Armchair Genealogy - Family Tree & History

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The genealogy guide podcast, demystifying technology and exploring family tree research. Please remember to subscribe and share the podcast with family and friends.

Mell 0:23
Welcome along to the first edition of armchair genealogy.com. With me the Genealogy Guy, UK. The aim of the podcast is to give help and tips not just from me, but from the listeners by sharing your own knowledge. So drop me an email with any suggestions either about content or people to interview. In this edition, we will be talking exclusively with Mark Bayley, who is Head of Online Development at the Genealogist.co.uk By the way, do listen out very carefully for a special offer that Mark gives the listeners of this podcast where you can get a discount of £40 off an annual subscription plus a free subscription to "Discover your Ancestors" online magazine

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Mell 1:21
When I was at this year's family history show at Kempton Park racecourse, in London, I had the opportunity to sit in on a very interesting talk about the usefulness of using maps, and the great work that's been done digitising and connecting databases of information and layering them, leading on from that I'm going to talk to Mark Bayley, who gave the presentation and find out a bit more about using online maps generally. And the what the new developments are and what it actually means for genealogists. So welcome along Mark, what's your background? Because I mean, I can I can give you the title of the online genealogy expert. But what does that mean? What do you actually do? What's your take on it?

Mark Bayley 2:05
My job title is the head of online development for the genealogist I've been involved in genealogy from from a young, very young age, my parents set up S & N genealogy supplies back in 1992. And myself and my two brothers were around all the various family history fairs throughout the country, every weekend, and I've basically grown up with (A) genealogy, but (B) computers. My dad has a big fascination in technology and in computers, specifically writing printer drivers for one thing, and then working on genealogy based programs and things like that. So I had a general interest in both those features. And when I went off to university, for my dissertation project, and I studied computer science, I created a web viewer for family trees that would import a gedcom file back in the days before you could get an online tree with ancestry Find my Past or ourselves. So yes, it was a very early days Web Viewer for for family trees. And that grew into what we have as tree view today on The Genealogist. So that's that's my background, I graduated from university and then join the company to bring my dissertation project into a production ready model that that we released as the first version of tree view, which now exists online in multiple versions ahead. But also on on apps for tablets, and phones and software as well for Windows and Mac.

Mell 3:37
Let's talk about maps generally, what is it about the maps that are so useful to genealogists?

Mark Bayley 3:43
Maps give a huge amount of context to the sort of dry records that you normally see when you're a genealogist. So genealogy is all about the dates and places and names, which you can get from birth, marriage, death records, and census and things. But we like to give more context and tell you more about your ancestors lives. So we specialise in broadening that sort of record range, we've released all sorts of different records that can tell you more about your ancestors lives. Again, that's it's a kind of a descriptive form but maps are one stage ahead, I would say that a visual form, you can you can see it's like so it gives you that kind of context. So not only can you use maps to see where your ancestor lived, but you can also see what that area was like because for example, if you take Milton Keynes is very different today than it would have been in the sort of mid 1800s maps, especially if you've got multiple different periods of maps, you can go through those periods and see how an area developed and grew. But also it gives you that geographical context. At that point in time, you can see obviously, where your ancestor lived, but maybe where they worked, where they went to church where they went to school. And you can draw these connecting lines and see how relationships developed, you might realise that how an ancestor met their their wife through his commute to work as well get all these extra interesting stories from maps?

Mell 5:09
Well, you mentioned earlier about the overlaying of databases. Can you elaborate more on there? Because it sounds very technical. But for the viewer, it's fascinating.

Mark Bayley 5:18
Yes, yes, well, we'll put some pictures up as well (on the Youtube Version of this podcast ). So the viewers can see how this all works. We kind of know now for map based records, we digitise many different periods of maps. And we decided we needed a better way of displaying these because, for example, we had Tithe records from the 1830s. And we would show a person a pin on the map where their ancestors property was. And that's all very well and good. But what would be really nice is to show the user where that that pin would be today, so you can see where their visit their ancestral home. So we built an interface called Map Explorer. And we geo referenced historical maps and records. geo referencing is where you, you basically stick on a historic map onto a modern map, make sure it all aligns up, so that you can use the interface and the Map Explorer to view. For example, this Tithe record and you can change an opacity slider. So you can go from the historic type map through to the modern day map and see exactly where that pin is. But then we've added all other Ordnance Survey historical maps. So you can change through these various map layers, going from the 1890s, to the 1920s and 30s 40s 50s. And see how that area developed over time. So kind of describe it a bit like a time machine, you can go back and see where your ancestors home was, and then transform yourself through time and see how that area changed.

Mell 6:48
What I found personally great was the fact that the Census is and then you can click on properties that are close to work, what you're looking at. And you can find the details link straight through to transcriptions of what was from the census.

Mark Bayley 7:03
Yes, that's a very good point. Actually, we more recently, not only have we been adding our map based records to Map Explorer, but we've also geo referenced other record sets such as you said, with census, so we can show you, when you view an ancestor in the census records, we can show you below those records, a map with a pin showing you where that house is. And if you click that map with a pin, it'll bring the whole lot up into Map Explorer. And you can click on every house. And so you can see who was living next door to your ancestor, or near where, who was the landlord at the local pub and things like that. So you can really see it, I kind of get to see again, the context of that particular area. And that particular time,

Mell 7:45
it was interesting as well, with the Tithe maps, it also it tells you the landowners are in that area, not just who's living in the property, but actually who owns it.

Mark Bayley 7:55
Yes, yeah, because these were sort of essentially tax records, they needed to record, obviously, a large amount of detail the owner and the occupier of every land, land parcel. So it gives you sort of both sides of society, a higher land owning aristocracy, but also your tenant farmers, that may have only owned a few acres of land. And that's the case not only with our tithe records from 1836. But also moving forwards to 1910, we have another record set called the Lloyd George doomsday survey, it was the names of the 1910 land survey. So again, that was another snapshot in time, in 1910, where the the government were trying to introduce a new tax based on the increase in value of a property over time due to government spending, they needed to then survey every single property in the country to take a snapshot of the value of that house at that time, so that when the person comes to sell it, or it's inherited, they can send the surveyors out and see how much that property is increased in value, and then tax the people on that amount. The tax was never actually introduced. But the survey was completed and was kept alive for five years between 1910 and 1915. So it's a living document. It's quite, quite interesting. So you've got these sorts of records sets that allow you to go from one time to another. So you can see who was owning a field in 1836, with the Tithe records, and we can jump ahead to 1910 with the Lord George Doomday. And see if the family still own that that area of land. You can even go as far back as 1086 with the Domesday records, which also on Map Explorer, so you can see a wide variety of, of different periods.

Mell 9:39
Now I appreciate it's it's a lot of data because he's not just the maps to the data that overlays on the maps as well. So I'm assuming that it's you haven't done the entire UK at the must be key areas that you've concentrated on?

Mark Bayley 9:52
Yes, well for the Tithe records. We have the whole of England and a few counties of Wales in the next month or so we'll be adding the entirety of Wales on onto map explore the Lloyd George Domesday, we have covered the area Greater London, and we're working our way through the home counties at the moment. So I believe we've got London, Middlesex, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, we've just released Oxfordshire. Barkshire was also released. So we're also coming up and let the lineup we've got Surrey, Northamptonshire. It says plenty more more home councils, we're hoping to finish the home counties in the next sort of year, and work our way out. But it's a mammoth project is about four times the size of the 1911 sensors, just to give you an idea of scale,

Mell 10:38
That is a lot of work. But it does, it saves a lot of leg room for people that are trying to try and trying to track their own family and then realise that they're in a completely different area of the country. And they can actually call it up on a map and and try and get their head around what's actually happening in that area.

Mark Bayley 10:56
It's really handy to well follow a family through the country as well. We've got lots of plans for new additions, and modifications to Map Explorer to help help people track a family through time, via, the maps we also able let a person search these maps to well find there, you could find your own home today by typing in your postcode in the search box, and then see who was living in your house during the census years. But we also have a historic search site that lets you search for historic address, maybe the street was bombed out during the Second World War or made way for new property developments. And therefore that street doesn't exist, you can't search for it today. But we have a historical database of place names that you can search for a street that may not exist, and it will jump to that location.

Mell 11:44
So what you're saying is, even if the place doesn't exist on a map today, it can still find it through the database.

Mark Bayley 11:50
Exactly. And then it'll be able to show you a contemporary map. So you can see what the property kind of outline would have been on where it was situated. Yeah.

Mell 11:56
The other thing that I really liked about the way the map works is that you can change the opacity and look through, but up to three layers of maps at one point, according to what what's available in the areas that you've got to. And I think just being able to like slide through and keep jumping between the two time periods, you can really get an idea of where exactly a building was. And where an entrance even was,

Mark Bayley 12:21
You have the base layer, we call it the modern day maps, which you can go between either an Open Street Map, Ordnance Survey map, or even a satellite image from from modern day times, then you've got the middle layer, we call that the historical map layers. So you can pick an Ordnance Survey map from the 1890s, or the 1920s 30s 40s, or 50s, to give you some sort of contemporary location data. And then finally, we have the top layer, which is our record set now. So this would overlay pins across the whole set of maps with the link to the actual records of who were living in that particular time in that particular place. But also, this represent layer can include maps in itself, for example, the Tithe records or the Lloyd George doomsday survey. So you can in one point, you can have three maps on the same screen for the same place. And use these opacity sliders to go through the maps, as it were see through a map and and go down to the modern day baselayer and see exactly where that place is located.

Mell 13:21
Can individuals put their own pins on if they want to actually tag themselves, sort of thing their own properties or their own families

Mark Bayley 13:29
That doesn't exist at the moment in in Map Explorer, but we are working on a new version of tree view, which will be a web based and we are trying to integrate as much of Map Explorer into tree view as possible. So you'd be able to add your ancestor into tree view. And you can pin particular events or locations for an ancestor and be able to display them through these various different map layers and see family all pinned out on the map.

Mell 13:53
I always talk to people and try to explain about things like file formats. You mentioned right at the beginning about gedcom files, which lots of people still have no idea. They've got it all written down on pieces of paper and word documents, which is great. But it means that you can't integrate them with things like databases and the work that you're doing.

Speaker 4 14:12
Yes, yeah, I mean, I really recommend if your listeners are using spreadsheets or paper, that that is good in its own way. But I'd really recommend importing your data into a family tree package, whether it's software like Family Tree Maker, a tree view, or an online tree like such as tree view on the genealogist, I'd really recommend you do that because it allows you to display that data. In so many different ways. You can produce reports and charts and get the next generation enthused in the family tree when it's all on sheets and sheets of paper that are dried details. It's not as interesting to the younger generation, but displaying charts with photographs and even maps showing you where people lived it. It makes it just more interesting and having that sort of interactive nature. have an online tree really helps. So the next version of tree view you can invite your family members to so you can invite your grandchildren to your family tree so they can browse around the tree and even help you research and add new records to that family tree.

Mell 15:15
And that's the other key one is once they're digitised, you can you can share it across the continents that you're not tied to just somebody's bedroom, you can actually send them the link and they can see what information you've got. And you can add more information.

Jingle 15:29
Email the podcast by contacting us info@armchairgenealogy.com.

Mell 15:44
These maps are they know in the public domain, somebody has to digitise them, but were they in the public? Or do you have to buy all these maps in? Or are you always looking for new maps,

Mark Bayley 15:54
We are always looking for new maps? Yes, definitely. So if if anyone's aware of a map based record set that we haven't yet digitised, do get in touch. And we'll pursue that. But we have partnerships with different libraries and archives, where we partner with that particular organisation to scan in their maps, digitise them, geo-referenced them, and put them near stitch them together in this format so that users can see not just one sheet of a map, but the entire country that they can zoom in and drag around and, and navigate. So it makes it much more accessible to imagine back in the days before these these records are online having to go to the National Archives, find the apportionment record for your ancestor by manually paging through hundreds and hundreds of pages in a book for that particular village, find the person listed, realise the plot number in the map number, then you'd have to go back to the National Archives request that map and then heave onto a big, big desk that the biggest maps we've digitised, probably the size of a half a tennis court. So you can see these quite big, unwieldy things. And when you're trying to digitise and conserve them, yeah, trying to find one plot on a large map like that might be time-consuming. Whereas now having them all available online and accessible like that means you can basically click your the record of your ancestor. And within seconds, you're viewing a map, exactly located down to the pin where the property was. And not only that, but you can use the opacity slider to sort of see the modern day map and know exactly where that field stands today.

Mell 17:29
Do you connect with local history groups, from around the UK as well.

Mark Bayley 17:32
We partner with different societies and organisations, volunteer groups, so many different family history societies have submitted their records onto the genealogist. And they can earn revenue that way through people you are accessing and viewing their records. And I obviously go around the country talking to various different groups history groups, a lot more local history groups nowadays with obviously been very interested in in the maps for their particular area. But also family societies and events like the family history show.

Mell 18:03
The mathematics behind getting the map to the right size to overlay, so it matches with current day maps. Just these must be astounding.

Mark Bayley 18:14
So the process of adding these historical maps to the genealogist is, is a quite a tricky one. So we'll start by obviously conserving the map first of all, at the the archive location. So if we're talking about Tithe records, for example, that's in in the National Archives in Kew in London. So we digitise it on a large format book scanner. Like I was saying some of these maps are incredibly large, too large to be scanned in in one go. So we have a large sort of tabletop that can be rotated around so the maps not touched itself, to keep moving it and moving it to scan each portion of the map. So in a large table that can be scanned can be rolled across scanned again, then the table spins around you can so you can scan a large amount of the map and then those digital images as digitally stitched together to create a single map for that village or location. Then, once we've got this stitched digital image, we have a volunteer website called UK indexer. So people can volunteer at ukindexer.co.uk to help us on many of our different projects such as our map geo referencing, they can then credits towards a free subscription to the GS. So on UK indexer. We have expert volunteers that we allow him on the map projects that will bring up the historic maps and this case Tithe records for example. So bring up the Tithe map and it will be the system on UK index will then bring up a modern day version of this map for the parish, and then the volunteer will pick sort of landmarks and locations that are quite accurate. So the junctions of crossroads. So the bridge over a river They'll pick, say up to five or more points on a map. And the system from that can morph the historic map to match those points to the modern map. So even if the time surveyor at the time might have got his measurements are slightly and it wasn't true to form it, it wasn't as accurate as one day on survey maps are today, the system can morph that map slightly to make it fit as an exact match across the the modern day map. So it creates these sort of geo reference maps, as we call them, we then chop these geo reference maps up into tiny little tiles, as we call them. And it will, the Map Explorer system will display these tiles at whatever resolution you're zoomed into. So even though these maps for a Tithe map for a particular village could be several gig in the size, which would obviously take a few hours to download, it can only show you the small sort of tiles for the current area you're zoomed in. And therefore that's why Map Explorer is always instant to load those historical maps, despite it being a huge file in its entirety. So that's the whole process and how how it manges to work so efficiently, you need a real pinpoint accuracy. Because once you're off by a few meters on one pin, and the other pins can go off by a few meters, you'll end up from one side of the map matching to the other side of the map being well off, and it would it just it wouldn't look right. So that's why we need to well, (A) use our sort of the expertly trusted volunteers. And (B) we need to have a more precise sort of pinpoint location. But yes, after our volunteers have geo referenced a map, it then goes through to the arbitration team, which is our in house data team, that double check that all the points line up correctly, before they go into the Map Explorer.

Mell 21:54
That's what amazes me is when you do change the opacity, it matches up even when, as you say it's a very old map. And you can clearly see that in getting exactly measured properly, it still makes it work. So you can actually see the buildings that are still standing some of them

Mark Bayley 22:09
So thats another good point actually is these maps, and map explorers, not just of interested to genealogists, we found all sorts of interesting other hobbyists that have discovered Map Explorer and these maps and use them for their own purposes. Obviously, social and local historians love these kinds of maps. But also, we found groups like metal detectorists, that are fascinated by the Tithe maps on our map explorer, because it means that they can find locations of buildings, and footpaths and things that don't exist today. And they always find that the best sort of bounty as it were, in fields where these unnamed buildings were no other metal detectors have gone through that area.

Mell 22:09
The other thing goes now some on the different layers that you're on there, you've also got a collection of like one of the tabs is graves.

Speaker 4 22:55
Yes, we have, obviously map based records on Map Explorer. But also, as you spotted with the census, we're we're geo referencing other record sets. So we've got headstones, we've got war memorials, we've got an image archive with 10s of 1000s of images. And for the majority of them, we can place them down to within a meter of the where the camera was. So we've geo referenced or lab image archive as well. So you can pick any of these different record sets within the record layer and display pins on those locations. This is something that we're currently working on. So we have this is a geo referenced census from the 1939 register back to 1871. We're working on the last three years of census at the moment, but we're also working on BMD's. And parish records. For example, if your ancestors got married in a parish, it'd be at the parish church, we want to be able to show you the pin where they got married on that church. So yeah, we've got a lot of other records that we're working on at the minute. So we've got an exciting couple of years coming up with new releases on Map explorer.

Mell 23:55
The other one was pubs, are there databases out there for for logging all the old pubs and inns.

Speaker 4 24:01
I've had actually somebody come up to me on one of my talks I gave last year and said that they were a pub enthusiast, and wanted to record as much information about the old pubs that don't exist today. And he was loving the fact that he could use the census records. And basically, we have a search tool called the keyword search which allows you to search for a key word for a particular record. And because we transcribe all the fields and sensors, such as the occupation and the street address, he was able to type in things like landlord and public house and things into keywords, find out all the local pubs in a particular area, and then using Map Explorer can see exactly where they were located. So he he really loved that.

Mell 24:43
Once the data is available, how many other people suddenly realise they can benefit from it. I mean, people who trace their own properties that they live in, there's a whole genre of like genealogists that are just interested in their houses that they live in.

Yes, I spoke to for house historygroup a while back, and we're talking about the various things that you can do on, on tracing a particular house's history, so we looked at a particular case study. And it's just amazing the amount of detail, you can pull up on one place just by jumping to that place on Map Explorer, and then literally just going through each individual record set on the drop down list, and seeing what records are for that location for that period. And that period. So you can do a case study just jumping through time on one location, and something that would have taken you maybe all day, you can do it in a matter of 5 or 10 minutes. The details of one property straightaway.

Its incredible work. I mean, I'm just blown away with the the amount of work that's going on behind the scenes that make it so such such a visual experience. Because we're coming towards the end, I could carry on chatting to you for hours because you've got loads of information. But what's your favorite time period? I mean, you're into history and genealogy and maps, if you've got a particular passion that you get really excited about a particular moment in time.

Mark Bayley 25:59
I really like early census. But particularly I like the 1836 Tithe records I think my favorite records, just because it's before the first census. And it meant that I could see my ancestors. At that time were all in Lydd in Kent, and I could see their farmsteads in Romney Marsh for the first time, I could see exactly where they were located. Because 1841 enumerators at the time. Just put Romney Marsh lLydd, you know, it's a big to try and locate your ancestors. But with tied records, I could go straight down to the fields that he owned, and I can see where his farmhouse was. So yeah, that's I think that's the most exciting record for me.

Mell 26:37
The personal aspects that you find when you're talking to a genealogist, generally, there's always a personal passion, something that they really get, and this is so good. And you've just hit the nail on the head with the Tithe records.

Mark Bayley 26:49
Yeah, I'm looking forward to one day again over to Romney Marsh and finding that farmhouse see what's what's still there. If there any kind of records of the of the Bayley's in that Farmhouse still?

Mell 26:59
Well, thank you very much, Mark. It's been a fascinating conversation. And as I say, I could carry on and carry on chatting for ages. If people want to find out more generally about maps and all that sort of thing. Is there a place that you can point them off to just to get going and what they should be looking for?

Mark Bayley 27:15
Yeah, sure. So if you go to the thegenealogist.co.uk/maps, you can find all about Map Explorer and map based records. We have a there's a little video on that page too. And for all your listeners, we happy to give a discount on an annual subscription. So if they go to thegenealogist.co.uk/ag23, they'll be able to save £40 off a diamond subscription and also get a 12 month subscription to Discover your ancestors online magazine.

Mell 27:45
Ah fantastic. I'm sure that some some of the listeners will be going oh, what a discount because that's that's our people they think well, is it as good as they make it once you're into a particular piece of software, and you realise what they've got, it saves you so much time,

Mark Bayley 27:58
look forward to welcoming new new people joining on the Genenalogist all your listeners.

Mell 28:03
And once again, thank you very much Mark,

Unknown Speaker 28:04
Thanks so much, Mell Cheers.

Jingle 28:12
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