Pre-Victorian Family
History Research
What can you achieve for free or at a low cost online
Going further back into your family’s past than the Victorian period can
be a real challenge. The birth, marriage and death records which are so easily
available to search and order online these days simply did not exist before the
start of Civil Registration in 1837. Likewise, the decennial censuses of
households in England and Wales (which can easily be viewed at any of the
commercial genealogy sites) didn’t start until 1841.
Unfortunately, finding out more about your family before these dates can
be pretty frustrating. You should be aware
that there is a more limited range of resources on offer and that these
resources will potentially be much more difficult to interpret. Don’t be put
off, however. The satisfactions of finding out more about the lives of earlier
ancestors, can be immense, and your perseverance is likely to be well-rewarded.
To get you started on your family history before the Victorians, there are, in
fact, many records and other useful historical material which can be searched
freely (or at a very low cost) online. This article deals only with the records
for England and Wales (significantly different records are available for
Scotland).
My recommended book on tracing Pre-Victorian ancestors
My recommended book on tracing Pre-Victorian ancestors
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| By Internet Archive Book Images - https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14779513221/Source book page: https://archive.org/stream/englishhumorists00stee/englishhumorists00stee#page/n432/mode/1up, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43578597Add caption |
Pre-Victorian Research – Managing Your Expectations
There are a number of key reasons why your family
might be more difficult to research pre-1837 :
·
It’s possible that some of the records in which
they appeared might not have survived or might be patchy.
·
Due to the way in which existing records have been
transcribed and acquired by the commercial genealogy sites, you might need to
subscribe to more than one such site.
·
The original records might be located in more than
one archive.
·
It’s likely that there will be more confusion over
the identification of some of your ancestors from the early period than there
is for members of later generations of your family.
·
The amount of information available on these earlier ancestors will be
far more dependent on their social, religious and economic status than it would
be had they lived later in the nineteenth century – in short, the wealthier and
more socially prominent they were, the more likely that you will find records
about them.
·
Understanding early ancestors almost always requires you to gain some
knowledge of the times in which they lived and of the local area. This article
will give you some idea how to start doing this.
Family history gets more difficult once you start searching for events
that happened before 1837. This period can also usefully be thought of as the ‘Pre-Victorian
period’. This is because, as luck would have it, Civil Registration was
introduced on 1st July 1837, less than two weeks after Queen
Victoria came to the throne.
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| The Knapp Family early 1830s Via Wikimedia commons |
Pre-Victorian
Church Registers
The main source of genealogical information before 1837 is that
from church registers. These include the parish records of the Church of
England (from 1538, following the Church of England’s split with Rome, it was
decreed that each parish priest must keep such a register). They also include entries in so-called
non-parochial registers produced by Protestant Non-Conformist and Catholic chapels
and churches. All such registers were originally handwritten volumes in which
details of baptisms, banns, marriages, and burials were recorded. In 1754,
separate marriage and banns registers were introduced in a standard printed
portrait format. These remained in use until 1837.
Some websites offer information from early Church Registers for free,
though beware that the information can sometimes be patchy and of minimal
genealogical value. These include:
FreeREG https://www.freereg.org.uk/ Free Internet
searches of baptism, marriage, and burial records, which have been extracted
from parish registers, non-conformist records and other relevant sources in the
UK.
Online Parish
Clerks http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/online_parish_clerk Records transcribed by volunteers and
made available online for free.
Family Search https://www.familysearch.org/ Free Site
run by The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (The Mormons)
https://www.familyhistorydirectory.co.uk/ Links to the records of commercial genealogical sites that go back before
1837.
Pre-Victorian
Content at Ancestry, Find My Past, The Genealogist
All the main commercial
genealogy sites have information from church registers going back into the
eighteenth century and much earlier which can be accessed for a small fee or
subscription. None, however, give complete coverage and since the information
is supplied to the genealogical companies by different sources, you might get
slightly different details even when you are looking at a record of the same
ancestor. Remember if you are not successful in finding the information you are
looking for, be patient, new information from church registers is being added to
these sites all the time.
Additionally, the
commercial genealogical sites have a wealth of other material from pre-1837
which can be accessed as part of your subscription. I have listed only a tiny
selection here to whet your appetite:
Ancestry
·
London, England,
Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921
·
All London,
England, Poor Law and Board of Guardian Records, 1430-1930
·
Royal Collection – Includes
information from 50 historical publications - including Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage (1802) - detailing almost half a million people born
into or descended from the peerage, nobility or landed gentry
·
The Bankrupt
Directory 1820 – 1843 Until 1869, insolvent debtors could face prison terms, and this
directory reveals the names of those bankrupt individuals whose names were
published in The London Gazette.
·
The
Crimes, Prisons & Punishment Collection 1770-1934 (Contains over
500,000 records of criminals who passed through the justice system in England
and Wales from 1770 to 1934, both as criminals and as victims of crime)
·
Convict Transportation Registers 1787-1870 A collection of
convict transportation registers from 1787 to 1867 containing the details of
over 125,000 convicts who were transported to the various Australian colonies.
·
Early Birth
Certificates from the Presbyterian, Independent and Baptist
Registry and from the Wesleyan Methodist Metropolitan Registry. They cover
dates from 1742 to 1840.
·
The Society of
Friends' (Quakers) Registers, Notes and
Certificates of Births, Marriages and Burials ranging from 1578-1841.
·
Overseas Birth,
Marriage, Death and Burial of British Subjects
including those onboard ships. Original registers, notebooks and copies of
entries in registers kept by incumbents of English churches and missions,
British embassies and legations etc. These cover the period 1627 to 1960.
Pre-Victorian Archival
Resources
The National Archives and Local Archives/County Record Offices across
the country house original records of many kinds going back many centuries. Official
pre-Victorian records that might include information about your ancestors may
relate to schools, property, land ownership, occupations, workhouses, the
military, taxation, legal, religious and business matters, court records and electoral
records, to name but the most common. Additionally, archives might hold
personal records of your early ancestors such as diaries, letters, and
commonplace books. Indexes of such records are available and searchable for
free online at http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/. To see the records
themselves, you will probably have to visit the archives in question, although
more and more archival records are being made available online in digital
format. Sometimes these can be accessed freely through computers in local
libraries, and sometimes they can be accessed for a small fee through your own
computer. It’s really a matter of finding the relevant archive online and
seeing what it has to offer.
To take an important example, all wills proved in the
Prerogative Court of Canterbury (1384-1858), can be viewed online for a small
fee from home via the National Archives (www.nationalarchive.org). By way of
a second example, Manchester
City Archives (which can be accessed either through the Discovery Section of
the National Archives or through http://www.manchester.gov.uk/info/448/archives_and_local_history)
has many records which have been digitised and can be viewed for free from
computers in Manchester libraries. These include 609 apprenticeship indentures
(indexed by the name of the child and master) mainly for children put out by
the churchwardens and overseers between 1700 and 1913.
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| Old graveyard, Moffat. 2009, Via Wikimediacommons |
Websites with Useful Free
Pre-Victorian Content
A not-for-profit digital library based at the Institute
of Historical Research brings together material (including biography, religious
history, local history, parliamentary history and urban history for Britain and
Ireland (mainly between 1300-1800).
·
Vision of Britain (http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/)
Search by the name of the place in Britain in which you are interested to view
statistics, maps, writings and more.
The
Federation of Family History Societies (FFHS) is an educational charity with
over 160 member societies throughout the world. Most societies focus on a
particular geographical area or on a specific surname.
Pre-Victorian Maps
Viewing a map of where your ancestors lived at the time that they lived
there, can really help you understand what their daily lives might have been
like. You will be able to see how they were connected by road, river, or canal
to other nearby centres. Understanding their proximity to the sea, forests and
mountains can give you an idea the occupations and pastimes they might have had,
the dialects they might have spoken and even the food they might have eaten.
·
London Ancestor http://www.londonancestor.com/maps/maps.htm
·
Vision of Britain http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/maps/
·
British Library (Original Ordnance Survey Maps-
Preliminary Drawings) http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/ordsurvdraw/
·
Mapco http://mapco.net/ Free
access to high quality scans of rare and beautiful antique maps and views.
Pre-Victorian Books
The text of many books published before the
Victorian period can be viewed for free online. Some of the best websites
include:
·
Early Cookbooks https://savoringthepast.net/2014/08/28/18th-and-early-19th-century-cookbooks-digital-searchable-and-free/
·
Wellcome Library
Cookbooks http://wellcomelibrary.org/collections/digital-collections/recipe-books/ Selection of cookery
books from 16th century onwards.
·
Virtual
Books at the British Library http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/virtualbooks/ Access to digitised
copies of some manuscripts and books in the British Library’s collections.
·
Google Books www.books.google.co.uk/ More than 2
million full text books now in the public domain are available for free.
·
Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ Provides the free full text of over 50,000 free e-books (mainly pre-1930s and so out of copyright) which can be
read online or downloaded.
·
Internet
Archive www.archive.org A not-for-profit archive
including millions of digitised books.
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| John Roque 1746 = Map of Woolwich, London, via WikimediaCommons |
Pre-Victorian Newspapers
and Periodicals
Newspapers give a real flavour of life in the locality where your
ancestor lived. Before the Victorian period, the names of ordinary people were
not mentioned in newspapers anywhere near as often as they were later to be. However,
if your ancestor was a person of wealth or importance it is possible that he or
she will receive a name check and that you will be able to find them on a
digitised historical newspaper site.
More than 21 million
newspaper pages – digitally scanned, going back to the 1700s, can be viewed for
a subscription. This is also available if you have a membership with FindMyPast
(http://www.findmypast.co.uk/)
The pre-1837 newspaper collection (available to view
through your subscription or pay-to-view) includes: The
Times (1788-1833); The Gentleman’s
Magazine Library (1731-1868); The
Edinburgh Advertiser (sporadically 1771-1909, and many other titles.
This free site includes over a million newspaper pages
from nearly 120 newspapers from 1804 to 1910. The first newspaper to be
published in Wales was the Cambrian
from 1804 in Swansea. This was followed by The
North Wales Gazette (1808) and The Camarthen Journal (1810). The first
Welsh language weekly was Seren Gomer
in 1814.
MiscellaneousToolbox
– For Free Pre-1837 Research
Occupations
· Genuki Occupations http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/Occupations Gives information on
early occupations in the UK and Ireland and explains how to find out more.
Politics
Provides a written transcript of Parliamentary debates in the House of
Commons from 1803-2005.
A free fully searchable
edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people
ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central
criminal court.
Churches
·
FindaChurch
http://www.findachurch.co.uk/Information on over 30,000 UK Christian churches, with photo, map,
description, contact details, and visitor information.
·
Historic Churches
http://www.britainexpress.com/historic-churches.htm A gazetteer featuring history, architecture, location, photos, and heritage of British churches.
Graveyards and
Monuments
·
Church Monuments
Society http://churchmonumentssociety.org/index.html Conceived to encourage the appreciation, study and conservation of church
monuments both in the UK and abroad.
·
Deceased Online
http://www.deceasedonline.com/ Digital scans of register pages, grave
details and other interments in a grave, pictures of graves and memorials, maps
showing the section or exact location of graves and memorials. Has some records
dating back as far as the 1600s.
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Useful Books
John Wintrip, Tracing Your
Pre-Victorian Ancestors A Guide to Research Methods for Family Historians,
Pen and Sword Books, 2017 Buy this book here
Gardner and Smith, Genealogical
Research in England and Wales. 3 Volumes, Bookcraft, 1956-1964.
Cole J. and Titford, J., Tracing
Your Family Tree, 4th ed. Newbury, Countryside Books, 2003.
Herber, M. Ancestral Trails, 2nd
edition, Stroud, Sutton, 2004.
Chambers, P. Early Modern
Genealogy: Researching Your Family History 1600-1838, Stroud, Sutton, 2006.
Oates, Jonathan, Tracing Your
Ancestors Through Local History Records: A Guide for Family Historians, Pen
and Sword, 2016.
This article first appeared in December 2017 Family Tree Magazine UK
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