Find Wills of British Soldiers Who Died on Active Duty

The Probate Service for England and Wales have launched a new index to wills of soldiers who died while serving in the British armed forces between 1850 and 1986.

You need to enter at least a surname and year of death but you can add additional data in the advanced search. It's a pity that it doesn't allow a range of years to be entered but you can page backwards or forwards to see other years.

Note however that if the soldier for whom you're searching didn't leave a will or wasn't serving at the time, you won't find them.

However, I think I've found  a problem either with the search mechanism or in the index of soldiers in their database.

A search for Munro 1944 yields

Surname     First name     Regimental number     Date of death
MUNRO     LEONARD CYRIL     14241771     10 June 1944

A search for Munns 1944 yields

No results with the surname MUNNS and the year of death 1944

I think this is a mistake.

My info is that Leonard Cyril Munns died 10 June 1944 in France.

The details for Leonard Cyril Munns are on the Royal Leicestershire Regiment Online Archive but I also checked on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website.

I've queried this anomaly with the Probate Service for England and Wales.

Search the wills of British soldiers index.
There seems to be a problem with this link and for the moment you'll need to click on the Soldier's Wills tab.

Once you've found the person you want you can download the grant and or will for £10 per person.

Search for English and Welsh Wills After 1995

The Probate Service for England and Wales have launched a new index to wills of people who died in England or Wales after 1995.

The website currently says "Search for the will or probate of any person in the UK who died in or after 1996" but I've been in contact with Stuart Marshall to point out that it should say England and Wales (instead of UK) and he says he will get this amended.



I imagine the person creating the website saw the referendum poll results and assumed that there would be such a victory by the 'Yes' campaign that Scotland would be independent after 18 September.

Search the England and Wales Will index.

Once you've found the person you want you can download the grant and or will for £10 per person.

1911 England & Wales Census Search - Free till 18th November

I've just discovered that it's also free to search the 1911 England & Wales Census through Genes Reunited.

1911 England & Wales Census Search - Free till 18th November

I just remembered to use Find My Past's free England & Wales Census Search today.

I haven't made much progress, except in finding details about Marchantons that I hadn't known before.

In the census entry for Mary Marchanton (born 1853),  wife of James, for 'Condition /Yrs married', it says Am.

I'm wondering what the "Am" could mean.

Any ideas, please ?

Trade and Street Directories

About a year ago, I blogged about street directories produced both by the Post Office and their availability online at the National Library of Scotland and as maps at AddressingHistory. 

Trade and street directories are useful in confirming information found in the census or as an alternative to valuation rolls.

My recommendation in our Kith and Kin columns in the Border Telegraph and Peeblesshire News newspapers was a collection of freely downloadable Scottish directories , however there’s an easier source on the National Library’s page of Post Office directories, (for Borders localities, choose Scotland).

I’ve now discovered another useful website that contains local and trade directories for England and Wales between 1750 to 1919. You can search by decade (1850s to 1910s), by location or by keywords (a combination of location, decade, and other details) and the directories are free to read and print, however you can print only one page at a time.

Petition to Release Historic English and Welsh Birth, Marriage, and Death Certificates for Viewing Online

Most of us in the UK have family members or ancestors who were born, got married, or died in England or Wales.

Unlike Scottish certificates, which can be viewed online at Scotland's People, only the indexes to English and Welsh births, marriages, and deaths can be viewed online.

To view the details of births, marriages and deaths registered in England and Wales since 1837, one is forced to buy certified copies of the entries from the General Register Office at £9.25 each. There's no reason why at least the older certificates could not be transferred to The National Archives, scanned and made available for viewing online on payment of a modest fee.

We don't need expensive legally certified copies; especially as we may need to see the details of many to help us decide which is the correct one.

If you're a UK citizen and / or a UK resident, there's an e-petition to Release historic Birth, Marriage, and Death certificates for viewing online - please have a look and if you agree, sign the petition.
It needs at least 100,000 signatures to be eligible for debate in the House of Commons.

There's a long way to go, at the time of writing there were only 222 signatures.

Welsh Ancestry

Surprisingly to some, there was a lot of movement between Wales and Scotland in past three centuries, so you may well have family members who lived in Wales.

People moved from Scotland especially to work in coal mines and slate quarries, to work as labourers and farm servants on estates, as well as in more traditional industries.

Similarly, people moved to Scotland to work in coal mines, to work as labourers and farm servants on estates, on the hydro-electric scheme construction, as well as in factories.

Of course, there was a lot of migration to and from England and Ireland, and to North America, too.

So you might be interested in television channel S4C's new family history programme, Perthyn, Welsh for 'belonging'.

The first programme is to be broadcast on Wednesday, 4th May at 9pm. This programme is about Geraint Morgan from Penllergaer near Swansea and his search for the reason why his great uncle, Llewelyn Davies, left the village of Myddfai in 1908 aged 17 for a new life in America.

Look at the the S4C Perthyn website for tips and useful links.


(Thanks to Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter).

findmypast.co.uk Announces Fully Indexed Birth Records for England and Wales

In today's newsletter from findmypast.co.uk, they announced that we can now search fully indexed birth records for 1837 to 2006 on findmypast.co.uk.

This is a great improvement in looking through all those index pages and brings births from England and Wales nearly up to the Scottish standard.

You can search the complete set of birth records in one go or by one or more counties at a time.

I found that searching for a common name sometimes resulted in the website failing to respond so perhaps they're having teething problems or they're just overloaded.

You can choose whether you want to search for variants of first names and surnames, search for a range of years, by mother's maiden name.

There are a few oddities.
I searched for a double barrelled surname Zentler-Gordon with first name Robert (no variants) born between 1940 and 1950, which produced 86 results  including lots with the surname of Gordon by itself. Searching for Zentler with first name Robert (no variants) born between 1940 and 1950 produced just 1 result of Robert Zentler-Gordon.

I searched for first name Voltaire surname Lowe (no variants on either), which produced 399 results but all 8 pages listed un-named male and female Lowes.
I changed the surname on this search to Praseodymium-Lowe, and got the same 399 results which seems to indicate that the first part is being ignored.
As I expected there are no people with the surname Praseodymium.

They're in the process of fully indexing the marriage and death records too, and expect to complete that by the end of the year.

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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.

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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.