Websites

For news of on-going projects in the digitisation of historical material, go to Queens’s University, Belfast, Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis.

After the census, the next major source for distribution, is the seventeenth century hearth-tax. Keep up to date with developments in completing the publication of all remaining county volumes at the Centre for Hearth Tax Research.

The ability to determine correct historical boundaries is naturally of importance to plotting distributions. Historical British boundaries have been transferred into digital format by the GB Historical GIS Project. The data is now available online. Brett Langston’s Registration Districts in England and Wales is excellent for determining the parish coverage of registration districts (though the serious amateur may still need to consult the authoritative Frederick Youngs’ two print volumes on Administrative Districts).

One-Name Studies are obviously of direct relevance. Many members of the Guild of One-Name Studies have released data on the distribution/incidence of their registered names on their websites.

For software that you can buy which has in-built plotted registration district boundaries for 1881 (England and Wales only), I would recommend version 2 of Stephen Archer’s Genmap UK.

An exciting development is the possibility of the use of genetic fingerprinting to establish whether bearers of a surname do share a common ancestor. The starting point to keep in touch with this exciting work is Chris Pomeroy’s excellent and comprehensive website which keeps track of developments. [link no longer accessible]