Final part of HICUZ 79

Back across the pond

I’ve captured a list of other Wroes from merry ole England, near Manchester that are not in my personal line, but are definitely in some of our Wroe cousins in England.

The data came from http://www.familysearch.org/ , merely plugging in the Wroe family name along with a few names which traditionally re-occurred in my family, Richard, James, William, Thomas, and John. The data came back and was captured off the screen. This level of data was all free, though one could subscribe and get additional data. This level of data, however, let me find some obvious family connections, mainly siblings of known ancestors in my line. Additionally, the data provided film and index numbers which hopefully will allow you cousins out there to rent the films through a nearby Family History Center (or centre for those cousins across the pond), and get all the additional info to fill out family group sheets and thus save the info for posterity.  Here is a website offering free downloads of various genealogy forms - http://www.genealogysearch.org/free/forms.html

I will provide copies to Wroe cousins upon request. I urge the families of Wendy, T. David, Julian, Joyce, Doreen, Bart, George, Phil, William, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera to delve into this further… and to check my analysis.  AND – to see if it links the following families of Manchester to your, or my Wroe line – Cheetham (or Chetham), Ravalde, Brown (or Browne), Hayes (or Heyes of Salford), Washingtons, Popes, Weedons, Chancellors, Monroes, Plant, Shepley, Stansfield, Porter (in around Bradford), etc etc etc Watch for use of “Original” as a given (first) name, particularly in Brown/Browne line.

FUTURE CHALLENGE-

One can also capture a great number of snail mail addresses for Wroes living in and around Manchester from http://www.192.com/ . The data needs to be shifted for possible connection to known lines. I hope to send a form letter to a few of these Wroe families – as I did about fifteen years ago – to see if perchance serendipity happens and we discover a connection. Watch for this to happen in about a year or so… or try it yourself.

A PAST ATTEMPT at connecting  - I placed the following personal ad in the Manchester Evening News (MENS) in 2009, asking for help. Mentioned as an approach you might try.

In Touch

Readers' letters from Saturday 05 Sep 2009

QUOTE - I am hoping to find descendants of Richard Wroe, born Cheetham, June 29 1800, married Margaret Stansfield. He was a weaver and carder in Bradford, Manchester. His siblings (all born in Cheetham) included James, Thomas, Sarah and John. One of Richard’s sons was my paternal great grandfather Thomas Wroe/Rowe, born March 8, 1830.  Don Rowe rowboatdon@yahoo.com  UNQUOTE

The MENS site allows each of you to search for surnames – Wroe, Davies, Porter, etc. etc. etc. and hopefully discover relatives. I have received no replies thus far. The link is - http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/comment/in_touch/2009/09/05

NEW SUBJECT

I recently rejoined the Manchester Liverpool Family History Society (MLFHS) in Dec 2010. In one of their Internet postings I detected a Dennis Stansfield as a fellow member. I sent off a quick e-mail identifying a potential family connection, as my great great-grandfather Richard Wroe (born 1800 in Manchester, Lancashire) had married a Margaret Stansfield (born in Workington, Cumberland). We emailed each other and alas it proved (March 2011) there is no apparent connection.  

As a MLFHS member I subscribed to their posting of enquiries, and now share a few  from the MLFHS website as potential approaches for your research.

UK, Royal Navy and Royal Marine War Graves Roll, 1914-1919

Ancestry added this series of records recently, you can search by keywords so you can search a place name - not foolproof because will also match if the name appears anywhere else in the record like surname. Subjects are bolded and underlined. Personal identifiers removed.

MLFHS: Catholic Records Index

I have now completed the work on St Wilfrid's RC Church, Hulme baptisms by updating the Catholic Records Index (Data-Online Data menu on MLFHS home page) to include all of the names which appear in the transcript. This extends the previous coverage 1842-1862 up to 1907 and adds something like 80,000 more names.

Full details can be found, of course, on the recently published CD - see:
http://www.bookshop.mlfhs.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_3&products_id=1308

LDS (Latter Day Saints, i.e. Mormons) research site changes - In case you're not already aware of it, this information is very helpful in understanding the new LDS site, what it does and doesn't do, and how to continue to access the old data:

http://broadcast.lds.org/elearning/FHD/Local_Support/Consultant/Interactive_Guide/Adjusting_to_the_new_version.pdf

1911 Irish (Republic of) and UK census data now available online

Not sure if been mentioned here before but a comment about finding burial places jogged my memory.  If you find the name of a cemetery but not sure where it is then worth trying on the In From The Cold website, you can search on part of the name of a cemetery and it will display an aerial view of the cemetery.
> http://www.infromthecold.org/war_grave_cemeteries.asp

Lancashire OPC - It stands for "Online Parish Clerk".  See  http://www.lan-opc.org.uk/ for the Lancashire project - there are others covering other parts of the country. This indicates  English Parishes where volunteers do research for you. A great asset.

Subject:

National Archives: Census of Ireland 1911

I wanted to share this link with you.  The Irish 1911 census was just published.  You can select the 1901 census with this link as well.  

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/search/

New Virginia Freedmen Bureau Records On Line
Without fanfare the Family Search Beta site has released a set of records entitled Virginia , Freedmen's Bureau Letters, 1865 - 1872.  Attempting to respond to a query by someone on Afrigeneas.com, I tried to locate the document she had posted, which she had said was part of the Freedmen's Bureau Letters 1865-1872.  I Googled that term and it took me to the Family Search Beta site.  Although I found the record she cited with the person she mentioned, I was not sure where I was in the Bureau records, by last night I had figured it out....what Family Search had released was Record Group 105 of the Records of the Field Offices for the State of Virginia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 1865-1872......... Indexed by Name and digital images, over 800, 000 images on 203 reels of microfilm.  A Gold Mine for African American Researchers (and not just Virginia Researchers).

It is incorrect to say that those who were enslaved are not in the records prior April 1865 and the end of the Civil War and the general emancipation, look at any county court record where "property" is listed wills, deeds, we are there...but those enslaved individuals do not speak for themselves....in these FB Records many of the people we seek "Speak for Themselves"... give their names, their children's names, wives, go to court, make labor contracts, complain about their treatment as Free Men and Women, ask for transport back to their homes after they had run to Union held territory in VA to contraband camps, marry, take a census...too many other things for me to mention.

In 1993 James Walker (http://www.aagsnc.org/articles/walker.htm), co-founder of AAHGS and Archivist at the National Archives had spoken to our AAHGS Chapter about the historical value and the immense wealth of information of these records and implored us to go and see them.  A couple of months later I did have an opportunity to see some of them.   They were not microfilmed and in their original state, I was overwhelmed.  In the early 2000's these records were microfilmed. The VA records took 203 reels of microfilm to complete.

These documents not only tell the story of OUR participation in Virginia's and the Nation's history at a most crucial time period, but others as well,  Freedmen Bureau officials, White Virginians and ALL  who had contact with the Bureau, for whatever reason.

I can't promise you that everyone will find what they are looking, nor will it be easy to maneuver thru this site (I have been working on it all day) but it is an incredible resource.  I strongly suggest that you look at the Descriptive Pamphlet which describes what is in this Record set and gives a general description of what is on each reel...this is a link to the Pamphlet at NARA:

http://www.archives.gov/research/microfilm/m1913.pdf

About Mocavo - The world’s largest free genealogy search engine, Mocavo.com, provides genealogists access to the best free genealogy content on the web including billions of names, dates and places worldwide. Mocavo.com seeks to index and make searchable all of the world’s free genealogy information. While Mocavo.com discovers new sites every day, some of the existing sites searchable on Mocavo.com include genealogy message boards, family trees, state and local historical societies, the Library of Congress, National Archives, Ellis Island, Find A Grave, the Internet Archive, various U.S. state archives, and many tens of thousands of genealogy sites built by individuals. Similar to other search engines, Mocavo.com honors site owners by linking directly to their content.  http://mocavo.com/  

Consider your High School yearbook as a potential source of information.

1940 US Federal Census - The Archives will not be providing microfilm of the 1940 census, but it will be available digitally.  Here's the scoop directly from NARA (National Archives and Records Administration):

[Genealib] Old Cherokee Families: Notes of Dr. Emett Starr

This book is free online at: http://www.accessgenealogy/  You will find it in the section Native American Records

Lancashire BMD data

New data has been added at www.lancashirebmd.org.uk as follows:

Added 5,628 Births for Bury RD comprising: Bury South (1874-1879); Elton (1888-1889); Radcliffe (1885-1893)

Amended 4,626 Births for Blackburn RD to include mother's maiden name, comprising: Blackburn Northern (1901-1904)

Added 6,714 Deaths for Burnley RD comprising: Nelson (1923-1936)

ACCESS THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES THROUGH FOOTNOTE.COM

The National Archives is America 's information storehouse, collecting data on millions of residents who served in the military, arrived on passenger ships, took up federal lands, or were alive at the time of each decennial census.   
The Archives has a contract with Footnote.com to digitize many of its collections and make them available on the Internet.  In addition Footnote has loaded images of historic newspapers and city directories.  A subscription is required, but some of the content is accessible free.

BMD – Birth, Marriage and Death records

There has been a burst of quiet development by Councils to provide online ordering services for BMD certificates. Services are now offered by:
Lancashire CC (covers Burnley, Chorley, Hyndburn, Lancaster, Preston & S Ribble, Ribble Valley and W. Lancashire.

(This has been around for a while and is linked into LancashireBMD) Bolton Liverpool Manchester Salford Sefton (covers North and South Sefton) Tameside Trafford. We are looking at the possibility of linking some of these to the LancashireBMD order page.

You can find the individual links by Googling the individual register office sites, but for convenience, I have added a new 'Online Certificate Ordering' selection to the MLFHS Toolbar under the 'BMD' menu.

Cheshire BMD has been updated to add:

Marriages:
28 for Morley Green, United Reform Church, registers at Cheshire East (1993-2007)
134 for Wilmslow, Sacred Heart St Teresa RC, registers at Cheshire East (1990-2004)
1,490 for Wilmslow, Unitarian Church (Dean Row), registers at Cheshire East (1975-1995)
1,820 for Macclesfield, Civil Marriage, registers at Cheshire East (1997-2004)
1,769 for Cheadle, St Mary, registers at Stockport (1953-1975)
 
MLFHS: RAILWAY STAFF DATABASE & RAILWAY COMPANY DETAILS, Release Ver.    3

I was wondering whether anyone has access to the above CD. I have been trying to
track down the staff records for the NER and hope this CD might give the first
clue. I am looking for any entries relating to Joseph Bulmer around 1845 to 1860. He
was variously described as a railway labourer and railway waggoner.

Recall that Great Grampa Thomas Wroe worked as a railway labourer in 1851.