While my own overseas research has taken a back seat for a little while, as I concentrate more on my Australian emigrants, and their families out here, I do have a strong connection to Cornwall with a number of my families hailing from there, as well as a few of Mr Lonetester’s gang too. As my Cornish roots are ones that I have traced reasonably extensively, I became familiar with a number of free websites that are useful for researching your Cornish ancestors. I don’t claim to be an expert by any means, just someone who’s researching their family history and came across a bunch of websites that I found useful. Anyway thought I’d share my favourite ones with you here. This did start out as being a “top 10 list”, but as you can see it grew, and grew as I went through all the sites I have bookmarked under Cornish Genealogy <grin>. For this post I have chosen to exclude commercial data websites such as findmypast.co.uk, www.ancestry.co.uk, and thegenealogist.co.uk all of which I have used at various times, but those listed below are all free. A2A (Access to Archives) http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/advanced-search.aspx?tab=1 The A2A website is a seriously awesome website. It is an amazing resource not just for Cornwall, but for the whole of the UK. Archives and repositories around the UK have indexed much of their holdings, much of what you won’t actually find online. Cornwall Family History Society http://www.cornwallfhs.com/index.php Since its beginning in the mid-170s, the Society has aimed to become a ‘centre of excellence’ by encouraging Cornish family history research. Along with publishing a quarterly Journal, the Society has co-ordinated the transcription and indexing of over 5 million original records so far, as well maintaining a...
