Your current location:
Home > Other Records of interest
Other Records of interest
when building your family tree
In addition to the comprehensive Census and Birth, Marriage & Death Indexes, Ancestry.co.uk also carries an extensive range of other record collections, running into thousands, to help you both build out your family tree and enrich the information you hold against a known ancestor.
Our record collections range from Immigration and Emigration Records, to Military Records, Telephone Directories and even Alumni Records. To give you a taste of how these records can help you further your family history research, we're going to focus on 2 types of record here, namely Military and Immigration/Emigration lists. Let's start by taking a look at Military records.
Capturing your family's military past in your family tree
Military records typically hold vital clues for those conducting their family history research and stretch back as far as the late 17th Century.
Amongst the most widely referenced military records on Ancestry.co.uk presently are those relating to World War One. Between 1914 and 1920 approximately 5 million men served in the British Army and key record sets you'll be able to refer to include, Pension and Service Records together with Medal Roll Indexes.
Service records-as their name suggests-relate to the records of those who registered for service with the British Army. Meanwhile, Pension Records hold information to those who received a pension (usually for a specified period, often subject to review) as a result of injuries or illness sustained during their military service.
Military records are highly useful in terms of locating other family-related information, such as details of next of kin and occupational details as well as addresses to enable you to broaden out your family history research.
Medal Roll indexes, for example, provide for information of medals awarded to those serving in the British army. These include notification of such awards as the British War Medal, Military Cross and Victoria Cross, amongst others and are a fitting tribute to the efforts of our ancestors in serving King and Country in the most extreme and harshest of battleground conditions.
Pinpointing those emigrant ancestors in your family tree
Immigration and Emigration records (often referred to as "Passenger Lists") can hold vital clues to ancestors missing between census years for example. Given the nature of these records, there is wide diversity in both types of record as well as the level of information held on each.
For those tracing their overseas British or Irish ancestors, some of the most pertinent records are likely to include, Passenger Records and Passenger Lists relating to emigration into the USA as well as inbound immigration (Convict and Bounty) entry records into Australia.
These records will typically be able to tell you when your ancestors emigrated, with whom they emigrated, where they arrived, their outward port of departure as well as the name of the boat they traveled out on.
Between around 1880 and 1920, millions of people from all over the world immigrated to the United States. In the early 1890s, Ellis Island opened its doors to process the new arrivals. New York (through Ellis Island) was the busiest port for immigration, but immigrants came through many U.S. ports. Regardless of where they landed, most ships that sailed to America, before and after 1880, kept a record of their passengers.
Ancestry.co.uk carries a wide range of passenger and emigration record lists. These include such collections as:
- Australian Convict Indexes, 1788-1868
- New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia Convict Musters, 1806-1849
- New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia, Settler and Convict Lists, 1787-1834
- New South Wales, Australia 1828 - 1842: Bounty Immigrants List
- New York Passenger Lists 1820-1957
- Boston Passenger Lists 1820-1943
- Philadelphia Passenger & Immigration Lists 1800-1850
Links