Welcome to our last blog of 2017! A lot has happened at Ancestor Homes in the last 6 months.
In July we launched our website with approximately 5,000 records. Initially we focused on the people in our documents, extracting names, occupations, relationships and addresses in order to help researchers discover more about their ancestors and add a bit of colour to family trees. By finding out information ancestors become people and not just names. Deeds can tell us what people did for a living, where they lived, what their house was like and can also show us our ancestor’s signature and seal.
In August we had a giant scanning week where we scanned in some of our most prized deeds. These deeds are usually written on velum or parchment, on average 70x60cms in size and date as far back as the 1550s (You can download a free Conveyance here to see what some of our large format deeds look like). Scanning in these deeds was a huge challenge as many have been folded up for decades, even centuries, and many of the wax seals are crumbling. Despite the challenges we had a fantastic week, and we are still working on this collection so more can be added to our website every month.
October saw the launch of our Property Search, as requested by you. With the growth in popularity of House History and One-Place Studies, it made sense for us to launch a property focused search. Deeds can include information such as when the property was built, plot size, ground rent fees, occupants and their occupations, neighbours and even information about the surrounding area.
Ancestor Homes can help you trace the history of a house or discover more about an ancestor through a range of deeds and documents. Use our collection alongside newspaper articles, photographs and census’ to build the colourful history of houses and ancestors.
We end the year with a Christmas Sale, over 20,000 records and lots of enthusiasm about what is yet to come. Thank you for all of your support and feedback these past few months. We hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a very Happy New Year!