On the beautiful spring evening of 6^th May 2011 SoG members, staff, friends and guests attended the Anniversary Gala Dinner at the Royal Overseas League. The Society’s Patron HRH Prince Michael of Kent welcomed everyone and congratulated the Society on reaching its anniversary and, in addition, awarded the Society of Genealogists’ prestigious Prince Michael Award to Alex Graham of Wall to Wall Television.

The Prince Michael Award is made for distinguished and outstanding services to Genealogy.

It is not given lightly. Previous recipients have included The Family Record Centre, The Genealogical Society of Utah, Family Tree Magazine and Free BMD; all organizations that have joined the Society of Genealogists in broadening the appeal of genealogy.

Prince Michael said “ I am delighted to be here personally to present the award this evening to Alex Graham and his television production company Wall to Wall who make the popular BBC television series Who Do You Think You Are? Since it first appeared in 2004 the series has made a growing UK audience of some 5-6 million viewers aware that family history can be engaging and can reveal fascinating and often emotional stories. The show has in turn led a vast numbers of intrigued family historians to genealogy websites and to archives; encouraging them to go on their own genealogical adventure. Now the format has been extended to the Netherlands, Ireland and the United States. So this award is made to Alex Graham and Wall to Wall in appreciation of raising awareness of family history worldwide.”

The Society of Genealogists is the oldest genealogical organization in the country. Founded in 1911 it is the premier genealogical society and National Library and Education Centre for Family History

Prince Michael of Kent has been Patron of the Society of Genealogists since 2005, having formerly been its President from 1978.

Technorati Tags: genealogy, Society of Genealogists Centenary, Wall to Wall TV, Who Do You Think You Are?

Another slightly unusual source has been made available for family history 

I’m indebted to Michael Dunn who has sent a note to remind me that the marine news contained in Lloyd’s List for the period 1740-1837 has been indexed by the Guildhall Library, London. Michael has now scanned and made images of the  Lloyd’s List marine news notices to compliment the index and both the images and the link to the Guildhall Library’s index is available at www.1812privateers.org/Bibliography

Michael’s website www.1812privateers.org is intended to provide information on the War of 1812 and the Prisoners of War. American privateers added to the offensive capability of the United States. He draws on sources from the UK at TNA and in North America and the site is extremely interesting.

Lloyd’s List is a newspaper devoted to marine news and shipping movements; principally for the merchant shipping community but now a valuable source for anyone interested in maritime activity of the period. In particular it records the movements of ocean going vessels and marine news of casualties, ‘speakings’ and other events involving individual vessels..

This database has been compiled from copies of Lloyd’s List deposited at Guildhall Library by Lloyd’s of London as part of the Lloyd’s Marine Collection. The database is an index to the marine news section of Lloyd’s List for the period 1740 – 1837. Please note that only the news items are included; the ordinary shipping movements have not been indexed. The news items are remarkable and, as you can see from the example image below, packed with names of ships and their owners showing arrivals and sailings.

Note there are some omissions. The database excludes the years 1742, 1745, 1754, 1756, 1759 and 1778, for which Guildhall Library does not have copies of Lloyd’s List. In addition there are only the Old Style dates January 1 to March 24 for the years 1740, 1743 and 1746.

Technorati Tags: family history, genealogy, Lloyd' List, marine, Society of Genealogists

This new addition to the Society’s popular ‘Cemeteries & Burial Grounds’ walks, will take place on Friday, 7 October 2011 starting at 2pm. The walk will last approximately two hours and our group  will meet our walk leader, Alec Tritton, at Postman’s Park, behind St. Botolph Aldersgate. Book early as places are limited.

The walk MUST be pre-booked, price £10.00 (£8.00 SoG members). To book a space, visit our secure website or telephone the events department: 020 7553 3290. Do you have a question? email the events department

Technorati Tags: ancestor, burial, cemetery, family history, graveyard, parish, Society of Genealogists, walk

The Society of Genealogists has recently reprinted two of the most popular titles in its My Ancestors series. My Ancestor was a Merchant Seaman by Christopher and Michael Watts (£9.99), is recognised as an authoritative work on tracing ancestors who served as merchant seamen. Packed with information and advice on how to access merchant seaman records, this is a comprehensive guide for family historians and genealogists alike. My Ancestor was in the British Army (£10.99), by the same authors, provides similar guidance in tracing the records of British soldiers who served from around 1660 up to the Second World War. Both books are an invaluable addition to any family historian’s library and both are available now from the society’s bookshop, and online at www.sog.org.uk. As ever, members of the Society of Genealogists receive a 10% discount on our publications.

London Metropolitan Archives invited representatives of the London genealogy community to attend its first Family History Forum at the archive on 20 April 2011. This was attended by the Genealogist from the Society of Genealogists, and representatives from the Federation of Family History Societies, North West Kent FHS, London, Westminster and Middlesex FHS, East Surrey FHS, and the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain. The meeting was chaired by Deborah Jenkins (Assistant Director: Heritage).

A lot has happened in the London archive community recently with the Guildhall Library, Archives and Art Gallery having been amalgamated with the London Metropolitan Archives bringing effective control of 3 services under the Corporation of London. The recent partnership with Ancestry.co.uk to digitise records sets of genealogical, social and local significance has very much changed the nature of the service provided by the archives. The forum was called to update the family history community on issues affecting LMA.

CUTS

Sadly, though perhaps inevitably in the current climate, the first item on the agenda was a statement by David Pearson (Director: Libraries, Archives and Guildhall Art Gallery Department) about the requirement for the department to make savings of 15.9% in its budget for 2011-12. Having been consulting users via the LMA website and drop in meetings since March the department is now pretty much ready to decide how it will make these savings. Yes it will mean reduced opening hours, fewer Saturday openings and compulsory redundancies amongst the staff.

As this procedure is still in process we have no news yet of how much expertise or resource will be lost from the archive and this must clearly be unsettling for staff. The new online catalogue has meant a 30% increase in the number of document ordered and delivered at the archive (some76,000 over the year with nearly 90% of them delivered within 20 minutes). There were 29,000 visitors – all be it 6% drop on the previous year. It will be interesting to see how after the cuts LMA can continue to provide services to such numbers or continue to receive the high satisfaction feed back it currently receives via user surveys or its leading 4* position under TNA’s archive assessment scheme.

Essentially LMA will close on Fridays and will be open only one Saturday a month. This will take place from November after the stock taking week, having given a suitable period for notice etc for staff. To compensate in some way for this LMA will be introducing longer opening hours on Wednesdays making late night opening to 7.30pm on Tuesday -Thursdays. A significant number of people had asked LMA not to close on the same day as other major repositories. (Both TNA and SoG are closed on Mondays) making it possible to do some research at least in London on this day. The number of researchers on Saturdays has been falling dramatically and it will be reviewed in a year whether to continue to open on Saturday. So this means if you want LMA to remain open on Saturdays it’s a case of use it or lose it.

DIGITISATION

Charlotte Shaw (Head of Collections and Systems) provided an overview on the last two years partnership with Ancestry.co.uk to digitise and make available significant LMA collections. Phase one of the project is progressing steadily with C of E parish registers, Board of Guardian Records, School and Nonconformist registers having come on stream. In the next few months the diocesan wills formerly held in LMA and Guildhall will be online and indexed with electoral registers up to 1965 and City of London Freedom records to follow.

Stage two of the project is seeing negotiations with the various city livery companies to allow the deposited records from the Guildhall to be digitised and made available. This will not include those livery company records retained by the companies themselves. 2012 will see the inclusion of the City & Tower Hamlets Cemetery records and some Session Records.

Questions were raised about omissions in the digitised records and misattributions. It was made clear that some older films NOT created by LMA itself were OMMITTED from the Ancestry project as they were not of suitable quality. Also films were digitised only when LMA had copies of the original records and permission from the authorities for their use. LMA seemed unaware of the problems of the mis-attribution of some of the sources supposedly included by Ancestry.co.uk. The SoG Genealogist promised to provide a link to some comments on this information.

Miriam Silverman (Ancestry: UK Content Manager) followed up with more information about the future projects. Ancestry’s scanners continue to process records at LMA. They are currently working on the Guildhall and LMA Collections of Poll Books and the Overseas Returns. The London wills number nearer 400,000 which a much larger number than had initially been thought to exist. A broader spectrum of records will include parish confirmations, Middlesex transported convict records, Surrey Marriage Bonds and Allegations, London Land Tax and London Poll books though they will also be including the Guildhall’s copies of poll books for places outside London. It is hoped that most of the records will be indexed with a pilot of the early poor law records under way through Ancestry’s World Archives Projects that allows volunteers at home to index images of the records made available to the community.

There was discussion about the updating and improvements made to any mistakes or omissions in the indexing or transcription of records. Work is being done to identify and amend any problems across collections in addition to using the correction and amendment procedures already made available to users of the Ancestry site. Essentially any one who has discovered errors and problems should let LMA and Ancestry know about it.

NEW ACCESSIONS

Nicola Avery (Principal Archivist, Archives Systems) provided a list of some of the new accessions recently acquired by LMA. Some of which were made available to view in the conservation room after the meeting. These include records for several churches and religious institutions, a copy of a missing interment register for Darenth Assylum and an accumulated register of the City of London School 19000-1920. LMA is currently negotiating the deposit of the registers of All Hallows Barking by the Tower – one of the last 2 city parishes to deposit its records.

PUBLIC ROOMS

In addition to some of the statistics mentioned above Tim Harris (Head of Access and Buildings) reported on issues relating to the physical care of the building. One significant point to note is that a service lift is to be refurbished between November and December which will affect the production of records. If anything it might be better to avoid making a visit in this period and certainly give lots of notice using the advanced ordering facility on the online catalogue. One interesting point to note from the results of the user survey is that for the first time the percentage of users reporting their interest as genealogical was down to 60% with 40% saying they had other reasons for using the record office.

The next meeting of the LMA User forum will be in September. In the meantime anyone interested in receiving information about new and events from LMA can sign up for the electronic newsletter