New database and online resoureces

A new copy of the database has been loaded to the website. The new version has many updates and includes 76 new people.

It is difficult these days to think of doing your family history without resorting to any of the major online resources. The main two for the Halstead name and its variants are findmypast.co.uk and ancestry.co.uk

I thought therefore that it might be useful to tell you exactly who is useful for which counties.

Ancestry.co.uk has the records from the following records offices

Dorset
Gloucestershire
London Metropolitan Archives (all of Greater London except the City of Westminster)
Lancashire

• Lancashire Archives (Preston)
• Liverpool
• Manchester
• Manchester Cathedral
• Wigan

Northamptonshire
Surrey
Warwickshire (is split into two separate databases Warwickshire and Birmingham)
West Yorkshire (Wakefield Archives)

To ascertain exactly what material there is use the catalogue
Be careful though of results that say "selected entries" as they will not be complete transcriptions and you need to check exactly where the records come from.

findmypast.co.uk has the records from the following records offices
 Canterbury
Cheshire
City of Westminster
Devon
Hertfordshire
Lincolnshire
Manchester
Quaker
Shropshire
Staffordshire
Yorkshire (there are several archives here and more to come - also includes transcripts for some of the West Riding)
Wales (not all of the counties are there yet)

with findmypast use the A-Z of Record Sets
Again care needs to be used as not all the record sets have the county assigned to them. An example is Calderdale in Yorkshire