dons-top3englishwebsites.html

DON'S TOP 30 ENGLISH GENEALOGY WEBSITES

ŠCopyright 2008 by Donald R. Snow
Click on paragraph title to jump to that section of the Class Notes

Welcome and What This Class Is All About
Instructions and Helps
Portals, Gateways, or Collections of Links
Repositories and Searches
Databases
Maps, Gazetteers, and Directories
Conclusion
Assignment

This page was last updated 2008-10-01.
Return to the London Family History Centre Home Page or the Events Page or the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page or Don's Class Listings Page .

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION TO CLASS

Instructors are Elder and Sister Donald R. and Diane M. Snow of the England London Mission, London Family History Centre ( snowd@math.byu.edu , dms34@juno.com )
These notes with active Internet links are posted on the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group website http://uvtagg.org under Class Outlines , Don's Listings , and are linked on the London Family History Centre website http://www.hydeparkfhc.org under Events . Many other class notes for family history are linked on both sites also.
This class will discuss and show the links (URL's) to 30 websites that are very helpful for English family history research.
This list is divided into categories with a few websites listed in two or more categories; many others could also have been so listed
Narrowing down the list of websites to 30 is like having to live within a budge and there are lots of others that I would like to have included.
A dollar sign $ means that the site is commercial and requires payment to use it fully, but frequently the index is free and some FHC's have access to these commercial sites free.

INSTRUCTIONS AND HELPS

http://wiki.familysearch.org -- Contains many helps and instructions, including all the Family History Library updated research outlines, guides, and helps
http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Library/Education/frameset_education.asp -- FamilySearch's helps, research publications, research guides, and research guidance
http://www.rootsweb.com/~rwguide/lesson28.htm - RootsWeb's Guide to Tracing English Family Trees
http://www.ancestorsmagazine.co.uk/ -- Ancestors Magazine and search engine, The National Archives (UK)

PORTALS, GATEWAYS, OR COLLECTIONS OF LINKS

http://www.genuki.org.uk -- Genealogy of the UK and Ireland; portal to many good websites and databases
http://www.pricegen.com/resources.htm -- Links to more than 500 UK websites
http://wiki.familysearch.org -- Portal to genealogy links organized by country
http://www.fhlfavorites.info -- Links organized by location - click on map or else click on location, e.g. British, at top
http://www.spub.co.uk/tgi2/links.html -- The Genealogist's Internet
http://cyndislist.com/ -- Collection of 260,000 genealogy links worldwide
http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/index.html -- Medieval English Genealogy including Heraldic Visitations
http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html -- Links to my sets of notes including several sets about British and Irish FH

REPOSITORIES AND SEARCHES

http://www.google.co.uk/ -- Very useful for searching for names, locations, maps, databases
http://www.londonfhc.org ( previous URL was http://www.hydeparkfhc.org ) -- Complete catalogue online, very good under-used repository and library in London
http://www.a2a.org.uk/ -- Access To Archives - union catalogue of British archives; searchable across all archives
$ http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/ -- The National Archives of the UK - DocumentsOnline

DATABASES

http://www.familysearch.org -- Contains several databases including IGI, some censuses, and the FHLC
http://www.freebmd.org.uk -- Volunteer effort to index Civil Registration of births, marriages, and deaths
http://ukbmd.org.uk/ -- UK BMD, links to many county Civil Registration databases
http://www.genuki.org.uk/ -- Databases and links to many others regarding genealogy in the UK and Ireland
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers.htm -- Hugh Wallis' IGI Batch number website, includes UK and Ireland
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/ -- British History Online - medieval and modern history, many databases, documents, and maps
http://rootsweb.com/ -- Many databases, family trees, FH lists, websites, message boards
http://members.aol.com/rprost/passenger.html -- Online passenger lists to and from the UK and elsewhere
$ http://www.ancestry.co.uk/ -- Censuses, BMD, immigration/emigration, many databases
$ http://www.findmypast.com/welcome.jsp -- Censuses, BMD, National Burials Index, passenger lists leaving the UK, military records, records of British India
$ http://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/user/subscriptions.php -- The Genealogist - Censuses, BMD, and other items
$ http://www.originsnetwork.com/ -- Origins Network for British, Irish, and Scotch records; many databases; free index

MAPS, GAZETTEERS, AND DIRECTORIES

http://www.multimap.com/ -- Good UK maps with aerial maps and overlays to see names of towns and streets
http://maps.google.co.uk -- Good way to find parishes and other locations
http://leisure.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ -- Ordnance Survey maps of the UK
http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/index.jsp -- A Vision of Britain Through Time - information and historical maps
http://www.gazetteer.co.uk/ -- Gazetteer and maps of the UK
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/source.aspx?pubid=445 -- Samuel Lewis' Topographical Dictionary (Gazetteer) of England of 1848 (4 vols)
http://www.nationaltrustnames.org.uk/ -- National Trust Name Distributions in the UK
http://www.historicaldirectories.org/ -- Historical Directories site for many UK directories

CONCLUSION

There are many more good websites for English family history research and the section of portals above will lead you to many.
Can also find many by Google searches for terms you are interesting in

ASSIGNMENT

Click on some of these links and see what kinds of things are there.
Find the distribution of a surname of one of your ancestors in the UK from the website shown under Maps and Gazetteers. Which counties is it most common in? Which ethnicity?
Go to http://wiki.familysearch.org and find something of interest to you for English research.
Try a Google search for terms like 'London marriage indexes' and see what you find.

Return to the London Family History Centre Home Page or the Events Page or the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page or Don's Class Listings Page.