British Cemetery and Cremation Records from Deceased Online

This week the team at Deceased Online are packing their suitcases for what should be a fun couple of days in Scotland's largest city. Here I look at what you can expect from the first ever Who Do You Think You Are? Live Scotland and the exciting records you can explore at the Deceased Online stand. Everyone at Deceased Online is looking forward to discovering more about their Scottish ancestors and meeting users of our database at the inaugural WDYTYA? Live Scotland on Friday 29 and Saturday 30 August at Glasgow's SECC . As well as having the opportunity to meet stallholders, visitors to the show can enjoy an array of workshops, talks and advice sessions on subjects as varied as Scottish legal documents, tracing First World War ancestors, and DNA. Deceased Online will be exhibiting alongside local family history societies, our partners at the Scottish Memorial Inscription s project, plus visiting experts from England, Ireland, Belgium and Australia. WDYTYA? Live Scotl...

This week the Deceased Online database adds burial records for two more Hertfordshire cemeteries. In this post, I look at these new registers as well as those of other burial grounds in the Hertfordshire Collection.   Deceased Online 's exclusive Hertfordshire Collection now includes ten cemeteries, dating back to 1801. Across the ten cemeteries there are over 200,000 records for more than 90,000 individual names and burials. The Hertfordshire records can be found on the website in the "East of England" region drop-down box. Hertfordshire borders north London and you may find, like me, that your Hertfordshire ancestors travelled back and forth to work in the capital.  Row of trees at Hatfield Hyde Cemetery (c) Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council The latest additions are Welwyn Hatfield Lawn and Hatfield Hyde Cemeteries . Their records of original registers, grave details and cemetery section maps come from Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council . The registers for Hat...

From Portsoy on the north coast to Laurencekirk on the Angus border, from Braemar in the Cairngorms National Park to Peterhead on the eastern coast, Deceased Online 's collection for Aberdeen City and Shire covers a wide variety of burial records. In this post, I look in detail at some of the burial records available and explain how to use them in your family history research. Aberdeenshire is Scotland's fourth largest council region. Its vast area encompasses 24 Munros (mountains over 3000 feet), 208km of coastline, more than 129 whisky distilleries, over 300 castles, 18 sites of Pictish stones, stunning golf courses, fishing ports and magnificent royal estates. All of this signifies the county's rich heritage. Over the centuries, the area has been home to crofters, landowners, servants, fishermen, merchant seamen, distillers, inns and the royal entourage. My crofter ancestors moved around the Mearns through the 18th and 19th centuries. Their offspring included farmers ...

Tomorrow, Friday 1st August, more records from our Aberdeenshire collection will go online. These records complete the Aberdeenshire dataset of more than 200 burial grounds and cemeteries. Among them there are approximately 250,000 individual burials or names and a total of around 600,000 separate records dating back to 1615.   Dunnottar Castle This new release includes the beautiful coastal parishes of St Cyrus and Dunnottar . Dunnottar is notable for its castle, perched dramatically on a rocky headland overlooking the North Sea.  The castle and parish have an amazing history as the site of royal visits, Jacobite rebellion  . . . and the wedding of my 3x great grandparents, James Jolly and Margaret Henderson in January 1832. As well as the records for the county of Aberdeenshire, the Deceased Online database holds half of Aberdeen City 's records - the other half are coming soon. Neighbouring councils, Angus and Moray are also working with Deceased On...

The Deceased Online database includes diverse records from church burial registers, urban cemeteries and modern crematoria. In this post I look at the history of cremation in Britain and feature some examples from Deceased Online's collections. Although the practice of cremating dead bodies was common in Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh cultures, cremation did not become legal in Britain until 1885. The Queen's Physician, Sir Henry Thompson (1820-1904), helped to form the Cremation Society of Great Britain on 13 January 1874. Thompson, the Society's first President, was concerned about the insanitary nature of urban burial grounds as well as the lengthy and increasingly costly nature of Victorian burials. The Cremation Society set about funding Britain's first crematorium in Woking, Surrey. Sir Henry Thompson (1820-1904) Not all Britons embraced the new practice. On 26 December 1878, the Vicar of Woking complained to The Times : Sir, -I read lately in the Recor...

Deceased Online now holds searchable burial records for over 150,000 individuals from 100 sites across Aberdeenshire. I am especially pleased that these include registers from the old county of Kincardineshire, the home of my JOLLY ancestors. In celebration of the new Kincardineshire and Aberdeenshire records being uploaded to the database, this week I look at my family connection to the history of Benholm parish and its cemetery. My great great grandfather William Jolly (1842-1889) enlisted in the Royal Engineers in May 1867. He was shortly transferred to England, and by 1871 he was living in barracks at the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria & Albert Museum). He would never live in Scotland again. William Jolly R.E. in England in later years William had been born in Montrose, Forfarshire (now Angus) where his father, James Jolly, worked as a salmon fisher. But within a few years the family dispersed and William went to live with his grandfather, also Willia...

This week, I'm looking at some of Deceased Online's less-known datasets, focusing on Kettering, Corby and Rushden in the county of Northamptonshire John Speed's map of Northamptonshire c.1676 There are a total of 12 cemeteries and 1 crematorium in Deceased Online 's Northamptonshire collection. All can be searched on the website in the UK records section, under "East Midlands" in the drop-down menu . Being landlocked, Northamptonshire is an interesting region to have ancestors. Many inhabitants moved back and forth to neighbouring counties. Northamptonshire is unusual in sharing borders with nine other counties: Leicestershire, Rutland, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, the former county of Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. The county is largely rural, although heavy industry predominated in Corby from the 1930s. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Northamptonshire as a whole was most celebrated for its manufact...