Find old records online
After exhausting parish registers, going further can seem daunting. However, a wealth of old records exist online, helping you take your family tree back several centuries.
The internet has revolutionised family history research, allowing you to tackle your family tree from your own living room. Although wellknown sources, such as BMD Indexes, censuses and parish records are readily available on the internet, you’re going to need to use a wider range of records if you want to find your ancestors in the 16th century and earlier. Luckily, many of these are easy to access online, and should soon help you begin to identify your medieval ancestors.
Having taken your family tree back to the early parish registers in the 16th or 17th centuries, it’s time to explore your medieval and early modern ancestors. There are a wealth of resources available to help you, on a mixture of both free and subscription sites. Your first step is to identify just who your last known ancestors were.
Social mobility existed in the medieval period and you’ll find you have a surprising range of ancestors, from peasants to kings. However, it’s also best to target specific generations of your family, as particular records are suited to gentlemen or noblemen, while others provide better information on lower status ancestors.
When you begin looking for early records, your best bet is to visit www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk, which is a site specialising in family history records in the Middle Ages. It’s a really excellent resource, with articles about specific record types and how to find them. You can find many of the records listed in printed works, and you can also click on links to view some online.
For example, under probate records, you can click on a link to view a scanned book containing 50 early English wills from the London Court of Probate, which may include your ancestor’s will. You can also try the websites cited in this article to
“The best records for tracing early gentry or noble ancestors are heraldic visitations, which were family trees produced by teams of royal heralds for families that claimed the right to a coat of arms”
search for other early records. If you’ve already taken your family history research back to 1600, the chances are that you’re a member of a subscription site already. If so, take the time to consider what old records they have to offer. None of the main subscription sites particularly specialise in older records, although all of them will have something of interest. For Ancestry. co.uk, try going to http://search. ancestry.co.uk/search/cardcatalog. aspx#ccat=sbo=1&hc=25&dbSort =1&filter=2*193&, which is its card catalogue of records, filtered to show the earlier records it has. Many are parish registers, but you’ll also find some early poor law records, wills and probate documents. Findmypast ( www.findmypast.co.uk) also has some early records, although it’s harder to search specifically for older record types. They are mostly useful for early parish registers.
Since older records tend to be more specialised and rare, subscription sites will always be of limited value when you’re tracing ancestors from before the 17th century. However, there is still a wealth of material online, if you’re prepared to do some digging.
A surprising amount of early records have been transcribed and published by historical societies over the years. While you can search for these volumes in your local county record office or library, why not see if they are available online? The best records for tracing early gentry or noble ancestors are heraldic visitations, which were family trees produced by teams of royal heralds for families that claimed the right to a coat of arms. The pedigrees, which were produced in the 16th and 17th centuries, often take families right back to the Norman Conquest, and, since gentry families intermarried, you can also cross-reference with other families. Most have been printed and many are available online. Go to www. heraldry-online.org.uk/ HarleianPublications2. htm for details of how to find and access the pedigrees for free.
Higher status ancestors may also have left a will, many of which you can view online at
The National Archives’ (TNA) website. Try searching for wills using TNA’s Discovery Catalogue ( www.nationalarchives.gov. uk/about/discovery-service. htm) and restricting the search results to ‘PROB’ records. You Politicians The History of Parliament website gives short biographies for all known MPs in the 16th century and 1386-1421.
can download many of the wills that they hold for a small fee, allowing you to transcribe them on your computer at home.
Medieval England was a feudal society, with peasants living on a manor belonging to a lord. If you know the manor where your ancestor lived, surviving manorial records are a great way of learning more about them.
The most common survivals are manor court documents and manorial accounts. While these have rarely been transcribed, let alone published online, you can use the internet to find them by carrying out a search of the Manorial Documents Register ( www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ mdr). You can search online by place name to identify what survives for your ancestor’s home manor and where you can go to find it. Also try www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/ sources/manorial.shtml for details of any that you can find online.
Many of your ancestors will also have taken part in military campaigns during the medieval period and it’s worth checking at www.icmacentre.ac.uk/soldier/ database, which contains records of soldiers between 1369 and 1453. There are three databases to search, each of which give names and ranks. The largest database contains the details of the men who fought alongside Henry V in his Agincourt campaign.
POLITICAL CONNECTIONS
Another online resource often underused by family historians is www.histparl.ac.uk, which gives details of MPs. Although not all of the biographies are currently online, members for 1386-1421 and for most of the 16th century are available. As well as a short biography, there are extensive footnotes, allowing you to carry out further research into your ancestor.
There are also a wealth of tax records available online, starting with Domesday Book of 1086, which lists landholders who William I wished to tax. For obvious reasons, tax records tend to be particularly thorough and often include members of society, such as women or lower status individuals, who are less easy to find in surviving records. Try www. medievalgenealogy. org.uk/sources/feudal. shtml for details of what you can find online, although bear in mind that much will be printed in Latin. You can visit https:// translate.google.co.uk to help you with translating the documents.
Once you begin searching for old records online, you’ll find a wide range of material available. As well as the websites already mentioned, try a general search of https://archive.org/index. php or www.books.google. co.uk as they hold transcripts of records by many local societies.
Finally, TNA will also hold the originals of many of the old records that interest you, so have a look at its research guides, which you can find at www.nationalarchives. gov.uk/records. This will point you in the right direction and you might be lucky enough to find copies online to view from the comfort of your own home.
It’s exciting to trace your ancestors back before the 17th century and into the medieval period. Let the internet help you locate documents. Who knows, you might be able to find an ancestor who fought at Agincourt, was an MP, or was simply a peasant who farmed their lord’s manor during the Middle Ages?