Some useful links
This is just a small selection of web sites
that can be useful to the genealogist.
For particular families, places or subjects,
several of the genealogy sites below have classified lists of links to web pages
and specialised search engines.
Most internet users have their favourite search engines.
One of the most comprehensive is
which also includes useful facilities like the ability to search for links to a specified page,
and provides cached copies of web pages it has indexed - useful if a page has recently disappeared or
been removed!
As well as its main index to the Internet, Google also provides several useful specialist search facilities:
- Google Scholar
A search facility restricted to "scholarly" online sources,
including material available by paid subscription.
- Google Books
An ambitious project to digitise more than 8 million volumes over the next few years. The text of the books is searchable, and out-of-copyright works are fully accessible. There is more limited access to works still in copyright.
A very extensive archive of web pages covering the past few years,
perfect for tracking down copies of web pages that have disappeared, is:
Some other search engines with extensive coverage are:
- FamilySearch
(Latter Day Saints; search engine for the I.G.I., Ancestral File and web sites)
- GENUKI (Genealogical Information Service
for the United Kingdom and Ireland)
A large amount of reference material, classified by county and subject, but the website can
be rather confusing to navigate
However, the site includes a search facility
- Rootsweb (US-based, but including much British material)
- Cyndi's list (US-based, but including much British material)
- GEN-MEDIEVAL/soc.genealogy.medieval
(companion web site for the medieval genealogy mailing list/newsgroup)
This is a very useful forum for discussing medieval genealogy, which can be
used either as a newsgroup or as a mailing list. The forum is unmoderated,
so there can be quite a lot of "off-topic" contributions and disruptive behaviour
from time to time.
Note that the forum is no longer accessible through Google Groups - see Instructions for accessing soc.genealogy.medieval without Google Groups.
- EnglandGenWeb Project (projects in progress)
- Association for the Promotion of Scholarship in Genealogy (in preparation)
[formerly at http://www.apsg.org/; not available, 2 November 2003]
- Foundation for Medieval Genealogy
Charitable foundation for research into pre-1500 genealogy; an annual fee is charged for access to its website, where the projects include Foundations, an annual journal of which volumes 1-3 are freely available online, and the Online Library Catalogue and Reference Database, a referenced database of medieval genealogy.
- Medieval English Genealogy (Debbie Kennett, Genealogy Wise)
Group for the discussion of medieval English genealogy, on a website describing itself as the "genealogy social network".
- Sources-England (WikiTree)
Extensive list of links to genealogically useful published sources available online. A few more are listed under Great Britain Genealogy Resources.
Many extensive databases are available on the internet, and they
can provide a quick and convenient means of reference.
However, they should be used with great caution, as they
are often based on older secondary sources, which may have been
poorly researched or superseded by subsequent research.
The reliability of the information can be difficult to check,
as many databases do not cite their sources. The following is just a
small selection:
- The Henry Project (Stewart Baldwin, American Society of Genealogists)
An experimental cooperative online database
with the aim of documenting the ancestors of King Henry II as far as the
tenth generation - unusual among Internet databases in that the emphasis is on providing and discussing
evidence from primary sources
- Medieval Lands (Charles Cawley; Foundation for Medieval Genealogy)
An ambitious project, whose aim is to provide narrative biographical accounts of the royal and noble families of Europe in the medieval period. The aim is eventually to document the accounts from primary source material, but a number of them - including those for England after 1066 - are currently outlines based on secondary sources.
- Community Trees: British Isles and England (FamilySearch.org)
A number of genealogical databases compiled from various sources. They include British Isles: Peerage, Gentry and Colonial American Connections, Europe: Royal and Noble Houses (predominantly England and France), Residents of London, Norfolk Visitations, 1563 and Wales: Medieval Records Primarily of Nobility and Gentry.
- Ancestry of Charles II (Foundation for Medieval Genealogy)
A hyperlinked set of chart pedigrees indexing the ongoing series of papers in The Genealogist entitled "A Medieval Heritage: The Ancestry of Charles II, King of England", by Neil D. Thompson and Charles M. Hansen.
- Leo's Genealogics Website
(Leo van de Pas)
An extensive genealogical database containing more than 400,000 persons.
Much of the emphasis is on medieval ancestry, as well as on modern royalty and nobility.
The data are mostly taken from good-quality secondary sources, which are specified for each entry
- Plantagenet Country:
Ancestors of Elizabeth of York 1465-1503: Genealogies, portraits and brief biographies
(Leo van de Pas/Brigitte Gastel Lloyd) [not available, 11 March 2024; see the Internet Archive's copy of this page]
Listing of the ancestors of Elizabeth of York, with biographies and portraits for some individuals
-
The Ancestry of Elizabeth FitzAlan (and her sister Joan FitzAlan) to the 9th generation
(Genealogy page of John Blythe Dobson) [not available, 22 June 2024; see the Internet Archive's copy of this page, from October 2022]
-
Our Family Museum: A Collection of Family History Notes
(James Nohl Churchyard; online version by Henry Churchyard)
This page also has links to a number of other databases, including
Royal Genealogies (compiled by Denis Reid)
[not available, 19 April 2015; see the Internet Archive's copy of this page, from March 2005]
and Lineal Ancestors of King Edward III of England
and Philippa of Hainault (compiled by Randy Wilson)
- WW-Person: A data base of the titled nobility in Europe (Herbert Stoyan)
- The
Exciting Danvers Home Page (Philip Richards)
[not available, 19 July 2009; see the Internet Archive's copy of this page, from March 2007]
Database covering just over a thousand individuals,
many of them medieval
- Ford's
Landed Gentry of Berkshire (David Nash Ford's Royal Berkshire History) [not available, 16 June 2020; see the Internet Archive's copy of this page, from April 2003]
Database compiled from various sources, including nearly 10,000 individuals
associated with Berkshire
-
Bradley, Collette, Gillespie & Opp Ancestry (Hal Bradley)
- My Grandchildren's Ancestors (John R. Schuerman)
The Histories section includes a number of articles on medieval ancestors, originally published in the newsletter Wordens Past.
- The Peerage (Darryl Lundy)
Compilation of genealogical information about the British peerage and European royalty.
- WorldCat (Online Computer Library Center)
Offers free access to the basic information in a union catalogue of books held in libraries worldwide, currently including more than 100 million records. There are some links to electronic texts available online.
-
Copyright libraries in England and Wales:
For the British Library the online catalogue fully covers the main collections of printed books for all periods
(at least in theory); for the others, only more recent accessions are fully represented, and older material
is being gradually added.
- Library Hub Discover (combined catalogue for a number of UK national, academic and specialist libraries, replacing COPAC)
- National Archives Library Catalogue
- Library of Congress
Although obviously not a U.K. copyright library, this is often preferable to the British Library
online catalogue in terms of detail and accuracy.
- Bibliothèque nationale de France
- FamilySearch Catalog
(FamilySearch)
- Library Catalogue (Society of Genealogists, London)
- The London Library
A subscription library founded by the historian Thomas Carlyle in 1841,
without which these pages could not have been written
- Digital Scriptorium
Online union catalogue of medieval and early-modern manuscripts covering the holdings of a consortium of institutions in the USA, with sample images of the documents.
- Access to Archives (A2A)
A large searchable database compiled from the catalogues of around 400 record repositories in England and Wales was previously available. It has now been merged with the National Archives catalogue. For some reason the option to search repositories in a particular region of England has been lost.
- The National Archives
(incorporating the Public Record Office and the Historical Manuscripts Commission)
This includes an outstanding resource - the online Catalogue,
which is in the process of being compiled from the older paper finding aids.
It already includes a huge number of references to individuals - with particularly good representation
of medieval records - and can be searched by surname.
- Historical Manuscripts Commission
(Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts,
now part of The National Archives)
The Commission provides a great deal of useful material - two sections worth mentioning in their own right are:
-
A listing of record offices and repositories, with links to web pages and catalogues, is available online:
- Explore Archives and Manuscripts (British Library)
- Records formerly held by the Guildhall Library, Manuscripts Section, are now at the London Metropolitan Archives
See also Collage, an image database compiled from
the collections of the Guildhall Library and the Guildhall Art Gallery
- Harvard Law School Library
- For listings of other record repositories, see subsection on
General Finding Aids
- Streetmap
Includes Ordnance Survey maps of England.
- Google Maps
- Ordnance Survey maps (National Library of Scotland)
Includes around 200,000 sheets of maps of the United Kingdom at various scales produced between the 1840s and the 1960s.
- Nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey Maps (British History Online)
Maps of Britain at a scale of 1:10,560 (Ordnance Survey Epoch 1), from the period 1843-1893. (These maps were previously available at https://www.old-maps.co.uk/, but have been withdrawn, apparently because the website wasn't making enough money.)
- Old Maps Online (The Great Britain Historical GIS Project/Klokan Technologies GmbH)
Search portal for historical maps on the Internet.
- Britain From Above (Historic Environment Scotland)
A searchable collection of 95,000 aerial photographs of Britain, dating from 1919-1953.
- The Historical Gazetteer of England's Place-Names (English Place-Name Society)
Database of place-names, based on the Society's published volumes, searchable for both modern and historical spellings. [This potentially very useful site returned relatively briefly in 2021 after an absence of about two years, but as of March 2022 it is again unavailable.]
- Gazetteer of British Place Names (Association of British Counties)
- Key to English Place-Names (Institute for Name-Studies, Nottingham University)
Database covering all English parishes, with notes on the origin of each place name, and source references. The data can be searched, or else browsed for each county using either alphabetical indexes or maps.
- Survey of English Place-Names (Institute for Name-Studies, University of Nottingham)
Searchable and browsable database of English place-names and their historically documented forms, based on the work of the English Place-Name Society.
- Samuel Lewis, ed., A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848) (British History Online)
- Lewis Topographical Dictionaries (Mel Lockie)
Gazetteer based on the Topographical Dictionaries for England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales published by Samuel Lewis in the early 19th century. Scans of the published volumes are available at the Internet Archive.
- A vision of Britain through time (Great Britain Historical GIS Project, University of Portsmouth)
A large, searchable collection of information about places in Great Britain, including extracts from gazetteers and directories.
- List of Historic Place Names of Wales (Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales)
Database of historical place-names, searchable or browsable by map.
- Four online listings of Latin place names:
Of course, medieval genealogy outside England is a huge subject. But I thought I'd add a few links
here to useful online resources, as much for my own convenience as anything:
- Miscellaneous:
- Medieval Prosopography: The German and Imperial Aristocracy of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (Donald Charles Jackman)
Detailed scholarly articles; in progress.
- The Crusades:
Bibliography (University of North Florida/Paul Halsall)
[not longer available; see the Internet Archive's
copy
of this page, from October 2002]
An extremely detailed bibliography, including links to both source material and secondary works available
online. (Of course, this includes references to a lot of medieval English people, in a foreign context.)
- Europäische Stammtafeln. This is a compendious - though of course not flawless -
collection of royal and noble European chart pedigrees,
published in German, currently under the editorship of Detlev Schwennicke.
Some associated reference material is available online:
- John P. DuLong, Europäische Stammtafeln: Notes
Including an overview of the different editions of the work, a listing of their contents,
a table of symbols and terms used in the pedigrees,
a discussion of their value and an extensive bibliography
- Stammtafeln: Register
An index to vols 1-19 of the work
-
The Carolingians: An English-language bibliography (Thomas F. X. Noble, University of Virginia/Julia M.H. Smith,
University of St Andrews) [not available, 4 December 2015; see the Internet Archive's copy of this page, from February 2005]
Very extensive bibliography, including relevant papers in journals
- France:
- Rob's Norman Bibliography (Rob Helmerichs) [not available, 22 June 2024; see the Internet Archive's copy of this page, from January 2023]
Extensive online bibliography for Norman history, 10th to mid-12th centuries
- Germany:
- Monumenta Germaniae Historica digital
(Monumenta Germaniae Historica/Bavarian State Library)
Official website of the extensive series of published documents relating to the history of Germany,
offering free access to images (in JPEG format) of all but the most recently published volumes.
The web pages are in German.
- Ireland:
- Netherlands:
- Medieval Memoria Online (MeMO)
Database with details of records and objects associated with the commemoration of the dead until 1580 in the area now within the Netherlands.
- Scotland:
- The Declaration of Arbroath Family History Project (University of Strathclyde)
Genealogical investigation of those named in the Declaration of Arbroath (1320) and their families, using both documentary and genetic evidence.
- KinHelp (Gordon Johnson) [not available, 17 March 2017; see the Internet Archive's copy of this page, from January 2016]
A research service for Scottish ancestry, concentrating on the pre-1700 period; the website also includes indexes to a number of volumes of published records and other useful reference material.
- Wales:
- Bartrum Project (Aberystwyth University)
Project based on Dr P. C. Bartrum's Welsh Genealogies. Zip files containing scans of manuscript pedigrees and typescript indexes to them.
- Encyclopædia Britannica
- Abbreviations:
- infoplease.com
A search facility including almanacs, a dictionary and and encyclopaedia
- OLD ENGLISH Links... (Judith Werner)
An excellent list of links, including many dictionaries and glossaries,
and many other sources of useful reference information for language and genealogy
- Names:
- Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources (Sara L. Uckelman, Durham University)
Dictionary of given names recorded in European between 500 and 1600. In progress, currently containing more than 1000 names, with citations to sources.
- Medieval Names Archive
(Joshua Mittleman)
Collection of links, mainly to lists of names collected from primary sources, many medieval
- Given Names c. 1450-1650: A-I
and J-Z,
"One-Off" Given names
and Latinized Given Names
(Judith Werner, OLD-ENGLISH)
A very extensive list of given names used in late medieval and early modern England, including
variants, familiar forms, Latin forms and abbreviations, and other notes; with an alphabetical index of Latin forms
- Latin Forms of English Surnames and
A Few Latin Christian Names with Their English Equivalents
Extensive lists, from Charles T. Martin, The Record Interpreter (1911) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)
- Names from the British Isles
(Eponym)
[temporarily unavailable, 26 October 2003; see the Internet Archive's
copy
of this page, from December 2001]
Collection of links to web pages discussing names, many covering England in medieval times;
there are also sections dealing with Scotland, Wales, Ireland and other regions
- The Internet Surname Database
A database containing information on the origins of surnames, with details of early occurrences. Compiled from various sources, including Bardsley's Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames and Reaney's Dictionary of British Surnames.
- Connected Histories: British History Sources, 1500-1900 (University of Hertfordshire, Institute of Historical Research, University of London, and University of Sheffield)
Combined search engine for a number of online historical resources (including material available only by subscription).
- The Country House Database (Robin Alston)
A listing of country houses from the late medieval period to c.1850, with an index of families. [not available, 13 April 2011; see the Internet Archive's copy of this page, from February 2009]
- DiCamillo Database (Curt DiCamillo)
Project to list all country houses built in Britain and Ireland, whether still standing or demolished.
- Researching Historic Buildings in the British Isles (Jean Manco)
Extensive collection of bibliography and links, many relevant to genealogy as well as architecture.
- The Gatehouse (Philip Davis)
Gazetteer of medieval castles, palaces and fortifications in England, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, including an extensive bibliography, background essays and a list of licences to crenellate.
- PastScape {Historic England)
Database of English historical sites and buildings, including documentary information, photographs and maps, derived from the National Record of the Historic Environment.
- National Portrait Gallery
Includes an Advanced Search facility, with many online images.
- Purchasing Power of British Pounds from 1264 to 2006 (MeasuringWorth.com)
A facility to compare sums of money at different dates, based on a retail price index.
- Expert Links: English Family History and Genealogy (Nathan W. Murphy, Price and Associates)
A large collection of links, including many online databases.