loads of free items for genealogy [Archive] - British Genealogy & Family History Forums

royston

08-10-2008, 8:16 AM

This is a fantastic site for free downloads of old books, lots of which are related to genealogy.
http://www.archive.org/search.php?qu...sh%20registers
The initial page has parish record books, but if you put things like visitatons in the search on the page other things will come up.
Roy

Hugh Thompson

08-10-2008, 10:14 AM

Hi Roy,Love it,what a great site,I've just got to work out how download the books,found a visitation that I needed straight away.
Hugh.|jumphappy

Marie C..

08-10-2008, 10:21 AM

Looks fascinating. Have you tried downloading anything? Some of them are large numbers of downloads. Will they take up too much space? Sorry! bit thick regarding downloading stuff.M

Lesley Robertson

08-10-2008, 10:52 AM

Looks fascinating. Have you tried downloading anything? Some of them are large numbers of downloads. Will they take up too much space? Sorry! bit thick regarding downloading stuff.M

When you look at the screen with the details about the book on it, on the left is a panel headed "view this book". If you want something that looks like the pages of the book, click on pdf. These can be very big, so if you're on a modem, choose Full ext, which is smaller, but which relies on OCR (computer text recognition) so often has errors.

I love this site. It has all sorts of goodies!
Lesley

pipsqueak

08-10-2008, 11:09 AM

That was interesting. You can read the books without downloading them by clicking on the image. There's quite lot there. Pity about the flashing gifs though - they're annoying.

salcat

08-10-2008, 11:14 AM

There is an option to turn off the thumbnails (the little flashing pictures). Scroll right down to the bottom of the page and its om the right hand side. They annoyed me too :)

Sally

Marie C..

08-10-2008, 11:23 AM

Thanks Lesley, shall enjoy it now. M

Sue Mackay

08-10-2008, 11:39 AM

That's my reading matter sorted for the rest of the day. Downloaded Visitations by the Bishop of Cape Town for the Cape of Good Hope in 1848 and 1850.

|jumphappy

Thanks a lot :D

royston

08-10-2008, 12:53 PM

Hi Roy,Love it,what a great site,I've just got to work out how download the books,found a visitation that I needed straight away.
Hugh.|jumphappy

Just click on the type you want (eg PDF) and it will ask if you want to open or save.
It is then upto you which.

Roy

royston

08-10-2008, 1:23 PM

Just click on the type you want (eg PDF) and it will ask if you want to open or save.
It is then upto you which.

Roy

Still searching this site and finding new things by searching in different ways.
Try inserting as follows (for example) history of Northumberland. This brings up many items for that county. You can do the same for other counties with varying results.
Roy

BeeE586

08-10-2008, 2:23 PM

What an amazing site, how on earth did you find it ?

No ironing done .................. again !

Eileen

Lesley Robertson

08-10-2008, 2:46 PM

What an amazing site, how on earth did you find it ?

No ironing done .................. again !

Eileen

I don't know about the others, but I found it when Googling for the Church of Scotland Fasti - they have all of it! Since then, I've been using it for work as well as home - if you're into botany, try searching on Sowerby and botany together.

Lesley

royston

08-10-2008, 2:54 PM

What an amazing site, how on earth did you find it ?

No ironing done .................. again !

Eileen

Sorry about the ironing but this was more "pressing"

I am afraid that I cannot claim credit.A friend on a Cornish site found it.

Pity there weren'tmore like it. Roy

v.wells

08-10-2008, 3:01 PM

This site was posted last year sometime and I have downloaded Whites 1902 Devonshire Directory and this a.m. downloaded Devon Parish registers 1853-1913. Double click on the type of file you want in order to open or save it. I choose .pdf as I have lots of room on pc, plus is better defined.

Thanks for bringing it to our attention again. I had almost forgotten about it but it remembered me!:D

I am now hoping to go back and look for burial registers and maybe something about RC Irish BMD's.

Sue Mackay

08-10-2008, 3:02 PM

What an amazing site, how on earth did you find it ?

No ironing done .................. again !

Eileen

I think I last used an iron in about 2003.... Always buy clothes that can be drip dried or dried flat and then 'ironed' on me :D As for sheets etc, they're going to get rumpled anyway....

People might also like to know that the home page of this wonderful site at
http://www.archive.org/index.php has the Way Back Machine. When you get that dreaded 404 File Not Found you can often find a cached page via this site.

CanadianCousin

08-10-2008, 3:45 PM

People might also like to know that the home page of this wonderful site at
http://www.archive.org/index.php has the Way Back Machine. When you get that dreaded 404 File Not Found you can often find a cached page via this site.

There's an add-on for Firefox that adds "Find archived page" to the right-click menu - it automatically launches a Wayback Machine search for the URL in the address bar. I can't remember what it's called, but I've been using it for several months.

Tim

CanadianCousin

08-10-2008, 4:00 PM

When you look at the screen with the details about the book on it, on the left is a panel headed "view this book". If you want something that looks like the pages of the book, click on pdf. These can be very big, so if you're on a modem, choose Full Text, which is smaller, but which relies on OCR (computer text recognition) so often has errors.
Another tip - when I see a book with an intriguing title, and want to know whether it includes a reference to a specific name that I'm interested in (e.g., a person or place), I generally start by choosing the text version, and use the browser's 'Find' function to see if there are any hits. If it looks like the book is worth saving, then I'll download the PDF version.

You can also use 'Find' in Acrobat Reader to search through PDFs, but some of the large files can take several minutes to download even with a broadband connection, and I don't always have the patience (esp. if I'm not sure about how useful the book is likely to be).

HTH -

Tim

Hugh Thompson

09-10-2008, 1:53 AM

susan-y

09-10-2008, 2:21 AM

:oAt the risk of sounding even dumber than I like to admit... what is meant by the term "Visitation"? |oopsredfa I only know it by definition as paying your respects at a funeral home prior to a funeral.

Thanks

Sue

Hugh Thompson

09-10-2008, 2:28 AM

basically they are family trees or pedigrees.

susan-y

09-10-2008, 2:36 AM

|hug|
Thankyou Hugh!
Just what I wanted...a simple answer !!!

Sue

Hugh Thompson

09-10-2008, 2:48 AM

Hi Sue,they are very handy if you happen to have one of your Great's mentioned on them
Regards Hugh.|book2|

ChristineR

09-10-2008, 5:19 AM

Many, many thanks for this link :)
|jumphappy

Hugh Thompson

09-10-2008, 7:41 AM

The Exeter PR is indexed which is a great help as it is about 450 pages if I remember correctly,also the visitations are as well so you don't have to search through every page to find names,I've converted about 60 PR's to searchable text and it's about 95%successfull if you vary your spelling.
Hugh.:)

Sukiejane

10-12-2008, 4:13 PM

Can I be awfully thick and ask what is a 'visitation'?

Pam Downes

10-12-2008, 5:13 PM

Can I be awfully thick and ask what is a 'visitation'?
Hi Sukiejane,
I know the result of the visitation(s), but didn't know the full story, so I googled and found this one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraldic_visitation) amongst others.
The key word to use/remember is 'heraldic' as opposed to religious.
Pam

busyglen

10-12-2008, 6:27 PM

That's where I looked it up a while ago Pam, as I wasn't too sure.

I haven't had any religious ones though? ;) As far as I know!

Glenys

Lesley Robertson

11-12-2008, 9:23 AM

Another great free site that I've been using for years is UK Genealogy Archives,I haven't seen it mentioned on the forum but it's well worth a look.
I should imagine that a lot of you already know about it.Lots of Cornwall, Devon and Derbyshire PR's and Visitations.
Hugh.:)

uk genealogy archives.org.

How long is it since you were there, Hugh? I've tried using the url with and without www and all I get is a search engine called "find something interesting", searching on "visitation" turned up one irrelevant hit.
Am I doing something wrong? - I put dots where you have spaces in the url.

Lesley

Hugh Thompson

11-12-2008, 10:22 AM

Hi Lesley,I don't know what happened to that link so here it is again.
Hugh.:)

http://www.ukgenealogyarchives.org.uk/index.html

Sukiejane

11-12-2008, 12:23 PM

Many thanks for everyone's replies - still a little confused but having read some of the postings I shall venture forth and see what comes my way.

Hugh Thompson

18-01-2009, 5:16 AM

I also found there are the "Marriage Allegations" for Hampshire,Canterbury,London,Westminster,and Surrey.It also lists the peoples occupations.covers from abt,mid 1500's to 1830's
Good luck Hugh.:)

Sukiejane

19-01-2009, 10:45 AM

Many thanks Hugh - have made a note of this and will certainly give it a look. Thanks, Sukiejane

Hugh Thompson

19-01-2009, 11:06 AM

Good hunting Sukie:)

Hugh Thompson

23-01-2009, 3:25 AM

I tried a search for "The Harleian Society" and found a few PR's that might help anyone as regards London.
The first three books listed were,
PR's for St Antholin,Budge Row London.marriages,baptisms,burials,1538-1754, and of St John Baptist on Wallbrook,baptisms and burials,1682-1754.
2nd book,
Register book of marriages for the parish of St George,Hanover square Middlesex,1788-1809.
3rd book,
St Thomas the Apostle,London,marriages,baptisms,burials,1558-1754.

There could have been more PR's but you have to open each book just to see what they're about.
Hugh.:)|snore|