Thursday 31 January 2019

Irish and British records coming soon to Ancestry

https://prf.hn/click/camref:1100l4pTC/destination:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ancestry.co.uk%2F
Ancestry UK has provided a summary of the new collections and updates to existing record-sets we can expect to join the database in February.

Of particular interest to Irish genealogists will be the following:
  • More than 2million entries in a Dublin street directory (year not revealed) will join Ancestry's collection of Irish Directories (1500-1920) in mid-February.
  • Around the same time, some 5,500 Poor Law records covering settlement and removals for the unions of Bethnal Green, Hackney, Poplar, Shoreditch, and Stepney, will join the London Poor Law, Selected Removal and Settlement Records, 1698-1930 collection in mid-February. Many poor immigrants from Ireland (and other countries) settled in these areas of London's East End.
  • More than 1.5million summaries of nearly all probate cases in England and Wales for 1967–1972 will fill the current gap in the England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1995 collection. This update should arrive in late February.
  • The final February update is a whopper and will see more than 5.2million records added to the WW1 Pension Ledgers & Index Cards, 1914-1923 collection. Sourced from the Western Front Association, the records provide details of 'other ranks' military and military-related personnel who filed for a pension after WW1, or, if killed, details of their widow/other dependents or next of kin. (The images are available only on Fold3, Ancestry's military database, but Ancestry's indexed data is reasonably informative.)
  • The only imminent new record-set with likely relevance to Irish family historians is the London Poor Law Hospital Registers collection, which holds nearly 300,000 records of the elderly and chronically ill receiving some relief in infirmaries attached to workhouses. The registers note name, age, gender, dates of admission, discharge and/or death. This collection should arrive in the database in mid-February. It did. See 14 February blogpost.
In addition, the Bexley Electoral Registers (1734-1965) collection will be updated with half a million records, and a new British Alien Internees (WW2) collection will join the database.

There will also be a period of free access to Irish and UK collections in the middle of the month. I'll bring you details when they're confirmed.