17 March 2016

Ancestry adds to Yorkshire records

Three new collections are added to Ancestry's Yorkshire records originating from the West Yorkshire Archive Service.

Yorkshire, England, Quarter Session Records, 1637-1914 has 331,599 items from the Leeds and Wakefield offices. You''ll find the guilty, innocent, plaintiffs and witnesses with names indexed but little information to place anyone with a common name in a family context. Given the name and date try newspapers as a additional source. A couple of samples I checked had quite legible handwriting - one I'd class as calligraphy.

West Yorkshire, Roman Catholic Oath Records, 1714-1787, 1829 with just 15,385 items, For the earlier period these are lists and certificates of Roman Catholics failing to take the oaths of abjuration, allegiance and supremacy which were a part of an act passed by parliament in 1715. Mostly contains names and location. The latter period, 1829, is a register of Roman Catholic Priests gathered as a result of the passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Act by Parliament.

Yorkshire, England, Probate Records, 1521-1858 has 30,335 items from the Peculiar of Knaresborough and the Archdeaconry of Richmond. Some of the early records are extremely difficult to decipher, some are indexes only while the later ones can be quite comprehensive including family names, relationships and inventories.

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