Tracing your ancestors from 1066 to 1837 : a guide for family historians

The trail that an ancestor leaves through the Victorian period and the twentieth century is relatively easy to follow - the records are plentiful, accessible and commonly used. But how do you go back further, into the centuries before the central registration of births, marriages and deaths was introduced in 1837, before the first detailed census records of 1841? How can you trace a family line back through the early modern period and perhaps into the Middle Ages? Jonathan Oates's clearly written new handbook gives you all the background knowledge you need in order to go into this engrossing area of family history research. He starts by describing the administrative, religious and social structures in the medieval and early modern period and shows how these relate to the family historian. Then in a sequence of accessible chapters he describes the variety of sources the researcher can turn to. Church and parish records, the records of the professions and the courts, manorial and property records, tax records, early censuses, lists of loyalty, militia lists, charity records - all these can be consulted. He even includes a short guide to the best methods of reading medieval and early modern script. Jonathan Oates's handbook is an essential introduction for anyone who is keen to take their family history research back into the more distant past. The author of Guarding Hitler tells the truly heart-rending stories of Caucasian and Eurasian children held captive inside Japanese internment camps. The Japanese treatment of Allied children was as harsh and murderous as that of their parents and military POWs, but this whole episode has been overlooked. Children were plucked from comfortable colonial lives and forced to mature hastily in terrible circumstances, where survival became a daily game, and where their lives were constantly threatened by disease, starvation, and physical abuse. Many of these children were separated from their parents, or they saw their families destroyed by the Japanese. Most witnessed almost daily episodes of bestial violence that no child should ever see, and the entire cumulative experience has had a deep and lasting effect into their adult lives. They are among the last victims of Japanese aggression, and even over sixty years later many carry the mental and physical scars of that atrocious episode. The fate of [Japans] military prisoners is now well known, but the equally poor treatment handed out to the civilian internees and their children is a less familiar topic. Many books on this subject focus on a particular part of the Japanese Empire. Felton has taken a different approach, and covers most of the Japanese Empire, from Singapore and the rest of mainland China, through Hong Kong, Malaya, Burma... and on into the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines. HistoryOfWar.org "Children of the camps: Japan's last forgotten victims tells the ... stories of Caucasian and Eurasian children who were imprisoned within Japanese internment camps throughout Asia during the Second World War"--Jacket.