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It's a discussion forum (set up like City-Data) but it's not a competitor of C-D, so I figured it was fine to link it here. C-D has discussions on places and lots of topics, rootschat only has discussions on specific genealogical info in the British Isles.
There are stickies at the top of every forum with lots of links to resources for England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. But what really impressed me was the responses to requests for lookups. The people on the site, very quickly, found info I asked about, in church records, burial records, baptism records, banns (marriage announcements in Church of England). Within 24 hours, I was able to fill in two generations about which I'd known only one person!
It helps if you know the county you're looking for. You just post your lookup request in the forum for that county (read their hints for posting lookup requests first). The very helpful Brits who assisted me did not have scanned images, but transcribed info from lots of church and county records. If I want the actual images, I'd have to go to the UK, but at least now I know where to find them, as they indexed everything.
And unlike what I've found in the records of my US ancestors, the UK seems to record all the deaths of infants. It's rare for me to find a record of an infant death in my US ancestry, but I know there must have been many; they just don't show up. But from what I've found, at least in the county of Leicestershire, LOTS of infant deaths show up (with INF after the name and burial date), and it's really heartbreaking when you really think about it. My ancestor had twin baby girls, born several days apart, the first died and they baptized the second one on the day of the first one's burial. Then the second one died a few months later.
I also learned the trade of many of my ancestors on that branch: frame work knitters. These were skilled tradesmen who made stockings and hosiery with a pretty primitive machine. There was a guild, and men advance from apprentice all the way to Master like in any trade. Most of my male ancestors in this line had FWK after their name, and I learned this mean frame work knitter. The hosiery industry evidently lagged behind in the industrial revolution, and didn't become mechanized until late in the 19th century.
Anyway, I hope you have as much luck there as I did!
Thanks anything to help is good!! I am researching Irish relatives, which is proving very difficult because of the clan names there are many with the same names that are completely unrelated. At least I know a county. And I think some of the census records burned at one point or something.
I have a full "worldwide" membership on Ancestry.com, and I use it frequently, but I can't access UK/Scottish records for most of the 1900s. Is Ancestry.com.uk a different entity, and do I need to pay extra to get into that "zone?" Dumb question, but I can't find the answer on the entire site. I'm looking for a specific person who lived in Lanarkshire, Glasgow, from 1949-1955 or so, and I am almost certain she and her husband immigrated to Kenya at some point, but I can't find her anywhere. I'm going in circles.
I posted the query on the site and already got one response, but it seems locating people in the 1940s and 1950s is more difficult than in the more distant past!
I didn't have to register at Ancestry U.K. I just signed in with my username and password from the Ancestry Canada site (which also works when I sign in to the Ancestry U.S. site).
This is another source for finding free information in Scotland, though it contains mostly sensationalist news, like today's cheap tabloids. It goes back to the early 1800s and covers mostly poems, bawdy songs, who wrote them, murders, prisoners and other lawless types -- anything fantastic. The broadsides are here: The Word on the Street - Broadsides at the National Library of Scotland
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