Family Research - English, Scottish and Irish Genealogy » 2005

Ukrainian SS ‘Galicia’ Division allowed to settle in Britain

Home office papers reveal how 7,100 Ukrainian men from the 14th Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ Division were allowed to settle in Britain in order to protect them from persecution in Stalinist controlled Ukraine. The documents follow the case of the Ukrainian soldiers, from their capture in Italy by British forces to Britain’s reaction to an Italian treaty with the Soviet Union to repatriate the men.

Catalogue reference: HO 213/1851, Ukrainian prisoners of war in Italy: possible transportation to UK for ’screening’ for more click here

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Presbyterian divine, Franklin Roosevelt

John Witherspoon, a Scottish Presbyterian minister who came to America in 1768 to be president of the College of New Jersey (Princeton), is the latest candidate for inclusion among the Founding Fathers. In his scholarly John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic (Notre Dame, $22.50, 220 pages), Jeffry H. Morrison argues that any one of Witherspoon’s three careers –pastor, college president and politician — should have guaranteed him the “prominent and lasting place in American history that he has been denied.” for more click here

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The National Family History Fair-Gateshead

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The National Family History Fair

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My granddad’s death changed history

From attempted assassinations of Winston Churchill to spy rings and code breaking, a Norwich man is trying to piece together the mystery of why his grandfather was killed.

Window cleaner Ivan Sharp, 36, of Ashmanhaugh near Wroxham, was named after his grandfather — a mining engineer who was on one of the few civilian planes to be shot down during the Second World War.

With him on DC-3 airliner flight 777A was Gone With The Wind star Leslie Howard and theories about the attack include an attempted assassination of Winston Churchill. for more click here

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Genealogy in France

Before you begin your search for a civil record in France, you will need some basic information - the name of the person, the place where the event took place (town/village), and the date of the event. In large cities, such as Paris or Lyon, you will also need to know the Arrondissement (district) where the event took place. If you are not certain of the year of the event, you will have to conduct a search in the tables décennales (ten-year indexes). These indexes usually index births, marriage, and deaths separately, and are alphabetical by surname. From these indexes you can obtain the given name(s), document number, and date of the civil register entry. for more click here

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The Scottish National War Memorial

The Scottish National War Memorial commemorates nearly 150,000 Scottish casualties in the First World War, 1914 - 1918, over 50,000 in the Second World War, 1939 - 1945 and the campaigns since 1945, including the Malayan Emergency, the Korean War, Northern Ireland, the Falklands War and the Gulf War.

The Memorial is to be found in Crown Square at the very top of the rock on which Edinburgh Castle stands. In 1927 the architect Sir Robert Lorimer and two hundred Scottish artists and craftsmen created a serene Hall Of Honour and Shrine where the names of the dead are contained in books that are on permanent display.for more click here

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Graveyard tourism

Albany - Here lies President Chester A Arthur, amid the tall trees and tousled grass of Albany Rural Cemetery.

A dribble of people still visit the Victorian-style grave of the little remembered 19th-Century United States president. More than a hundred years after his death, Arthur is something of a cemetery star.

Consider Patrick Weissend, who travelled hundreds of kilometres to see Arthur’s grave - twice - as part of his quest to visit all 38 presidential graves around the USA. for more click here

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