As of Monday 17 November 2025, the price or ordering your family history probate documents via the government’s Find A Will service will increase from £1.50 to £16.00. That’s an eye-watering rise of almost 1000%.
The notice for this increase was published on 10 November in The Gazette, meaning for many it has been a mad rush to get those last minute orders in.
The rationale for this price rise, as stated in the Ministry of Justice’s (MOJ) Explanatory Memorandum, reads:
The estimated cost to His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) for providing single copies of documents under the Find A Will service equates to £16 per copy. The £1.50 fee therefore significantly under-recovers its cost, despite fees being set with the intention of full cost recovery. This statutory instrument will therefore increase the fee for users to obtain copies of documents within the Principal Registry of the Family Division, district registries and any sub-registries attached, which includes the “Find A Will” service and individual users requesting extra copies of probate grants from £1.50 to £16, to align more closely with costs and ensure that HMCTS can continue to deliver its services effectively.
The £1.50 charge was introduced in 2019, with prior to that the cost being £10, so a review was overdue. But I would love to know how they determined upon a flat rate £16 figure.
It means for many the cost of these documents for family and local history will be now prohibitively expensive, limiting future research. For example, at £16 each, there is no way would I be able to afford ordering all the World War One soldiers’ wills that I have for my Batley St. Mary of the Angels one-place study.
I’ve spent this past week ordering probate documents for clients to beat the rise. It included an order for 12 wills which cost £18. As of 17 November to place that same order will be £196.
Today I finally got round to reviewing my one-place study soldiers’ wills, confirming I’d already got them all.
I also reviewed my direct line ancestors, and placed an order for the six I identified as missing. Four came back instantly via an automated service, having already been digitised. This is akin to the service for World War One soldiers wills.
To my mind this begs the question why did the MOJ not introduce a graded pricing structure for probate records, similar to that in place for General Register Office (GRO) civil registration orders? The GRO’s automated Digital Image service has a lower cost of £3, with PDFs costing £8, and the more labour-intensive full certificates coming in at £12.50.
This seems a much fairer system than the flat rate fee, a system which might avoid pricing out family and local history researchers. For as the fee structure stands, there will be a dramatic cliff-edge drop off for probate orders going forward.
Postscript: The MoJ does still have a £1.50 bulk access option aimed at some (unspecified) organisations who access every copy of a grant of probate or will issued in England and Wales. By extension this means individual family and local history researchers are being overcharged for their documents, essentially subsidising these organisations. Hardly a fair system!
Because of work commitments, during October 2025 only one new post was added to the Batley St Mary of the Angels One-Place Study, bringing the total number of posts to 415.
This new post was the parish history snippets piece for October 2025. These snippets cover a variety of events and people from the parish from years gone by, and can be found in the Bulletin for Batley St Mary of the Angels and Birstall St Patrick section. Even if you have seen them on the Bulletin, it is worth checking them here as some have links to more detailed pieces I have written.
One of the reason for the lack of additions this month is because in November and December I’m giving a series of talks to various organisations. These include an online talk on 11 November 2025 to the Society of One-Place Studies about the early history of the Irish in Batley, and the parish of Batley St Mary of the Angels up until around the 1880s. This is restricted to members of the Society. However, on Monday 24 November I will be giving more or less the same talk at the Batley History Group meeting in Batley Town Hall. This starts with refreshments at 7pm, with the talk commencing at 7.30pm. It is open to both members (£2) and non-members (£4). So, perhaps I will see some of you there. More details about this, and Batley History Group’s other meetings in 2025/26 can be found here.
James Harkin, Batley’s 1st Catholic Mayor
I also have a special thank you this month for someone who has sent me a lovely letter and some photos of James Harkin, Batley’s first Catholic mayor – one of which is included in this piece. I don’t have her contact details to thank her personally, so hopefully she will read my thank you here.
Below is the full list of pages to date. I have annotated the *NEW* posts, so you can easily pick these out. Click on the link and it will take you straight to the relevant page.
If you want to know the background, and what is involved in a one-place study, click here. Otherwise read on, to discover a wealth of parish, parishioner and wider local Batley history.
Postscript: I may not be able to thank you personally because of your contact detail confidentiality, but I do want to say how much I appreciate the donations already received to keep this website going. They really and truly do help. Thank you.
The website has always been free to use, and I want to continue this policy in the future. However, it does cost me money to operate – from undertaking the research to website hosting costs. In the current difficult economic climate I do have to regularly consider if I can afford to continue running it as a free resource.
If you have enjoyed reading the various pieces, and would like to make a donation towards keeping the website up and running in its current open access format, it would be very much appreciated.
Please click 👉🏻here👈🏻 be taken to the PayPal donation link. By making a donation you will be helping to keep the website online and freely available for all.
Thank you.
As a professionally qualified genealogist, if you would like me to undertake any family, local or house history research for you do please get in touch. More information can be found on my research services page.
Finally, if you do have any information about, or photos of, parishioners from the period of the First World War please do get in touch. It does not have to be War Memorial men. It could be those who served and survived, or indeed any other men, women and children from the parish.
I would also be interested in information about, and photos of, those parishioners who were killed in World War Two, or others from the parish who undertook any war service and survived. This can be as broad as serving in the military, or work in munitions factories, the Land Army, even taking in refugees. This is an area I’m looking to develop in the future.
Written by professional genealogist Cheri Hudson Passey, and drawing on her experience in carrying out work for the U.S. Army Past Conflict Repatriations Branch (for UK researchers this equates to the MOD’s War Detectives from the Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre Commemorations team), the stated aim of this book is to help genealogists of all levels to trace and connect with descendants of ancestors. These connections might lead to more information, documents, family memorabilia, photographs and photo identification, to enrich research and add colour to your family history.
The slimness of the book, running to 56 pages, is indicative that it is a basic overview. After the preface and methodology, the chapters are as follows:
Building a Solid Foundation.
Looking for Clues in Records.
Researching Online.
Researching on Location.
People Finders and Social Media.
Reaching Out to Family.
A Word About DNA.
Working Through a Soldier Repatriation Case: Steps for Finding Living Family.
There is also a concluding section and, to round off, a couple of pages listing tools and resources – although there are some website address errors here.
Together they provide a step-by-step guide to finding relatives down both ancestral and collateral lines, using modern tools to track them down.
Some of the steps are obvious, like ensuring your family tree is accurate and complete. The value of research plans to keep on track is discussed, as well as the need to follow the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS), concepts which may be new to non-professionals.
Building mini trees is suggested as a research tool, and the book includes several screenshots on how to export GEDCOM files with which to work from. These, along with other images, are greyscale rather than colour.
Various sources are highlighted as useful for providing clues, building a body of evidence and resolving conflicting information. Search tips are given for finding living family members, including through using online trees. Tools such as reverse image searches are covered. I was pleased to see recognition that everything is not online. And I particularly enjoyed the chapter which pulled everything together in working through a soldier repatriation case.
From my UK and Ireland research perspective, the fact that it is written by a U.S. researcher means it is naturally geared towards research in that country. This is particularly obvious in the sections dealing with locating newspapers, and people finding sources. It is explicitly acknowledged in the section about national public records. That being said, there are general tips to be gleaned from those researching beyond the U.S., especially for the less experienced researcher.
Arguably the most crucial chapter is the one about reaching out to family. It was good to see advice given about handling these tricky initial contacts. This includes being aware of the fear factor behind unsolicited contacts in this world of scammers, along with the need to respect privacy and reach out with respect and sensitivity to living connections, upholding the ethics of handling information about living, and obtaining informed consent around any information shared.
However, one important topic I would have liked to have seen covered in a little more detail was the potential ethical dilemmas posed by this aspect of family history research, very much like DNA tests, the risks of which are dealt with in the book.
Contacting distant living relatives can potentially lead to unforeseen and unintended consequences, especially if that family history is challenging and sensitive, and it might have been useful to have consideration of this aspect. This is a particular issue when the person being contacted has no obvious family history interest, and is not on a family history platform, so is unaware to the possibility of such contacts.
As I have mentioned, the book is only a brief introduction to the subject of identifying and tracking down living relatives, and ethical dilemmas are a meaty subject. But a cautionary, if not a deeper exploration of this angle, would have been helpful.
That aside, when these contacts work out the mutual benefits can be huge, and this book is a useful addition to my genealogy library as a handy and concise aide-mémoire to this type of research.
The book was published in 2025, ISBN 9780806321516. For ease I’ve attached the purchase links for both Amazon and Genealogical.com
Full disclosure: I received a free copy of the book from Genealogical.com. I was not asked for a review in return, but I thought it would be useful to post one to introduce this book to others who may not be aware of it. In doing so I have expressed my honest opinion.
May 2025 marked a milestone for the Batley St Mary of the Angels One-Place Study, with it hitting 400 posts during the first week of the month. By the end of May 2025 five posts had been added across a range of topics, bringing the total number of posts in the study to 404.
Below is the complete list of all the St Mary’s posts published up to the end of May 2025, including links to them, with those new and updated posts signposted so you can easily locate them.
If you want to know the background, and what is involved in a one-place study, click here. Otherwise read on, to discover a wealth of parish, parishioner and wider local Batley history.
That milestone 400th post was a description of the parish of St Mary of the Angels in 1950, a post which for some will bring back memories. This is in the Miscellany of Information section.
With May 2025 marking the 80th anniversary of VE Day, I added a new World War Two biography, that of Bernard Stenchion. His death, in June 1945, illustrates that although Victory in Europe was celebrated on 8 May 1945, for some this was not the end of the War, while for many other parishioners the war had already irrevocably changed their lives.
The 1950 May Queen Catherine Heaps (L), with Moya Hill, the 1949 May Queen (R)
It also seems appropriate that in May two new May Queen pieces were added – about the 1923 May Queen Katherine Phillips, and the 1950 May Queen Catherine Heaps.
The fifth new post this month was the parish history snippets pieces from the May 2025 bulletins, and this can be found in the Bulletin for Batley St Mary of the Angels and Birstall St Patrick section.
Below is the full list of pages to date. I have annotated the *NEW* and *UPDATED* ones, so you can easily pick these out. Click on the link and it will take you straight to the relevant page.
Finally this month, I wanted to let you know that I will be giving at the Batley History Group meeting on 23 June 2025 all about the early history of the Irish in Batley and the parish of St Mary’s up to the 1880s. If you want to attend that meeting, it is in the Council Chamber of Batley Town Hall, with refreshments served from 7pm and the talk starting at 7.30pm. All are welcome, and the cost is £2 for members and £4 for non-members. It would be great to see people there.
Postscript: I may not be able to thank you personally because of your contact detail confidentiality, but I do want to say how much I appreciate the donations already received to keep this website going. They really and truly do help. Thank you.
The website has always been free to use, and I want to continue this policy in the future. However, it does cost me money to operate – from undertaking the research to website hosting costs. In the current difficult economic climate I do have to regularly consider if I can afford to continue running it as a free resource.
If you have enjoyed reading the various pieces, and would like to make a donation towards keeping the website up and running in its current open access format, it would be very much appreciated.
Please click 👉🏻here👈🏻 to be taken to the PayPal donation link. By making a donation you will be helping to keep the website online and freely available for all.
Thank you.
As a professionally qualified genealogist, if you would like me to undertake any family, local or house history research for you do please get in touch. More information can be found on my research services page.
Finally, if you do have any information about, or photos of, parishioners from the period of the First World War please do get in touch. It does not have to be War Memorial men. It could be those who served and survived, or indeed any other men, women and children from the parish.
I would also be interested in information about, and photos of, those parishioners who were killed in World War Two, or others from the parish who undertook any war service and survived. This can be as broad as serving in the military, or work in munitions factories, the Land Army, even taking in refugees. This is an area I’m looking to develop in the future.
April was a particularly busy month for the Batley St Mary of the Angels One-Place Study. It included the addition of a new subject heading, along with eight new posts, bringing the total number of posts to 399. One other post was updated.
Below is the complete list of all the St Mary’s posts published up to the end of April 2025, including links to them, with those new and updated posts signposted so you can easily locate them.
The May Queens of 1931 and 1932
If you want to know the background, and what is involved in a one-place study, click here. Otherwise read on, to discover a wealth of parish, parishioner and wider local Batley history.
The new section added in April was one about the May Queens of the parish. I am trying to identify as many of them as possible, with a piece dedicated to each year. To date seven years have been added to this section, 1922, 1931-1933, 1939-1941.
The final addition this month is in the Bulletin for Batley St Mary of the Angels and Birstall St Patrick section. It is the piece covering the parish history snippets included in the parish bulletins during April 2025.
I have also added a further update to the World War Two introduction page.
Below is the full list of pages to date. I have annotated the *NEW* and *UPDATED* ones, so you can easily pick these out. Click on the link and it will take you straight to the relevant page.
Postscript: I may not be able to thank you personally because of your contact detail confidentiality, but I do want to say how much I appreciate the donations already received to keep this website going. They really and truly do help. Thank you.
The website has always been free to use, and I want to continue this policy in the future. However, it does cost me money to operate – from undertaking the research to website hosting costs. In the current difficult economic climate I do have to regularly consider if I can afford to continue running it as a free resource.
If you have enjoyed reading the various pieces, and would like to make a donation towards keeping the website up and running in its current open access format, it would be very much appreciated.
Please click 👉🏻here👈🏻 to be taken to the PayPal donation link. By making a donation you will be helping to keep the website online and freely available for all.
Thank you.
As a professionally qualified genealogist, if you would like me to undertake any family, local or house history research for you do please get in touch. More information can be found on my research services page.
Finally, if you do have any information about, or photos of, parishioners from the period of the First World War please do get in touch. It does not have to be War Memorial men. It could be those who served and survived, or indeed any other men, women and children from the parish.
I would also be interested in information about, and photos of, those parishioners who were killed in World War Two, or others from the parish who undertook any war service and survived. This can be as broad as serving in the military, or work in munitions factories, the Land Army, even taking in refugees. This is an area I’m looking to develop in the future.
What family historian isn’t a bibliophile? I’m no exception to the rule, living by the principal “A house isn’t a home without at least one bookcase for every room”.
I love exploring a multitude of family and local history topics, so it was a pleasure to be introduced to a new subject – the baronial system in Scotland, as covered by David Dobson in his book Scottish Baronial Families, 1250-1750. Published by the Genealogical Publishing Company, this paperback runs to 199 pages.
It opens with a brief summary of the feudal governance system introduced and used by Scottish monarchs, at the heart of which was the administrative unit of a barony. Headed by a baron, who in effect was a crown vassal, it was a system which operated until 1747 when the British government curtailed their powers with the Heritable Jurisdiction Act, their response to Jacobite rising of 1745-46. With Baronial responsibilities extending to the tax collection, supplying of men for military purposes, as well as jurisdiction over civil and criminal matters, and the baron’s principal seat of authority being the caput, in terms of English equivalent a baron was something akin to a Lord of the Manor.
The introductory section also explains the difference between barons and the noble rank of baronet, the latter created in 1611 by King James VI1 as a way of fundraising, along with promoting the Plantation (organised colonisation) of Ulster, and settlement in Nova Scotia. These are also featured in the book.
Next there is a simple one-page bibliography, which acts as a very basic proxy for specific source citations.
Before getting into the meat of the publication, there are seven images. Whilst they are captioned, I would have found it helpful to also have an accompanying page number to link them to the specific section in the book.
We then come to the main body of the book. Drawing mainly on the Register of the Great Seal of Scotland, this is an alphabetical listing of the Scottish Baronial families – covering in total around 1,000 Scottish baronies and baronetcies. And whilst the listings are dominated by men, there are also a smattering of female holders. The listings detail the families, plus when, where, and by who, they were granted their baronies/baronetcies. Some have additional information. The pieces range from a couple of sentences, to – in some cases – upwards of a page for those families with multiple grants, or where there is extra details.
The book concludes with a select listing of Scots-Irish baronetcies established in Ireland and in the New World.
It is a book to dip into for reference, rather than one to read from cover to cover, and it acts as a concise introduction to the subject. Personally, as part of this reference material, I would also have found a place name index useful, in order to link locations to baronies. But there’s no doubt this is an impressive starting point and companion book for researchers and local historians investigating these families.
The book was published in 2024, ISBN 9780806359748. For ease I’ve attached the purchase links for both Amazon and Genealogical.com
Full disclosure: I received a free copy of the book from Genealogical.com in return for a honest review. I have expressed my truthful opinion in the above review.
Footnotes: 1.King James I of England, although it was not until 1707 that new baronets were established under the United Kingdom.
The number of posts in the Batley St Mary of the Angels One-Place Study creeps ever-closer to the 400 mark. The three new posts added in February 2025 brings it up to 386. One of those posts is a result of my February visit to the Leeds Diocesan Archives, and hopefully in the coming months more pieces will follow on from my finds that day. Two other posts were updated.
Below is the complete list of all the St Mary’s posts published up to the end of February 2025, including links to them, with those new and updated posts signposted so you can easily locate them.
If you want to know the background, and what is involved in a one-place study, click here. Otherwise read on, to discover a wealth of parish, parishioner and wider local Batley history.
Batley St Mary of the Angels
The first piece arising from my Diocesan Archives visit is a description of the parish boundaries given by Fr, Lea in 1918. It is interesting because of the changes which have taken place in the intervening period, with streets appearing, and other landmarks vanishing.
The second piece is about the deaths of the husband and wife Smallpox Hospital caretakers within days of each over the Christmas/New Year period of 1921/22. Again there is additional interest here for people who might remember the old Smallpox Hospital, and the separate Infectious Diseases Hospital which later became Oakwell Geriatric Hospital.
The final addition is in the Bulletin for Batley St Mary of the Angels and Birstall St Patrick section. It is the piece covering the parish history snippets included in the parish bulletins during February 2025. There are some additional links here to fuller pieces I’ve written about some of these snippets.
As for the two updated pieces, one details more parishioners who served in, and survived, the First World War. The other is an update to A St Mary’s Parishioner in the Holy Land, which covers a physical attack he sustained whilst there.
Below is the full list of pages to date. I have annotated the *NEW* and *UPDATED* ones, so you can easily pick these out. Click on the link and it will take you straight to the relevant page.
Postscript: I may not be able to thank you personally because of your contact detail confidentiality, but I do want to say how much I appreciate the donations already received to keep this website going. They really and truly do help. Thank you.
The website has always been free to use, and I want to continue this policy in the future. However, it does cost me money to operate – from undertaking the research to website hosting costs. In the current difficult economic climate I do have to regularly consider if I can afford to continue running it as a free resource.
If you have enjoyed reading the various pieces, and would like to make a donation towards keeping the website up and running in its current open access format, it would be very much appreciated.
Please click 👉🏻here👈🏻 to be taken to the PayPal donation link. By making a donation you will be helping to keep the website online and freely available for all.
Thank you.
As a professionally qualified genealogist, if you would like me to undertake any family, local or house history research for you do please get in touch. More information can be found on my research services page.
Finally, if you do have any information about, or photos of, parishioners from the period of the First World War please do get in touch. It does not have to be War Memorial men. It could be those who served and survived, or indeed any other men, women and children from the parish.
I would also be interested in information about, and photos of, those parishioners who were killed in World War Two, or others from the parish who undertook any war service and survived. This can be as broad as serving in the military, or work in munitions factories, the Land Army, even taking in refugees. This is an area I’m looking to develop in the future.
2025 got off to a great start for the Batley St Mary of the Angels One-Place Study, with the addition of five posts which cover a varied mix of the history of the parish and its people. It brings the total number of posts to 383. One other post was updated.
Below is the complete list of all the St Mary’s posts published up to the end of January 2025, including links to them, with those new and updated posts signposted so you can easily locate them.
If you want to know the background, and what is involved in a one-place study, click here. Otherwise read on, to discover a wealth of parish, parishioner and wider local Batley history.
Batley St Mary of the Angels
Two new War Memorial biographies were added, those of Harold Gaunt and Thomas Dolan. The former covers a lesser known aspect of military service. The latter includes some cherished photos, used with the family’s permission. I also identified more parishioners who served in, and survived, the First World War. That list has been updated.
The Bulletin for Batley St Mary of the Angels and Birstall St Patrick section, has one addition. This is the piece covering the parish history snippets which were included in the parish bulletins during January 2025 – one of which may be rather surprising but reflects commonly held initial world attitudes to someone who turned out to be a monster.
It also links to the one of the two new posts in the Miscellany of Information section. One is about a former parishioner who played an unexpected and significant role, bringing him into contact with people across the world. The other post is a topic I never thought would be covered in the St Mary’s One-Place Study. Given this month, on the 27 January, we commemorated World Holocaust Day and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp complex, it serves as a timely and important reminder.
Below is the full list of pages to date. I have annotated the *NEW* and *UPDATED* ones, so you can easily pick these out. Click on the link and it will take you straight to the relevant page.
Postscript: I may not be able to thank you personally because of your contact detail confidentiality, but I do want to say how much I appreciate the donations already received to keep this website going. They really and truly do help. Thank you.
The website has always been free to use, and I want to continue this policy in the future. However, it does cost me money to operate – from undertaking the research to website hosting costs. In the current difficult economic climate I do have to regularly consider if I can afford to continue running it as a free resource.
If you have enjoyed reading the various pieces, and would like to make a donation towards keeping the website up and running in its current open access format, it would be very much appreciated.
Please click 👉🏻here👈🏻 to be taken to the PayPal donation link. By making a donation you will be helping to keep the website online and freely available for all.
Thank you.
As a professionally qualified genealogist, if you would like me to undertake any family, local or house history research for you do please get in touch. More information can be found on my research services page.
Finally, if you do have any information about, or photos of, parishioners from the period of the First World War please do get in touch. It does not have to be War Memorial men. It could be those who served and survived, or indeed any other men, women and children from the parish.
I would also be interested in information about, and photos of, those parishioners who were killed in World War Two, or others from the parish who undertook any war service and survived. This can be as broad as serving in the military, or work in munitions factories, the Land Army, even taking in refugees. This is an area I’m looking to develop in the future.
This is the book I wish I’d had nine years ago when dad and I tested with FamilyTreeDNA. It is now proving invaluable in helping me finally navigate our tests in an informed way. I’ve also been reminded about biobanking which means, even though dad died a few years ago, I can upgrade and expand his tests – and crucially know how to understand and make best use of the results.
Written by DNA expert Roberta Estes, who you may know as the author of the DNAeXplained blog, it is 247 pages packed with information to help you choose which FamilyTreeDNA test is right for you, and to ensure you get the most out of your test results. Those pages run to 11 chapters, walking you through the types of tests, who they are relevant for, along with their various associated tools.
Whenever I see a book review, I always want a run-through of the contents to see if what’s covered is of interest to me. After all, I need to make sure I’m spending my money wisely. So I’ve listed the chapters, and included the page numbers, to give an idea about what is covered, and the depth devoted to each broad topic.
Chapter 1: Types of Testing – Y-DNA, Mitochondrial DNA, Autosomal DNA, and X-DNA. Pages 6-10.
Chapter 2: Setting Yourself Up For Success. Set-up preparations to help get the most from your test. Pages 11-23.
Chapter 3: Y-DNA – Your Father’s Story. A detailed explanation of test options and goals, which shows how to use your results. Pages 24-96.
Chapter 4: Mitochondrial DNA – Your Mother’s Story. It explains the goals of this test, covers matches, what they mean and how to take those further. Pages 97-131.
Chapter 5: Autosomal DNA – The Family Finder Test. Probably the best-known test type, with matches to all family lines. Pages 132-172.
Chapter 6: X Chromosome – Described as your secret tool that’s included with Family Finder, it shows how this can be used. Pages 173-186.
Chapter 7: Ethnicity – My Origins. How this is calculated, the caveats around it, plus ethnicity chromosome painting. Pages 187-206.
Chapter 8: Advanced Matching. A useful, and often-overlooked, filtering tool. Pages 207-208.
Chapter 9: Finding, Joining and Utilizing Projects. An overview of various DNA projects, what to expect when joining one, and the benefits of getting involved. Pages 209-217.
Chapter 10: Third Party Tools. Covers Genetic Affairs and DNA Painter. Plus creating a powerful DNA Pedigree Chart to weave the various tools together. Pages 218-224.
Chapter 11: Creating Your Step-By-Step Roadmap. A useful bullet-point roadmap summary of all the various FamilyTreeDNA tests and third-party tools. Pages 225-230.
Glossary. This explains in straightforward terms the sometimes daunting vocabulary associated with DNA testing. Pages 231-247.
As you might have spotted from the above, there’s no index. This is a potential drawback, because it is less easy to home in on a specific issue. The chapters though are divided into bite-sized chunks, which are outlined in the chapter sub-headings and these sub-headings might, in some instances, act as a proxy index.
Throughout the book, there are plenty of graphics to help illustrate and explain, and there are also handy associated tip boxes.
Understanding DNA testing can be bewildering, and there is no doubt that this is a book which requires concentration. But it does help explain a complex subject, and makes it more accessible to those of us with less grounding in science.
The Complete Guide to FamilyTreeDNA is published by Genealogical Publishing Company, and is available in eBook, non-colour paperback and colour paperback formats – so there are a choice of reading options and price points.
Be aware, there are pros and cons with each.
I have the full colour paperback version of the book – something I welcome, given the number of charts and diagrams, the meaning of which might get lost in the black/white/grayscale paperback. But the colour paperback version does cost more, and price is an important consideration. Checking the Genealogical.com website, there is a free colour supplement download available for selected pages, so this could provide a workaround for the non-colour paperback. And the eBook is in full colour.
I personally prefer a physical book, as best suited to my reading and learning style. The drawback of the paperback format is the absence of footnote hyperlinks to take you directly to the DNAeXplained website references. I imagine you’d get that with the eBook version.
My edition was published in August 2024, ISBN 9780806321400. I’ve attached the Amazon link, and also the Genealogical.com link for all versions.
My conclusion. If you have invested in testing with FamilyTreeDNA, I’d say it is worth the extra outlay on this book, to make sure you’re getting the most from your results.
Full disclosure: I received a free copy of the colour printed paperback book from Genealogical.com in return for a honest review. I have expressed my truthful opinion in the above review.
If A House Through Time has piqued your curiosity about your own home and its previous residents, why not make this the year to find out more?
I can unveil the mysteries of the history of your house, discover more about those who have also called your home theirs and the events which influenced their lives, all interwoven with tales of their triumphs, alongside sensitive handling of the more challenging times they may have faced.
I will place your home within its local history context, often integral to shaping the stories of those who lived there. Viewing your home through the lens of local, and even national, history will help you see it in an entirely fresh light, giving you a new appreciation of its place in the history of your local community.
Through my meticulous, professional research, drawing upon a wide range of sources including archive-only material, the rich and colourful tapestry of the lives of those who have left their invisible footprints in your home will be once more brought to light. As an experienced researcher, I really can breathe life into the history of your home.
Whatever the house style or era, a professionally researched and written house history is a wonderful talking point amongst family and friends. It is a fabulously unique house-warming gift to treasure. It can also be a real selling point if you do eventually wish to move on.
Edwardian, 1930s, Victorian and older – a whole range of house ages and styles can reveal fascinating backstories
Don’t just take my word for it. Here’s the feedback from two of my recent house history clients.
Jane has gone above and beyond in producing a written account of the history of my house. It really was like having my own personal “A House Through Time” researcher. I am amazed at what she discovered, both about the history of the house and those who lived in it. CI, UK
We finally moved in and I gifted the [house history] book to my wife. She loves it. She hasn’t read it all but now she knows the names of all the ghosts she can hear. Thanks again.BK, UK
If you want to discuss the various options about engaging me to write the history of your home, please do get in touch via email at: pasttopresentgenealogy@btinternet.com.
This includes if you are undertaking your own house history research but live a distance from the West Riding Registry of Deeds, and would like me to undertake look-ups on your behalf there.
Alternatively, you can access me via my Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives (AGRA) profile, which can be found here.
House history is just one of the research services I offer. I also undertake family and local history research, ranging from individual document look-ups and archive visits, to brick wall busting, and multi-generational family trees or full family histories. I can also be engaged as a speaker, with my list of current talks here. Contact details for all these services are as above.
Past To Present Genealogy 