'Across the Pond' Research Site

An useful and free online site for those researching ancestors from the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, Channel Islands, Isle of Man & Northern Ireland) and the country of Ireland should investigate what ‘GENUKI‘ has to offer. One of the major items is the searchable detailed information on most locations throughout England, Wales and the Isle of Man.

With an alphabetical Index of Places in England and Wales there are some 250,000 places listed and providing where they are located. The same applies for Irish places by using the online Gazetteer of Irish Parishes. This can also assist in locating genealogical societies in an ancestor’s home region.

In the GENUKI search engine a location or an individual’s name (even just surname) can be looked up. It will produce a listing ranked from the best match at ‘four stars’ down to ‘one star’. Various documents and listings of information concerning that search name or term can be found. Some of the documents are church records, list of burials, regional censuses, directories of trades and professions, marriage indexes, parish registers, headstone inscriptions and Wills.

For example the surname of ‘Briggs’ was searched and some 1,118 matches appeared for the surname. For the name ‘Wolstenholme’ some 84 matches were listed, especially from directory listings. In the Unsworth town in the county of Lancashire some 105 matches appeared, everything from census to maps to gazetteers and church parish records. For the location, ‘Moreton in Marsh’ there were 34 matches including memorial inscriptions, marriage index, photo gallery and the 1868 gazetteer.

In the parishes and churches search, place the name of a location such as Pilkington in the county of Lancashire and some 144 parishes and churches are listed providing exact location and what information is on the site (photos, cemetery, founding of the church, etc.).

The GENUKI is a worthwhile pursuit to learn more about the general area some of your United Kingdom ancestors lived in and possibly some more details on individual families.