Armchair Genealogy - Family Tree & History

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The Genealogy guy podcast, demystifying technology and exploring family tree research, please remember to subscribe and share the podcast with family and friends.

Genealogy Guy 0:17
Here we go with another episode of Armchair Genealogy with me. Mell, the Genealogy Guy, thank you to all the emails this month. It's always so nice to hear from the listeners of the podcast with ideas, suggestions and general thanks. It means a lot and confirms what I'm doing is useful to other genealogists, a particular thank you to those that are sharing or reposting a link to the podcast to their own social networks, along with family and friends, something that is very apparent when I see the number of listeners growing each episode. As you recall, I recently visited the Midland version of the Family History Show that I attended at the Three Counties Show Ground in Malvern, Worcestershire, if you want to get along to one of these family history shows in the UK, then check out the locations around England. And they also have an online special for those that cannot make it to the UK. Buying tickets in advance, you get a discount on the cost. And all the dates and locations can be found by just visiting thefamilyhistoryshow.com, and click on the drop down along the top where it says locations. Back to this month's episode. Whilst at the family history show, I also bumped into my friend Mark Bayley, who gave a great update presentation on the new stuff that has been added to Map Explorer section on thegenealogist.co.uk so I thought I would get him back on the podcast to give us a personal update. Listen out for the special discount deal he has offered to all armchair genealogy podcast listeners. And welcome back then Mark, what's happening and where are we going with with it?

Mark Bayley 1:58
We've been quite busy since we last spoke. We've released a lot more map based records, which you would be pleased to hear in Lloyd George domesday has been rapidly expanding. So since we last spoke, obviously, we had London and some of the home counties, well most of the home counties. But since we spoke, we've got now added Bedfordshire, Dorset, Essex recently, Hertfordshire, Kent Northamptonshire, Surrey, and now we're moving into the West Country, so Wiltshire,

Genealogy Guy 2:29
From Wiltshire, we move out to Somerset direction?

Mark Bayley 2:32
That's right. So moving forwards, we'll have a release in Cambridge, and then we'll be releasing Sussex, Hampshire, and then sweeping around theWest Country, so Devon, Cornwall, Gloucestershire, and then we'll be moving over to Suffolk, Norfolk, before heading on into the Midlands.

Genealogy Guy 2:53
I'm guessing the Midlands is quite a big, hefty one, because there's so many areas that sort of overlap each other.

Mark Bayley 3:00
Yes, yeah, we'll be releasing county by county. And I believe the plan is to start releasing Midlands counties in the beginning of 2026 so not long to wait, say, nine months before the first sort of county comes up.

Genealogy Guy 3:17
And when I was growing up, I was, my address was Staffordshire, and then half way through my life it became West Midlands. How do you sort of try and do you still run with the old system, or do you sort of cross reference?

Mark Bayley 3:32
It's a very good point, actually, especially for the Lloyd George, which doesn't follow geographic norms whatsoever. So the books contain 400 pages each, and they'll cover 100 individual properties. So you have four pages of field book for each individual property that would list the landowner, the occupier, and then a description of the land, and then various rates and things to work out the value of each property, sometimes even include diagrams. So it's a huge number of books. Is about 96,000 books, and they're organized under what was known as the valuation office and then into wards. Wards generally followed parishes, but they'd often be slightly larger, containing a couple or three or four, sometimes parishes in one Ward, and they would name the valuation office of the ward after the closest to A in the alphabet of the areas that they contain. For example, let's say, a valuation office of Hereford, but it would actually contain a much wider remit than just the town of Hereford. It would actually probably contain somewhere around half of Herefordshire. It's it's quite awkward to follow. So we have a department that does our quality assessment of the transcripts as they come in. And. And then they allocate them to a particular county by literally looking through the books and seeing what the majority of that book covers.

Genealogy Guy 5:07
What I find fascinating is because you deal with maps and areas is, as I mentioned earlier, the Staffordshire became the West Midlands, but the same is, like certain areas, I trace back some ofmy family too, like Herefordshire, but then the villages I've traced back to, when I speak to the local history groups, they go, ah, oh, well, that particular village. So that changed. It was according to what year it was in which area it fell. Just causes another level of headache. When you're trying to figure out, you think you've got the right area, and then you realise, oh, I need to look in the next parish, because it's changed boundaries.

Mark Bayley 5:44
I mean, that's why we brought map explore into existence, really, because a pin on a map you can see exactly where it's located. The idea being that, rather than saying you're looking for a person in Staffordshire,you could say a particular parish and thenexpand out from, say, within 30 miles of parish X. Or you caneven just jump straight into Map Explorer and then look at all thepins on the map and zoom into where you believe your ancestor was. So it makes it much more easy when it's visual.

Genealogy Guy 6:17
And for the benefit to the listeners that the Lloyd George domesday. Why did he come about?

Mark Bayley 6:23
Good question, so we call it the Lloyd George domesday because it was created by David Lloyd George, who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1910 it's also known as the valuation office, landsurvey, as its more official title. So David Lloyd George was tasked with increasing funds for the government. To do that, he invented a new tax, and they were going to tax people on the increase in value of their property over time due to public spending that could be on infrastructure or services in that particular area, such as making roads up. I see this is 1910 so a lotof the roads were unmade at the time. So any anything that was invested in by the government was seen that they should getsome kickback from that investment. And that's where this, this valuation office survey came in, because they would, the idea was they were going to survey the entire country as a snapshot. In 1910 actually went up until 1915 so those records were updated for about 15 years as people changed ownership. And then the idea was that when you come to sell your property, or if it was inherited, they'd send out another survey and value a house again, and if it was deemed that your house had increased in value over time since the last survey due to government spending, they would tax you on that. So like I say, it went on for five years between 1910 and 1915 but the tax was never introduced. In 1915 they decided, look, we'd already spent five years on this project, they had surveyed the whole country, but it was such a costly process to keep on top of this, to keep all the records up to date, that they decided to drop it. And of course, with the First World War, they also decided they didn't have the time or resources to focus onit anymore. So the tax was never introduced, but the records were all created, and they're still there today. So that's that's the main thing for us genealogists.

Genealogy Guy 8:24
Moving on then. So Tithes, have there been any changes or updates on the tithe side of things?

Mark Bayley 8:30
Yeah, so when we last spoke, obviously, that the tithes were all available on the site. However, we've painstakingly geo referenced all the tithe maps for England and Wales now, so they're all available in that interface I mentioned earlier, Map Explorer. So for those of you that that don't know about Map Explorer it's a unified interface to view maps and records all in in one window on one screen. And it's really easy to jump through time. So you can go back to 1086 with our domesday records, the original 1086 Domesday, and then travel through time up until 1939 register is our most recent addition, or nearest to now. And you can see how A/ an area changed over time, looking at our various historical map resources. But B/ seeing those pins, each pin representing a record either in like, I say, the original Domesday, the Lloyd George domesday from 1910 the tithe records, which are 1836 up to 1936 but we've also, since we spoke, added many more record collections to Map Explorer. So we've now geo referenced all of our census records, as I mentioned, 1939 but allthe way back to 1841 now. And we've added military records, such as war memorials, headstone records. We're looking at adding directory trade residential telephone directories coming up next, and eventually, the ideais to have parish records birth, marriages and deaths, all of our records, because every record happens in a place, so we should be able to theoretically, geo reference all of our records on the site.

Genealogy Guy 10:08
What I always find fascinating is when you look at a map, and then, as you say, travel through time, you can see that the properties that start to appear, or the farm that suddenly disappears and becomes taken over by someone else, or a housing estate suddenly appears on the edge of the village, and it just adds to the whole storyline of trying to figure out what yourancestors went through as they lived and their time period.

Mark Bayley 10:34
Yes, definitely. I mean, I've looked at some of our family that have farmlands in Kent and it's really interesting to see just a pin in a field on the farmhouse and then jumping forwards to say, the1939 register. And now there's pins all over that field because the field was sold, and now there's a huge housing estate in that field. So it's, yeah, like you say, it's really interesting seeing how tiny villages change, transform into huge towns.

Genealogy Guy 11:01
And as you mentioned earlier, what's good is you're using a map so you know you've got the right place, so you can look at things that are going on around, as opposed to which boundary was was this particular event taken place in? And it makes life a lot easier when it's visual. It really sort of makes life easier to picture where things are going on, what's happening?

Mark Bayley 11:24
Yes its so it's always much easier to understand things when they're visually represented. And in fact, we've got a heat map that we use a separate tool at the moment for showing somebody all of the results from Master search, but given different colours to different counties based on how many records found in each county, and we're transforming that idea over to Map Explorer. So the eventual idea is to be able to do research at thegenealogist.co.uk. at master search typing a full name, surname, etc. And then you can click on a button to say, map these results, and it will jump into map, explore of a nice, great, big heat map, and you can see where the number of records are, and zoom into that area, and then see the pins, and then be ableto click and see who lived any particular place.

Genealogy Guy 12:11
So does that also help? Then, if you've got movement of families and and sort of showing how a family grew in a particular area?

Mark Bayley 12:19
Definitely, yeah. So I for one of my talks, I talk about being able to understand the origin of your surname. And the starting slide for that talk is showing them a heat distribution map for just the single surname in master search jumping into that and then seeing, because the first census is 1841 that we can search on, and that's before industrialisation. So before people started moving up and down the country to go to the factories and the mines, etc, it means that you're very easily able to capture where that person's family came from. So example, my name Bayley, if you type it in to master search and go into the 1841 census, you can see the concentration where our family lived straight away. Easy to see the origin of your particular surname. And then, once you've found it, to then go through times to pick 51 census, 61 census, 71 census, and see how that family moved over time. Gives you a great idea as to where to look for next if you're struggling to find your family in a particular year census.

Genealogy Guy 13:22
And as we all know as genealogists, dates and names are great, but you actually want to start to know the story of the family, how and why they moved, and what they did, where they worked, what they owned, etc. So what about on the military sideof things? What's happening on that side?

Mark Bayley 13:38
Yeah, well, we've added millions of military records since we last spoke, but the main resource that we released last month is WO 164 so the War Office 164 records we've released in partnership with the National Archives. So it's a big exclusive for us. It's the first time these records have been made searchable online, and they're the Royal Hospital Chelsea prize records kind of a misnomer, really, because these aren't inmates in the Royal Hospital. It was just the fact that the Royal Hospital Chelsea administered the records. They took over the organisation of paying out these prize funds. So they're a really early military resource, from 1720 and they go up to 1899 so we cover the 18th and 19th centuries before searchable service records that people can find out information about their ancestors. So it's really handy. Of going that extra generation or two back, we found that certain battles and wars were fought if, if the British captured a place that had something of value, or indeed a big cash deposit, the army would decide to distribute that prize fund through the that particular regiment that fought in that particular battle. As a way of boosting morale and encouraging the soldiers to push on. Obviously, the higher than the ranks you are, the bigger chunk of the slice of cake you're going to get. But it's all down on the paper, even it covers most ranks all the way down to privates that we're getting even, albeit a small sum at the end of the day, but the records are there, and that's that's thekey thing. So it proves that your ancestor fought in this particular battle and they were awarded this particular fund of money. And like I said, it's really handy because it's really early records of these military personnel, but it's also means your ancestor didn't need to have claimed that money. A lot of people think, for example, in the medal records, my ancestors didn't claim a medal, so therefore they wouldn't be found in the records. Or the military medals are actually medals records of entitlement. So if your ancestor was awarded, well, entitled to be awarded one of these medals, whether it was for courage or bravery, or even just the campaign medals, they'd still be listed in records. And that's the same with this record set, even if your ancestor did fight, fighting the battle and was entitled to the money. But unfortunately, they had passed away. They died in in another battle later on, or indeed died in that particular battle their relatives could claim. So these are records of outstanding prize funds that hadn't been claimed up until that point relatives could then claim but if you look through these particular records, you can see about 75% of the prize fund wasn't actually claimed at the time, and that's whythe records go on all the way up to 1899 because a relative couldcome in, into the scene 20, 30, years later, and then claim the fund.

Genealogy Guy 16:50
Is this covering wars that happened in Britain and Europe? Or does it go out? Does it reach out to like places like India and Africa and places like that?

Mark Bayley 17:00
Yeah, pretty much all of the above that you've just mentioned. Soit covers things like the Indian Mutiny. It does cover one or two ofthe later wars in American independence, for example. It covers the Peninsula War. So things like Waterloo is in in this record set, there was a prize fund from Waterloo, so you can see all the various soldiers that fought in that particular battle. Yeah, it covers a huge number of wars, and not just the wars and battles, but even captures of ships as well, because obviously, the ship would often contain things of value. So there's a whole piece, a whole book dedicated to captures of ships and the prize funds from those as well. These ships are also into war years as well. Sowhen there wasn't a particular war and they still caught ships, wefound a progression in the War of Independence, American independence, that we've obviously gone across the islands that are actually to capture for trying to transport troops and things over to America. So things halfway, and you can see them capturing ships and islands that we weren't in particular war with, but we still captured those, and there was a prize fund allocated to them. Probably the best place to go would be the genealogist news page, where there's a whole article on this particular release and the full full coverage.

Genealogy Guy 18:26
Yeah, it makes sense to actually have an explanation of what's been launched, as opposed to, here's some stuff to go and explore, because it can be quite overwhelming to be showered with so much information. And you're thinking, Well, how do I start to search this?

Mark Bayley 18:42
Yeah, when we make a new record release, we'll write a press release, but we also have article writers that will dive into these records and try and find an interesting story a particular individual, and then use the whole article to illustrate the record set and what, what it can do for you.

Genealogy Guy 19:02
Moving on from the military, what's, what's the next thing that you've been working on?

Mark Bayley 19:06
Well, we've got lots more that we're currently working on. So in terms of the Lloyd, George Domesday, obviously, we've got a lot of counties coming out. We've got a more military records coming out, more parish records for various counties coming out. Unfortunately, they're still under wraps. I can't quite talk about which counties, and then just really being released is our brand new search interface. So Advanced Search interface. Last year we released our brand new master search, a new interface, but with extra functionality and tools built into that. So Advanced Search is more of the same, so it's built in now to be the same, theming, the same style, so it's all one seamless interface, jumping from Master search to advanced search, but it has all those extra features. So we have a brand new phonetic filtering that's more advanced and allows you more control over whether you want something to sound very much like the name you're searching for, or you want to be a bit more broad in your search. And we've also added our new advanced keywords. So before you could just search for a number of keywords, but master search added the idea of advanced keywords where you could say, I want to find x and y and Zed in the same record. Or you can say I want to find X or Y or Z, or you could say I want to find any record that does not include X, Y or Z. And we've added those advanced keyword features into the advanced search as well. From the nav bar at the top of the Genealogist, you can click on the Search, and then pick advanced search, and then you can pick a record set, for example, military. And then, for example, WO, 164 that would bring up a specific interface for that record set. So list regiments, for example, in WO, 164 case, dates, places. So everything to do with that particular record set. So you can be very precise in your search.

Genealogy Guy 21:05
Let's grab a short break from listening to Mark Bailey, giving me the chance to add some context to why genealogy matters. I often get asked why do a family tree? And I have to say my answer is usually along the lines of your family story didn't start with you. It won't end with you. So exploring your family history is a powerful way to discover where you come from and who you're connected to. It's like opening a door to the past full of real people, real stories and real connections that shape who you are today. Building a family tree keeps those stories alive, celebrates your heritage and creates something truly meaningful to pass on.It's easier than you think, and is far more rewarding than you can ever imagine. Just ask any genealogist. Now let's turn back tothe interview with Mark Bailey talking about the updates to Map Explorer on thegenealogist.co.uk website, you've certainly been working with a lot of data because, like, each one of these books contains 1000s and 1000s of names and pieces of information, and you're having to tie it all together and make it talk to each other. It's a massive task.

Mark Bayley 22:21
It has, yeah, we've released 10s of millions of records since we last spoke, and it can be quite a task to be keeping on top of everything, but we do our best.

Genealogy Guy 22:33
How does thegenealogist.co.uk and and the software do they? Are they constantly working together, or do they go off and do their own things, then come together and join up at certain points?

Mark Bayley 22:45
So when you're saying the software, do you mean the tree building software? Or,

Genealogy Guy 22:49
yes, the tree building.

Mark Bayley 22:52
So yes, so Tree View is our tree building software, and you're right. So the genealogist and Tree View kind of work together, and they keep everything in sync. So we have the genealogist, which has an online family tree builder, but there's also the software for Windows and app called tree view, and also an app for mobile devices and tablets called tree view. So all three of them keep in sync that we've written custom syncing code that allows the app, the software and the website tool, talk together. But the new thing that we are working on, that will be coming out later this year is a brand new version of tree view that is all web browser based. So back when we built the software tree view for Windows and Mac, web browsers weren't very capable of doing many things. However, technology changes rapidly, and web browsers from Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Firefox all cater for new, modern web technology, and it means that we're able to build all of the software features that are available in tree view into a web version. So it means you don't need to download anything on your computer anymore. You could be on your library's local computer, or you can have it on your tablet. It means you can just go to the website and have that full software functionality wherever you are on whatever device you're on. Yeah, so everything's then just stored in the cloud. You don't haveto worry about if your computer dies or if your hard drive crashes,that can that data is always safe in the cloud and available to you wherever you are.

Genealogy Guy 24:32
To clarify your the software for doing the trees, you can just import a GEDCOM file that you've already got and then drop it into this system and then work and see how that sort of connects with the data you've got in your data set.

Mark Bayley 24:47
That's right. Yeah, so our software and the web browser both support GEDCOM 100% so you can import your family tree from any other piece of software or any other family trees. Supports, GEDCOM as well.

Genealogy Guy 25:01
Now I'm always, I'm always astounded when you still meet people that have just got paper versions, and they're missing out on the chance to connect and find out a lot faster lots of information by just having it as a GEDCOM, even if it's just a basic GEDCOM. But when you meet somebody that's got fantastic records, but it's all paper-based. You're going but you can't, you can't access the stuff quickly, so you have to go the long way around to find the same information.

Mark Bayley 25:31
Yes yeah. And keeping that sort of information up to date on paper records. I mean, it looks really good. I love a paper chat fora family tree, but having to update all those dates as you find new records is a really painful thing. My daughter's very good at calligraphy, so I get her to hand write out the lovely charts. But every time I found a new record, I say, Oh, can you add a date of death for this person or a birth date for this person? So yes, keeping it as a GEDCOM or in a software online is so much easier, and you get the added benefit of hints. So, always, when new record sets are added, then you can suddenly discover new records for your ancestors.

Genealogy Guy 26:12
And I have to ask, because it's now the buzz thing to ask about all things AI stuff. Are you looking at integrating AI into the sort of being able to have an agent or something that

Mark Bayley 26:21
we're currently using AI behind the scenes, but we're still exploring ideas for how to add AI into our interface that helps users. But isn't just a gimmick that I've seen other companies, maybe not even in genealogy, but AI can be often just used as a bit of a gimmick, and it doesn't really add value to the user. It just has complexity, confusion and inaccurate results. We want to keep away from that.

Genealogy Guy 26:50
And that's the key. I believe that AI is going to be really, really good for genealogy generally, but making sure that you can believe what it's actually giving you is going to be paramount, and it's going to be down to humans still being able to go doesn't look quite right to me.

Mark Bayley 27:08
We've spent a lot of time and effort on the AI backend system I was talking about, making sure that it can't ever hallucinate. That's the problem with AI is it loves to make stuff up, and you can't have that in genealogy. So, yeah, it's going to take some perfection before users start seeing any AI on the front end.

Genealogy Guy 27:26
So have we covered everything we have we got up to date now, or is there anything else? Yeah,

Mark Bayley 27:30
I think, I think that's, that's, that's, that's caught up. And if anyone wants to see what's the latest and greatest on thegenealogist.co.uk, if they head over to the news page, which is simply thegenealogist.co.uk/news they'll be able to see you all of our latest releases. And we've got a special offer for armchair listeners as well. So if your listeners would like to save £40 as a lifetime discount on a diamond subscription to the genealogist, they can go to the genealogist.co.uk/armchair25 , and they'll alsoget a free year subscription to Discover Your Ancestors Online magazine.

Genealogy Guy 28:08
Wow, fantastic. Okay, shall we start to tell everybody that I know, not just the podcasters, anybody that's into genealogy, so you should grab this. It's a good deal.

Mark Bayley 28:19
Great. Thanks very much. Mell

Genealogy Guy 28:20
No, thank you very much, for your time and keep up the great work, because it's only through organisations and companies likeyourself that are that are doing the, what I would call the donkey work in the background, and making it accessible and easy to access that makes genealogy even more fun for all ages. It's the technological route to take

Mark Bayley 28:41
Definitely.

Genealogy Guy 28:42
OK then thanks very much, Mark Bailey, and that just about wraps up. So a very big thank you there to Mark Bayley telling us about the fantastic updates on the Map Explorer section inside thegenealogist.co.uk website. And do check out the deal that he has offered to all the listeners of armchair genealogy by just visiting the genealogist.co.uk/armchair25

Until the next time, happy and constructive research

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