Discovering New Sources

Grace’s Guide To British Industrial History

In their own words, Grace’s Guide describes itself as the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. I found this site when a search for my relative came up in a search for his name and added his ocupation – engineer.

Clicking through to the result I found his obituary which gave me a lot of information I didn’t know and confirmed some of what I did. Most interestingly Graces Guide gave me the source of that information, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. I now had somewhere else to look. I visited the IME website and discovered they held a searchable archive, and low and behold there he was. The record showed me his proposal to become a member.

And that was not the end of my discoveries, because re-looking at Graces Guide I came across other names from my family tree. Well worth a bit of leg work and perseverance.

The Clergy of the Church of England Database

I knew that a number of my ancestors were members of the clercy, spcifically Church of England. Their database is very large and checking it I found 8 entries, some as early as the 18th century. Now, I found searching this database a little awkward as a name search required a record ID so I ended up browing the database under the “M”‘s. What I should have done was a use a favourite Google tip.

If you know of a website which has the potential for one of your ancestors to be named therein, you can do a Google Site search. You can do this in two ways. One by undertaking an “Advanced Search” via Googles Tools menu, or a simpler way, thus: In the norma search box, type the word “Site” followed by a colon. Add to that the website address (without “https://www.”) foillowed by a space and the name or phrase you want to search for. The whole thing then will look like this:
site: theclergydatabase.org.uk smith

It’s not infallible but it works really well in most cases.

So these are just two websites that have been really useful to me. Others include:

The Ship’s List
The ShipsList website will help you find your ancestors on ships’ passenger lists.
University of Leicester – Special Collections Online:
A fascinating collection of historical information including trade and street directories for England and Wales
The Gazette – Official Public Record
The Gazette is one of the official journals of record or government gazettes of the Government of the United Kingdom. It contains records such as Wills & Probate notices, and Company Profiles.