Well, the Internet being what it is, it should come as no surprise that someone’s already taken the initiative to come up with one!

GENEVA, the Calendar of GENealogical EVents and Activities, is a joint project between GENUKI (the virtual reference library of genealogical information for the UK and Ireland) and the Federation of Family History Societies (an association for genealogical societies with a  interest in England, Wales and Ireland). It lists dozens of special events, fairs, talks and other activities in the United Kingdom and Ireland, with a link to each event’s website or web page.

The list’s compiled by Malcolm Austen for GENUKI and the FFHS. At present the focus is heavily on England and Wales, but the calendar’s open to events all over the world – “just as long as they pertain to UK & Irish ancestry”, as Malcolm says.

So if you’re gripped by genealogical Wanderlust, or if your local society has an event that you’d like to publicise – or even if you’re planning an event and are keen to avoid clashes with other events nearby – why not visit the GENEVA website?

GENEVA – online calendar of GENealogical EVents and Activities

ScotlandsPeople, the official online source of data from civil registers, parish records, censuses and wills and testaments  for Scotland, is a partnership between the General Register Office for Scotland, the National Archives of Scotland, The Court of the Lord Lyon (responsible for coats of arms and heraldry in Scotland) and Internet service providers brightsolid. You can access over 50 million records dating back to 1855 for deaths, 1553 in the case of births and marriages, and 1513 for wills and testaments.

Registration at ScotlandsPeople is free. So are detailed searches of the indexes, although you’ll have to pay to view or download census or register entries and document images; it costs £6 to view 30 entries in the statutory registers, the old parish records or the censuses (these credits last for 90 days), £5 to view one will or testament, and £10 to view a coat of arms.

You can find out more from the ScotlandsPeople website:
http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/

The collections offer a rich research resource for scholars, researchers and genealogists and include a virtual online library.

http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/specialcollections/collections/methodist/

You can browse six journals online:

• Gentleman’s Magazine
• The Annual Register
• Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
• Notes and Queries
• The Builder
• Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine

Visit their website for more information:
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ilej/

The excellent Access to Archival Databases facility has a vast number of subjects. By no means all of them are directly relevant to genealogical research, but a fair few are. Here are the best examples, but there are others – and it’s worth keeping an eye on the list from time to time to see what else is being added:

• Germans to America Passenger Data File, 1850-1897
• Famine Irish Passenger Record Data File, 1846-1851
• Italians to America Passenger Data File, 1855-1900
• Russians to America Passenger Data File, 1834 – 1897

(NB Poland was divided between the German, Russian and Austrian Empires in the 19th century, so if you have Polish ancestors who emigrated during that time you may well find themin the German or Russian records.)

You can find out more at the US National Archives Access to Archival Databases home page:
http://aad.archives.gov/aad/

Founded in 1885 as the Huguenot Society of London, the Society changed its name in 1986 to reflect its wider membership. It seeks to promote the publication and interchange of knowledge about the Protestant Christians who fled France to avoid religious persecution in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many of whose descendants are largely unaware of their ancestors.

The Society has published a large number of PDF guidesto help those researching their Huguenot ancestry – starting with a basic guide on how to proceed with research, and giving all kinds of more specific pointers such as a French glossary, a guide to Huguenot settlers outside London, and how to search in France for ancestors who arrived in Great Britain and Ireland after 1710.

Sadly the Society’s journal, Huguenot Families, ceased publication in 2008, but back copies are still available from the Society’s website.

For more information, visit the Huguenot Society of Great Britain & Ireland’s website:

http://www.huguenotsociety.org.uk/family/

Well, for starters they’ve got an award-winning complete index of births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales since civil registers began in 1837 (including records of overseas registrations).

There are complete transcripts for all census returns for all counties in England and Wales from 1841 to 1901 (except for 1881 – records are already available for London and Lancashire, and the rest will be available soon) with linked images so that you can see the actual entries if you choose.

If you’re delving back even further than 1837, they’ve got the records of over a thousand parishes on line, and the number’s growing steadily – these can take you back as far as 1538, when Thomas Cromwell ordered the recording of all baptisms, marriages and burials. There are also records for Nonconformists going back to the 1600s in some cases.

They have other research materials available too – including trade directories going back to the mid-1800s, land records from the 1873 tax survey covering all landowners with a holding of one acre or more, and many more.

All this wealth of information is checked by a team of UK experts, both paid and volunteer, to ensure the greatest accuracy possible. And to make sure it’s as useful to you as it possibly can be, there are a host of smart search tools available to help you extract all the details you can.

With a range of subscriptions to suit everyone, whether you just want to check a couple of entries on one of The Genealogist’s hundreds of databases (443 and rising) or want to carry out extensive research on several of them, The Genealogist is the online research tool for you.

It’s funded and maintained by a bewildering range of government departments and public sector bodies – the register offices and public records offices for all parts of the United Kingdom, plus the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the network of academic archives throughout Britain, the Imperial War Museum and even the old records from the pre-1947 India Office.

There’s a whole section full of topics of interest to family history researchers, with useful information about civil births, marriages and deaths registration, religious records (parish registers), censuses, wills, immigration and emigration records, military records, and adoptions. They’ve also got several guides on how to get started in the whole field of family research using original records, genealogy software and records on the Internet. Reviews of useful books and a handy reading list round off this excellent resource for the novice genealogist.

FamilyRecords.gov.uk

Poland was wiped off the map as an independent country at the end of the 18th century, and didn’t reappear until after the First World War – and then had its frontiers drastically redrawn westwards in 1945. So present-day Poland was once divided between two German kingdoms, the Austrian Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary and the Russian Empire; while parts of inter-war Poland are now in Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and the Czech Republic!

However, there’s a handy website that gives you a few useful hints on how to make progress in your search for your Polish ancestors. PolishRoots.org has several informative and helpful pages covering the redrawing of Poland’s frontiers between the 19th century and the present day. You can also get information on how local government and record-keeping under the various administrations in Poland were organised, how to identify changing Polish surnames, and how to apply for certificates of birth, marriage and death as well as records from the various religious communities – Catholic, Lutheran and Jewish. There’s even a potted history of Poland from the mid-18th century onwards.

All this can be found by following this link:
http://www.polishroots.org/genpoland/

With an extensive and ever-expanding catalogue of transcripts from parish records, 19th-century censuses and land ownership returns, it’s rich in official data for births, marriages, deaths and settlements. South Wales is especially strongly represented, particularly Monmouthshire (Gwent) and Glamorgan, but records for other parts of Wales are there too if your Welsh family history lies in, say, Flintshire or Merioneth. (The 1873 Returns for Owners of Land are also available for Scotland and Ireland.)

As if that wasn’t enough, there are even sections recording the inscriptions on war memorials, monuments and gravestones.

All of the data is freely available online, although some of the data sets are also available for purchase to help pay the site’s running costs.

And if all that wasn’t enough, there are several links to other useful online resources.

To find out more, visit:
http://www.cefnpennar.com/