SOCIETY News & Announcements
Society Announcements and News about Family History in Cumbria
click on the title (or down arrow) to see the full text for each news item or announcement.
Free access to newspaper records 25/10/24 An offer from FindMyPast until 28 Oct
As Remembrance Day approaches, discover and honour forgotten soldiers, wartime women and your relatives’ part in shaping the world we know today. From the ashes of war, communities rebuilt, society shifted and glimmers of hope for the future shone. To help you find and commemorate untold, richer family stories, we’ve made our entire newspaper archive FREE until 28 October. Use this link
Free access to Military Records 18/10/24 Expired
As Veteran's Day approaches, discover and honour forgotten soldiers, wartime women and your relatives’ part in shaping the world we know today. From the ashes of war, communities rebuilt, society shifted and glimmers of hope for the future shone.To help you find and commemorate your ancestors’ stories, FMP has made some essential First World War family and military records FREE to explore until October 21 using this link
You will have to register but you will then get free access to records normally only available to subscribers. In a test, there were over 23000 references to WW1 soldiers indexed as being connected to Cumberland. Images of the records for 2 Cumbrian great uncles gave details of events and dates, and personal details such as next of kin, height and even chest size. More poignantly for the one that was killed, there was a list of his oeresonal effects.
New Website Launched 15/10/2024 New content and features
The website has been re-created in-house using free development tools. This will save the Society a great deal of money as it will avoid maintenance fees and annual software licenses.
We are retaining the same colour scheme and page layout, and the organisation of the content will remain largely the same, so frequent users will have the comfort of familiarity. However the interactive parish map has been reworked, and especially the People Search is now presented in a different (and faster) way, with new content (more Carlisle wills, and the first BMDs from Cumbrian Newspaper transcriptions). A totally new feature is that there is now access to Newpaper Transcriptions, which can be seen as they are added.
The biggest change with the new version is that there is now no personal password necessary to log in to a Member Area. There will still be member-only content, such as Society Newsletters, but this will be protected by a society-wide password (that will be relayed to members via the Newsletter, and by email). This decision has been taken in light of the experience of the launch of the previous version of the website, when we had scores of problems encountered by members trying to register their passwords. For the transition to the new version, all old passwords can be forgotten.
It does however mean that there will no longer be direct access to your Member dashboard - you will now have to inform the Membership Secretary directly of any changes in your contact details. Though new members will still be able to subscribe on-line, but from now on this will be through Parish Chest (the commercial service of the Family History Federation - our trusted partner). We will communicate soon and directly with current members, regarding the options for subscription renewal.
We have also entrusted the operation and maintenance of the online shop (for our publications) to Parish Chest.
Discover Historic Maps of Lancashire and Cumbria. 21/9/24 Recording of past Zoom event
Standing Orders 05/02/24 Have you amended the amount of your membership renewal standing order for 2024?
If you are a member who pays by Standing Order, did you remember to amend it in line with the new subscription rates for 2024?
For UK members this will be £15
Current Closure of Kendal Record Office 19/9/2024 An announcement from Cumbria Archive Service
"A decision has been made to close County Hall in Kendal to the public whilst a decision is made about its long term future. Following this decision, I just wanted to take the opportunity to explain the impact of the closure for the Cumbria Archive Centre, Kendal. We are committed to continue providing an Archive service in Kendal and we have taken a number of steps to ensure the continued care and management of our written heritage and facilitate access to our collections whilst a longer term solution is identified.
The archive collections will remain at County Hall during this time and staff will continue to care for and manage these collections as they have done since 1962. We are working with our colleagues at Kendal Library to support continued public access to the collections. In particular we will accommodate researchers in the Herdwick Room, which is located in the Local Studies Library on the first floor of the library. As with current procedures, access will to be provided by appointment to reserve a space and request documents in advance. We will continue to be open on Wednesdays, Thursday and Fridays and further details will be available through our website at www.cumbriaarchives.org.uk. These arrangements have been approved by The National Archives.
As I say, we are committed to the long term future of the Archive Service in Kendal and a feasibility study will be undertaken to address the longer-term options for providing an Archive Service in Kendal."
For more details see cumbriaarchives.org.uk
New Publications 1/7/2024 MIs now available for Kirkbride and Warcop
*NEW* Kirkbride St Bride MIs
Gravestones at St Bride’s Church at Kirkbride were photographed and transcribed in 2022/23 by William Bundred and Bridget Casson. £4
*NEW* Warcop St Columba MIs
The Memorial Inscription information in the first part of this document, 1 to 86 and IC/1 to IC/11 has been transcribed in 2023/24 from the notebook compiled by Jeremy Godwin, archivist, approximately 25 years ago. Because of the time lapse it is possible that some of the memorials may have deteriorated and the information recorded may no longer be as legible. It is mainly only those inscriptions that are dated prior to 1900 that were included in the notebook, although one later inscription had also been included. Another part contains extensive information of graves (mainly 20th century) in Warcop Cemetery. Download £6.00
Watch this space for new publications
Newspaper Transcriptions 16/01/24 How to access transcriptions for C19th Cumbrian newspapers
Transcriptions of C19th Cumbrian newspapers have been recorded and made available by members of the Society, especially Petra Mitchinson who has done most of them.
The newspapers are:
Carlisle Journal 1801-1815, 1833-1846
Carlisle Patriot 1816-1823
Westmorland Gazette 1828-38
Penrith Herald 1874
Cumberland Paquet 1777-1902 (incomplete)
These transcriptions have been posted on list-cumbria, a mail list server maintained by Cumbria FHS. Joining instructions are available at https://list.cumbriafhs.com/mailman/listinfo/list-cumbria
The archive can be browsed at
https://list.cumbriafhs.com/pipermail/list-cumbria/
There are well over 4000 postings including births, marriages and deaths; court cases and general news items. A couple of examples are included in this blog.
There are tens of thousands of BMDs, and over time these will be added to the people search on this site.
Meanwhile, there is another implementation of these transcriptions at
https://groups.google.com/g/genealogy-cumberland
This is searchable by keywords.
list-cumbria has been migrated 30/11/2023 Where to find the email list and how to join it.
An email list for those interested in the English county of Cumbria. This includes the ancient counties of Cumberland and Westmorland, and the Furness region of Lancashire, and the Sedbergh district of Yorkshire.
The list is provided for the genealogy community by Cumbria Family History Society.
To subscribe, go to https://list.cumbriafhs.com/mailman/listinfo/list-cumbria