Launch of Scottish Valuation Rolls 1875- free Index Search for 2014

Announced on ScotlandsPeople 

-- and you can search the index for FREE until Dec. 31st!

Among the hundreds of thousands of Victorian Scots who can be found in the latest year of Valuation Rolls to be released on ScotlandsPeople are two of the most celebrated sportsmen of the era, the golfers Old Tom Morris and his eldest son Young Tom.

Valuation rolls for 1875 covering the whole of Scotland have become available, enabling searches for property owners, tenants and occupiers across Scotland from 1875 to 1920, and often revealing valuable information about the inter-census years. The latest addition comprises over 900,000 index entries and almost 72,000 digital images taken from 141 volumes of Valuation Rolls.

All the Rolls are fully searchable by name and address, and researchers can investigate people living, working and playing all over Scotland – from country estates to city tenements, castles to crofts, and factories to golf courses. Researchers at the National Records of Scotland were particularly interested to spot 17 golf clubs and societies around Scotland – from Ayrshire to Aberdeen – plus three Golf Inns.

Tom Morris father and son were not only renowned professional golfers, but Old Tom was also a sought-after maker of golf clubs and balls at his shop in St Andrews, where he was helped by his sons. His family was also prospering. Young Tom was already a successful professional player, having won the Open three times by the age of nineteen, and was newly-married. In early 1875 his daughter Elizabeth also married, but the year turned out to be the family’s ‘annus horribilis’, when tragic personal loss followed professional success.

Using the newly-available Valuation Rolls, and records of births, deaths, marriages and wills that are already on ScotlandsPeople, archivists at the National Records of Scotland have pieced together the sad tale of Old Tom and his family. ‘Old Tom Morris’s Terrible Year’, a special display at the National Records of Scotland, enables visitors to learn more about this remarkable story of repeated family loss and extraordinary resilience as Old Tom outlived all his children and their spouses.Old Tom continued his business and designed many golf courses in Scotland and beyond. When this elder statesman of Scottish golf died in 1908 at the age of 86, as the result of an accidental fall in the New Golf Club in St Andrews, only his grandchildren, Elizabeth’s children, survived him.

Tim Ellis, Registrar General and Keeper of the Records of Scotland, said:“The Morrises helped Scotland’s golfing reputation to grow across the world, and we are using the outstanding historical resources of the National Records of Scotland to mark the Ryder Cup with a tribute to two remarkable Scottish sportsmen. The release of the Valuation Rolls for 1875 enables people worldwide to take a virtual peek into addresses throughout Scotland between 1841 and 1920 on the ScotlandsPeople website. This is part of the commitment of the National Records of Scotland to provide access to the key records that researchers want.”

The Valuation Rolls can be searched along with statutory registers, old parish registers, Catholic registers, census records, wills and testaments and coats of arms on the ScotlandsPeople website, at the ScotlandsPeople Centre in Edinburgh, and at local family history centres in Glasgow, Kilmarnock, Hawick and Inverness.

Vital & Court Records for the USA

I just received notice about a website that helps people researching their family history/genealogy in the United States. The site is www.county-clerks.com and was recently updated to include the Official contact details for every single county clerk in the USA.

If you were not aware, researchers trying to learn about their family history in the USA need to contact a county clerk if they are in search of any court records as well as marriage, divorce, birth and death records (vital records). County-Clerks.com makes it easier for people to contact the county official they need to find for this research.

There are no other sites like it (vitalrec.com for instance hasn't been updated in years) and it serves as a valuable resource for people looking for archived records. This has the potential to be a valuable resource for US researchers.

Mocavo- free weekend access to Universal Search

What better way to top off Mocavo's Back to School Week than with an Open Access to Universal Search weekend? Usually you need to be a Mocavo Gold member to search all of our databases at once, but for this weekend only, you can search more than420,000 databases to your heart's content. Kick start your research today and see who you will discover.

Start Searching Now

The British Newspaper Archive starts digitising eight new titles

The British Newspaper Archive starts digitising eight new titles

More than 8 million newspaper pages from 1710-1954 are now available to search at The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk).

In the last month, the website has started digitising the newspaper archives of eight new titles. These cover England, Scotland and Northern Ireland and include the London Evening Standard, Glasgow’s Daily Record and the Northern Whig.

The first years from the following new titles have been added to The British Newspaper Archive:

·         Biggleswade Chronicle, covering 1912

·         Daily Record, covering 1914-1915

·         Lake's Falmouth Packet and Cornwall Advertiser, covering 1864

·         London Evening Standard, covering 1860-1862 and 1866-1867

·         Newcastle Evening Chronicle, covering 1915

·         Northern Whig, covering 1869-1870

·         Surrey Comet, covering 1854-1857 and 1859-1870

·         Watford Observer, covering 1864-1865, 1867, 1869-1870

You’ll find more information and links to these new additions at http://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2014/08/07/8-new-titles-including-the-london-evening-standard/

The British Newspaper Archive is a partnership project between the British Library and Findmypast. From November 2011 to 2021, up to 40 million pages from historical newspapers across the UK and Ireland (spanning the period 1700 to 1954) will be uploaded to the website www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It provides world class information services to the academic, business, research and scientific communities and offers unparalleled access to the world’s largest and most comprehensive research collection.

The Workers’ City: Lives of Toronto’s Working People

The 2014 Toronto History Lecture is dedicated to the memory of J. Brian Gilchrist(1956-2014).

THE 2014 TORONTO HISTORY LECTURE
6 August 2014, 7:30 pmCity of Toronto Archives, 255 Spadina Road
Admission is free, but reservation is required.

The 2014 Toronto History Lecture, titled The Workers’ City: Lives of Toronto’s Working People, will offer a rare window on the diversity of working-class experiences in Toronto’s past and highlight their distinctive place in its history. Generations of working people literally built the city and created the goods and services to sustain a large metropolitan population. Yet their stories are seldom told. Historian Craig Heron will explore the opportunities and challenges that members of the city’s working class have faced over the past 150 years, and will share his insights into major changes and common themes during that period, through the lives of eight different Toronto workers.

For more information, see the website here.

Ancestry.ca Offers Free Access to all 235 Million Canadian Records

from Dick Eastman Online Genealogy Newsletter of today:

In celebration of Canada Day on July 1st, Ancestry.ca is offering free access to all its Canadian records. Quoting from the web site’s home page: “Explore our extensive variety of Canadian records – ALL FREE this weekend – and connect the milestones of your ancestors’ lives.”

“Access to the records will be free until July 1, 2014, 11:59 p.m.(Eastern Time). To view these records you will need to register for free with Ancestry.ca with your name and email address. Once you have registered we will then send you a user name and password to access the records. If you haven’t already, you will be prompted to register once you start trying to search and view the records. After July 1, 2014, you will only be able to view these records using an Ancestry.ca paid membership.”

For more information, or to view the records free of charge, go to http://www.ancestry.ca.

“How-To DNA” – A Multimedia How-To Guide for Genetic Genealogy

Dick Eastman posted at www.eogn.com on June 20, 2014 the following information about a new site linking us to many sources of information on Genetic Genealogy.
Blaine Bettinger is a genealogist and a DNA expert with a Ph.D. in biochemistry with a concentration in genetics. He is a frequent author and lecturer with a focus on DNA. He has now announced the creation of a new online how-to guide for genetic genealogy. The site will include short instructional how-to videos for beginners, as well as presentations and webcasts for the advanced genealogist.

How-To DNA (www.howtodna.com) will also provide links to the latest videos, podcasts, and other instructional material created by DNA experts. 

You can learn more in Blaine’s announcement at http://www.thegeneticgenealogist.com/2014/06/20/announcing-dna. 

The site is live now at http://howtodna.com.