Anglo-Celtic Connections

So far this month  FamilySearch has added three Canadian (Quebec) Collections to its Full Text Search.

	Collection Title	Records	Last Updated
	Canada, Quebec, Legal, from 1826 to 1889	21,778,245	14 January 2026
	Canada, Quebec, Others, 1969	5,340,040	14 January 2026
	Canada, Quebec, Deaths, from 2008 to 2011	635	8 January 2026

Although nothing has been added for the UK or Ireland, FamilySearch has been busy, adding 196 titles. Here’s an Ai-generated summary of the additions.

1. Major Regional Highlights

• Philippines: Massive updates across dozens of provinces (Cebu, Metro Manila, Iloilo, etc.). Most are Legal records ranging from the mid-1800s to the late 20th century.

• Brazil: Extensive coverage of Civil Registration and Catholic Church Records for almost every state (São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, etc.), with many records extending into 2023.

• United States: Significant focus on Biographies, Legal, and Property records. Notable large collections include Kansas Legal records ($3.5M+$ records) and New York Legal records ($27M+$ records).

• Portugal: Broad updates to Catholic Church Records across various districts like Coimbra, Braga, and Vila Real.

2. Largest Collections by Record Count

If you are looking for the most “searchable” new data, these are the heavy hitters:

Collection Title	Record Count
United States, New York, Legal (1985)	27,121,873
United States, Military Service (0001-2012)	32,007,492
Canada, Quebec, Legal (1826-1889)	21,778,245
United States, Oklahoma, Legal (1907-1959)	7,912,817
United States, California, Deaths (1972-1973)	7,065,301
Venezuela, Catholic Church Records (1577-2022)	6,380,292

3. Notable “Deep History” Records

Several collections date back exceptionally far, which is rare for digital indexing:

• Spain, Sevilla, Municipal Records: Dates back to 1293.

• Netherlands, South Holland, Legal: Dates back to 1314.

• Portugal, Civil Records: Dates back to 1437.

• Italy, Puglia, Births/Marriages/Deaths: Comprehensive sets from the mid-1800s to early 1900s.

UPDATED BELOW

The Arolsen Archives is the largest archive on victims and survivors of Nazi persecution, sharing knowledge and promoting active remembrance and democracy.

Ancestry’s two new databases are:

Index to Tracing and Documentation Files from Arolsen Archives (Formerly ITS), 1947 (in German)
An index of approximately 1.5 million records that document inquiries to Arolsen about people who had been impacted by the Holocaust. Records, in the language of origin, may include the following information:

Name, including any known aliases
Date of birth
Record number
Database number
Arolsen file number

Arolsen Concentration Camp Lists, 1939-1944 (in German)
This collection contains 8,137,272 records of concentration camp internees who were held captive by the Nazi Regime during World War II. Most records came from Buchenwald, Dachau, Flossenburg, Mauthausen, Mittelbau-Dora, Natzweiler-Struthof, or Neuengamme; but records from other concentration camps are also present. Types of records available include:

Transports lists
Registers
Death certificates
Death reports
Witness records
Prisoner records
This collection is multilingual. Most are in German, but you may also encounter records written in English, French, Czech, or other languages.

Records may include the following information:

Name
Age at registration
Nationality
Occupation
Religion
Date and place of birth
Date of arrival
Name of concentration camp
Prisoner number
Type of prisoner
Role within the camp
Rank and Unit
Date of departure
Date and place of death
Age at death
Names of family members

Linked images of the original are available. ChatGPT and Gemini will provide a transcription and translation, to be treated with caution.

How long until Ancestry starts producing a similar collection for victims of ICE?

UPDATE
Ancestry has asked I make it clear that the Arolsen databases are free.  They do require a searcher to be logged in to their Ancestry account, which can be a free account. 

Choose from these selected free online events. All times are Eastern Time, unless otherwise noted. Registration may be required in advance—please check the links to avoid disappointment. For many more events, mainly in the U.S., visit https://conferencekeeper.org/virtual/

Tuesday 20 January

2 pm: Ottawa Virtual Genealogy Drop-In, for OGS Ottawa Branch.
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/virtual-genealogy-drop-in-2-2026-01-06-2026-01-20/

2:30 pm: Preserving the Greatest Generation: (US) World War II Genealogy, by Courtney Carr for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/15260280

8 pm: Beyond the First Clue: Unraveling a Genealogical Mystery with the GPS, by Gary L. Ball-Kilbourne for BCG and Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/beyond-the-first-clue-unraveling-a-genealogical-mystery-with-the-gps/

Wednesday 21 January

1 pm: Why Do We Grieve? by Robin May for Gresham College.
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/why-grieve

2 pm: Advanced Topics in DNA 1 of 5: Advanced Y-DNA Evidence, by Blaine Bettinger for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/advanced-topics-in-dna-1-of-5-advanced-y-dna-evidence/

7 pm: FamilySearch: Review & What’s New, by Clare Muehlbauer for OGS Thunder Bay Branch.
https://thunderbay.ogs.on.ca/events/thunder-bay-branch-tbd-2/

8 pm: Foundations in AI for Family History 2 of 5: Prompt Power—Getting Better Answers from AI, by Andrew Redfern and Fiona Brooker for Legacy Family Tree Webinars. (Legacy FTW Members Only)
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/foundations-in-ai-for-family-history-2-of-5-prompt-power-getting-better-answers-from-ai/

Thursday 22 January

6:30 pm: Local History & Genealogy Collections at the Columbus
Metropolitan Library, by a librarian from the Columbus Metropolitan Library for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/15260412

7 pm: Epic Tales From New France: Dawn and Carol’s Greatest Hits, by Carol Ufford and Dawn Kelly for OGS Ottawa Branch.
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/best-of-our-new-france-talks-ottawa/

Friday 23 January

Saturday 24 January

Three new Canadian titles were added recently: the Brampton Business Times, Niagara This Week, and the Trail Rossland News. Like most of the 30+ updates, the additions are for this century, mostly for 2025.

For the UK, 217 papers are marked as updated. While many are for recent months, more than 20 have coverage in the 19th century.  I was delighted to see coverage for my family in the 94.425 pages of the Yarmouth Mercury from 1934 to 2024, and 518,480 pages of the Eastern Daily Press for 1870-2024.

Do you use Wikipedia? Do you recall when it was sneered at?

After 25 years, an anniversary which was little noted, Dan Gardner rates it a rare success story in an otherwise disappointing internet landscape and a monument to what free people can do with nothing but their own intelligence and energy.

He also has suggestions on how it, and Wikimedia, could be improved.

https://dgardner.substack.com/p/wikipedia-at-25

Miscellaneous items I found interesting this week.

Canada and the Great Irish Famine 
This book by William Jenkins, published in paperback last October, has been approved for addition to the Ottawa Public Library collection.

2025 continues series of world’s three warmest years

What in Irish history “was surely a major tribute to the longevity of our race, and the healthy character of our much-abused weather”? Find out on Valentine’s Day.

New variant of the flu virus is driving surge of cases across the US and Canada

Flu activity in Canada has started to trend downward as of 9 January, following a sharp spike in mid-December.
During the peak period in late December, over 26% of all flu tests performed across the country came back positive.
In Canada, the surge was driven by a highly infectious new H3N2 subtype called subclade K. This variant is noted for causing high fevers and hitting children particularly hard compared to previous years.

Keep up to date with the Canadian respiratory virus surveillance report.

Constable’s “The Cornfield”: A Bicentenary Harvesting
From Gresham College, by Malcolm Andrews, reflections on a painting that has acquired iconic status – a marker of national identity — as a representation of typically English countryside.  At 1 pm on Tuesday.

 

Thanks to the following individuals for their comments and tips: Anonymous, Dianne Brydon, Gail, Sylvia Smith, Teresa,

On 15 January, Canadiana augmented its newspaper collection for London (ON) with the following issues between 1932 and 1935

For the London Evening Advertiser, there are separate files for: July 15, 1932 – December 30, 1933; January 2, 1934 – December 31, 1934; and January 2, 1935 – December 31, 1935.
The paper commenced in 1863 and ceased publication in 1936. Canadiana has 3,984 digitized issues starting in 1922.

Files for the  London Morning Advertiser are for: August 1, 1932 – December 25, 1933; January 1, 1934 – October 8, 1935; and January 1, 1935 – October 24, 1935.
Coverage starts in 1923;  there are only 116 scattered issues

If you had ancestors living in Appin, Arva, Clandeboye, Delaware, Dorchester, Glanworth, Ilderton, Lambeth, Nilestown, Thorndale or Wardsville, they may well have read these papers.

With the new year comes the opportunity to access records coming out of embargo.

TheGenealogist just added 185,396 newly opened records to their 1939 Register for England and Wales collection. Most are for people born in 1924 and 1925. Would you like to try it for free? Until 31 January, TheGenealogist is offering a 30-day free trial at https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/MGB39126/.

I couldn’t locate the Register at FamilySearch. Ancestry has 45,915,091 records, Findmypast has 36,526,334, and MyHeritage has 35,145,138 records. TheGenealogist doesn’t specify. Why the differences? Could Ancestry be including alternate spellings or married names?

Hearth taxes were introduced in the British Isles in time for the cold period of the Little Ice Age. They came with the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy. In England and Wales, they were levied from 1662 to 1689 at one shilling per hearth and collected twice yearly. It was also collected in Scotland between 1691 and 1695, and continued in Ireland into the early nineteenth century.

Hearth tax records name the head of household and the number of hearths. Many returns also list those exempt from payment, often the poor. Hearth tax records function as a quasi-census for the later seventeenth century.

Hearth Tax Digital, currently containing 370,407 entries, allows users to explore information on individual names and communities, including whether householders were men or women, their titles (such as Mr, Mrs, or widow), and, in some cases, their social roles, including medical and military occupations.

The records are published unabridged, following the layout of the original manuscripts, and are fully dated. Latin text is transcribed and translated into English, with abbreviations clearly indicated.

Find a list of the coverage at https://gams.uni-graz.at/archive/objects/context:htx/methods/sdef:Context/get?mode=records. Recent and forthcoming additions include London(City, Southwark, and Westminster), Bristol, Norwich, Yorkshire (all three ridings, plus Hull and York), and East Anglia (Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex). Improved search tools and an interactive map support both targeted research and broader exploration.

If you have impoverished Victoria ancestors, don’t miss these two articles.

Dave Annal, in his article Poverty, Illegitimacy and Lies, about Stoke-on-Trent, quotes from “Mrs Gaskell’s groundbreaking novel Mary Barton, available at the Internet Archive.