Video

This video was inspired by something I saw recently on the FamilySearch website. Something that chilled me to the core... The big genealogical websites seem to be increasingly adopting a 'Click and Collect' approach to finding our ancestors. It may sound like an attractive idea but it's not the way that historical research works. If we want to have any hope of breaking down our toughest brickwa...

Tracking down the precise locations of your ancestors' houses can be a real challenge, particularly in rural areas. But by using a variety of documents and maps we can usually home in the right property. This video looks at a case study in the Hertfordshire village of Norton...

Join me on a stroll around a Hertfordshire churchyard as I search for a particular gravestone - more in hope than anything else...

The government has published a consultation paper about the future storage of and access to ‘historic wills’ by which they mean those wills held by HMCTS under the terms of the Court of Probate Act of 1857 which set up the civil probate system. The paper sets out the Government’s proposals to introduce a system for preserving will documents in digital form, as opposed to the current system of k...

In this episode, I’m returning to a theme I’ve explored before on a number of occasions. Yes, it’s time to ask once more whether Ancestry really know what they’re doing… The records of London's Boards of Guardians, held by the London Metropolitan Archives, have been digitised by Ancestry. But for reasons which aren't apparent to me, the records have been split over (at least) four separate data...

If you watched Episodes 3 & 4 of Setting The Record Straight, which focussed on Meards Street in Westminster, you’ll know that I like to use maps and other contemporary documents to help me to identify the actual buildings in which the subjects of my research lived. In this episode I explore this idea further and demonstrate a method that I use to trace addresses over hundreds of years, to show...

This short video, covering 300 years in the history of a London street in just ten minutes, was first broadcast in September 2023 as part of the All About That Place event, celebrating the 10th Annivesary of the Society for One Place Studies www.one-place-studies.org/

This short guide to using the records of the tithe commission in conjunction with contemporary census returns to identify individual ancestral properties was first broadcast in September 2023 as part of the All About That Place event, celebrating the 10th Annivesary of the Society for One Place Studies www.one-place-studies.org/

UPDATE!!! As of 8 September 2023, the majority of the problems explored in this video appear to have been resolved. If it's a coincidence that this happened just six days after I published my video exposing the problems with the database, then it's a very happy one!

... in which I take a look at the GRO's excellent new instant download service but ask the question, 'Does it entirely replace the certificate/pdf options?'

Bad transcription can have a huge impact on our ability to find our ancestors in the various online databases but we can usually get around the problem with creative searching. But what if some of the entries on a page just haven't been transcribed at all? This episode of Setting The Record Straight looks at a page from a register where the majority of entries just haven't been captured at all...

In this episode I talk about the process behind the taking of the 19th century English & Welsh census. The role of the enumerator in compiling the census was well-defined and it’s important that we understand what they really did so that we can understand how that process might have an impact on what was recorded. And let me tell you this - it didn't involve anyone standing on a doorstep, askin...

Back in February last year, long before I’d started this series of videos, I recorded a short piece about the ‘new, improved’ Find A Will website. I thought it was high time that I revisited the site to see how it’s all looking now. And the good news is ... well, there’s lots of good news... Which makes a nice change!

Online access to census returns has opened up the records and massively increased our chances of finding our ancestors in the returns. If, like me, you remember trying to find people in the pre-digitisation age, you’ll know how difficult it could sometimes be. Both Ancestry and Findmypast are - quite reasonably - geared towards finding individuals. But it's worth bearing in mind that not everyo...

Setting The Record Straight: Episode 10 - 1874 And All That...

Setting The Record Straight: Episode 9 - Compulsory or not...?

Setting The Record Straight: Episode 8 - Reporting errors...

Setting The Record Straight: Episode 7 - FamilySearch Provides The Answer...

Setting The Record Straight: Episode 6 - Misinformation...

Setting The Record Straight: Episode 5 - Going to a place...

Setting The Record Straight: Episode 4 - Return to Meard's Street

Setting The Record Straight: Episode 3 - Meard's Street, Westminster

Setting The Record Straight: Episode 2 - Really Bad Digitisation, Part II

Setting The Record Straight: Episode 1 - Really Bad Digitisation, Part 1

Setting The Record Straight: Introducing...

Probate Search Website

LBC Census Interview 19 March 2021