Researching local history with Ancestry
Learning about the history of a local area is a fascinating project to undertake. Perhaps you want to investigate the place you live today, or research the locality in which your ancestors once lived. There are many records on Ancestry that will help you learn about these places in the past
You will be pleasantly surprised to note that records that are useful to family history research are also extremely revealing about local history research. You
Useful tools for local history
The sort of records that you will find useful when starting your local history project are maps, old photographs, phone books, trade directories, newspapers and census returns. When doing your family history your focus will naturally be on your family members. With local history you are aiming to research the local area and the census records on Ancestry have two extremely helpful tools to help you do this.
Above you can see a census page on Ancestry. Near the bottom of the window you will see some useful buttons. may just need to interrogate them in a slightly different manner. Here we provide a few tips to get you started on your local history project.
Interesting people & places to research locally
The school, the pub, former shops or a local war memorial can all make for fascinating projects. Not only are the individual lives interesting to research, but the insights you will gain as to how an area has changed over time are intriguing too. In times past, for instance, the railway companies provided employment for many people even in small villages who may once have had a station to help with the transport of agricultural livestock.
By way of example, searching the employment records on Ancestry by place we find a person employed as a signalbox man, Thomas Henry Pearson (see above). To learn more about him we can compare records, and seek him out in the 1939 National Register (see below). Here we see that he served in the ARP (Air Raid Precautions) on the advent of war. As a telegrapher and First Aider he would have had valuable skills for a remote rural community.
Referring to the ‘Maps, Atlases & Gazetteers’ category in the Card Catalogue on Ancestry we can find a range of maps, including one from 1807 – showing the area before the railway line ran past the village. A later map from the Ordnance Survey Revised New Series Maps collection, 1896-1904, subsequently shows its route.
How to find local history records on Ancestry
A good place to start it to study the Card Catalogue on Ancestry, to begin exploring the full range of records that might be of interest to you.
Select ‘Search’ from the menu bar, and scroll down to ‘Card Catalogue’.
From here you can filter by categories. There are several categories that have clear applications for local history. For instance, you may wish to look at the ‘Maps, Atlases & Gazetteers’ category mentioned. Or you can filter to home in records for your geographical area of interest.