Articles by Findmypast

The 1911 Census of England and Wales was taken on 2nd April and recorded the details of over 36.3 million men, women and children. The count included all individual households, plus institutions such as prisons, workhouses, naval vessels and merchant vessels. The census also included records for the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, Royal Navy ships at sea, and overseas military establishments.The census is perhaps one of the most valuable resources available to UK family historians and can reveal a

To successfully build a family tree you'll need to use information on the family members you already know about to discover those you don't. The documents that help you do this can vary from prisoner lists to business indexes, military records to archived newspapers, but while those resources can be amazing for painting a picture of what your ancestor may have been like as a person, more often than not it's BMDs that allow you to identify them in the

The Battle of Waterloo was one of the defining moments in European history. To help everyone understand the importance of the event, we've summarised the Waterloo story. What role did your ancestors play? Find out in our Waterloo records, and share your own stories below.Waterloo records, and share your own stories below. In 1814, Napoleon, Emperor of France, escaped from exile on the Isle of Elba and marched on Paris, intent on reclaiming his throne from King Louis XVIII. European

You've probably noticed that a number of individuals' information have been redacted from the records, meaning that when viewing a household, there may be one or more members whose information is unavailable to view. This is to maintain the privacy of those who were obliged to supply their personal information to the enumerators of the 1939 Register. Although the Register isn't a census, and therefore isn't subject to the rules and restrictions that censuses are, personal information about living people is

Paratrooper Lance Corporal Josh Leakey was awarded the Victoria Cross (VC) in 2015 for bravely coming to the aid of isolated and wounded comrades in the face of the enemy in Afghanistan. Although L/Cpl Leakey is the third British soldier to receive a VC for service in Afghanistan, he is the first recipient to have survived the conflict. Until now Pte Johnson Beharry from 1st Battalion the Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment was the only non-posthumous British military recipient since 1965, for

We've all been new to family history at some stage, and we'd be lying if we said we hadn't made (and continue to make) a few mistakes here and there. Luckily, genealogy is a marathon, not a sprint, and so there's time to learn from our errors and become better researchers along the way. Here are a few of the mistakes we made when we started out that we are sharing in the hope you'll avoid making the same ones.