Tracing people in the past, and uncovering information about how they lived their lives can be a fascinating insight into a period of history. Across the 19th and 20th centuries, the mechanisms for state recording of lives increased significantly, after the introduction of civil registration for births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales, and with the introduction of individually identifiable records through the decennial Census.
This workshop will introduce a broad range of sources to facilitate the tracing of individuals through the public records, and will focus on equipping researchers with the skills to identify potential sources for tracing people in the past. The workshop will focus on records available for England and Wales. We will not discuss Scottish or Northern Irish records in this workshop, though many of the skills learnt will be applicable to records from these jurisdictions.
This half-day online workshop will take place on Microsoft Teams. It will provide an overview of the most useful sources and methods for research in this area, and what challenges a researcher may face. This will include how to uncover the lived experience of people, and the circumstances in which aspects of their lives were recorded in records.
This workshop will provide researchers with the skills to begin tracing people in the past through public records. It will offer:
- An overview of the principal sources for tracing people in England & Wales in the 19th and 20th centuries. This workshop will give you an insight into the range of sources available for this type of research, and explain the types of information commonly held about people in the past.
- Case studies of individuals whose life courses have been traced through commonly available records in the public domain. These will include people with a variety of life experiences, including employment, migration and criminal convictions.
By the end of the workshop, attendees will have learnt about common sources for life course tracing, and the types of records which may inform their knowledge about how people lived in the past.
This is a short online workshop and so will not provide in-depth instruction on navigating and interpreting original historical records. For more in-depth training taking place on-site at The National Archives and involving hands-on document work, please see our other workshops in the PAST programme.
