Thursday, January 12, 2017

Free Access to LostCousins This Weekend (14 to 16 January)

Side-by-side with FindMyPast's free access to census and birth, marriage and death records, LostCousins is offering free access this weekend, though it seems their weekend ends on Monday !

Free Access to FindMyPast's Census and Birth, Marriage and Death Records

Brrr, it's cold out there.

Until the end of this Sunday, there's free access to FindMyPast's census and birth, marriage and death records, though I've found I can also see pre-1837 English parish records.

Also, it's not just UK records but also records from Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and USA.

Start your free family history journey.

If you miss this free offer, come to our archive and search room at 52 Overhaugh St, Galashiels, TD1 1DP, Scotland.

Friday, January 6, 2017

Welcome to 2017 – the Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology




At Borders FHS, we are looking forward to 2017 - to help with your family history, to build up your family tree and add to the Births, Marriages, Deaths & Census information you already have.

The Monumental Inscriptions team are busy photographing and recording throughout the Borders.  Final checks of the transcriptions are being done at Chirnside while several other burial places have been photographed and transcribed and the MI’s available for use in our Research Room will be increasing throughout the year.

Indexing of both the Poor Law and the Police & Criminal records continue using the digitised images of the records held by the Scottish Borders Archive.

We have over 15,000 individual arrest records already and have completed the indexing of the recruitment records for Policemen in the Borders Counties.  Our home-based volunteers are working away on Roxburghshire, Hawick and Berwickshire arrest records and these are providing fascinating insights into local and social history such as the building of the Borders railway in the 1860’s, the movement of seasonal workers from Ireland and the regiments stationed at Stobs Camp before WWI.

Research for the Stobs Project, looking at the camp during the years of WWI, is both interesting and challenging.  Our Stobs research team are researching both the POW’s and the soldiers stationed there.  Find more news about the project at http://www.stobscamp.org/

Over the last year, our library has been improved by many donations of books - biographies, family histories, local & social histories.

And we are looking forward to a bigger, brighter research room.  We will be opening on Tues 10th Jan after our New Year break and will be open on Tuesdays and Thursdays until the end of February.  In March, we will be open on Fridays again.  Please come along and meet our research team

And we have some fascinating talks lined up – all of the talks are in the Corn Exchange in Melrose and start at 2.30pm
Feb 26 – From Abbey St Bathans to Otago – the story of a forgotten Borderer
Mar 26 - Transcribing ScotlandsPlaces
Apr 30 - Farm Servants of South-East Scotland, 1750-1914
May 28 - The Deid’s Letterwills and Legacies - Lifting the Veil on Past Lives

Look out for news about the 2017 Borders Heritage Festival (They’re on facebook and Twitter @BHeritageFest and are planning their own website as well).  Over the last few years, the festival has spread over the whole of the Borders and this year will have much more to see and do.   And you can follow us on facebook and twitter too.