SOCIETY Announcements & News 

NEW Keswick St John Monumental Inscriptions (Volume 2) £4

Download only. Based on burial register. Includes name index and graveyard plan

This document covers the 1620 names of those buried mainly in the South West section of the churchyard and supplements the original publication(available through the Cumbria FHS website (https://www.cumbriafhs.com/) ) which covered the North West and North East areas closer to the church with earlier gravestones. This mainly covers the 20th century but with some burials intro the 21st century.  

Watch this space for new publications

The AGM will be held at Burton on June 7th  . There is now a webpage  https://sites.google.com/view/cfhsv3/society/agm for the Notice and all documentation

Version 3.1 Release Notes

The website has been updated

• 25% additional new content has been added to the People Search Database making 420k records in all.
  Specifically we have updated

  • Westmorland Burials - 43.4k additional individuals, making 86.7 burials in all

  • Carlisle Patriot - 41.5k person-based indexing records have been added for births, marriages, deaths and other news items for 1817-21:
    a 40 fold increase in newspaper transcription references.

  • Missing Copeland BMDS references for individuals with surnames beginning with C and D have been restored.
    Apologies if you encountered any issues while searching for these

Please note that the number of references for each surname have not yet been updated, so there could be an undercount (of around 25%) with respect to the number of references you see in the output tables. The displays should be comprehensive.

• There is a new page for AGM notices and documentation. 

• More Society Announcements and News have been posted, and specifically recordings of our Zoom presentations are posted in this section (where we have permission from the speakers)

Our website continues to be developed and hosted using Google Sites.

London Branch Turnpikes and Maps in the North West by Paul Hindle

Date: Feb 1, 2025 1:25 PM London

Watch 

Duration:00:49:07

Passcode: ^dX46mtQ

Watch now

From Saturday 25 January 2025, Carlisle library will close for 10 to 12 months as it is undergoing a £3.3M transformation.  A temporary library will open in part of the building by late February. https://www.cumberland.gov.uk/planning-and-building-control/regeneration-project/carlisle-city-centre-projects/carlisle-library-transformation

In response to feedback from members, the parish map labels have been changed to a darker colour to improve the readability. Clicking on the links still opens up the relevant Genuki parish page giving a wealth of sources of information for the parish in question.

Appleby St Lawrence Monumental Inscriptions.
Updated to include cross-referencing of the numbered graveyard map to the transcription grave numbers. Still £8

Watch this space for new publications

The website has been re-created in-house using mainly 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 have also entrusted the operation and maintenance of the online shop (for our publications) to Parish Chest. 

Other credits: The website was rebuilt by us using Google Sites and is hosted by Google Sites, but also Heyzine and Tiiny. It no longer uses Bubble, Webflow or Xano.

This presentation by Laragh Quinney, National Library of Scotland was very well received.

Here is a recording  hePasscode: MEwr@4KA

available limited time only

"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* 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

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.

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

The official Facebook page for the Cumbria Family History Society, with over 3000 members is at  

https://www.facebook.com/groups/241982616155568

Use it to ask for help or advice, or to share your good news or breakthroughs.

Let other members know of new resources or publications, or forthcoming events relevant to Cumbria.

London/Zoom Branch
Migration Throughout the UK
Debbie Bradley
Duration:01:06:01 - but only available until December 24

Cumbria Archives Christmas and New Year Closure 2024 - 2025

Cumbria Archive Centres will close at usual times on Friday 20 December 2024. All Archive Centres will re-open on Thursday 2 January 2025.

Advance notice of closure of Cumbria Archive Centres for stocktaking and staff training, 27 November to 6 December 2024

All Cumbria Archive Centres will be closed from Wednesday 27 November for 2 weeks and will reopen as normal on Wednesday 11 December 2024. This is for staff to undertake important training and stocktaking work. Please note that there may be delays with responses to enquiries, telephone calls and digitization requests during this period.

Important changes to public access at Kendal Archive Centre

In June 2024 Westmorland and Furness Council announced that all public access to County Offices, Kendal, would cease from October 2024. This means that Kendal Archive Centre will change public access to records during October 2024:

• Public access to records will be provided in the Herdwick Room, local studies library, at Kendal Library, Stricklandgate, Kendal LA9 4PY

• Records will continue to be stored at County Offices

• Records requested by researchers will be transported to Kendal Library on a daily basis.

• An appointment to see records must be made at least 72 hours in advance. It will not be possible to provide access to researchers without an appointment.

• All records must be pre-ordered at least 72 hours in advance.

• Length of opening hours will remain the same but start and finish times will change. These will be 10 AM to 4 PM, Wednesdays to Fridays.

• Deposits of records can be made to the back door of County Offices by appointment only.

• Westmorland and Furness Council has begun a feasibility study of a long term new site for Kendal Archives Centre.

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 family heroes, FMP has made the 1921 Census, our entire newspaper archive, all military records and everything on Findmypast FREE until 11 November. Iuse this link

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

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.