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This week thousands have assembled at Who Do You Think You Are? Live in Birmingham to demolish those brick walls, learn new tricks of genealogy, and hear about the latest news of family history.  Most of us have searched the newspapers for obituaries, but much more can be revealed about our ancestor’s lives than the memorials at their death.  Today, we will take a look at the divorce courts, bankruptcy notices, illegitimacy cases, and committee minutes.The mid- to late…

Whilst Mothering Sunday is now commonly combined and celebrated with the secular holiday of Mother’s Day in the United Kingdom and Ireland, its origin is religious in nature and separate from that of the American Mother’s Day.Starting in the 1700s, individuals would attend a special service on Laetare Sunday (the fourth Sunday of Lent) at their mother church (usually the church where an individual was baptised or their local parish church/closest cathedral). This activity was soon coined as going…

You can search more than 390,000 newspaper pages from 1914-1918 at The British Newspaper Archive, with more being added all the time. Juliet Greenwood got in touch to explain how she used the collection to research World War One recipes for her novel, We That Are Left.**************When I first began writing a novel set during the First World War, I knew I wanted to focus on the experience of women and civilians.For Elin, the heroine of We That Are Left,…

WW1 editions of the Evening Despatch now onlineThe Evening Despatch was published in Birmingham throughout World War One. Over 4,000 pages from newspapers published in 1915, 1917 and 1918 have just been made available to search online.Search the Evening Despatch  Newspaper pages added every weekThousands of extra pages are added to The British Newspaper Archive each week. We’ll be adding more from the Evening Despatch soon, so be sure to check the recent additions regularly.See what’s been added in the…