Northumberland online
BEST WEBSITES TO AID YOUR RESEARCH
The main county archives website northumberland archives.com is currently undergoing a complete overhaul to offer new functionality, including the ability to order copies of documents online. A temporary catalogue has been launched at northumberland. spydus.co.uk, also available through a link on the homepage.
Aside from Northumberland Archives’ schools material being available on Findmypast, there aren’t any large-scale digitisations in the offing. You can already browse 61,776 images of Northumberland parish registers (1538–1950) via FamilySearch ( familysearch.org/search/ collection/2353070), there’s Durham’s family records.dur.ac.uk, and findmypast.co.uk also has parish baptisms, marriages and burials data produced by the Northumberland and Durham Family History Society ( ndfhs.org. uk). Ancestry has Durham diocese Bishops’ Transcripts, marriage bonds and allegations, and the specialist durhamrecordsonline.com has more than 3.5 million parish and census records from Durham and Northumberland. The FamilySearch wiki lists some other online resources at familysearch. org/wiki/en/ Northumberland,_ England_Online_Genealogy_Records.
There’s a list of the county’s registration districts at ukbmd.org.uk/reg/nbl.html, and as always GENUKI is invaluable: genuki.org.uk/big/eng/nbl.
Berwick is served by the volunteer group the Friends of Berwick and District Museum and Archives, and its website berwickfriends.org. uk has links such as Berwick Shipyard ( berwick shipyard.com), exploring shipbuilding on the River Tweed, and the Guild of Freemen of Berwick-upon-Tweed ( berwickfamilies.org. uk). You may also find useful information via the Borders Family History Society site ( bordersfhs.org.uk). The North East Inheritance Database ( familyrecords.dur.ac.uk/nei) gives access to pre-1858 probate records from Northumberland and County Durham, which are hyperlinked to document images on FamilySearch.