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.

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/

On 9 October 2025, LAC announced:

The call for proposals for the Documentary Heritage Communities Program (DHCP) scheduled for this fall is postponed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Updates will be provided in due course.

Apparently, “Due Course” has not yet arrived. In prior years, the call for proposals had already been issued.

Few would be surprised if LAC decided that cutting the program would be a relatively painless way to save $1.5 million, plus the associated administrative costs, at a time when the organization’s total budget is being severely pruned.

Will LAC provide an update soon? Or does due course mean indefinitely?

Deceased Online has updated its website with new features and 75,000 new digital burial records for the London Borough of Havering. Spanning 1871 to 2021, this collection dates back to the borough’s Essex past.

The update includes records from four major sites:

• Romford Cemetery (Opened 1871): A 25-acre Victorian site with records dating from 1871–2021. There are 118 CWGC burials
• Rainham Cemetery (Opened 1902): Known for its historic chapel and records spanning 1902–2021. The CWGC shows 13 burials.
• Upminster Cemetery (Opened 1902): This site holds records from 1902–2021. 6 CWGC burials.
• Hornchurch Cemetery (Opened 1932): Containing records from 1932–2021, it is home to a dedicated War Graves Memorial for WWII, 105 CWGC burials.

Researchers can search for free using a last name, though records from mid-late 1994 are computerized data only

Miscellaneous items I found interesting this week.

Unlocking Family History with ChatGPT: AI Tools for Genealogy Research
Read to discover the prompt and the resources ChatGPT suggested for researching life in the early 1890s near the docks in London.

 Charlotte Gray on Canada’s National Archives and Popular History

Yuletide R&R Wrapup
Over the holiday period, the blog carried a mix of Yuletide R&R and abbreviated family history posts. R&R posts averaged approximately 503 views per post, compared to only 115 views for the remainder. One R&R post reached over 1,000 views, the lowest of the more genealogy-oriented ones — just three.

New at TNA

LAC – What happened?
In case you missed it, here’s a response about the LAC collaborative project with Internet Archive Canada to digitize 80,000 public domain publications, dating from 1322 to 1920.
“There is a team diligently working away on digitizing books from the LAC collection, part of a three-year project. The decision was made to reach a critical mass before public access. We are just in the process of cleaning up some metadata before announcing and making available the digitized books – within the next month.”

Dianne Brydon

This week can perhaps be characterized as Naval Gazing.

British Women’s Royal Naval Service Enrolment, 1917–1919
Years covered: 1917–1919
Records added: 4,838

The WRNS enabled women to take on shore-based naval roles such as clerical work, communications, driving, cookery, and technical support, releasing men for service at sea. Compiled by naval authorities, the records typically include a woman’s name, service details, and dates of enlistment and discharge. For family historians. You may be surprised to find service overseas, such as in Malta. Sourced from the National Museum of the Royal Navy.

Royal Naval Division Service Records, 1914–1920
Years covered: 1914–1920
Records added: 4,730

The men of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines served on land during the First World War, fighting alongside the Army from Gallipoli to the Western Front. Drawn from The National Archives and the National Museum of the Royal Navy, these records are exceptionally detailed and will give you a combination of the following information about your ancestor: biographical information including name, date of birth, address, occupation, religion, and name and address of next of kin; swimming ability; appearance details such as hair colour, eye colour, distinguishing marks including tattoos and scars, height, chest size, and complexion; and service history including rank, service number, where stationed, wounds or illnesses, awards, and disciplinary action.

Navy Lists
Years covered: 1921–1937
Records added: 10,469,334

Published regularly, these lists detail officer appointments, promotions, ship assignments, and the fleet’s structure. Follow the careers of naval officers year by year.

Newspapers
This week’s additions include four new titles. The earliest starts in 1786.

Publication Title	Date Range	Pages Added	Status
Herne Bay Gazette	1986–1999	61,784	New
Ayrshire Post	1987, 1995–1999	35,678	Update
Kirriemuir Herald	1957–2004 (gaps)	27,580	Update
Pateley Bridge & Nidderdale Herald	1863–1950 (gaps)	19,238	Update
Maidstone Journal & Kentish Advertiser	1786–1829 (gaps)	8,750	Update
Irish Temperance League Journal	1863–1896	7,480	New
Leyland Guardian	2005	4,492	Update
Helensburgh and Gareloch Times	1882–1892	2,220	New
Marlborough Times	1915–1919	1,806	Update
Islington Gazette	1919	1,076	Update
Larne Weekly Recorder…	1883	216	New

Here’s something the others can’t match. The MyHeritage website is now fully available in 50 languages

The newly added languages are Albanian, Basque, Bosnian, Georgian, Icelandic, Irish, Luxembourgish, Maltese, and Welsh. There are now localized domains for these languages, so users are automatically served the most relevant version of the site.

Find out more on the company blog.

 

 

Join Saturday’s online meeting by registering, which covers both events.

Who Pays the Piper? Wills and Testaments of Scottish Musicians 1513-1800 / 9 a.m. EST

Presenter: Robert Urquhart, a retired archivist from Fife. 

Family historians sometimes think wills and testaments were only made by the wealthy, but many were registered in Scottish courts for people of “small estate,” including pipers and other musicians. This presentation uses examples to explain will and testament terminology and to show how these records reveal details of the lives and families of pipers, drummers, trumpeters, minstrels, and others.

“It All Started with Some Buttons… Looking for a Stewart Piper” / 10 a.m. EST

Presenter: Susan Reany Iskra, a keen genealogist from Dryden

While visiting family in England some years ago, Susan Reany Iskra was shown a set of buttons and told of a connection to a Stewart piper at Drummond Castle. These buttons were the starting point for a research journey that Susan will share in her presentation, covering her search, the processes she used, the resources she consulted, and what she learned about this piper in 19th-century Scotland.

I stumbled across this ad for 50% off Ancestry.ca until 12 January. It’s undoubtedly for “new” subscribers only.

Find the details here.

The National Library of Scotland was quick off the mark, putting online 9,851 maps at scales of 1:1,250 to 1:10,560 published in 1975. They came out-of-copyright on 1 January 2026.

These maps cover areas in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and include 2,872 more detailed maps at scales of 1:1,250, 6,281 maps at 1:2,500, and 699 less detailed maps at scales of 1:10,000/1:10,560 . A graphic index includes these new maps published in 1975. These are usually the most detailed, basic scales of Ordnance Survey maps for these areas.

Check here if you missed any recent additions.