my last name ia WATKINS - and a mini FAQ

99.999% of WATKINS are unrelated because this surname is a patronymic

my own list in RootsWeb's WorldConnect Project: WATKINS

Watkins
English (also frequent in Wales): patronymic from the personal name Watkin.
Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4

Watkin

English: either a revival of the medieval pet name (Wat + the hypocoristic suffix -kin), or a transferred use of the surname derived from it.
A Dictionary of First Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0192800507

Watkin
English: from a pet form of Wat(t), a short form of Walter.
Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4

Wat
English: the usual medieval short form of Walter, based on the normal vernacular pronunciation, Water, with a short “a”.

Walter
English, German, and Scandinavian: from an old Germanic personal name composed of the elements wald rule + heri, hari army, warrior.
There was a native Old English form of the name, Wealdhere, but it was replaced at the time of the Conquest by the Continental forms in use among the Normans.
In medieval Germany, the most famous bearer was the minnesinger Walther von der Vogelweide (c.1170-c.1230).
Variants: German: Walther. Scandinavian: Valter.

Cognates: Scottish Gaelic: Bhàtair, Bhaltair. Welsh: Gwallter. Dutch: Wouter, Wolter. Low German: Wolter. French: Gaut(h)ier. Italian, Spanish: Gualtiero.

Short forms: English: Wat (medieval, occasionally revived); Walt (esp. U.S.). Dutch: Weit.
Pet form: English: Watkin.
A Dictionary of First Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0192800507

WIKI
In Wales, before the 1536 Act of Union, with England, all Welsh people used patronyms and matronym as the sole way of naming people.

welsh patronymics - Google Search

Name Meaning and Origin

• Naming patterns can help you learn more about your family’s cultural and ethnic background.
• You might find alternate name spellings which are helpful when searching for family records.

with thanks to the Ancestry Learning Center - Home
and see for example :-

Search Results

	12,252	1901 England Census
	11,783	1881 England Census
	9,916	1891 England Census
	7,868	1871 England Census
	7,722	1861 England Census
	7,316	1901 Wales Census
	6,727	1851 England Census
	6,505	1881 Wales Census
	5,976	1891 Wales Census
	5,592	1841 England Census
	5,220	1871 Wales Census
	4,963	1861 Wales Census
	4,579	1851 Wales Census
	3,653	1841 Wales Census
	111	1901 Scotland Census

51,593 1930 United States Federal Census
» View all 389,385 ancestry.com census results

Birth, Marriage & Death	totals 397,050

	49,342	England & Wales, FreeBMD Birth Index: 1837-1983
	40,490	Social Security Death Index
	29,595	England & Wales, FreeBMD Marriage Index: 1837-1983
	27,976	England & Wales, FreeBMD Death Index: 1837-1983
	26,182	United States Obituary Collection
	» View all 397,050 results

Surnames of England and Wales:
"an extract of an Office of National Statistics database, and contains a list of surnames in use in England, Wales and the Isle of Mann in September 2002. The list contains almost 270,000 surnames, shared by 54.4 million people.

Surname	Count	Ranking
WATKINS	32401	199

"WATKINS "family history society" - Google Search

UK outbound passenger lists

Family Tree, Family History, Find Your Past, UK | Findmypast.com in association with The National Archives of the United Kingdom has published online for the first time another decade of UK outbound passenger lists covering the years 1940 to 1949. Over 86,000 colour images have been added to the site listing 1,400,614 passengers travelling from British ports on 11,425 long-distance journeys.
The most popular destinations during this decade were USA, Canada, Africa, India, Australia, Argentina, South Africa, New Zealand, Canary Islands and Jamaica.

Findmypast UK outbound passenger lists now cover 1890 to 1949 a list 18.4 million passengers

Unsurprisingly the Second World War had a significant influence on sea travel during this decade. In May 1940 the threat to the UK from air attack and rumours of a possible invasion grew, leading to offers of hospitality and refuge for British children from overseas governments.
A UK-government-sponsored scheme - Children of the Overseas Reception Board, or CORB, was the result. Included among the outbound passenger lists of the 1940s at findmypast.com are details of 2,664 children who emigrated to destinations in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa over a three month period.
Known as 'Seaevacuees', the children ranged in age from 5 to 15 and the passenger lists show their parents and home address in the UK as well as their destination address overseas. 1,532 children went to Canada, 577 children to Australia, while 353 went to South Africa and 202 to New Zealand.
Thousands more would have travelled had it not been for the tragic events of 17 September, when the SS City of Benares - packed with 197 passengers including 90 children - was torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic.

Whilst most of the CORB children returned to the UK after the end of the war in 1945, some remained permanently.

Following the war, the British wives of Canadian, American and Australian servicemen can be seen travelling out to join their new husbands overseas. Described as "dependent of" followed by the name of their husband, the women's old address in the UK is given as well as their new address overseas. In many cases, the wives are travelling with their young babies.

On a lighter note, the 1948 Olympics were held in London and following the games, numerous athletes can be found travelling home. Among them is Harold Sakata, a member of the American team, who later played 'Oddjob' in the James Bond movie Goldfinger.

There are also some famous names in the 1940s passenger lists, including Winston Churchill, Spencer Tracy, Walt Disney, Joan Fontaine and Benjamin Britten.

The passenger lists at findmypast.com now include 20 million names within 137,000 passenger lists spanning 1890 to 1949. On completion the records will go up to 1960.

CANADA marriages

CANADIAN WAR BRIDES OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR: "It has been almost ninety years since the end of the First World War, yet little is known about the war brides who came to Canada after the war. This web page was created to promote and preserve the history of the war brides who made Canada their home during this era."

slaves in Denmark up to 1859

Uærlige slaver - dk.videnskab.historie.genealogi | Google Groups:

"Spørgsmålet om ærlige / uærlige fanger (=slaver) gik jo ikke på, om de
var troværdige eller ej - men derimod på om de havde deres ære i behold,
eller om de havde miste den.

De uærlige slaver blev holdt under meget stramme vilkår, gik med
fodlænker, gik i bestemte let genkendelige dragter, sad i de værste
fangeceller osv. Og de sad altid på livstid, og det i ordets
bogstaveligste forstand.

De ærlige slaver blev behandlet (efter datidens forhold) en del bedre,
havde bla. mulighed for at arbejde ude i byen under afsoningen, og som
det væsentlige - de havde deres ære i behold, og kunne altså efter en
evt. løsladelse vende tilbage til det civile liv.

Når en uærlig slave får æresoprejsning betyder det altså, at han får sin
ære igen - bliver rykket op i gruppen af ærlige slaver."
. . . .

Uærlig slave betød, at den pågældende havde været i bødelhænder.
Typisk piskning, knibning med glødende tænger etc.
De var i et og alt æresløse.

I 1859 var begrebet slave indenfor strafferetten afskaffet til fordel
for de ny straffeformer tugthus og forbedringshus.

Hvis man havde været i bødelhænder var man uærlig.

Tænk på kagstrygning af "liderlige fruentimmere".
Disse kvinde kunne ikke få arbejde, da ingen ville arbejde sammen
med dem. Dette var jo temmelig upraktisk, da man så skulle forsørge
dem i fattigvæsenet og straffen blev ændret til tugthus.


an explantion of the occupation SLAVE when it appears in danish census

SOG London

Frontis - The Archive Publishing System: "The Society of Genealogists Sign with Frontis

Frontis is excited to announce that The Society of Genealogists in London have signed an agreement to publish their archives on the internet using the Frontis system. More details to Follow soon

Frontis™ allows you to classify and publish transcribed and digitised sources, images and multimedia which are then available for users to browse or search on the internet or on intranets. Frontis is unique in being able to perform intelligent searches on the structured data sets allowing internal and external users to retrieve the information which is relevant to them in a fast, efficient manner"

Frontis Archive Publishing System - Google Search


The Society of Genealogists have recently entered into an agreement
with Frontis Ltd, the supplier of the Frontis Archive Publishing
System that will allow the Society to publish for the first time, on
its own website, transcribed records, digitised documents, facsimiles
of books and other material held in our library. This data will
appear in an exclusive "members only" section of the website, thus
giving Society members even greater access to the library and its records.

Our Chairman says that this is a big step forward for the Society, a
significant number of our members are from overseas, and within the
UK, live some distance from our library and are thus unable to visit
the library as often as they would like. We can now begin to make
records available to them via the internet and the first of these
should appear shortly. Our members have been asking us to publish
more of our material exclusively for them and we are now in a
position to do this.

The Society will still be making records available on both the
Origins and FindMyPast websites as we have to generate income to
enable the Society to expand the services that we wish to provide to
members, and to allow the Library to acquire even more records.
Record offices and other libraries often wish to dispose of material
that is not directly related to their activities, but these can be of
great value to the family historian and when these are offered to the
Society we feel in a number of instances that we should save
them. This takes up a lot of time and requires funding.

Society of Genealogists - Home Page

Their library is the largest genealogical collection in the UK with collections of family histories, civil registration and census material, parish register ...

World Genealogy

$WorldVitalRecords Blog » WorldVitalRecords.com Launches World Genealogy Collection: A Billion Names From 33 Countries Coming Online: "PROVO, UT, February 4, 2008 — WorldVitalRecords.com (a service of FamilyLink.com, Inc.) released today its flagship product, the World Collection, an online genealogy database containing more than 1.5 billion names from 35 countries.

WorldVitalRecords.com’s World Collection launch includes significant collections from countries such as: England, Canada, Australia, France, Ireland, Scotland, Hungary, and Portugal.

“All over the world there are wonderful people who are digitizing and preserving historic records,” said Paul Allen, CEO, FamilyLink.com, Inc. “During the past year we have traveled and met with these content providers from more than a dozen countries. We are pleased today to announce that many of them have chosen to let us distribute their genealogical databases on the Internet.”

More than 20 companies have partnered with WorldVitalRecords.com to make this new collection possible. They include Find My Past, Genealogical Publishing Company, Archive CD Books Australia, British Origins, Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild, Archive CD Books Canada, Eneclann, Quintin Publications, Gould Genealogy, Familias Argentinas, Godfrey Memorial Library, and Moravian Heritage Society."

Racism?

The Free For All - The Roots of All Racism: "Racism in its most virulent and violent form relies in part on an obsession with bloodlines. Think of the 1935 Nuremberg laws that codified the de-naturalization and de-humanization of Jews, in the interests of maintaining “the purity of the German blood,” which was “the basis for survival of the German people.” These laws “for the protection of German blood and German honor,” included prohibitions on marriage or extra-marital sex between Jews and “citizens of German or related blood.” Jews were defined according to their bloodlines and included anyone with 3 or 4 Jewish grandparents.

You’d be hard-pressed to find any sane person today willing to defend the Nazi’s belief in racial purity and the importance of bloodlines, but it’s easy to find people who seek pride in their own distant ancestry. The American genealogy industry is thriving, measuring racial purity with an exactitude of which Nazi’s could only dream. In a country originally defined partly by its opposition to inherited nobility, people are so invested in tracing their family trees that they surrender their DNA to private for-profit testing companies as thoughtlessly as they give up their social security numbers for department store charge cards."

Ireland Census

Ireland Census Records - Free links to Irish census records online:
"Ireland Census Finder is a tool designed to help you find sites which offer free Irish census records online."

National Archives: Census of Ireland 1911

The household returns and ancillary records for the censuses of Ireland of 1901 and 1911, which are in the custody of the National Archives of Ireland, represent an extremely valuable part of the Irish national heritage. Read more about their digitisation.

• What’s in the Census records?
• Partners in the project
• Future plans
• Census online: user feedback
• Search the census records for Dublin 1911

Coimeádann An Chartlann Náisiúnta: "go leor taifead éagsúil, a bhfuil baint ag cuid mhór acu le ginealas na hÉireann agus leis an stair áitiúil."

National Archives of Ireland home page : "The National Archives holds a wide variety of records, many of which are relevant to Irish genealogy and local history."

from Ireland to Cananda

Introduction - The Shamrock and the Maple Leaf - Library and Archives Canada: "Welcome to The Shamrock and the Maple Leaf, an exhibition of Irish-Canadian documentary heritage held by Library and Archives Canada. Here you will discover photographs, letters, books, music and other evidence of Ireland's vital influence on Canadian history and culture."

ScotlandsPeople new modern vital records online

ScotlandsPeople: - "Statutory Registers

» Births 1855-2006
» Marriages 1855-1932
» Deaths 1855-2006"

the modern day indexes - NOT IMAGES -
of births (1908 to 2006) and deaths (1958 to 2006) are now available,
and corresponding extracts can be ordered.

Click here to register as a new user | Existing users click here to login and perform searches

new remote storage for Danish National Archives

Nye magasiner til Rigsarkivet og Landsarkivet for Sjælland

370 hyldekilometer / 370 shelf -kilometers with stae of the art computer controlled truck reaching up to 12 meter high shelf systems
Press Release with map - Rigsarkivet sikrer statens første OPP-kontrakt

OPP Pihl Arkivet A/S - Google-søgning
OPP = Offentlig-Privat Partnerskab - Public / State with a Private Company Partnership which is a new way of financing public projects in Denmark
OPP site:dk - Google-søgning

Canada census 1851 1852 1901 1906 1911

Automated Genealogy: " hosts several projects to index Canadian censuses.

Over the last several years Library and Archives Canada has digitized their microfilms of the original census forms for several of the Canadian censuses and Automated Genealogy has organized volunteers to produce indices to the people enumerated in these censuses.
Each project uses simple web forms to allow volunteers to transcribe census data from the images into a database, with the entered data being immediately available on the site. Following transcription further volunteers proofread and make corrections.
Anyone with an internet connection can participate as a transcriber, proofreader, or just by submitting corrections as they use the site. The status of each census project varies depending on how long it has been active. There is a link to the LAC image of the original census page at the top of each transcribed census page."

Linking Projects

An interesting feature of the site is the ability to link various records associated with a person together. This is done through the Link Centre. Projects are underway to link records from several sources as well as between the censuses. If this project were to be fully realized a researcher would be able to look up any person in Canada (from the era that census data is publicly accessible for) and find all the person's census records, birth, marriage, and death records, as well as photographs, newspaper stories, and other online data. It is a very ambitious project but many hands make light work and we have already linked over one million records! Help us put together the pieces of our shared genealogical puzzle by linking records for people you have researched!

The linking projects include:

• Soldiers of the First World War Linking
• Canadian Virtual War Memorial Linking
• Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online Linking
• British Home Children Linking
• Halifax Explosion Linking
• The Illustrated Index to the 1901 Census
• Uploaded Images Linking
• Off-site Marriage Record Linking
• Extracts from Publications