Summer slows the world of family history. This year, this week, the US and UK are preoccupied. There is news for Irish genealogy.

Claire Santry posted Irish Registry of Deeds Index Project: July 2024 update and Irish Newspaper Archives offers up to 40% discounts (until 8 July).

John Grenham highlights Genealogical Office records, held in the National Library of Ireland manuscripts department, a collection now being digitized.

Here are the top-ranked YouTube videos based on views per day for the past week:

| 1 | “Palestine’s Family Tree”,  17,750 views per day
| 2 | Hugh Bonneville & John Bishop’s Surprising Family Ties (FULL EPISODE) \| Our DNA Journey \| Ancestry®\,  18,750 views per day.
| 3 | Honoring The Children of Henrietta St \| The Genealogy Roadshow \| Ancestry®, 12,000 views per day.
| 4 | Your ancestry 🦶  3,000 views per day.
| 5 | AMERICAN ANCESTRY 3,000 |views per day.
| 6 | Top 10 Genealogy Shows to Watch if You Can’t Get Enough of Finding Your Roots, 1,620 views per day.
| 7 | ✨ You are an ancestor ✨  1,600 views per day.
| 8 | Ed Balls’ uncovers dark family history! 🌳 1,240 views per day.

To watch any of these videos, enter the title on youtube.com

Delve into your US relative’s history with the MyHeritage U.S. City Directories collection. It incorporates 26,000 U.S. city directories published between 1860 and 1960.
The collection contains 561 million aggregated records consolidated from 1.3 billion records, so multiple records about the same person are listed together.

The “Aberdeenshire, Scotland, Burial Registers, 1769-1983” collection contains 370,539 records spanning over two centuries.

Information may include name, age, death date, spouse, parents, occupation, and address.  Find burial registers and lair (burial plot) sales papers.

The following places cemeteries and churchyards across Aberdeenshire are included:

Allenvale, Cairmie, Drumblade, Essie, Fettercairn , Fordoun, Forgue , Gartly, Glass, Grove, John Knox(?), Marykirk, Nellfield, Nigg, Old Machar (?), Rhynie , Ruthven, St Clement’s, St Nicholas, Sat Peter’s, Trinity, Ythanwells.

Original records are held by Aberdeen City Council.

DeceasedOnline has a selection of Aberdeenshire burials. Start at https://www.deceasedonline.com/servlet/GSDOSearch

“Check back regularly as new collections will be added.”

That’s the message you see on visiting the full text search experimental Labs product at FamilySearch.

Available are: US Land and Probate Records, Mexico Notary Records, Australia Land and Probate Records, New Zealand Land and Probate Records, and US Plantation Records.

That way for several months, it reminds me of the line from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: “Godot will not come today but will surely come tomorrow.”

This new Ancestry transcription database has 7,076,289 20th-century records based on the Quebec government’s Registre de référence à l’état civil.
This image shows the transcript for my nearest relative. There are the usual inaccuracies one expects in a death record in another language. Christophe is Christopher. The birth year is off, and the mother is named Margaret, not Marie.

The same record at Généalogie Québec, free for Ottawa Public Library cardholders, does have the final r on Christopher.

Directorate of Movements microfilm C-5693 recently became available on Canadiana.ca Heritage. 

It comprises voyages to Europe between November 1943 and April 1944.

Canadian forces members, airmen trained under the BCATP, and others are included in the passenger lists.

There are 5,354 images covering 43 voyages.

Ships include the Pasteur (6 voyages), Ile de France (5), Aquatania (4), Queen Mary (4), and Mauretania (4).

Below is the list of voyages. Some were considered but ended up not carrying troops. I’ve added a few starting page numbers to help find a voyage of interest.

Eastbound Personnel – PASTEUR – Port of Departure – Halifax – Convoy AT-81a [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-786-2 (Starts at image 3).

Eastbound Personnel – BEAVERHILL – Port of Departure – Saint John – HQS 63-302-787.  (Starts at image 378).

Eastbound Personnel – MAURETANIA – Port of Departure – Halifax – Convoy AT-81 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-788-1.  (Starts at image 483).

Eastbound Personnel – MAURETANIA – Port of Departure – Halifax – Convoy AT-81 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-788-2. (Starts at image 817).

Eastbound Personnel – FORT TOWNSHEND – Port of Departure – Halifax – HQS 63-302-789.

Eastbound Personnel – QUEEN MARY – Port of Departure – New York – Convoy AT-82 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-790. (Starts at image 1181).

Eastbound Personnel – ILE DE FRANCE – Port of Departure – New York – Convoy AT-83 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-791.

Eastbound Personnel – AQUITANIA – Port of Departure – New York – Convoy AT-85 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-792.

Eastbound Personnel – VESSEL – Port of Departure – San Francisco – HQS 63-302-793.

Eastbound Personnel – FORT AMHERST – Port of Departure – Halifax – HQS 63-302-794.

Eastbound Personnel – ERRIA – Port of Departure – Halifax – HQS 63-302-795.

Eastbound Personnel – FORT TOWNSHEND – Port of Departure – Halifax – HQS 63-302-796. (Starts at image 1491).

Eastbound Personnel – BAYANO – Port of Departure – Halifax – HQS 63-302-797.

Eastbound Personnel – VESSEL – Port of Departure – San Francisco – HQS 63-302-798.

Eastbound Personnel – LADY NELSON – Port of Departure – Halifax – HQS 63-302-799. (Starts at image 1610).

Eastbound Personnel – U.S.N. VESSEL – Port of Departure – Davisville, Rhode Island – HQS 63-302-800.

Eastbound Personnel – ILE DE FRANCE – Port of Departure – New York – Convoy AT-87 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-801.

Eastbound Personnel – PASTEUR – Port of Departure – Halifax – Convoy AT-87a [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-802-1.

Eastbound Personnel – PASTEUR – Port of Departure – Halifax – Convoy AT-87a [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-802-2. (Starts at image 1903).

Eastbound Personnel – QUEEN MARY – Port of Departure – New York – Convoy AT-88 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-803.

Eastbound Personnel – AQUITANIA – Port of Departure – New York – Convoy AT-89 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-804.

Eastbound Personnel – MAURETANIA – Port of Departure – New York – Convoy AT-90 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-805.

Eastbound Personnel – ILE DE FRANCE – Port of Departure – Halifax – Convoy AT-92 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-806-1. (Starts at image 2294).

Eastbound Personnel – ILE DE FRANCE – Port of Departure – Halifax – Convoy AT-92 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-806-2.

Eastbound Personnel – ILE DE FRANCE – Port of Departure – Halifax – Convoy AT-92 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-806-3. (Starts at image 3061).

Eastbound Personnel – QUEEN MARY – Port of Departure – New York – Convoy AT-93 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-807.

Eastbound Personnel – AQUITANIA – Port of Departure – New York – Convoy AT-94 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-808.

Eastbound Personnel – QUEEN MARY – Port of Departure – New York – Convoy AT-97 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-809.

Eastbound Personnel – PASTEUR – Port of Departure – Halifax – Convoy AT-100a [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-810.

Eastbound Personnel – QUEEN ELIZABETH – Port of Departure – New York – Convoy AT-99 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-811.

Eastbound Personnel – AQUITANIA – Port of Departure – New York – Convoy AT-100 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-812.

Eastbound Personnel – ANDES – Port of Departure – Halifax – Convoy AT-97a [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-813-1. (Starts at image 3427).

Eastbound Personnel – ANDES – Port of Departure – Halifax – Convoy AT-97a [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-813-2.

Eastbound Personnel – MAURETANIA – Port of Departure – New York – Convoy AT-102 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-814. (Starts at image 3960).

Eastbound Personnel – EMPRESS OF SCOTLAND – Port of Departure – Halifax – Convoy AT-103a [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-815-1. (Starts at image 3968).

Eastbound Personnel – EMPRESS OF SCOTLAND – Port of Departure – Halifax – Convoy AT-103a [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-815-2.

Eastbound Personnel – QUEEN ELIZABETH – Port of Departure – New York – Convoy AT-104 [USA to United Kingdom (Troops)] – HQS 63-302-816.

Eastbound Personnel – PASTEUR – Port of Departure – Halifax – Convoy TA-104B [United Kingdom to United States] – HQS 63-302-817-1. (Starts at image 4580).

Eastbound Personnel – PASTEUR – Port of Departure – Halifax – Convoy TA-104B [United Kingdom to United States] – HQS 63-302-817-2.

Eastbound Personnel – VESSEL – Port of Departure – San Francisco – HQS 63-302-818.

Eastbound Personnel – FORT AMHERST – Port of Departure – Halifax – HQS 63-302-819.

Eastbound Personnel – CAVINA – Port of Departure – Halifax – HQS 63-302-820.

Eastbound Personnel – BEAVERHILL – Port of Departure – Halifax – HQS 63-302-821. (Starts at image 5198).

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

MyHeritage wants to know if you would be interested in them developing such a feature, that would allow you to create such videos using AI, based on your family stories?
https://blog.myheritage.com/2024/06/bringing-family-history-to-life-with-videos/

The Global Alerts Map highlights breaking news stories around the world. Filter stories by category and read the latest news updates. Zoom into any region or country of the world.

Measuring Main Streets explores what’s working, what’s not and what’s next for Canada’s main streets, empowering city builders from the neighbourhood to the national scale.

Imirce: The Kerby A. Miller Collection
Irish Emigrant Letters and Memoirs from North America

The British Library continues to suffer an outage of its website, online systems and services, including thesis access, resulting from a cyber-attack last October.

4,000 names from the Irish census of 1821 are available

Ancestry adds 26,903 records in Buckinghamshire, England, Napoleonic Register: Posse Comitatus, 1798, a record of all men in the county between the ages of 15 and 60 who could be recruited for military service. It excludes Quakers, clergymen, and those already in the military. Those ineligible to serve but who owned horses, wagons, and carts were also recorded.

Did you know
Fetherstonhaugh is pronounced Fenshaw
Ghoti is a creative respelling of the word Fish

Thanks to this week’s contributors: Ann Burns, Anonymous, Brenda Turner, Chuck Buckley, gail benjafield, Helen Gillespie, Ian Barker, Leslie Anderson, Teresa, Unknown