28 June 2019

Additions to Findmypast this week

Donegal Workhouses Registers and Minute Books
Search Irish ancestry through more than 400,000 new and exclusive records from the Donegal workhouses. The records include admission and discharge registers as well as the board of guardians' minute books. The books span from 1840 to 1922, comprise records from 7 poor law unions across Donegal and join a growing collection of Irish Work House and Poor Law records. These records are also available to browse.

The unions covered include Ballyshannon, Donegal, Dunfanaghy, Glentis, Inishowen, Letterkenny, Milford, and Stranorlar. The original records are held by the Donegal County Council and have been digitized through a partnership with Findmypast. Within the collection, you will find a wide variety of records. In addition to inmates find appointments such as that of Mr. John Reid as a Parish Warden in the Letterkenny Union in November 1846.

Scotland, Highland Poor Law 1845-1929
These detailed transcripts of more than 9,000 new poverty relief records can reveal a wide range of information such as a description of the relief received, location, occupation, residence, earnings, the names and earnings of relatives, how poor they actually were and the nature of their disability (if disabled).

Responsibility for administering funds for the poor lay initially with the church. The Poor Law Act (Scotland) 1845 established parochial boards in rural parishes and in towns, the Central Board of Supervision was in Edinburgh, gradually removing the responsibility away from the church. Each parochial board had to keep a roll of the poor to whom it gave relief.

An example of these records is John Reid, born in 1786, a gardener, who in 1872 received 2/- per week which was gradually "raised to 5/6 per week in consequence of the increasing age and debility of John being unwieldy and daily assistance required in taking him out of and putting him again to bed, 16 May 1879 – Died this morning at 8."

Scotland, Highlands and Islands Assisted Emigration 1852-1857
Search the names of those who received assistance from the Highlands and Islands Emigration Society in emigrating from the Highlands of Scotland for Australia. Each transcript will reveal dates and ports of both departure and arrival, age and residence, the ship sailed on, the name of the sponsor and the amount they received.

British & Irish Roots Collection
More than 1.2 million records have been added to Findmypasts's exclusive British and Irish Roots Collection, a vast database of nearly 100 million records that identify British or Irish emigrants in North America. These records have been added from existing collections, notably census records.

International Records Update – Luxembourg
Three new indexes of births & baptisms, marriages and deaths & burials cover the years 1662 to 1840.

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