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.

Today, 21 July, is climatologically the hottest day in Ottawa, according to records from the Central Experimental Farm.
It’s midway between 16 and 27 July, which all have an average daily maximum of 26.7 °C. It’s also the day with the warmest daily minimum temperature of 15.7°C.

Here’s an analysis of the recently updated historical Canadian newspapers digitized at Newspapers.com.

British Columbia dominates with over 60 publications, mostly recent issues of many small-town or regional titles (e.g., Arrow Lakes News, Sooke News Mirror, Cowichan Valley Citizen).
Ontario has eight updates, including The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail.
Alberta: the 14 updates of recent issues are a mix of rural (e.g., Sylvan Lake News, Castor Advance) and urban (Calgary Herald and Edmonton Journal.)
Quebec, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the Atlantic provinces: Less comprehensive, while including key publications like The Gazette (Montreal) and Telegraph-Journal (Saint John).
Yukon has one entry (Yukon News).

Here’s the full list

At 11 am, the Parliament Hill webcam shows a mix of sun and cloud, and the weather radar indicates the rain having moved well off to the east, with nothing approaching from the west.

The sun is expected to start to break through around noon. I’ll be checking the weather radar at 11 am and will be at the cafe, all being well, at noon.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

The Infinite Complexity of History
The latest from Dan Gardner on how a basic misunderstanding puts people in danger of falling for Holocaust denial and others forms of pseudo-history

Galway, Ireland, Ballynahinch Estate Records, 1905-1940
Ancestry added this small new collection, just 2,137 records
Galway, Ireland, Ballynahinch Estate Records, 1905-1940. It has tenant records from 1905 to 1940 and visitor records from 1905 to 1970.

Family History AI Show
Only 2 weeks after the last episode, Mark Thompson and Steve Little are back with episode 27. They cover AI Image Restoration Concerns, Perplexity’s Future, Copyright Cases Are Shaping The Future of AI, Project Workspaces Help You Stay Organized. Joking about 51st state not appreciated.

Needle- The Global News Map
News stories posted in the past day pinned them on a map. Leans heavily on Canadian sources.

A cluster of Worcester and area-based papers from the 19th and 20th centuries is the highlight of the most recent additions to the newspapers.com collection.

There’s a notable, smaller presence of London-based newspapers (Hackney and Stoke Newington Recorder, The Docklands and East London Advertiser, Newham Recorder, Ilford Recorder).

Although fewer in number, papers from Cambridgeshire (The Hunts Post), Hertfordshire (Royston Crow), North Somerset (North Somerset Times), and Warwickshire (The Alcester Chronicle, etc.) broaden the geographical spread,

So far, the forecast for Sunday in Ottawa is now “Mainly cloudy. Wind becoming northwest 20 km/h gusting to 40 near noon. High 25.” No mention of showers.

A note from Christine Jackson corrects the previous information: “There’s no parking or vehicle access from the Parkway.”

Christine helpfully informs that there is a new parking lot – accessible only from the Parkway – on its south side. There’s a new traffic light there on the Parkway & pedestrian crossing over to the upper level of the Beach (with path & stairs down to the patio cafe).

Hundreds of Donegal census records, thought to have been destroyed in the Public Records Office fires in Dublin in 1922, have been recovered.

Three clusters are notable:

1821, Killymard parish, near Donegal Town. These extracts sourced from the book Killymard, ancient and modern. Attempts to track down the original notebooks containing the original transcriptions have so far proved unsuccessful.
1851, Gartan parish. Complete census records for about 15 townlands in the Glenveagh area.
1821, Clonmany and Desertegny civil parishes. All Doherty/Dogherty households and all households containing at least one person called Doherty (e.g. as servants or live-in labourers). This has resulted in the recovery of about 40% of the original census returns for both parishes.

The documents are now freely available online through the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland to mark the 103rd anniversary of the Four Courts blaze.

This news is abstracted from an article in the Donegal Daily, which includes detailed instructions on access.

Surrey, Southwark, Licenses and Trade Registers (1690-1950) 25,361 records

Findmypast has digitized these registers from Southwark (1915-1950) in partnership with Southwark Archives. The collection includes licensed coal retailers and street traders.

Records provide names, addresses, event dates, and trading details. Original documents include commodity specifications and pitch allocations. Was an ancestor engaged in Southwark street commerce? There are pages of street trading licences for pitches on East Street, one of London’s oldest, largest, and busiest markets, with a history dating back to the 16th century.

The post-war street trader registers demonstrate notable increases in both licensed traders and product diversity, reflecting economic recovery following the Second World War.

St George The Martyr Workhouse Records (1729-1838) 63,448 records

Administrative records from St George the Martyr Workhouse in Southwark, digitized through a partnership with Southwark Archives. The collection comprises Board of Guardians minutes and overseer payment documentation from 1729 until the institution’s merger into Saint Saviour’s Poor Law Union in 1836.

Records contain names, dates, occupations, admission circumstances, family relationships, clothing allowances, and staff compensation details.

Newspaper Collection Additions 202,482 pages

This week sees the publication of four new titles, as well as the addition of more than 10,000 pages to four others, with considerable coverage in the 19th century.