who do you think you are live 2010
Last Friday and Sunday I attended the Who Do You Think You Are? Live exhibition at London’s Olympia, answering questions on resources for family history and giving research advice.
For a newcomer to family history – and the interest in family history has yet to reach a plateau and continues to mount – the scale and corporate gloss of the event may come as something of a shock. Family history is big business now. This year’s principal sponsor was the multinational corporation Ancestry. As well as the customary somewhat clinical Ancestry stand where visitors could search Ancestry databases, on offer also was the Ancestry scanning bay and the Ancestry members-only hospitality suite, a kind of hybrid between a gated community with its own private security and a business-class airport lounge laying on complimentary refreshments and a little ineffective back massage.
Who Do You Think You Are? Live grew out of the Society of Genealogists’ annual show, which used to take a more modest and less expensive exhibition space in Victoria. Three key events precipitated the explosion of interest in family history in England – the online release of the 1901 census in 2002, the publication of the birth, marriage and death indexes by the company now known as Find My Past, and the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? TV series. Wall To Wall, the makers of the Who Do You Think You Are? documentaries, saw an opportunity to piggyback the long-standing annual SoG event and co-opt the family history societies. This seemed like a partnership at first but it now looks increasingly like there is a cuckoo chick in the family history community’s nest, slowly pushing it out.
Which brings me back to Ancestry. A visitor entering Who Do You Think You Are? Live was funnelled through the Ancestry stand. He or she may not have been subjected to a body scan or relieved of all their cash, but the American corporate giant is unmissable. Meanwhile, over in a far corner of the exhibition centre, on the far side of the area reserved for family history societies, the visitor could see, if they had the stamina, stands which are in fact far more interesting and which reflect the range and diversity of family, local and social history organisations that have become marginalised. Passing the Anglo-German Family History Society stall, with its books on sugar bakers, pork butchers and WW1 alien internees on the Isle of Man, the visitor would have reached the British Deaf History Society and, in the very corner, the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain, with its humble trestle table, small selection of fascinating volumes and enthusiastic volunteer staff. The JGSGB and its ilk cannot afford more floor space, or a prime position with guaranteed footfall, but I hope that they and all the local and subject societies had a worthwhile weekend and can continue to carve out a niche for themselves within what is now the family history marketplace.
A good seven or eight of the family history enquiries I took at Who Do You Think You Are? Live concerned Jewish family history research. Most enquirers knew or believed that their ancestors had roots in Poland, although one had Dutch and another German-Jewish ancestry. However, all Jewish researchers are likely to confront the same brick wall: how to establish a place of origin outside Britain, if this is not recorded in family papers or lore. And this is no easy question to answer.
The census returns, including the 1911 census released in 2009, seldom name a specific place. Too often the census return states merely Austria, or Poland, or Romania, or Russia, or Russian Poland. Even where a city or town such as Kovno or Warsaw or Wilna is given, it is not necessarily the case that this is the actual place of origin rather than a convenient shorthand for a district or region of the same name.
Naturalisation records may give the required information but, of course, many immigrants, and perhaps a majority of the poorer ones, settled without going to the trouble or expense of formal naturalisation (or wished to avoid the encounter with the authorities that it entailed). Naturalisations are indexed in The National Archives’ online catalogue and can also be found in the London Gazette. However, the researcher will need to access the underlying naturalisation file, or what survives of it, at The National Archives in Kew to find out full details. Naturalisation records before 1921 are on open access but those of later date require a Freedom of Information Act application.
Family historians with Jewish roots are welcome to contact Bluebird Research with any questions they have. Or, of course, they might wish to contact the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain…
[...] this year’s WDYTYA event to last year’s, one has to say that the trends I wrote about in this blog have continued. All exhibition space was taken and there were some new exhibitors (such as Genes [...]