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Category Archives: Soapbox
Transcripts and indexes
The release of the 1921 census returns for England and Wales earlier this year led to some (fairly heated) discussion on social media regarding the quality of the transcription provided by Findmypast, the National Archives’ commercial partners in the online … Continue reading
Posted in Document Sources, research, Soapbox, digitisation
Tagged tna, the national archives, research, family history, census, documents, transcription, genealogy, digitisation, antiquarians, indexing
6 Comments
When Digitisation Goes Bad Part II: Death’s Apprentice
or…Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back Onto The Internet This is the second part of a blog post looking at some particularly bad examples of digitisation in the world of family history research. In the first … Continue reading
Posted in Document Sources, research, Soapbox, digitisation
Tagged research, family history, documents, genealogy, london metropolitan archives, apprenticeship, indexing
1 Comment
When Digitisation Goes Bad Part I: The Night Of The Living Death Duties
This is the first part of the latest in a series of blog posts looking at the some of the problems behind the way that we access family history sources via the major commercial websites. In previous posts I’ve looked … Continue reading
Posted in Document Sources, research, Soapbox, digitisation
Tagged tna, the national archives, research, family history, documents, genealogy, death duty registers
4 Comments
Please Release Me…
…being a very brief history of the releases of the English & Welsh census returns. We need to understand right from the start that the primary purpose of the census has never been to produce a resource for the benefit … Continue reading
Posted in Local History, research, Soapbox
Tagged 1921 Census, census, documents, family history, genealogy, latter day saints, research, society of genealogists, the national archives, tna
6 Comments
You Don’t Know What You’ve Got…
I realise that I’m running the risk of sounding like a broken record here but it seems like there’s always something else to say when it comes to assessing the work of the major commercial genealogical websites. Because it’s undeniable … Continue reading
Posted in Document Sources, research, Soapbox
Tagged documents, family history, genealogy, london metropolitan archives, parish registers, research, st pancras
9 Comments
You Had One Job…
I’ll try to keep this brief. I’ve blogged a lot in the past few years about the problems with many of the databases on the major commercial genealogical websites and in particular the various county-wide English and Welsh parish register … Continue reading
Posted in Document Sources, research, Soapbox, Uncategorized
Tagged cheshire, documents, family history, Findmypast, genealogy, marriage registers, parish registers, prestbury, research
9 Comments
We Need To Talk About Ancestry
Or … How The Major Commercial Genealogical Websites Are Killing Family History Research As a full-time professional researcher, I depend heavily on the resources that I’m able to access online, particularly those databases provided by the major commercial websites. Without … Continue reading
Posted in Document Sources, research, Soapbox
Tagged ANcestry, documents, family history, genealogy, parish registers, research, tribbles
25 Comments
Birth or baptism?
A couple of weeks ago, I was searching for some baptisms on Ancestry’s London Parish Register Database, when I noticed something odd. I’d just done a basic search for anyone with the surname ROGERS and the parents’ names William and … Continue reading
Where have all the women gone?
To mark International Women’s Day I wanted to have a look at the key records that we use to research our English & Welsh family history, and to consider how those records routinely under-represent the roles played by our female … Continue reading
Posted in research, Soapbox
Tagged family history, Florence Nightingale, genealogy, International Women’s Day, research, Women's History
9 Comments
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