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 conferencekeeper.org.

Tuesday, 29 July

• 2 pm: Top (mainly US) Newspaper Sites That You MUST RESEARCH! by Ari Wilkins for Legacy Family Tree Webinars
  https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/top-newspaper-sites-that-you-must-research/
• 2:30 pm: A Beginner’s Guide to Italian Genealogy, by Logan Knight for the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
  https://acpl.libnet.info/event/13986391

Thursday, 31 July

• 5 pm: Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors by Chris Paton for Ontario Ancestors (OGS)
  https://ogs.on.ca/events-calendar/

• 6:30  pm: Cluster Research or Discovering You’re Related to the Whole
  Block, by Jessica Trotter for the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
  https://acpl.libnet.info/event/13836186

Friday, 1 August

9 am:  The history and role of The (UK)  Government Art Collection, from The National Archives (UK).
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/art-and-diplomacy-inside-the-government-art-collection-tickets-1335257042759

2 pm: Finding Your Scot Ancestors in New Scotland by Brian Nash for Legacy Family Tree Webinars
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/finding-your-scot-ancestors-in-new-scotland/

The valuable records in these nine collections cover 500 years from the 14th century to the 19th century.

Archdeaconry of Cornwall Wills and Administrations 1569-1699.
A Calendar of Wills, Gloucestershire 1541-1650.
Calendars of Lincoln Wills 1320-1600 (covering Lincoln, Leicester, Rutland,
Northampton, Huntingdon, Bedford, Buckingham, Hertford, and Oxford).
Wills and Administrations Preserved in the District Probate Court of Lewes 1541-1652 (covering East Sussex).
Dougal’s Index Register to Next of Kin, Heirs at Law, and Cases of Unclaimed Money.
Commissariot Record of Edinburgh, Register of Testaments, 1514-1600.
Commissariot of Inverness, Hamilton & Campsie Testaments, 1630-1800.
Abstracts of Probates and Sentences in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury 1620-1624.
Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills Index 1653-1656.

If you don’t have access to TheGenealogist, you should be able to find free online access to most, if not all, of these resources through a combination of FamilySearch, Internet Archives, Google Books, as well as subscription sites Findmypast and Ancestry. The title may be slightly different.

On this day, 28 July, in 1750, J S Bach died.

On the day before the anniversary, YouTuber and English organist Ben Maton (The Salisbury Organist) posted an episode in tribute.  If you’re interested in that style of music, or the musicianship, the voice, the English countryside and parish churches, I recommend it.

https://youtu.be/CS8IkJZbrtg?si=y6yC71HEeNsI81oc

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

New search button for the BIFHSGO website
I’ve been pestering BIFHSGO, and its long-suffering webmaster, for a simple way to search the Society website, especially the contents of back issues of Anglo-Celtic Roots. Harrah! It just appeared.
Go to the top left-hand corner of every page to find the search button “ENHANCED BY Google.” Type in the term you want to search and click on “Enter.”
Look for more changes coming to the website.

Counting the climate costs of abandoned shopping trolleys

Three Times As Good!
Unusually, on three successive days, 21-23  July, Dick Eastman posted about the Genealogy Fair in Fergus, Ontario . It’s on Saturday, 6 Sept from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Do I detect AI at work?

Bradford Trade Directories 1861 -1901

Hockey’s Violence Problem – And Ours
The article Hockey Canada sex assault verdict: Sports culture should have also been on trial is food for thought.

The acquittal of five former Hockey Canada players has reignited debates about sports culture and sexual assault. While victims deserve our support regardless of a trial’s outcome, the conversation raises uncomfortable questions about hockey’s unique relationship with violence and how society processes men’s issues only when they intersect with women’s safety.

As an immigrant from Britain, where football and cricket predominate, along with tennis and bowls, none of them contact sports, I’ve always found the violence in (ice) hockey disturbing. Unlike boxing or MMA, where violence is contained within formal combat rules, hockey players learn that hitting opponents, fighting, and intimidation are strategic necessities. From minor hockey onward, controlled aggression against those who threaten your team becomes a core skill.

Compare this to basketball, soccer, tennis, or even American football which has established rules governing contact. While American football involves physical contact, it doesn’t condone the interpersonal feuds and targeted aggression that hockey often celebrates. The physical dominance that wins hockey games doesn’t magically switch off in hotel rooms, suggesting the problem may be more fundamental than policy reforms can address.

The original article notes that male athletes are “socialized to comply with peer cultures that equate vulnerability with weakness”, that’s the same conditioning that produces hockey’s alarming rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide. Yet we only examine this socialization when men become perpetrators, not when they become victims.

Systems that dehumanize people rarely limit their damage to one group. The culture that treats women as objects may also destroy the mental health of men within it. Meanwhile, men also face forms of prejudice, from assumptions about their inherent violence and untrustworthiness around children, to dismissal of their experiences as domestic violence victims or sexual assault survivors.

Selective empathy and gendered prejudice serve no one well.

100 piece Bath Jigsaw Puzzle

The FreeBMD Database was updated on Wednesday, 23 July 2025, to contain 293,630,377 unique records, up from 293,415,571 at the previous update.
Years with additions of more than 10,000 index entries are 1993-1996 for births, 1994-1996 for marriages, and 1995-1996 for deaths.

FreeBMD estimates, based on GRO figures, that the collection is reasonably complete to 1993, except for a gap in 1991 for deaths.

With this addition, there are now 718,563 records in the Aberdeenshire, Scotland, School Admission Registers, 1852-1928 in a collection sourced from the Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen City Archives

Registers, from more than 200 schools, may include: Name, Gender, Birth date and place, Admission date, Discharge date, Parents’ names, Mother’s maiden name, Residence place, and Year. Many of the transcriptions have linked register images.

Mark Thompson and Steve Little are back on track with their third episode this month. I’m only about halfway through listening and fascinated by their news on transcription.

The topics are: AI-Based Transcriptions Transform Genealogy, FamilySearch Interview with David Ouimette, Grok 4’s Anticipated Release, Apple Changes Its AI Strategy.

Find the episode here.

Since Tuesday, attempts to access the LAC website at https://library-archives.canada.ca/index.htm have been met with the message, “We are currently experiencing technical difficulties with our website.” This is the second time this year that I’m aware of a prolonged outage.

They don’t mention that underneath, the banner, ENGLISH, takes you to https://www.canada.ca/en/library-archives.html, which may provide some of the functionality you need.

These days, websites are increasingly vulnerable. With the LAC website receiving roughly four million visits per year, or 10,950 per day, it’s unfortunate the outage message could not be more helpful.

Pen & Sword continues to expand their well-known and long-running British Tracing Your Ancestors series. Two new books published in the past three months are noteworthy if your family story touches on Surrey or Staffordshire

Tracing Your Surrey Ancestors
By Sarah Pettyfer
Published: 14 July 2025
Paperback, 184 pages, 30 mono illustrations
ISBN: 9781036110109 | £12.79 (was £15.99)

The county is of particular interest, as many communities once in Surrey, including Lambeth, Southwark, and Wandsworth, are now part of Greater London. This can trip up even experienced genealogists.
Author Sarah Pettyfer recently gave a Legacy Family Tree Webinars presentation on Surrey. It was pretty detailed. If you subscribe, be sure to check out the webinar and syllabus first.

Tracing Your Staffordshire Ancestors
By Chloe O’Shea
Published: 16 May 2025
Paperback, 216 pages, 40 mono illustrations
ISBN: 9781036108786 | £15.99 (eBook £9.99)

Chloe O’Shea’s new title, like most in the series, covers familiar parish and census records, as well as often-overlooked sources, such as manorial court rolls and tithe apportionments. It goes deeper, offering insight into special sources (such as pottery industry records) and integrating DNA and social media.

Looking ahead, a revised edition of Tracing Your Ancestors from 1066 to 1837 by Jonathan Oates, and a new book, A History of Adoption in England and Wales by Gill Rossini, are scheduled for release by Pen and Sword later this year.

Ancestry’s compilations of obituaries published in newspapers, collected from various online sources, have been updated as of 21 July 2025.

Ancestry has been compiling the Canadian, UK, and Ireland collections for nearly 20 years. The contents of the Canadian collection are primarily from the 21st century, with additions for the most recent years, making it a valuable resource for one-name studies.
Also updated is the U.S., Cemetery and Funeral Home Collection, 1847-Current, with 143,602,708 records.