Family History on-line from Essex Libraries

Did you know…
During the Covid19 Pandemic, and whilst Essex Libraries remain closed to the public, a number of on-line Family History Research resources have been made available FREE to Library Members. (If you are not currently a member, you can easily register on-line for temporary membership.)

Since March 2020, “Find My Past” have made access to their site temporarily available to Essex Library members from home, rather than only in the library. Now they’ve extended their offer and increased the range of records available. Library members can now access the Find My Past Worldwide Edition. This includes over 13 billion records from Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada! It also contains the largest collection of Irish records anywhere online.

This extensive collection lets you search census records, births, deaths, immigration records and more. With many ancestors departing and arriving on these shores, who knows who you might find?

“Ancestry” has also temporarily made their Library Edition available  to Essex Library members from home. This contains masses of information for family history researchers, including census records, births marriages and deaths and much more.

Other facilities available online from Essex Libraries include the Times Digital Archive (full contents of The Times from 1785 to 2014); IWM Lives of the First World War (life stories of more than 8 million men and women); and The British Library 19th Century Newspapers (comprising millions of digitised British newspaper pages from the British Library’s vast collection).

Herein you will find a wealth of information whether you are tracing your own family history, or want to find out about a well-known person or simply want to explore the great events of the past.

Login to your Essex Libraries account on the library catalogue for full details of how to access these free resources from home with your library card. Just start here!   This link will take you to: https://libraries.essex.gov.uk/reference-and-courses-online/reference-materials/biographical-historical-and-family-history/

For a brief tutorial about how to begin researching your ancestry, click here to see Terry Barclay’s interesting and inspiring article on this site.

Don’t forget, the principal purpose of this wonderful Archive’s website is to provide a free repository for your family history stories so, don’t be shy – if you have a story you’d care to share, upload it here.