KEY SOURCES

ANGLO-AMERICAN LEGAL TRADITION

Created by the Law Department of the University of Houston, Texas, this free online resource – available at aalt.law.uh.edu – provides access to historic English legal documents held at The National Archives in Kew.

More than nine million record images are currently available to view on the site, with some dating back to what is regarded as the ‘First Legal System’, which lasted from 1176 until 1348 – roughly spanning the reigns of Richard I and Edward III.

INTERNATIONAL GENEALOGICAL INDEX (IGI)

The IGI is a database containing details gleaned from the millions of birth, baptism, marriage and death records collected by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The easiest way of accessing the database is by using the free genealogy website familysearch.org, but it should be remembered that the IGI is an index rather than a primary source, so always seek out the original document used to create the entry wherever possible. As Robert discovered, the transcriptions can sometimes contain errors.

WARWICKSHIRE PARISH RECORDS

Thousands of historic parish records held by Warwickshire County Record Office (WCRO) have been digitised and made available to explore on ancestry. co.uk, findmypast.co.uk and thegenealogist.co.uk.

This includes the parish register for Elmdon (1538–1725), in which the marriage of Thomas Yate and Elizabeth Corpson is recorded on 18 June 1552.

Crucially for researchers, all three sites display scans of the original register pages, as well as indexed versions of each entry.