Who Do You Think You Are?

You can download some British Army officers’ service records for free At the start of lockdown, The National Archives (TNA) at Kew made its digitised collections free to download via its online catalogue Discovery (discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk).

Laura is one of the lead genealogists behind Who Do You Think You Are? and on page 14 she shares her advice for exploring your female lines with tips from the TV series. A professional genealogist and blogger based in Derbyshire, Chloe recommends a g

Email wdytyaeditorial@ourmedia.co.uk Write to WDYTYA? Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol BS1 4ST WIN an AncestryDNA test kit from ancestry.co.uk WORTH £79 The writer of our star letter wins an AncestryDNA test worth £79 - so drop us a line and share your

EDITORIAL Editor Sarah Williams Production editor Seth Bursess Features editor Rosemary Collins Art editor Robbie Bennie ADVERTISING SALES Advertising manager Rebecca Janyshiwskyj 0117 300 8547 Brand sales executive Kelly Warden 0117 300 8538 Inserts

Email wdytyaeditorial@ourmedia.co.uk to feature your event here for free Discover how to take your family tree back to the Middle Ages 18 October w tinyurl.com/sog-medieval-genealogy-day This online event from the Society of Genealogists is sponsored

Information about settlers of 17th-century Ulster is now available in a free database. In the 1600s settlers, mainly from southern Scotland and northern England, made a new life for themselves in the Irish province of Ulster on land that had been con

Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk) has launched a range of threemonth subscriptions in addition to its existing one-month and annual packages. The new subscriptions to the family history site cost £38.49 at ‘Plus’ level, which includes the 1939 Register,

More than 5.5 million family history records from the US state of Connecticut are available on a new free website, Connecticut Genealogy (connecticutgenealogy.org). The site has searchable indexes of 576,638 births (1897-1917), 2,180,700 marriages (1

The National Archives (TNA) at Kew is seeking volunteers to transcribe 19thcentury military records (pictured). The British Army description and succession books cover officers, noncommissioned officers and other ranks. They include details of enlist

The first witness to the 1666 Great Fire of London has been identified by an academic. Kate Loveman, professor of early modern literature and culture at the University of Leicester, identified Thomas Dagger in research carried out on behalf of the Mu

The chromosome has been fully sequenced, completing the sequencing of the human genome (tinyurl.com/reuters-y-chromsome) The number of records that have been added to the collection ‘Gibraltar, Civil Records, 1777-1990’ on free family history website

WikiTree (wikitree.com) has apologised after its members’ data was accessed by a hacker. The members of the free family history website aim to build the world's largest accurate collaborative family tree. WikiTree currently has 35,568,937 profiles ed

In his 2016 episode EastEnders star Danny Dyer first discovered his great great grandmother Mary Ann Buttivant as a child in Mile End Workhouse registers. Mindful that a life of poverty and lack of education could lead people down a dark path, Danny

The 1844 Poor Law Amendment Act and the 1845 Bastardy Act empower mothers to apply to pettysessions courts for maintenance money from the father of their illegitimate child. The Matrimonial Causes Act makes it possible to petition for a divorce in ci

In 2015 actor Frances de la Tour was intrigued to learn more about her aristocratic ancestor the Hon. Sophia Ann Delaval. Letters and estate papers for the Delaval family from the 18th century, held at Northumberland Archives, revealed that Frances’

This record was compiled on 29 September 1939, but amended throughout the 1940s-1990s. When a woman married, her new surname was written above the original entry, therefore it is indexed with both the married and maiden surnames. If a direct ancestor

The Wiltshire OPC Project (https://wiltshire-opc.org.uk/genealogy) began in 2006, and has developed into one of the most successful OPC projects. There is a dedicated group of volunteers, and an active Facebook group that has nearly 2,000 members (fa

CELEBRATING YOUR DISCOVERIES Ask Christine Wilkie what she remembers of her early childhood and she will describe a large estate house on stilts amid tropical blooms and palm trees. She was born in 1943 and lived on a sugar plantation called ‘Dekinde

w ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/1129 Christine traced her forebears through slave registers kept on Barbados; copies are at The National Archives in Kew and in Ancestry's collection ‘Former British Colonial Dependencies, Slave Registers, 1813-183

Silversmith Paul Storr produced much of the silver that graced the tables of royalty during the Georgian period, and his work is still very collectable. Among his most notable pieces is the ‘Battle of the Nile Cup’ which was presented to Lord Nelson

w ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/2052 Here you'll find almost 500,000 admission papers relating to grants of freedom of the City of London. Apprenticeship documents and even birth records are sometimes included. w bit.ly/fmp-webb-livery Findmypast

a Aldermanbury, London EC2V 7HH t 020 7332 1868 e guildhall.library@cityoflondon.gov.uk w tinyurl.com/col-guild Records of London's guilds can be consulted here if you supply the appropriate ID. a 40 Wharf Road, London N1 7GS t 020 7251 8799 e hello@

Dr Angela Smith, co-author of Tracing Your Ancestors Using the UK Historical Timeline (see the subscription offer on page 22) It has been estimated that some 7 per cent of the population were killed during the English Civil War. Tens of thousands of

w dhi.ac.uk/causepapers This old but still fascinating database of more than 14,000 ‘cause papers’ relates to cases heard at church courts in the Diocese of York between 1300 and 1858. w familysearch.org/search/collection/list The countless collectio

a Kew, Richmond TW9 4DU t 020 8876 3444 w nationalarchives.gov.uk TNA's website includes an old, and now archived, description of its early officer records, but it's still worth looking at: tinyurl.com/tna-arch-off. w regimentalrogue.com/srsub/advice

Evelyn Sharp was one of nine surviving children of a slate merchant's family living in Weston Turville in Buckinghamshire. She had no higher education, but spent her time educating herself. At the age of 24 she let home for London, where she lived in

GIRTON COLLEGE ARCHIVES a Girton College, Cambridge CB3 0JG t 01223 338897 e archive@girton.cam.ac.uk w tinyurl.com/girton-arch The records of the Society for Promoting the Training of Women can be found at Cambridge University's first women's colleg

Visit the Government's website Find a Will at probatesearch.service.gov.uk to download a will or probate record back to 1858 for £1.50. For earlier wills, see The National Archives’ research guide at tinyurl.com/tna-pre-1858. The National Archives of

Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden arrives in England. He will eventually be involved in draining and transforming vast marshes into workable land, including in Cambridgeshire. Oliver Cromwell is elected as one of the two borough MPs for Huntingdon,

w tinyurl.com/fs-cambs-bts FamilySearch includes Cambridgeshire Bishops' Transcripts (1538-1983) at Cambridge University Library, plus Huntingshire parish registers for the same period. w freereg.org.uk Free REG is useful for anyone with ancestors fr

This name is associated with Cambridgeshire, Essex and Kent. Collen could be described as the Cambridgeshire variant of the surname Collin/Collins. This is a variant of the surname Duckett. More than 100 Fews were recording living in the village of W

When the Chivers family, fruit-growers and distributors of Histon, realised that most of their product was going to jam manufacturers, they decided to try making it for themselves. By 1875 they had opened the Victoria Works next to Histon Railway Sta

WOMWN'S HISTORY Jessica Cox The History Press, 320 pages, £25 From conception to afterbirth, the process of pregnancy and childbirth in 19th-century Britain is explored in this wellresearched book. Jessica Cox, a senior lecturer in English literature

jackpalmer.substack.com Free Jack Palmer may be young - he's just graduated from Duke University, North Carolina, USA, where he majored in history and psychology - but he has an impressive track record in family history, having begun his research whe