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This Week's Feature
Check out Ancestry’s New Search

We are pleased to announce that, based on thousands of pieces of customer feedback, we have redesigned our search functionality and added some new features that will make searching for records about your ancestors faster, easier and more effective. With a simple, easy-to-read layout, record counts that tell you how many matches you have and new methods to easily browse titles you should be able to find exactly what you’re looking for in no time. Plus we’ve added advanced search filters, image previews and better organized content categories all to improve your onsite experience here at Ancestry.

You can learn more about our new search feature and give it a spin by clicking the “Try It” link at the top of the main search page, so why wait any longer …

Take a closer look

Historical Records
Millions of
names added this week
Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management

This wonderful 19th century domestic bible provides you with a fantastic insight into how our ancestors ran their households and cared for their families and at the same time demonstrates the extent to which domestic life has evolved over the last 150 years.

Take a look here

Royal Aero Club Aviators Certificates, 1910 – 1950

hspace="5"This unique collection contains over 28,000 records and 13,000 photographs of men and women who qualified as pilots in the golden age of British aviation, many of whom were instrumental in the founding of the Royal Flying Corps and its successor the Royal Air Force, which was founded in April 1918.

The collection is fully indexed and searchable by name, date of birth, location and rank or profession as well as the plane they qualified on, when and where. It also includes original images of the pilots themselves, many of which have never before been available to the public and reveals wonderful details about their flying lives and exploits

Click here to start searching

The Australian Free Settler Collection is now available on Ancestry.co.uk

For the first time ever, you can now search 8.9 million names of those arriving into New South Wales in two, easy to use, online databases:

NSW Unassisted Immigrant Passenger Lists, 1826-1922

hspace="5"“Unassisted immigrants” were migrants whose journey was not subsidized and was paid for solely by themselves. These passenger lists are a record of their entry into New South Wales between 1826 and 1922 and contain details such as the name of the passenger and their occupation, their port of departure, the date they arrived and the name of ship they arrived on, and even possibly a bill of health

NSW Assisted Immigrant Passenger Lists, 1828-1896

These are the records of individuals whose journeys were subsidized or paid for by another person or through another agency. The database is made up of 3 different types of record; Returns of convicts’ applications for wives and families, Persons on bounty ships (Agents Immigrant Lists) and Persons on early migrant ships, and so contains an abundance of information.

Click here to learn more about this collection

Complete BMD Update

As part of our ongoing maintenance project, we have added approximately 1,024 images and an estimated 153,600 names that were previously missing, to the Marriage Index in this collection.

Click here to search this collection

British Army WW1 Medal Rolls Index Cards (1914-1922)

width="132"As promised we have been working hard to complete this collection for you and have added an additional 2,743,804 new names to our existing records, giving us approximately 4.8 million out of the estimated 5.5 million names within the entire collection. There will also be one more update in the very near future that will complete this collection entirely.

These records are the most complete listing of individuals who fought in the British Army in WWI, containing approximately 90% of soldiers’ names. The Index Cards were created by the Army Medal Office (AMO) in Droitwich in order to keep details about a soldier’s medal entitlement in one place.

Click here to view this collection and discover a hero within your family

1851 Census England & Wales

We are pleased to announce that significant maintenance work has been successfully carried out on this collection including the rescanning and rekeying of missing data as well as corrections to existing data. An estimated 9000 missing records have been added, 10,501 relationships corrected, 5,503 genders, 561 forenames and 444 surnames have all been corrected.

British Army WWI Service Records, 1914-1920

This collection contains the surviving service records on non-commissioned officers and other ranks that served in WWI and did not re-enlist in the Army prior to WWII. We have updated the records with an estimated 550,000 additional names to the existing estimated 427,000 which now completes the coverage of surnames in the range of A-H.

Click here to start searching this collection now

Ancestry.co.uk Enhancements
Learning Centre Updated

We are pleased to announce a new and improved Learning Centre area on Ancestry.co.uk. The Learning Centre has been redesigned with an easy to use layout and additional features including a Family History Toolbox which is bursting with tips and tools to help you discover your family history and an Ancestry Library providing you with access to the biggest collection of family history educational resources on the Internet.

Click here to take a closer look at our new Learning centre now

Multiple Photo Uploads to your Ancestry Member Tree are now even easier
Adding photos to your Ancestry Member Tree has never been easier, following the release earlier this week of our new Bulk Photo Upload feature. You can now upload up to 500 photos at any one time within the same upload window.


Once uploaded, you’ll be able to add descriptions, and other supporting information all within a single window view, significantly reducing the time taken to both upload and add supporting commentary. You can also easily attach a photo or series of photos to more than one ancestor within the same page too.

Here’s an example of a 2 photo upload:

Multiple picture upload

What’s the meaning of my surname? Where did my ancestors live? Did they stay in the UK or emigrate overseas? What did they do for a living?
Family FactsThese questions will be familiar to many, irrespective of whether you’re just starting out or are some way into your family research. Well, now you can discover these and many more fascinating facts relating to your ancestors and their surnames by using Ancestry’s latest Family Facts features.


For example did you know that Turner means a maker of wooden, bone or metal objects, or even a an official in charge of tournaments in the Middle ages as well as a guard in a watch tower in Southern Germany? Nearly 30% of all Turners in England and Wales were living in either Lancashire or Yorkshire around the turn of the 20th Century.

Start discovering fascinating facts relating to your ancestors now


Moving between generations in your Tree is now easier too

Each time you click forwards or backwards through your tree using the arrow buttons appearing when you hover near any of your ancestors,
Family Tree
you’ll create a link which will be displayed at the top of your family tree view.
Family Tree
Clicking on a named ancestor link will enable you to easily jump back to any previously visited ancestor so you can review, add further details or cross-reference with other ancestors you’ve already visited to

Visit your tree now to view this new feature

Ancestry in the news
Ancestry.co.uk strikes Gold!
Who Do You Think You Are LIVE!You’re in good company…Ancestry.co.uk received a “Gold Award” rating in a recent review by “Web User”, one of the UK’s leading internet magazines. Ancestry’s rich tree building and content features (photos, stories, personal profiles etc.) as well as extensiveness of records and ease of search were singled out in the review as being particularly impressive.

How may we help?
Need help with searching, tree building or our community? Find answers here

Help

Member Feedback
We want to get your thoughts
PollsIf you’re a regular visitor to the Ancestry Community section, you’re aware that we regularly run Member Polls to gain insights and feedback into your thoughts and ideas on a range of topics from record collections to site features and more. You may have even been a regular contributor to these, in which case we’d like to say “thank you”.

If you’re not familiar with these, just look out for a poll. They’ll always be located in the same place on the righthand side of the Ancestry Community Homepage. Whilst you’re there you can also take a look round and perhaps explore the Message Boards to connect with other Ancestry Members searching for “shared” ancestors.