Knowledge base

Occupations and Directories

Miscellaneous

• Introduction
• Searching for adoptions
• Deed poll
• Finding orphanage records - orphans
• Background information about relatives, environment, schools, housing, maps, etc.
• Poor law and workhouses
• Prison
• Inquests
• Huguenots
• House history

Introduction

The adoption indexes are held by the GRO.

Adoption registers are indexed by the surname of the adopting parents. There is no cross-reference to the birth surname (although of course on occasion it may be the same - where, for instance, adoption takes place within the same family).This means that it is necessary to know the adoptedsurname if a meaningful search is to be made of the indexes.

Searching for adoptions

Please note that only the adoptee is allowed to apply to see their original birth records and to go on the Adoption Contact Register. Unfortunately for family historians, this might mean that you will not be able to trace your genetic line, if you discover that a parent or grandparent was adopted.

If you were adopted through a court in England or Wales, you are entitled to find out information relating to your birth and, if it still exists, have access to your adoption file. For more information see the General Register Office (GRO) adoption pages

If you were adopted before 12 November 1975, you must attend a disclosure interview with an approved adoptions worker (in Scotland this is not a requirement).

On your original birth certificate you should find out exactly when and where you were born, the name you were given at birth, your mother's name, your father's name (if it was given) and the name and possibly relationship to you of the person who registered your birth. For more information about adoption in England & Wales you can contact the GRO or visit the GRO's site.

Deed poll

Officially registered deed polls in England & Wales may be found by searching online at London Gazette. These tend to be indexed in natural name order (forename then surname) under both the new and the old names. See:

http://www.gazettes-online.co.uk/

You can also try TNA’s website for court-registered changes of name by deed poll. See:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/familyhistory/name/default.htm   

However, only 5% to 10% of name changes are thought to be among these records.

Foundling registration
Foundlings are indexed without surname as "Unknown" after Z in the A-Z sequence for each quarter. See the attached jpg of image from 1837online (I assume that the customer needs to search for the three letters ZZZ to get to the right page) and also a paragraph of info from GRO.

Finding orphanage records - orphans

Not all orphanage records will have survived, and not all of those which have survived will be accessible to the public.

We would recommend four courses of action:

• Try searching on Access To Archives
• Try the relevant County Record Office (or London Metropolitan Archives if for London)
• Try TNA online catalogue and search using the terms “orphanage” in the field Word or Phrase and“ED” in the field Department or Series Code
• Try Barnardo’s

Dr. Barnardo children/Barnardo’s children – Canada records

The following links may be of use to customers enquiring about children given into the care of Dr Bernardo.
 
http://www.collectionscanada.ca/archivianet/020110_e.html - Canadian Home Children database.

http://www.barnardos.org.uk/what_we_do/work_with_former_barnardos_children.htm - Barnardo’s “after care” department where the records are kept.

Background information about relatives, environment, schools, housing, maps, etc.

One website which might be of some interest is http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/index.jsp.

Also, for old maps, you could try http://www.old-maps.co.uk (digital) and http://www.alangodfreymaps.co.uk (paper copies).

The London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) could be of use if your family were based in Greater London: www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/lma

Otherwise, it would be best to contact your local County Record Office.

Poor law and workhouses

The website www.workhouses.org.uk is an excellent resource for researching workhouses.

The Poor Law was a bureaucratic system, and created a large paper trail. Records of admissions and discharges exist, and are often available to search at the local Register Office of the relevant county. Local newspapers can also provide clues.

Prison

The series of criminal registers HO27, is held at The National Archives in Kew. These records are arranged by county and year and are not name-indexed, so research is necessarily labour-intensive. The objective of this research would be to establish the date and place of conviction and the sentence. In turn, this might lead you to either court records or to local newspaper reports.

Another archive which might hold interesting material is the London Metropolitan Archive (LMA). Good online catalogues are available at A2A and Familia. Local newspapers can be found at the British Library"s Newspaper Reading Rooms in Colindale.

The Calendar of Prisoners, held at The National Archives, will provide information on the date and nature of the offence, and where the trial was heard. As the Calendar is arranged by county, you can establish quite quickly where to then look for the trial records. If they were tried at the Assizes, then indictments, gaol books and even depositions can also be found at The National Archives; quarter session records are usually held locally.

Inquests

Records of coroners inquests are usually held at the relevant County Record Office, so in this case the best archives are likely to be the Corporation of London Record Office or the London Metropolitan Archives. However, by the 20th century many records no longer survive so you would indeed have to rely upon newspaper records. Given that this was London, there are going to be a large number of newspapers to choose from, so you might want to start by contacting the British Newspaper Library, Colindale.

Huguenots

There are a number of sources for Huguenot ancestry. The Huguenot Library is the best place to start your research, though you can always see if there was a local French Protestant church established in the area where they may have worshipped or registered baptisms and marriages. The best way to check would be to contact the Huguenot Society Library, University College, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT.

House history

By Nick Barratt

Most people who research their family history naturally gravitate towards the main sources that provide information on relationships - birth, marriage and death certificates, or census returns. However, these documents also contain additional data that tells you how and where your ancestors lived, helping you to understand more about their lifestyles. For instance, by investigating the history of the house they lived in, you can start to imagine the ways they might have contributed to the daily routines in their community, as well as compiling a list of possible friends and neighbours in order to build up a picture of the type of people who lived in similar houses in the street.

The movement from family to local history is an important part of your work, although you should already be looking to use a wide range of additional sources at the relevant local studies centre or county record office, to put flesh on the bones of your family tree. House history is simply a logical extension of your work.

The easiest way to identify an ancestral property is via an address on a certificate or census return. This can then form the basis of a search for other records specific to properties, such as maps, title deeds, manorial and estate archives and local tax returns. However, it is important to remember that in areas that were affected less by the Industrial Revolution, a home often doubled up as a place of trade or manufacture, so check for commercial records as well. In these instances, it is possible that your ancestors stayed in the same house for many generations, which means you can use the property itself as the means of tracing your family further back in time.

Property descent through a family can sometimes be hard to trace. However, you can look in wills and probate documents to see if a property is specifically mentioned in a bequest. Likewise, certain types of property could only be passed according to the rules and regulations of the local manorial court. These were known as copyhold properties and were held by the lord of the manor according to custom. The property could therefore only be transferred from one tenant to the next in the manorial court, and the new holder would receive a "copy" of the court roll compiled during this process. Court rolls are a fantastic source for house historians, as they can provide a trail of previous tenants that stretches back centuries - some of these are likely to be your ancestors. These can then be compared to other local sources such as parish registers.

If you are lucky, one of your ancestral houses will still be standing - providing you with a physical link to the past. This can be an evocative way of gaining a proximity to your forebears that documents alone cannot provide, as you can retrace their daily movements along the street or in the house.

Many houses from the nineteenth century are no longer standing, as terraced houses erected during the Industrial Revolution to provide cheap accommodation for workers, have long since been demolished - a process of clearance that the Blitz completed during the Second World War in many cities. In these instances you should arm yourself with a range of historic maps to try to locate the site on which the house once stood. These can then be linked to the decennial census returns to show how your family moved around within a community or local area.

Research is not simply restricted to locating a property; you can also gain an idea of how your family would have furnished their houses to turn them into homes. Strange alcoves or multi-level floors can be explained by the absence of long-removed machinery or lapsed domestic functions, such as butter making or hand washing. These days it is possible to get an idea of period furnishings through websites such as www.periodproperty.co.uk. The National Archives also has designs and representations of Victorian domestic appliances and wallpaper. Other sites, such as www.house-detectives.co.uk, introduce you to the main document sources and show you how to get started on the history of a house.

The next time you look at a census return for information on your family, think what the document is also telling you about the house, street and community in which they lived, and take some time to investigate further. You will be amazed at how much you can uncover, and how it will enrich your knowledge of your family"s past.