British Cemetery and Cremation Records from Deceased Online

Thank you to all who entered our latest book competitio n to win a copy of  Tracing Your Ancestors Using the Census   by Emma Jolly (Pen & Sword, 2020) .  Congratulations to the winner - Frances Owen! The answers to the census book competition are:   (i) The census index for which year was the first to appear online?  1881   (ii) In 1942, the census returns of which year were destroyed? 1931 To keep up to date with news of future releases please do like and follow our pages on  Facebook  and  Twitter !

2015 should prove an exciting year for family historians and anyone researching burial and cremation records. Edinburgh's Hogmanay Midnight Fireworks (Credit Lloyd Smith) Today, villages, towns and cities across Scotland are gearing up for magnificent Hogmanay celebrations. While the glorious firework displays seen over Edinburgh at New Year are a fairly recent phenomenon, the tradition of welcoming January with bonfires and torchlit processions dates back centuries. Although the word "Hogmanay" only appeared in writing as late as 1604. My Scottish Jolly ancestors lived in the old county of Kincardineshire on the north east coast - just south of the coastal enclave of Stonehaven . From at least 1908 , the people of Stonehaven have celebrated New Year in a 20-30 minute fireball ceremony, intended to ward off evil spirits from the old year in preparation for the next. The ceremony involves a group of local people swinging cages of giant flaming ragballs around thei...

Thank you to all who entered our latest book competition to win a copy of My Ancestor was a Woman at War (SOG, 2013). The winners will be announced on our Facebook page next week. The answers to the competition are:   (i) Who was known as 'the lady with the lamp'?   B Florence Nightingale (ii) Aethelflaed was the daughter of which famous English King? A Alfred the Great (iii) Women killed in the First World War are named on memorial screens in which cathedral? C York Minster. Mary Seacole (c.1805-1881) Florence Nightingale (who was born this week 1820, 12th May) features in the book as the founder of army nursing. Her innovative work in the Crimean War of 1854-56 led to the formalisation of nursing as a profession, but there were other women present in the region who took an alternative approach to tending the sick and wounded soldiers. One of the most well-known is Mary Seacole, who was obliged to arrange her own travel to the Crimea, where she op...

Look out for thousands more burial records from Deceased Online's Aberdeenshire Collection  By the end of Friday 2nd May, the Deceased Online database will hold over 75,000 burial records from Aberdeenshire in North East Scotland. All the burial grounds from this collection are managed by Aberdeenshire Council .  The magnificent 17th century Craigievar Castle lies close to the village of Alford, which features in the latest release Aberdeenshire is a large county, covering 8% of Scotland's land mass, and is steeped in history. The parishes covered in the new release are predominantly rural, with a number, such as Alford, Udny and Cluny, lying in the shadows of great castles. Unfortunately, neighbouring Towie Castle now lies in ruins. Auchindoir, which features in the latest records, takes its name from the Gaelic Auehindoir , or 'field of the chase'. This is associated with the flight of Macbeth's successor, Lulach, who is believed to have run thr...

Following on from last week's post on women serving in war, this week we have a competition to win a copy of My Ancestor was a Woman at War by Emma Jolly Women's war service has been thrust into the media spotlight recently with BBC 1's Sunday night drama series, The Crimson Field . Described by the BBC as one of "the Great War’s untold stories", the drama is centred around a tented field hospital on the coast of France, where a team of doctors, nurses and women volunteers work together to heal the bodies and souls of men wounded in the trenches.One of the issues raised by the story is the harsh reality of war. As with their male counterparts, women working close to the frontline could not be prepared for the sheer number of sick and injured men that would emerge from battle. My Ancestor was a Woman at War (Society of Genealogists, 2013) looks at how to research military nurses of the Victorian era and both world wars, while outlining resource...

As we await new South London records on the Deceased Online database , this week's post looks back at our recent book competition Thank you very much to all those who entered the competition to win a copy of my new book, Tracing Your Ancestors Using the Census (Pen & Sword, 2013) .  We had a great response, with answers emailed from all over the world. Congratulations to the four winners who will each receive a copy of the book: Jo-Ann from British Columbia in Canada Lesley in Cheshire Anne from East Yorkshire Dawn in South Africa The full list of questions and answers for the competition is as follows: (i) What date was the 1841 census taken?  Answer: Sunday 6 June 1841   (ii) What year was the first separate census for Scotland introduced?  Answer: 1861   (iii) In 1896 a quinquennial census took place. Where?  Answer: County of London/ London   (iv) Which census is known as the 'fertility census'?  Answer: 1911 ...

To link with Deceased Online's forthcoming competition to win one of five copies of my new book, Tracing Your Ancestors Using the Census (Pen & Sword, 2013), this week's post examines the use of burial records and censuses in family history research.  Besides records of birth/baptism, marriage and death/burial, census records are some of the most commonly used in genealogy. Once you have found a burial record on the Deceased Online database , you may want to look further into the life of the deceased person. Using the details on the burial record alongside those in censuses will help to give you a more rounded picture of your ancestor and his or her life. Most family historians use the Victorian and Edwardian censuses of 1841-1911 . These were taken every ten years and have been digitized on a number of databases. The original records are held at The National Archives. The 1841 census was the first to name each individual (as opposed to just heads of household)...

Recent competition winners and our new project to celebrate sportsmen and women in the database This week we’ve begun work on a project to identify previously celebrated sportsmen and women who are contained in the Deceased Online database . If you have found, or are related to, any successful sportspeople in our records, please let us know. We have already found the following in our collections, but need your help to increase our list. Brompton Cemetery   boxer John Jackson (1769-1845) champion cricketer John Wisden (1826-1884) chess master Johannes Hermann Zukertor (1842-1888) a ll-round sportsman John Graham Chambers (1843-1883)  motor racer Percy Lambert (1881-1913) Cambridge Crematorium Olympic athlete, Arthur ‘Archie’ James Robertson (1879 - 1957)   Warristoun Crematorium Olympic shot-putter, Thomas ‘Ted’ Ranken (1875– 1950)  Hampstead Cemetery   Derby-winning jockey, Fred Archer (1857-1886) Trent Park   ...

All records for more than 205,000 burials from 1840 to 1997 at Brompton Cemetery are now on the database. This week we uploaded the final set of records from Brompton Cemetery. Amongst the new data on Deceased Online are the burial details of some of the most significant and celebrated Londoners of the nineteenth century.  This year is the bicententary of the birth of John Snow (1813-1858) , pioneer epidemiologist and the man who discovered the causal link between contaminated water and cholera. He was also a practising physician, who pioneered anaesthetic methods and administered chloroform to Queen Victoria during the births of Beatrice and Leopold. Originally from York, Snow was the son of an unskilled labourer. Through hard work and the support of the ragged schools, he qualified as a physician at medical school in London in 1843 and began working in Soho. At the time it was popularly believed that cholera was caught from miasma, or ‘bad air’. In 1849, ...