Liverpool Online
BEST WEBSITES TO AID YOUR RESEARCH
Ancestry has had Anglican registers held at Liverpool Record Office on its roster since 2011 ( ancestry.co.uk/dynamic/liverpool). Some registers were missed during the initial digitisation programme and archivist Jan Grace says they are currently mopping up missed registers as well as new material that has been acquired since. The site also has Catholic baptisms (1802-1906), marriages (1754-1921), burials (1813-1988) and confirmations (1813-1920). You can check for arrivals and departures through Liverpool in Ancestry’s passenger lists, or there’s the Liverpool crew lists collection (1861-1919). Ancestry has also just completed digitisation of electoral rolls.
Rival subscription site findmypast.co.uk is working on workhouse and cemetery records. Findmypast also has some data produced by the Liverpool and South West Lancashire FHS ( liverpool- genealogy.org.uk).
The society’s online forum is well worth visiting ( liverpool- genealogy.org.uk/phpBB3). Threads are grouped under general help, military, news and more, plus there’s a section where members can recommend useful websites. The ‘Burials, Graves, MIs’ thread, for example, leads to a Toxteth Park Cemetery database ( toxtethparkcemetery.co.uk) and St James’ Cemetery ( stjamescemetery.co.uk/cemetery/untitled.html) – the latter being a 10-acre site holding the remains of nearly 58,000 people.
Other free resources worth exploring include Lancashire Online Parish Clerks ( lan- opc.org. uk) and, for transcriptions of local civil registration BMD indexes (as opposed to the GRO indexes) visit lancashirebmd.org.uk. There are also county-wide bodies such as Lancashire Parish Register Society ( lprs.org.uk).
The Liverpool Record Office site is a good place for researchers new to the area ( liverpool.gov.uk/archives), and if you dig around there’s lots of useful information via Liverpool Museums. Via this page ( liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/mol/visit/galleries/soldiers/ research/kingsreg/index.aspx), for example, you can search a database of King’s Liverpool Regiment soldiers who served during the First World War.