Monday 14 November 2011

Yet More War Stuff

NEWS

Well, what seems to have been an extraordinarily active Remembrance period has finally passed us by. Record sales of poppies, they tell us, and so much mention of the occasion in the media that many were beginning to air their annoyance at the saturation coverage. I'm almost frightened to say it for fear of criticism, but it has been a bit OTT, hasn't it?

Anyway, if nothing else, the Remembrance frenzy at least seems to send our genealogical service providers into overdrive. In addition to what I've already mentioned over the past few days, take a look at the following...

The Family Tree blog has flagged an online WWI project by the Imperial War Museum entitled Faces of the First World War. See the relevant post here.

The British Library are helping Europeana, publicity-wise, with their WWI project - a scheme that will come to a head, appropriately, in 2014. See the press release, here.

Many of you will have spotted three more Navy Lists popping up on the Ancestry website. Ancestry also has more information on their recent 'Nurses' records' release, here.

GenesReunited has also announced additions to its military records, though it is a little unclear exactly what those new records are. About all I can do is reproduce a section from an email circular they sent me:

The new release includes The National Roll of the Great War 1914 -1918 which has brief biographies of soldiers who survived the Great War and also information on those who supported the War, such as nurses and civilians, who rarely feature in other WW1 Records.
The complete list of the new military records added to www.genesreunited.co.uk is below.
1861 Worldwide Army Index
Paddington Rifles 1860-1912
Royal Fusiliers Collection 1863-1905
Surrey Recruitment Registers 1908-1933
Army Roll of Honour 1939-1945
De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour
Distinguished Conduct Medals
National Roll of the Great War
Royal Marine Medal Roll
The 1861 Worldwide Army Index includes soldiers who served across the World in Queen Victoria’s empire states.   The index is also useful for members to identify men missing from the 1861 census.
The newly added military records are available online at www.genesreunited.co.uk and can be viewed on a pay per view basis or Platinum members can choose to add on one or more of the record sets to their package at a low cost.

So make of that what you will.

Elsewhere, there seems to have a been a little burst of genealogical books onto the market. Chris Paton has a short summary of some of them, here (you can also see form his blog that he has one or two books of his own on the go which may interest you). You may also wish to keep an eye out for the following on the bookstands (announcement via FFHS) ...

... a new publication 'Discover Your Ancestors' in association with Ancestry.co.uk will be on sale at WHSmith from November 20th, 2011.

"Content rich and bursting with information about researching your family history, Discover Your Ancestors brings never-before-seen content, ideas and inspiration to people interested in this fascinating topic".

The publication is also available in the USA, Canada and Australia.

Discovery Your Ancestors, 188 pages, perfect bound, £4.99.

You can also order a copy directly from the publishers. Please send a cheque for £5.99 (includes P&P) payable to Discovery Media Group Holdings and send to Discovery Media Group, Discovery House, 63 Dundale Road, Tring, Herts, HP23 5BX, UK. (Please add £3 if you are ordering from abroad.)


And then there's this book - an overseas effort, but sounds really interesting.

Personally, I've not seen any of the books above, so can't vouch for them. But I CAN vouch for two books (well, booklets) that will be coming onto the market soon ... because I've compiled them! I'll be making an announcement about them soon, so keep checking the blog.

Moving swiftly on, I see that Ancestry have updated several of their London record sets (note the UK Prison Hulk records in there, too).

The Irish Genealogy News blog brings us yet more Irish events for November.

A reminder that the London Metropolitan Archives have re-opened today - but with revised hours. See here for full details.


And Meirionnydd Archives should be re-opening this week, too.




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