What's new in Essex Family History and Essex Country Life

New web pages on EFH include local dialect, slavery, Essex Congregational Church, Biographies of Messrs Abel,Bensusan, Chamberlen,Ely,Owen and Wedgewood Benn and a whole new section with 22 pages on the famous Essex Regiment.

New Names in the Essex Forum include, Radley, Polley, Barnes, Croxon,Smith,Brown and Sweeting.

Website of the month - Historical Directories

In the 1800's and early 1900's several companies produced Directories listing prominent citizens and local traders as well as providing a gazetteer for towns and villages.

These directories provide a valuable resource for Family Historians.

They are available on CD although buying several can be quite expensive.

The University of Leicester received some funding to transcribe some Trade Directories and as a result Essex Directories for 1855, 1874, 1882, 1894, 1902 and 1914 are all available to read free of charge on their website.

On their front page click ' find your location' when select 'Essex' and the available Essex Directories appear. Click on the directory and the front cover of the directory appears.

You can either browse page by page using the next image box or enter a search for a name or place and then use the next hit button to view the relevant pages.

A really useful site of your ancestors were tradesmen or farmers. The entry for Tillingham even lists the local rat catcher!

The Family History Mentor - Scottish Relatives

If your parentage includes a Scot some different rules will apply to that experienced for researching England and Wales.

The census lists on Ancestry and other such sites cover Scotland allowing the first line of search between 1841 and 1901.

BMD records are all held in Scotland at the Scottish General Records Office and as a result most of the free BMD checks will not cover Scotland.

In the past 18 months a number of sites have sprung up offering information although you need to be sure what information you will access before parting with any money as some of the sites have sketchy/unreliable details.

Information at the Scottish GRO is available only to callers or to order via the post/e mail but fortunately Scotland People website has digitalised all the the BMD information making it available via the internet. Subscribers can pay by search or have short/long term subscription.

In the past I have found some of the Scottish parish names challenging and have downloaded the free list of Scottish Parishes on Scotland's People. It's amazing how helpful this list is in identifying the parish and pinpointing the area in Scotland.

Quick Tips

At present the archive to the Times Newspaper is free to search. A subscription is to be introduced in the near future so if you would like to check old copies of the times now is the time!

Finding that your ancestors followed non conformist religions can be scary. This may make life a bit more difficult but most non conformists kept records that were at least as good of the Church of England. To find out how to access them put the name of the religion i.e. Quaker into a search box to find the website of that religion and then follow links to family history.All of their websites will have an information section or FAQ deisgned to help people trying to trace ancestors who followed that religion.

When you are connected to a census search why not have a bit of fun and try to find someone famous. This can be via the free 1881 census if you do not subscribe to ancestry etc. Try finding W G Grace , James Keir Hardie, Karl Marx or Florence Nightingale.