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The Newsletter of the Family Records Centre (FRC)
Issue 40 - October 2007

Prize Competition
GRO Service Targets
What's on at the FRC
Family History Surgeries

Closure Dates

2007
Tuesday 25 December & Wednesday 26 December

2008
Tuesday 1 January

Developments at Southport & Kew

Certificate Collect Service At Southport

The General Register Office has announced that a certificate collection service will be made available at their Southport office for customers wishing to make a collection in person for a pre-ordered certificate. The service will be introduced on Monday 29 October and certificates can be collected from Tuesday 30 October at the reception area of the GRO, Trafalgar Road, Southport, Merseyside, PR8 2HH.

The service will operate on Mondays to Fridays, from 10am to 4pm and will be available to online account holders and to those customers who order by phone and post. Further information about this service can be obtained by phoning 0845 603 7788 or by emailing certificate.services@ons.gsi.gov.uk (please include the letters 'GQ' in the subject line of your email to ensure a personal response).

Closure dates announced at Kew

As many of you will know, The National Archives, Kew is in the process of making changes to its public reading rooms.

These changes will entail essential building work at Kew from autumn 2007 to spring 2008. There will be disruption during this period, including closures for short periods of time.

The National Archives at Kew will be closed to the public on the following dates:

• 1 - 16 December 2007 inclusive
• 21 - 26 January 2008 inclusive

TNA intends to maintain its services while the building work is underway from autumn 2007 to spring 2008, with the exception of the above two closures. However, there may be delays, restrictions and disruption should you choose to visit during this period. All online services will be available as usual at: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk.

The National Archives will provide updates when any additional information is available and will display the latest information on their website, as well as at Kew and the Family Records Centre.

Microfiche Checking Service

In recognition of the fact that some birth, marriage and death microfiche records are not easy to read it has been agreed that from Monday 15 October GRO will offer an index microfiche checking service to customers at the FRC. Should customers experience difficulty in deciphering fiche information they can consult with staff at the Customer Service Point. Staff will have several resources available to them to assist customers.

In the event that FRC staff are unable to clarify the information, they will have the opportunity to request scrutiny by GRO staff who will undertake a thorough search of the paper master copies held at Southport. Customers will need to confirm how they wish to be contacted by Southport GRO staff - either by telephone or email - and would be required to provide the necessary details to the member of staff. Alternatively, customers can phone Southport on 0845 603 7788, Monday to Friday 8am to 8pm and Saturday 9am to 4pm, or send an email to: unclearfiche@ons.gsi.gov.uk.

Prize Competition

The FRC bookshop has three copies of Val Horsler's new TNA publication Elizabeth and Philip to give away in our latest prize competition.

For your chance to win a copy, simply answer the following question.

In what year did Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip get married?

a) 1945
b) 1947
c) 1949
d) 1951

Answers by email to: frc@nationalarchives.gov.uk with the word 'Competition' in the subject heading. One entry per person please. The closing date for entries is Friday 28 December 2007.

July's prize competition (a year's subscription to Ancestors magazine) was won by Mrs T Morris of Hertford. The correct answer to the question "When was the first edition of Ancestors published?" was April 2001.

For the Record…

The recently launched BMD Registers website provides online access to The National Archives' collection of nearly 5,000 nonconformist and other non-parochial registers.

The documents (from TNA record series RG4 and RG5) include Florence Nightingale's birth certificate and a record of William Blake's burial at Bunhill Fields as well as many thousands of births and baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials dating from the sixteenth century up to the start of civil registration in 1837.

Many of the registers contain miscellaneous items such as accounts and lists of congregation members - the register of the Old Presbyterian Meeting Place in Colyton, Devon includes several pages written in shorthand!

LMA Closure

The LMA will be temporarily closed from 4.45pm on Friday 2 November until 9.30am on Monday 21 January 2008. The reading rooms are being redesigned to enable the LMA to provide improved online access.

GRO Registration Transfer

The General Register Office (GRO) has announced that from 1 April 2008, it will no longer be part of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and will transfer to the Identity and Passport Service (IPS).

IPS is an Executive Agency of the Home Office, and is responsible for handling passport applications from UK Nationals. GRO and IPS already have a strong working relationship and have worked closely together on a range of issues. There are a number of synergies between the two organisations, particularly in the area of sensitive handling of personal data and in the processing of a large volume of applications from the public.

Your Archives

Your Archives is a ground-breaking new resource, which has recently been launched as part of The National Archives' online services. It uses the technology pioneered by the Wikipedia online encyclopedia.

The content on Your Archives is contributed by users and is designed to offer information additional to that currently available in The National Archives' Catalogue, Research Guides, DocumentsOnline and the National Register of Archives.

Users can contribute in numerous ways. They can edit pre-existing pages and submit articles about historical records held by TNA or elsewhere or they can publish transcripts of documents or even expand and update a TNA research guide.

Keeping Up With TNA

The Family Record Centre's newsletter was first published in 1997, although it didn't adopt its current title until issue 13, in January 2001. As this is the penultimate edition of The Family Record, subscribers who wish to keep up to date with future developments may want to sign up to The National Archives' monthly email newsletter. This is a must for family, local and military historians - in fact, anyone interested in history. You'll get updates on recently released government files and new online services for you to try as well as previews of our latest history publications, prize competitions and special offers.

To sign up for your free subscription, visit: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/enewsletter.

GRO Service Targets

Certificate production is monitored against a number of targets on a monthly basis. The table below details GRO performance over the period 1 July to 30 September 2007 for some of the areas monitored. The ONS target for each area is to process at least 95% of applications within the set number of days. The figures have been rounded to the nearest whole number. As you will see, all targets for the last three months have been exceeded.

Open Meeting

The next FRC Open Meeting will take place on Tuesday 6 November at 12.30. This is your chance to hear about the latest developments at Kew and Southport and discuss plans for the future delivery of our services. There's no need to book - just come along to the Meetings Room on the first floor. All are welcome.

Ancestors On Board

The AncestorsOnBoard database continues to grow with the addition this autumn of another decade's worth of records, bringing the coverage up to 1939. Users can now search 50 years of outgoing passenger lists online at: www.ancestorsonboard.com.

The records cover destinations such as Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and USA, including the ports of Boston, Philadelphia and New York.

New Books From The National Archives

This Autumn's top titles from the National Archives:

Elizabeth and Philip - Val Horlser (£7.99) October 2007
A fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at the wedding of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. The magnificence of the occasion captured the nation's imagination and brought thousands on to the streets to cheer.

Will's Will: The last wishes of William Shakespeare - Simon Trussler (£7.99)
Will's Will takes the written record of Shakespeare's last wishes as a starting point for exploring his eventful yet mysterious life. The result is a fascinating, freewheeling journey into a life (and death) with tantalizingly few facts and room for intriguing conjecture.

John Christie - Edward Marston (£7.99)
10 Rillington Place is an address that sends a chill down the spine. There are many gruesome aspects to the case but most unsettling of all is the fact that another tenant in Christie's house, Timothy Evans, was hanged for murdering his wife and baby girl when Christie may have committed the act.

Dr Crippen - Katherine Watson (£7.99)
Dr Crippen's murder of his wife Cora has stuck in the public imagination for many reasons with events culminating in the dramatic police chase which caught Crippen and his mistress Ethel le Neve halfway across the Atlantic. The book combines a gripping narrative with facts from witness statements, police reports, and the chilling words of a killer claiming 'So far as I know she is still alive'.

All our books are available from the shops at the Family Records Centre and The National Archives, Kew, and from all good bookshops throughout the country. They can also be purchased by telephoning 01476 541025 or online from: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/bookshop.

The Chart

The current top sellers in the FRC bookshop:

1 The Genealogist's Internet - Peter Christian
2 Easy Family History - David Annal
3 Family History Companion - Mark Pearsall
4 Army Service Records of the First World War - William Spencer
5 My Ancestor was a Merchant Seaman - Christopher and Michael Watts

FRC Extra - What's On At The FRC?

Computer Tutorials

Our one-to-one Computer Skills Tutorials have proved so successful that we have decided to make them available every day at the FRC, starting on Monday 12 November.

Sessions will be held at 2.00 and 2.30 from Monday to Saturday.

The tutorials are aimed at helping beginners to get over their initial unease about using computers. Staff will show you how to use a mouse and keyboard to navigate your way around the Internet and will introduce you to some of the best websites for family history research.

If you want to find out how to make the most of the huge range of material available online, why not give us a ring today? Sessions are free but must be booked in advance.

New To The FRC?

The FRC's popular 'New to the FRC?' drop-in sessions are aimed at first-time visitors as well as more experienced researchers who want a quick reminder of the sources and resources available at the Centre. Sessions take place in the Meetings Room on the first floor at 11.30 every Monday, Thursday* and Saturday and last roughly 20 minutes.

*except 15 November

To book a family history surgery or computer skills tutorial, please phone us on: 0208 392 5300 or send an email to: frc@nationalarchives.gov.uk.

Flower of Scotland

The Family Records Centre hosted its third one-day family history conference on Saturday 13 October. Focussing on Scottish ancestry, 'Flower of Scotland' featured lectures from Dr Irene O'Brien of Glasgow City Archives and Dr Bruce Durie from the University of Strathclyde. Feedback from the 60 attendees was excellent with one delegate describing the conference as "well worth coming to - a fantastic day". Another delegate said that "a day like this makes being involved in the often difficult and always interesting study of family history even more worthwhile".

We are hoping to hold similar events at Kew in the future.

Family History Surgeries

In the two and a half years that we we've been offering family history surgeries at the FRC, over five hundred customers have taken advantage of the opportunity to get advice and assistance with their family history research.

The range of problems that we've been presented with over the years is enormous. Many people have come to a standstill in the early twentieth century while some are trying to get to grips with research in the period before civil registration.

But the majority are lost in the Victorian era and have come to the FRC looking for help in tracing their ancestors in the nineteenth century birth, marriage and death records, and census returns.

Unfortunately, we don't have magic wands but we do have an excellent record of solving some of your more difficult problems. Even if we can't come up with the answer on the day, we will usually be able to suggest some different approaches, leaving you to go away and explore some previously untapped resources.

So, if you're struggling to get over that brick wall, why not give us a call and book a free one-to-session with one of our expert family historians.

Sessions are held every Tuesday and Saturday throughout the year.

We're Talking To You
- in association with Ancestors Magazine

There's another full programme of talks coming up at the FRC this Winter. All talks start at 2pm. Saturday talks for beginners are in italics.

2007

• 3 Nov - Tracing Your Ancestors
• 6 Nov - Sources for World War One Ancestry
• 13 Nov - Dr Williams' Protestant Nonconformist Birth Registry
• 20 Nov - So You Think You Know About Civil Registration?
• 27 Nov - In The Name of God Amen: Wills for Family Historians
• 1 Dec - Family History on the Internet for Beginners
• 4 Dec - Criminal Women in the 19th Century
• 11 Dec - Overseas Births, Marriages and Deaths 2008

2008

• 5 Jan - Census Returns Online
• 8 Jan - Divorce Records
• 15 Jan - The Imperial War Museum
• 22 Jan - The National Maritime Museum
• 29 Jan - Tracing Births, Marriages & Deaths
• 2 Feb - Introduction to Family History

Please note: Tickets for the talks are free and can be collected on the day of the event from the New Customers desk on the first floor. Places are strictly limited. Tickets will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis and cannot be booked in advance.

If you would like more information about any of the items in this newsletter please telephone us on 0845 603 7788 (GRO enquiries) or 0208 392 5300 (TNA enquiries). You can also email us at: frc@nationalarchives.gov.uk or visit our website at: www.familyrecords.gov.uk/frc.

To subscribe to the electronic version of the Family Record please send an email with the word 'Subscribe' in the subject heading to: FRC-Newsletter@nationalarchives.gov.uk.

The Family Record is jointly produced by the General Register Office (GRO) and The National Archives (TNA)