Church of Ireland Gazette Archive 1856 - 1923

The Protestant Church of Ireland’s newspaper, the Church of Ireland Gazette started life as a monthly magazine, named The Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette, became a weekly in 1880 and changed its name to The Church of Ireland Gazette in 1900 and is still in publication. 

The Church of Ireland's record repository, the Representative Church Body Library has the only complete hard-copy run of this newspaper and has digitised all editions for the 70-year period between 1856 and the end of 1923 and it’s available in their archive.

You don’t need to have Church of Ireland ancestors or even Irish ancestors to find the Gazette useful as the paper carried pieces about major national and international issues as well as appointments, retirements and general articles.

Search the archive.

New Publication - Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland

Oxford University Press have published the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, the culmination of a recent research project (Family Names of the United Kingdom) into 45,600 surnames in Britain and Ireland.

The team researched records from sources dating from the 11th to the 19th century to identify new and sometimes detailed explanations for surnames, even those held by as few as 100 people.

The 4 volume set is published at £400 but some public libraries may get it as part of their online Oxford University Press Reference subscription.

Until the end of November, you can use it online for free, using

Username: fanbi

Password: onlineaccess

Search the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names.


The Arts and Humanities Research Council have awarded the team a grant to continue the project so that another 15,000 surnames with as few as 20 current bearers can be researched.

Hawick’s German Prisoners - Stobs Internment Camp in Global Context, 1914-1919

During World War I, Stobs military training ground near Hawick was used as a mass internment camp for 4,500 prisoners; German civilian ‘enemy aliens’ who had settled in Britain before 1914 and were considered potential spies, civilian passengers and sailors from captured enemy ships, and military prisoners-of-war captured in Europe or at sea.

Although the majority of internees were German, there were some Austrians and some Turks.

There’s a free conference next summer about the Stobs camp, an opportunity to hear experts who have researched Stobs as well as camps in England, the Isle of Man, Ireland and others around the world, to see camp artefacts and perhaps to identify them, and visit the site with the Council’s archaeology officer, Dr Christopher Bowles.

If you have family members that worked at Stobs, or you’re descended from someone who was interned in one of the camps, I think you’ll find this conference especially interesting. Dr Bowles would also like to hear from anyone that has memorabilia relating to the camp.

Provisional programme.

The conference is on 18th and 19th June 2016 at Hawick. If you would like to attend, I suggest you register now at archives@scotborders.gov.uk

Finding Your Irish Roots

There’s a new charitable organisation, Ireland Reaching Out, set up by the Irish government to boost tourism (or as they say to welcome home the Irish diaspora to their ancestral parishes) by encouraging people of Irish extraction to find out about their roots. 

One of their main aims is to identify people who left Ireland, and trace them and their descendants worldwide and their other main aim is to help people researching their Irish ancestry to find an elusive gravestone, the location of their ancestor’s dwelling, make contact with living relatives or discover more about a community. 

They’ve recruited an army of volunteers covering over 500 Irish parishes and they’re offering their services free but they offer the opportunity to make a donation too.  It’s organised at the parish level so you need to know which parish an ancestor came from, and then you can register and add details about the ancestor that you want to research. There are links to family history societies, archives, and other resources. 

Whatever the origin of your roots, find out more from the exhibitors at our family and local history fair on 11th May 2013 in Galashiels, Scotland. 

Updated Name Search at Public Record Office of Northern Ireland

On 11th March a major new update to the Name Search facility was launched on the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) website. Eight further pre-1858 will indexes have been added, containing around 53,000 new entries and the index to coroners’ inquests has been extended by ten years to 1920.

These entries are in addition to the pre-1858 administration bond indexes, fragments of the 1740 and 1766 religious census returns and 1775 dissenters petitions already available on Name Search. The application now provides a searchable index to thousands of records as early as 1608. The new indexes cover the dioceses of Armagh, Clogher, Connor, Down and Kilmore. Given the loss of census records for Ireland prior to 1901, these records will be of great interest to genealogists tracing their family tree as far back as the 17th century.

Although most pre-1858 wills do not survive, the indexes provide information of use to genealogists, such as the names of the deceased, their address, the date of the grant of probate or administration and occasionally their occupation.

The site can be accessed via PRONI’s main website at www.proni.gov.uk.

300 Million New Names Online

Family Search have announced that over 300 million new names have been added, creating or updating more than 150 new collections of records.

Can that be right ? It seems unbelievably large. Even 300,000 would be a lot.

The records can be found at FamilySearch’s Record Search pilot.

Whatever it is, it's good news for all of us.

The collections updated include

• Australia Deaths and Burials, 1816—1980
• Canada Births and Baptisms, 1661—1959
• Canada Deaths and Burials, 1664—1955
• Canada Marriages, 1661—1949
• British Columbia Death Registrations, 1872—1986
• British Columbia Marriage Registrations, 1859—1932
• New Brunswick Births, 1819—1899
• Nova Scotia Births, 1702—1896
• Nova Scotia Marriages, 1711—1909
• Ontario Births, 1779—1899
• Ontario Marriages, 1800—1910
• Quebec  Births, 1662—1898
• Gibraltar Marriages, 1879—1918
• Gibraltar Births and Baptisms, 1704—1876
• Great Britain Deaths and Burials, 1778—1988
• Great Britain Marriages, 1797—1988
• Channel Islands Births and Baptisms, 1820—1907
• Isle of Man Births and Baptisms, 1821—1911
• Isle of Man Deaths and Burials, 1844—1911
• Isle of Man Marriages, 1849—1911
• Wales, Births and Baptisms, 1586—1907
• Wales, Deaths and Burials, 1586—1885
• Wales, Marriages, 1541—1900
• Ireland Deaths, 1864—1870
• India Births and Baptisms, 1800—1945
• India Deaths and Burials, 1800—1945
• India Marriages, 1800—1945

as well as lots of records from south and central America, the Caribbean, Europe, Russia, and the USA.

Happy searching !

If you want to volunteer to help Family Search, you can do that at FamilySearchIndexing.org. If you would rather help closer to home, please go to our Contacts page and send us a message, choosing the contact type Offers of Help.

To comment on this article, please click the 'comments' link below. 

Book Review - Tracing Your Criminal Ancestors - A Guide for Family Historians

Tracing Your Criminal Ancestors - A Guide for Family Historians
by Stephen Wade
176 pp. Glossy card covers. Illustrations. ISBN 978 1 84884 057 7 : Pen & Sword Books : £12.99
Available from Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 47 Church St, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, England, S20 2AS

If you had criminal ancestors in England, Wales, or Ireland, or people that were involved in court cases (as witnesses or victims) and want to find more about them, then this is the book for you.

The conditions in which they lived, crimes they committed, and the criminal justice system are all described in this very readable book, and there are a number of interesting illustrations.

The author begins with a look at the sources, different types of document, the different courts, with suggestions of the research process that should be followed.
Subsequent chapters deal in detail with the different types of offences: homicide, other crimes against the person, social protest, theft and robbery, rural crime, fraud and deception, sexual offences, and treason.

Each chapter describes the offences in detail, gives examples of punishments, suggests where you should look for records and sometimes provides references to records. As well as this research process there is a detailed review of one or more cases in the Case Studies section at the end of each chapter. Some of the cases are rather gruesome.

Chapter 9 deals with the destinations of the convicted criminal; prisons, asylums, hulks and transportation.

The last chapter is a survey of the relevant sources; however there is also a bibliography, a list of websites, a short glossary, and an index.

Very oddly, the author almost totally ignores Scotland, and does not make it clear whether his text includes conditions, offences, courts, processes, or records in Scotland. Apart from a few references to Glasgow, it's only on page 156 that he mentions the Scottish Legal System, and that it has different terms, functions, and processes to that of England.

This seems a strange omission in an otherwise comprehensive and easy to read book.

The only other gripe I have is that there are a number of typos in the text, as if it hadn't been properly proof-read.

All in all, if your ancestors were criminals, debtors, or drunks, or otherwise involved in a court case in England or Wales, then I strongly recommend this book.

To comment on this article, please click the 'comments' link below.