Most of the time, I write about new databases that are of no interest to me or most readers. Life is like a box of chocolates — joy when a new collection appears online for an area of your family history interest. I had one on 18 January with the 15,054,046 names in the North Riding of Yorkshire electoral registers addition on Ancestry.
It includes the major communities of Middlesbrough, Redcar, Whitby, Scarborough and Northallerton and a host of smaller ones like Great Ayton, which is in my family history.
I found my grandmother from 1945 to the year before her death, missing the war years. Her mother, under her married name Cochrane, was included in 1918 and 1919 recorded with her second husband but leaving the new mystery of where they were in the 1920s and most of the 1930s.
The registers include the names of registered voters in the Riding and their place of residence. Depending on the year, you may find a full street address, the name of a house, the name of the street, or the name of the polling district. Registers weren’t produced in 1916 and 1917 or from 1940 to 1944 because of the two world wars.
The originals are at the North Yorkshire County Record Office, let’s not forget to acknowledge the work of the organizations that preserved and made available the original records, Ancestry almost certainly used OCR to compile the collection.
John:
Thanks for the heads up about these registers. My Warrener line is from the Cayton area with a few cousin branches settling in the surrounding areas. So it is a wonderful treat to learn about a record set that includes the North Riding of Yorkshire and doubly so to actually find some familiar names in the area such as Leadley Ridsdale Warrener in Seamer.