside the picturesque River Clyde, less than one hour from Glasgow and Edinburgh. Founded in 1785 with a focus on philanthropy, education and the welfare of the mill workers, New Lanark became a model for industrial communities that was to spread across the world in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Saltaire World Heritage Site
Saltaire, World Heritage Site (saltairevillage.info)
Titus Salt was a man with a vision of an industrial utopia, and when he built Salts Mill and the surrounding village of Saltaire, he was bringing that vision to life. The mill was built to emulate a palazzo of the Italian Renaissance. Salt believed this was a time when social and cultural advancement were a direct consequence of the commercial ability of textile barons. When Salts Mill opened in 1853, it was the biggest factory in the world. 3000 workers toiled away at 1200 looms, producing 30,000 yards of cloth every single day. In a twenty five year building spree, Salt also built housing, a church, schools and almshouses for his work force.
Saltaire is a village where people live. You don’t have to book to come here and Salts Mill is free to enter. There are shops, places to eat, wonderful architecture and a lovely park.
Trade Union Ancestors
Welcome to Trade Union Ancestors – Trade Union Ancestors
We’ve mentioned this site before as it can help you locate a specific trade union in time and place with the A to Z index of trade unions and trade union family trees. In addition, you can read about some of the events and people that shaped the trade union movement through 200 years of history in our trade union histories, trade union lives and striking stories.
Family History Friday: Rural Craftsmen and Women
The number of surviving documents relating to particular cottage industries and rural crafts varies considerably, depending on the type of craft that you are interested in. The collections found in libraries and museums relating to the local history of their area may be your best starting point but we’ve included a few specialist websites that might also help you learn more. As museums are beginning to reopen to the public we’ve also added a few suggestions of places that you might like to visit in order to increase your knowledge.
Blacksmiths Index
The Blacksmiths Index (mygenwebs.com)
if you’ve blacksmiths in the family then this is your “go to” website. Indexed both under county and surname, the amount of information that you’ll find does vary but you’ll usually find their name, date of birth, family information and address, as well as where the information came from (usually census records).
Historical Directories
Historical Directories of England & Wales – Special Collections
We’ve mentioned this site before as it contains trade and local directories for England and Wales from the 1760s to the 1910s. The collection contains 689 directories, with at least one directory for every English and Welsh county for the 1850s, 1890s and 1910s. Searchable by name, place and occupation this is an essential tool for local, urban and family history. You can find Kelly’s and Pigot’s directories here, as well as those by regional publishers.
Old Occupations
List of Old English Occupations and descriptions (worldthroughthelens.com)
if you’ve ever found an obscure occupation mentioned in a census and been unsure as to what it could be, then this page could help. The list is by no means exhaustive but does give a brief description against each occupation listed eg a Straw Joiner was a person who thatched roofs.
Mills Archive
The Mills Archive – We preserve & protect records of our milling history
The Mills Archive contains documents and photographs of traditional and contemporary mills and milling, as well as similar structures dependent on traditional power sources. It makes that material freely available for public inspection and use in research and learning. The Mills Archive is one of the world’s great mill collections. It has over 3 million documents and images that are free to users. The collections show the rich and diverse crafts, buildings, machinery, equipment and people involved with mills in the UK and around the world.
The History of Straw Plait in Herefordshire
Hertfordshire Genealogy: Occupations: Straw Plait (hertfordshire-genealogy.co.uk)
Contains many pages about occupations in Herefordshire and some of these relate to the local straw plaiting industry.
Rural Museums
Rural Museums Network | A registered charity that promotes learning and encourages a wider understanding of the UK’s rural heritage
Included on the site is a map which shows where the different rural museums are. You can also discover where a museum dedicated to the particular craft that you are interested in is situated.
Museum of English Rural Life
The Museum of English Rural Life (reading.ac.uk)
The Museum of English Rural Life archive, library and object collections tell the story of rural England. The collections are a major source of knowledge and inspiration about how people lived and worked in the countryside. They tell the story of how food and farming matter to everyone.
The archives range from papers of individual farms and large estates through the institutional archives of major countryside organisations to the trade records of agricultural firms, as well as over a million rural photographs, films relating to the countryside, tens of thousands of engineering drawings, personal records and journals of farmers, farm workers, land girls and evacuees.
The library is the most important in the country for the study of British agriculture, the countryside and rural society. The majority of the 50,000 volumes in the library are open access and there are also extensive runs of historically significant journals from the nineteenth century onwards.
The object collections contain over 25,000 objects, including many not on display, which provide a material record covering 1750 to the present day.
National Wool Museum, Wales
National Wool Museum | National Museum Wales
Wool was historically the most important and widespread of Wales’s industries. The picturesque village of Dre-fach Felindre in the beautiful Teifi valley was once the centre of a thriving woollen industry, earning the nickname ‘The Huddersfield of Wales’. Located in the historic former Cambrian Mills, shirts and shawls, blankets and bedcovers, woollen stockings and socks were all made here, and sold in the surrounding countryside – and to the rest of the world. Currently closed to visitors, when it does reopen you can follow the process from Fleece to Fabric and visit the sympathetically restored listed mill buildings and Historic Machinery.
St Fagans Living Museum, Wales
St Fagans National Museum of History | National Museum Wales
St Fagans is a people’s museum, where we explore history together through people’s everyday lives. Traditional crafts and activities bring St Fagans alive, in workshops where craftsmen still demonstrate their traditional skills.
National Museum of Rural Life, Scotland
National Museum of Rural Life (nms.ac.uk)
The museum galleries explain how the land, people and new ways of working have shaped Scotland’s rural history.
Rural Life Centre, Surrey
Rural Life Living Museum | The largest Living Museum in the South of England (rural-life.org.uk)
The museum has over 40,000 artefacts relating to agriculture and rural life which includes buildings.
Lace makers
Home | Cowper & Newton Museum (cowperandnewtonmuseum.org.uk)
Although dedicated to William Cowper and his friend Rev John Newton (best known for writing “Amazing Grace”), there is a section dedicated to the history of the lace making trade Lace Making | Cowper & Newton Museum (cowperandnewtonmuseum.org.uk) .
Family History Friday: Election Records
Election records can be useful for confirming basic details about your ancestors. They are split into two sorts of record – poll books, which should give you names, address, occupations and how a person voted, the early ones of which pre-date census records and electoral registers, which were first introduced in 1832 and give details of everyone entitled to vote.
With a few exceptions, (registers were not published during the latter years of World War 1 (1916–1917) or World War 2 (1940–1944)), they have been produced annually ever since. If you know what area a person lives or lived in you may be able to find their address in an electoral register – though the property through which they qualified to vote is not always the same as their home address.
Do note, however, that electoral registers are arranged firstly under street names and then under an individual’s name. You do need to know beforehand where your ancestor lived! Also remember that before 1918 you will not find any women’s names – it was only after 1918 that all women over the age of 30 who met the minimum property qualifications were allowed to vote and it was 1928 before all men and women over the age of 21 had the right to vote.
An increasing number of electoral register and poll books are available on the commercial websites – www.ancestry.co.uk for example has London, England, Electoral Registers, 1832-1965 | Ancestry® and www.findmypast.co.uk has England & Wales Electoral Registers 1832-1932 | findmypast.co.uk .
Electoral registers from 2002 onwards are available online at Search for People, Businesses and Places – 192.com . Be aware though that as a consequence of new regulations, two versions of the electoral register have been produced since 2003:
1.the full version of the register contains the names of all voters and is used primarily to support the electoral process. Public access to it is strictly controlled and the data can only be used for research purposes.
2. the open register, also known as the edited register, is available for sale for commercial use for direct marketing, advertising, etc. It omits the names of electors who have exercised their right to opt out to protect their privacy.
Local reference libraries and archives hold electoral registers which cover their local area. For contact details for local archives see Find an archive | The National Archives .
For electoral registers in Wales go to the National Library of Wales Home | The National Library of Wales and in Scotland you’ll need to look at Home | National Library of Scotland (nls.uk) and for Voters’ Rolls Voters rolls | National Library of Scotland (nls.uk) .
Dublin’s electoral registers for 1899, 1908 – 1915 can be found here – Libraries and Archive – 1899 and 1908 to 1915 Electoral Rolls (dublincity.ie) .
Millions signed the three great Chartist petitions of 1839 to 1848. Thousands were active in those years and beyond in the campaign to win the vote, secret ballots (the first in the country was held at Pontefract in 1872), and other democratic rights that we now take for granted. Chartist Ancestors Welcome to Chartist Ancestors | chartist ancestors lists many of those who risked their freedom, and sometimes their lives, because of their participation in the Chartist cause.
The names included on the site are drawn from newspapers, court records and books of the time, from later histories and other sources. For example included is a section on Chartism in Leeds and names of prominent Chartists in the Leeds area are mentioned – Chartism in Leeds | chartist ancestors .
Wakefield Libraries 