THE BRITISH ONLINE ARCHIVES BLOG
This page brings you the latest news about British Online Archives (BOA) from Microform Academic Publishers (MAP).
October 10, 2011, 3:51 pm: New titles added to the David Irving Collection
Microform Academic Publishers are pleased to announce the publication of the first three of thirteen groups belonging to a section of Irving's private research collection, 'Records and documents relating to the Third Reich'. These three groups focus on German rocket and atomic reseach both before and during the Second World War. Also to be found are reseach files and interview notes for Irving's book, 'The Destruction of Dresden' (1963).
Link: David Irving's private research collection
Published by: David Sarsfield
July 29, 2011, 11:45 am: New and Improved Website
Microform Academic Publishers is delighted to announce the launch of their updated website, British Online Archives. Based largely on customer feedback received, the new site aims to improve user interface as well as build on its cosmetic attraction. Existing users will also notice a new section to the site entitled 'List by Subject', which aims to inter-link individual collections in relation to their historical significance. Please feel free to offer any initial responses to the new site by contacting our Head of Publishing, David Sarsfield, at dsarsfield@microform.co.uk.
Link: British Online Archives - List by Subject
Published by: David Sarsfield
July 19, 2011, 9:58 am: Collected Papers of the Bolton Whitman Fellowship
MAP is pleased to announce the release of Part 13 of the series, 'British Records on the Atlantic World'. Another example of Anglo-American relations, this collection focuses on a rather curious relationship between the Father of American poetry, Walt Whitman, and an obscure group of Lancashire workers and socialists.
Link: Collected Papers of the Bolton Whitman Fellowship
Published by: David Sarsfield
February 1, 2012, 11:09 am: Methodism collection now complete
MAP is pleased to announce the final completion of our online collection of Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist periodicals, courtesy of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, Oxford Brookes University, and is accompanied with a guide to the material by Dr Peter Forsaith, Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes. Although Methodism has come to be associated most closely with the Protestant Christian denomination founded by John Wesley (1703-1791), the term was already current in the seventeenth century, encompassing a number of different non-conformist churches including Calvinistic Methodism, to whose doctrine of predestinarianism Wesley, with his faith in universal redemption, was deeply opposed. Primitive Methodism emerged as a movement in the early 19th century from within the Wesleyan connexion, with which it eventually re-merged as part of the Methodist Union between the two World Wars.
Link: Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist periodicals
Published by: David Sarsfield
2011 April 4: New Head of Publishing joins MAP
Today David Sarsfield joined Microform Imaging Limited as Head of Publishing.
2011 March 22: Universities' Mission to Central Africa
This collection will grow to include the bulk of the archive created as a result of the activities of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, and subsumed after 1964 into the archive of the USPG. However, rather than wait for many months, researchers specialising in the religious and general history of Central Africa will be delighted to gain immediate online access for the first time to a complete of volumes 1 to 82 (1883-1964) of the UMCA's illustrated monthly magazine, Central Africa, with its focus on the countries of the east coast from Zanzibar and Tanganyika (Tanzania) in the north to Nyasaland (Malawi), North Rhodesia (Zambia) and South Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). The journal will be useful to anyone with an interest in the geography, ethnography and sociology of the region, as well as of the triumphs and tribulations of this Anglican mission. Articles by or about particular missionaries will doubtless excite family historians, while historians of the Great War will be keen to delve into how the conflict in Europe affected relations between the East African colonies of Germany and Britain.
Click on the button to view the freely accessible sample images from this collection (ISBN 978-1-85117-254-2). The intention is to add further materials from the archives of the UMCA in the autumn of 2011.
2011 March 15: David Irving's private research collection
Recently released on BOA, the first three digitised versions of the research collections used by British historian, David Irving, in his often controversial analyses of the Second World War, the Third Reich and of prominent figures therein. (ISBN 978-1-85117-251-1).
2011 February 2: Newspapers of Sir Oswald Mosley's BUF now also part of a World War II archive for FE colleges & schools
MAP has further teamed up with Digitorial to offer access to, in addition to the British Union of Fascists press (Action! and The Blackshirt), a day-by-day archive of the Daily mirror, Daily express and Yorkshire post, on ukpressonline (other titles, including the Daily worker, now being added). This archive aims to provide a history of the causes (from the appointment of Hitler as German Chancellor) and the daily events of the war (to Churchill’s defeat in the Khaki Election) as reported in a sweep of contemporary British press across a broad spectrum of political and geographical viewpoints.
Schools and colleges requiring further information on this fascinating resource should contact Digitorial.
Click on the button to view the freely accessible sample images from the East London pioneer, one of the BUF newspapers in the BOA collection (ISBN 978-1-85117-125-5).
2011 February 1: MAP teams up with ukpressonline over The Watchman
In addition to the core Methodist periodicals reproduced in British Online Archives, MAP has teamed up with Digitorial to offer access to the entirety of the Methodist newspaper, The Watchman and Wesleyan advertiser, from 1835 to 1884, on ukpressonline. In common with other newspapers of the nineteenth century, the pages were larger than contemporary twenty-first century broadsheets, and the typeface markedly smaller. So the decision was partly down to the physical format, which is particularly well suited to the ukpressonline interface, but also because the two companies' positive experience of co-operation on a number of newspaper digitisation projects over the last five years.
Click on the button to view the freely accessible sample images and indices in the Wesleyan Methodist periodicals collection (ISBN 978-1-85117-209-2) in BOA, which includes the Arminian magazine, 1778-1797, and its successors, the Methodist magazine, 1798-1821, and the Wesleyan Methodist magazine, 1822-1913. Also represented are the Minutes of the Methodist conference, 1744-1877, which overlap at the end with the retitled Minutes of several conversations.
2011 January 31: Did your Scottish ancestors invest in the failed Darien Scheme?
The Papers of the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies, 1694-1709, from the collections of the former Advocates Library, and now held by the National Library of Scotland, are a fascinating source of information not only for historians of the ill-fated Darien Scheme, but also for family historians searching for evidence of whether their ancestors were investors in the scheme and, if so, by how much. Accessible in their entirety from BOA (ISBN 978-1-85117-187-3), the material ranges from the early 1696 subscription books for Edinburgh and Glasgow, lists of stockholders, proprietors and debts due, not to mention hundreds of cash receipts and promisory notes, to letters from shareholders dated 1707 asking for certificates.
Click on the button to read the guide to this collection.
Click on the button to view the freely accessible sample images from this collection.
2011 January 15: The Manchester Cathedral banns books as a resource for family historians
If any of you know any cause or just impediment why these persons should not be joined together in Holy Matrimony you are to declare it.
Did any of your ancestors marry, or try to get married, in Manchester at any time between 1733 and 1928 (or, better still, were they engaged to be married but failed, perhaps because a parent told the priests that they were under age, or an existing spouse objected that they were already married!)? If so, then their names are bound to be inscribed in the Banns Books, because for most of that period the Collegiate Church, now Manchester Cathedral, was the only place to go.
Click on the button below either to view a sample banns book, covering the period from 5 April 1787 to 19 July 1789.
Chapels subordinate to the collegiate church existed, of course, across Manchester's ancient parish, which included: Ardwick, Beswick, Blackley, Bradford, Broughton, Burnage, Cheetham, Chorlton cum Hardy, Chorlton upon Medlock, Crumpsall, Denton, Didsbury, Droylsden, Failsworth, Gorton, Harpurhey, Haughton, Heaton Norris, Hulme, Kirkmanshulme, Levenshulme, Manchester Township, Moss Side, Moston, Newton (later Newton Heath), Openshaw, Reddish, Rusholme, Salford, Stretford, Withington. But marriage in any of these districts was by special arrangement only, and on payment of additional fees, beyond the financial abilities of the rapidly expanding population of ordinary working folk during the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. At times of peak demand, more than a hundred couples would wed in a single day, married in batches of 20-30. Yet not all would-be couples were married, as this apparently unique series of banns books starting from the Georgian period shows.
This span of almost two centuries recording the proclamation of intended marriages ("If any of you know any cause or just impediment why these persons should not be joined together in Holy Matrimony you are to declare it."), repeated three times at weekly intervals prior to the wedding, is unique in the Church of England. These books generally record less information than the marriage registers. However, where a marriage did not take place following the reading of banns, they provide the only record of a couple's intention to marry, when often the reason for the cancellation is noted. This appears to be the case with up to 20% of entries in the first hundred years of books. From February 1849 to 20 October 1850 records the length of residence at address given and, from 20 July 1851, also records 'date visited' at the address. The books appear not to record remarks other than 'found', otherwise left blank. The recording of the length of residence gradually fades out during 1878, but the date of the visit of the churchwarden/parish clerk is still recorded. An idea of the scale of, and reasons for, objections can be gauged by reference to the one extant Banns objections register. This lists all the proposed marriages against which objections were raised for the period between late October 1833 and early February 1836, and gives a cross-reference to the page number in the relevant banns book.
These volumes provide unique insights for social and family historians into the proportion of engagements that failed, what objections were raised, and by whom, as well as allowing detailed statistical analysis of residence and mobility in Victorian England.
Click on the button to read the guide to this collection (ISBN 978-1-85117-211-5).