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The Newsletter of the Family Records Centre (FRC)
Issue 31 Summer 2005 (18th online edition)

Closure Dates

Monday 29 August (August Bank Holiday)
Monday 26 December to Wednesday 28 December (Christmas)
Monday 2 January 2006 (New Year)

Family History Surgeries

We are now taking bookings for our Tuesday morning surgeries up to and including 7 February 2006. The family history surgeries are an opportunity for family historians to discuss their research problems in depth with our expert staff. The sessions on 18 October will be held by Irish genealogist, Helen Kelly.

The surgeries are free and are held every Tuesday morning (with the exception of 27 December when the FRC is closed). Each surgery lasts for half an hour with sessions starting at 10:30, 11:00, 12:00 and 12:30.

Basic Computer Skills for Family Historians

As more and more family history resources are made available on the Internet, it's becoming ever more important for researchers to be able to use computers confidently and effectively. The FRC is now offering half hour one-to-one tutorials on Thursday mornings for a trial period until 8 September 2005.

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

If you would like to book a family history surgery or a basic computer skills tutorial, please phone us on 0208 392 5300 or email us at: frc@nationalarchives.gov.uk.

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

We're delighted to announce that the FRC's programme of family history talks is now sponsored by Ancestors magazine. To launch this new partnership we've lined up some fascinating topics over the next few months.

9 August sees a talk by Sharon Hintze on the intriguing subject of Family Reconstitution - if you don't know what it's all about, this is your chance to find out! TV's Nick Barratt will be at the FRC on 20 September to talk about the importance of oral history in preserving our links with past generations and on 11 October, as part of our commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the death of Sir Henry Irving, we are pleased to welcome Frances Hughes to the FRC to talk about the remarkable theatrical career of arguably England's greatest ever actor.

Forthcoming Talks (Saturday talks in italics)

• 6 Aug - Tracing Your Ancestors at the FRC
• 9 Aug - Why Bother With Family Reconstitution?
• 16 Aug - The Secrets of the FRC
• 23 Aug - Tracing Records of Merchant Seamen
• 30 Aug - Theatrical Ancestry
• 3 Sep - Census Returns Online
• 6 Sep - Family History on the Internet
• 13 Sep - Amwell Village - a guided walk
• 20 Sep - Preserving Our Unwritten Past
• 27 Sep - Family & Local History Societies
• 1 Oct - An Introduction to Family History
• 4 Oct - Manorial Documents
• 11 Oct - Sir Henry Irving: 'The Knight from Nowhere'
• 18 Oct - Irish Records for Irish Family History
• 25 Oct - Travel to the UK: Inward Passenger Lists
• 1 Nov - Sex, Lies & Civil Registration
• 5 Nov - Tracing Your Ancestors at the FRC

The talks on Tuesdays start at 2pm while those on Saturdays begin at 11:30.

Tickets for all the talks are free and can be collected on the day of the event from the Research Enquiries desk on the first floor. Please note that spaces for the talks are limited. Tickets will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis and cannot be booked in advance.

The FRC Family History Lectures

The first in our new series of Family History Lectures took place in June and two further dates have already been arranged:

• 11 Aug - Problems in London Ancestry
• 6 Oct - Catholic Ancestry in England & Wales

Michael Gandy will be our speaker for both events. The lectures give visitors to the FRC an opportunity to learn about sources and techniques for family history research in a relaxed, friendly and informal atmosphere. Light refreshments are available.

The lectures are free and take place from 17:00 to 18:30. As with the Tuesday afternoon talks, tickets will be issued on the day of the event on a first-come, first-served basis.

Henry Irving Exhibition

October 2005 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the death of the actor, Sir Henry Irving. To commemorate this event, we will be hosting an exhibition telling the story of Irving's life using documents taken from the FRC and elsewhere. The exhibition will be launched on 11 October in association with the Irving Society and the Theatre Museum, and Sir Henry Irving will also be the subject of a free talk at the FRC on the same day.

Online census returns

The 1861 census returns for England and Wales are now available online as part of the co-branded Ancestry census website, along with the returns for 1871 to 1891. The returns can be accessed at: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/census.

You can view these online censuses free of charge at the Family Records Centre and at the National Archives, Kew.

Open Meeting

The following is a small selection of the questions raised by customers at the last FRC open meeting held on Tuesday 17 May:

Q: What is the difference between the first floor Email Access Point (EAP) and the online PCs in the reading room?
A: The EAP is primarily to enable customers to do quick Internet searches and to use web-based email. There are no printing facilities and there is no staff assistance. The PCs in the reading room are for genealogical research, and there are printers and a help desk. They cannot be used to access email.

Q: Why have all the wastepaper bins been removed from the reading rooms?
A: The FRC has obtained accreditation under ISO 14001, which covers environmental management. An essential component of this standard is that all waste must be separated into different streams (paper, plastic, glass etc) for re-cycling. New bins have therefore been placed at various strategic points around the building.

Q: Some typed or hand-written certificates include errors. If the original entry is hard to read, is it possible to produce both a printed and a hand-written or typed copy so the customer can interpret the details for themselves?
A: Certificates are produced on a full cost-recovery basis so it is not possible to produce two copies for the price of one. However, if errors are included in a typed or hand-written certificate and are reported, a corrected certificate will be produced. All typed and hand-written certificates are checked by a supervisor, but Certificate Services will look at the procedures again to see if there is any scope for further improvement.

The next open meeting will take place on 15 November at midday.

New Books in the Reference Area

• Jewish Personal Names S Gorr
• Researcher's Guide to American Genealogy VD Greenwood
• Register of One-Name Studies 2005 Guild of One-Name Studies
• Irish Family History on the Web (2nd Edition) SJ Raymond
• Researching British Probates - a guide to the microfilm collection of the Family History Library: Province of York DA Pratt
• Genealogical Research Directory 2005 KA Johnson, MR Sainty
• Making Sense of the Census Revisited E Higgs
• My Ancestor Was a Bastard R Paley
• The Convict Ships C Bateson
• The Second Fleet - Britain's Grim Convict Armada of 1790 M Flynn

Customer survey

Many thanks to all customers who took part in our twice-yearly onsite survey in June. We are delighted to report that nearly 97% of you rated the overall service at the FRC as either good or excellent. The full results of the survey can be seen in the Your FRC section of our website.

Improvements in the TNA reading room

We have recently installed a coin-operated print station, which can be used to print from the online and family history database computers in the first floor reading room. Previously it was only possible to print from these PCs using a copycard.

On a trial basis, A3 size prints will cost 20p. You can still buy copycards and loan copycards but the new system is quicker and simpler for customers who only want one or two pages printed out. We have also recently replaced all the very large old-style motorised microfilm readers (known to staff as the 'monsters') with modern units.

News From The GRO, Southport

GRO Service Targets

The table below gives a breakdown of our performance over the last 3 months in four key areas.

The target for each area is for 95% of applications to be processed within the set number of days. Figures have been rounded to the nearest whole figure.

Writers Section

Within the General Register Office (Southport) there is a small section that produces hand written certificates. This isn't a special service but a section that is called upon when certificates can't be produced in the normal way.

The mainstream production areas scan the copy of the register entry, which is held on microfilm, onto blank certificate forms. When the image cannot be scanned clearly or when the entry has a large note in the margin (usually because the original entry has been corrected) the certificate application is passed to the writers section where the details are transcribed by hand onto a blank certificate form.

In recent years use has also been made of software that enables the information to be transcribed by keying the information onto a computer template.

Transcription by hand is a lot more time consuming than the normal production process but of course before the use of scanning, or before that, photocopying, all GRO certificates would have been handwritten. Thankfully that was also before there was so much interest in family history research!

Deciphering the information that has to be transcribed is the most difficult part of the job and that's where a wide range of reference books comes to the rescue. Official Lists (an annual publication dating from 1845 produced by the Registrar General listing all registration officers and registration districts) and gazetteers are among the most valuable research aids. Experienced family historians would feel at home in the writers section, deciphering street names and now obsolete occupations!

General Register Office Open Days 2005

338 people responded to publicity with a request to attend the Open Days at GRO over two consecutive Saturdays (25 June and 2 July). Attractions included exhibitions from Certificate Services, Adoptions and Overseas sections. Also in attendance were staff from the Family Records Centre and representatives from various Family History Societies.

The visitors were treated to tours of the work areas, following the 'life of a certificate' from the receipt of an application to the despatch of a certificate. Various talks were provided for the visitors, covering topics such as 'Overseas Records', 'Online Ordering' and 'Tracing Birth, Marriage and Death Records'.

Feedback from visitors was extremely positive:

• 'I enjoyed seeing what happens when I order a copy of a certificate'
• 'A well organised and pleasantly conducted insight into your organisation'

News From TNA, Kew

Find your Trafalgar ancestor

The National Archives has recently launched a fully searchable database of over 18,000 individuals who fought in the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805 on the side of the Royal Navy. Trafalgar Ancestors lists all those who fought in Nelson's fleet including Royal Navy commissioned and warrant officers, ratings, supernumeraries and Royal Marines. Collectively these individuals were born in a surprisingly wide range of continents and countries, for example, Africa, America, West Indies, India, and most countries in Europe. The database also contains a reference to Jane Townshend - the only woman positively identified as having served at Trafalgar.

Trafalgar Ancestors is an ongoing project which aims to provide genealogical and service details about these individuals from a range of published sources and documents, but in particular the Admiralty records held by The National Archives. The overall aim is to eventually revise, extend and bring up to date Mackenzie's Trafalgar Roll.

In 1805, the Royal Navy employed around 110,000 individuals. So, if your ancestor served in the Royal Navy in 1805, there is roughly a one-in-six chance that they served at the Battle of Trafalgar. Trafalgar Ancestors can be searched by surname, but also using its advanced search facility, by first name, age on 21 October 1805, birthplace, ship's name, rating and rank.

To search the database, go to: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/trafalgarancestors

Further information

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)