New Records Available To Search This Findmypast Friday

There are over 186,000 million new records available to search this Findmypast Friday, including:

Scotland, People of Banffshire & Moray 1150-1857

Over 23,000 additional records have been added to the collection. The names in this collection have been discovered across a number of sources. Each record will tell you the original source and a description of the text.

Banffshire is a county in the north-east part of Scotland. It is bounded on the north by the Moray Firth, on the east and south-east by Aberdeenshire, and on the west by the counties of Moray and Inverness. After the Reformation, the area remained largely Roman Catholic and suffered greatly in the ongoing struggles and during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the county was a stronghold for Royalists.

Scotland, Burgess & Guild Brethren Index

Did your Scottish ancestors become masters of their trade? Uncover details of their lives with over 64,000 records spanning nearly 650 years of occupational records. Each transcript will reveal a combination of their occupation or trade, dates, locations and notable life events.

Medieval and early Scottish burghs were controlled by a minority of residents known as burgesses. The burgesses were merchants and craftsmen of the burgh, they had the right to elect the Town Council, and the merchants were more influential. The other residents of the burgh were ‘unfree’ and had no vote of special privileges from living in a town. Affluent householders such as chamberlains and lawyers were often ‘unfreemen’, although many were awarded the status of burgess ‘gratis’, this conferred citizenship but little else. Widows who were respectable, may also be awarded this citizenship. Becoming a burgess was viewed as the key to social position, it was evidence of economic success within the community.

British India Office Deaths & Burials

Over 12,000 additional records have been added to our collection of India Office Deaths & Burials. Discover details about the deaths of your ancestors who died in the UK, British India, Burma and other territories connected to the India office (St Helena, Sumatra, Kuwait, Aden, Penang, Macao). Discover where, when and in some cases how they died as well as where they were buried.

The records are made up of British India Office ecclesiastical returns, British India Office deaths of staff in uncovenanted (lower grade, no contract) state and, British India Office All Presidency burials. The ecclesiastical returns relate almost entirely to European and Eurasian Christians; few local converts are included. It is thought that roughly seventy five per cent of the information recorded in India was transmitted to London. The Ecclesiastical returns include people from all walks of life: civil servants, army and navy personnel, medical officers, scientists, business people, traders, travellers, missionaries.

1939 Register Update

Over 37,000 additional ‘open’ records have been added to the 1939 Register. Since the Register was launched, Findmypast has matched nearly five million ‘closed records’ to multiple data sources to correctly confirm the date and location of death for individuals recorded.

Each new record contains a transcript and an image of the original entry in the 1939 Register. Like a census, the Register can tell you a lot about how your ancestors actually lived. You can find out if your ancestors had servants or staff, who their neighbours were, how many children they had and what they all did for a living.

International Records Update – Bahamas

Discover your Bahamian ancestors in this online index of registered births from the British Crown Colony of The Bahamas, from 1850-1891. Birth records are essential to expanding your family tree. There are tens of thousands of records in this collection, giving information not only about relatives born in the Bahamas but also their parents.

British & Irish Newspaper Update

This week we have added 87,226 new pages to our collection We are delighted to welcome four new titles to our ever-growing collection, including an extensive run of Worcestershire publication the Evesham Standard & West Midland Observer, two Northern Ireland titles (the Protestant Watchman & Lurgan Gazette and the Ulster Examiner & Northern Star), as well as pages from West Sussex publication the Crawley News.

This week also sees updates to nine of our existing titles covering various English counties, including five London publications. We have also updated the Crewe Guardian and the Reading Evening Post.