Ancestral Tourism 2: Public & Municipal Cemeteries

Posted on 2nd Sep 2025 by English Ancestors

Ryde Cemetery, Isle of Wight. © Janice Heppenstall

This follows on from my last post: Ancestral Tourism 1: Churches and Churchyards. It focuses on locating and visiting graves of our ancestors whose final resting place is in one of the large municipal or other public cemeteries in our towns and cities rather than in a church graveyard.

First, a bit of history

The emergence of large public cemeteries is an interesting part of our social history, connecting with several other developments of the nineteenth century that will be familiar to local and family historians. The migrations and population booms of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries created not only a lack of housing for the living but also of burial grounds for the dead – and all the more so in the growing industrial towns and cities. The historic churchyard burial grounds posed problems on several fronts: they were generally small, overcrowded, often laid out in a haphazard manner; and as knowledge of hygiene and sanitation developed, there were concerns about the spread of disease, particularly since in towns and cities these small burial grounds were generally alongside the church and surrounded by closely packed housing.

The initial response to this problem was to turn to the private sector. Throughout the 1820s and 1830s a number of ‘garden cemeteries’ were established to serve big industrial towns, including Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle and later, London. These cemeteries were private commercial ventures set up under individual Acts of Parliament. They were large, well-planned spaces, often designed by the same architects and landscape designers who created public parks. Some of these garden cemeteries may be well-known to us. They include Highgate in London, Undercliffe in Bradford and Arnos Vale in Bristol.

Some of the early cemeteries were developed by and for Nonconformists. As outlined in my last post, the general practice was for Nonconformists to be buried in the parish churchyard and the service officiated by the Anglican vicar. Many prominent philanthropic capitalists were Nonconformists, and by this time were able to use their wealth and influence to bring about changes including, here, the freedom to bury their dead and conduct services according to their own beliefs and traditions. Well-known Nonconformist cemeteries include Chorlton Row Cemetery in Manchester, which opened in 1821, Low Hill Cemetery in Liverpool, opened 1825, and Woodhouse Cemetery in Leeds, 1835. It is interesting to note that it was around the same time that the State removed control of recording births (or rather baptisms), marriages and deaths (or rather burials) from the Church of England and placed that responsibility with a new General Register Office: the introduction of Civil BMDs in 1837.

Generally speaking, though, these cemeteries were money-making enterprises, serving the upper and middle classes. There was no increase in provision for the labouring classes. The response from some local authorities was to develop more cemeteries but funded by public money. Early examples are St Bartholomew’s Cemetery in Exeter, which opened in 1837, Beckett Street and Hunslet Cemeteries in Leeds, both opened 1845, and Southampton Old Cemetery, 1846. This was the beginning of the Municipal Cemeteries – publicly funded, and owned/ managed by the local corporation.

The Metropolitan Burial Act of 1852, and other Acts of Parliament that followed, empowered local authorities to establish public cemeteries and close previous overcrowded burial grounds. The new cemeteries would have uniform hygiene standards and procedures for burial, would cater for all social levels, including some lower cost options for decent burials, and would offer burial options with dedicated areas for people of all religious affiliations. Half of any new cemetery was to remain unconsecrated, allowing for burials without the Church of England service. Later, in 1879, the The Public Health (Interments) Act made it a duty of local health authorities to provide cemeteries if local conditions required it.

Historic England have produced a List of Registered Cemeteries, arranged in date order. Information is provided for each, including design, designer, whether private or municipal, and important or interesting features.

There is also a nationwide map published by the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management which includes every cemetery and crematorium in the land. I’ve checked out all the ones I know and they are all present and correct.

Since there is a similarity in records of these different types of public cemetery, the following notes about how to plan for your visit is intended to cover all of them. There are in any case differences from one cemetery to another, regardless of how they came into being.

Planning your visit

Allow plenty of time for this – there is a lot of research and planning to do!

Locating the records

Needless to say, the first thing you need is to know the cemetery in which your ancestor is buried. We’ll start by looking at who holds the records, moving on to which of them might be online.
Since Municipal Cemeteries are managed by the local authority, it is they who hold the records for these cemeteries. Often, this team is known as ‘Cemeteries and Crematoria’, or ‘Cems and Crems’ for short. You can find them online by using either of these phrases as search terms and adding the name of your town or city of interest.
Some local authorities offer a look-up service. For example, Leeds Cems and Crems provide a list of all cemeteries, together with opening date. They require the name of the deceased, the date of burial and the cemetery, and will ‘check the records and if the information is correct […] let you know the grave number and section or where in the grounds the cremated remains were strewn.’ Some Cems and Crems teams charge for this service; others do not.
Some local authorities have databases available online so you can check for yourself. For example, Birmingham Cems and Crems have separate online searchable databases for each of their twelve cemeteries.
Privately owned cemeteries keep their own records. Information can be accessed via their websites. For example, at the time of writing, Highgate Cemetery charges £40 for a search. However, they also state that copies of all their records are free to consult at Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre.
That said, digital images of the records of some cemeteries are available online. You might find records from your cemetery of interest on your genealogy subscription website; or try looking on FamilySearch. From the home page navigate to Search > Images > insert the name of your place of interest and then select the appropriate era from the drop-down list. From here, you will have to scroll through to see if the records you need are included, and if they are, you will need to browse through the images of the records. Knowing the death date or at least month of death will speed things up. I found all the records from York’s Fulford Cemetery on here – and they are excellent!
Transcripts of the records of your cemetery of interest may have been included on FindAGrave (free to use). I have found on there most of my ancestors and their families who were buried in a municipal cemetery, but it is primarily run by volunteers so is inevitably a work in progress.
There is also DeceasedOnline, which helps burial authorities and crematoria to convert their register records, maps and photographs into digital form and bring them together into a central searchable collection. There is a fee to see the individual records, and I have not used this website, but it is there as an option should you wish to use it.

Locating a Map of the Cemetery

The cemetery records will hold certain essential information about your ancestor: name, address, date of burial, occupation. There may be more information, but this little lot will enable you to identify the person and be sure it’s your ancestor. There will be one other very important piece of information: the number of the grave or plot where your ancestor is buried.

Armed with this, what you need now is a map. And on this point it’s a question of digging about online. Here are some places to look:

The cemetery’s own website, if they have one. Example: York’s Fulford Cemetery provide section maps on their website.
Local authority Cems & Crems may have pages for each of their cemeteries, possibly including maps. Example: Isle of Wight have plot maps of all their cemeteries available for download, for a fee.
A lot of the cemeteries have ‘Friends’, and these often have a website with maps. Examples: Friends of Beckett Street Cemetery have an astonishingly good series of online tools to help you locate and navigate your way to your ancestor’s plot. These include locations of plots, numbers and names of occupants in each, whether there is a monument or gravestone, and whether this has been photographed. A different approach is taken at Friends of Southampton Old Cemetery. They provide assistance in locating graves and request a small donation towards their conservation work. Some ‘Friends’ groups have even carried out research into the lives of those buried in the cemetery.
Local history or heritage groups may have websites with maps. One the best set of static maps I have found to date is for Ryde Cemetery by Ryde Social Heritage Group. Every plot is shown with the names of the occupants.
The local Family History Society may have mapped the cemetery. Example: Isle of Wight.
There may be a site map at the cemetery itself, but you will need to know this in advance to avoid disappointment.

Going alone or with a companion
In the course of researching this post I have located every one of my ancestors and all of their children buried in Municipal and Public Cemeteries. Armed with this information, including details of family plots, plus a better understanding of the significance of each of the cemeteries, I feel sufficiently well-informed to be able to make a decision as to whether to inflict a visit to any of them on my nearest, dearest, yet genealogically disinterested. Based on this, I consider one cemetery in Leeds with a single family plot of interest to be acceptable, and another in York with just three relevant family plots. The rest have far too many plots that I would need to visit; and although one – Beckett Street Cemetery in Leeds – may be acceptable on grounds of social history, I simply couldn’t put anyone else through the monotony of locating and visiting the number of graves. Definitely, these will have to be solitary trips for me.

Part of the problem leading to this decision is that although the nineteenth century cemeteries were intended as public landscapes, and are of great historic and heritage value, lack of funding means that many of them have now become neglected. It is here that ‘Friends of’ the individual cemeteries provide a valuable service, carrying out conservation and environmental work and delivering ecological benefits – but not every cemetery has a Friends group, and some are less active than others.

You might find that the ‘Friends of’ your cemetery of interest provide tours from time to time. It might be possible to arrange your visit to coincide with that, then stay on afterwards to visit your family’s graves. Interesting for you and they will appreciate the income.

If you can’t go

There is so much information to be found online. By doing the research outlined above, making full use of online material and even, where possible, via the ‘Friends of’ website, FindAGrave or a Facebook page, requesting a photo. You can also search online for images of the cemetery. Adding “wikimedia commons” to your search term will return a selection of images that are free to use provided you credit the photographer.

Be forewarned though that the inscription on images is not always legible. This could be because of sunlight conditions on the day, severe weathering over time, or possibly just because of the quality of the image when reduced for web use. The following wonderfully clear image is from FindAGrave, but some of the images of my family’s gravestones cannot be read at all.

*****

I hope this has given you some ideas for how to plan for a visit to a Municipal or Public Cemetery. Researching it has certainly focused my mind and I’ve found it fascinating. So fascinating, in fact, that I will be slotting in an extra couple of posts about cemeteries before progressing to finding about former homes and business premises of our ancestors in the post after that. 🙂

Ancestral Tourism 1: Churches and Churchyards

Posted on 12th Aug 2025 by English Ancestors

For many of us, there comes a time in our ancestral journey that we want to know more about the places where our ancestors lived. For the truly obsessed, this can take the form of a One-Place Study. However, for the majority of family historians, and indeed for many of our ancestors, simply visiting the place where they lived will be enough to provide that extra insight we’re looking for.

Bringing a companion

What might, for us, be termed ‘Ancestral Tourism’ could simply be an enjoyable day out for any family and friends accompanying us. The little stops and circuitous routes wouldn’t be too burdensome on companions, and might be thought to add dimension to a place.

I say this from a position of experience, since I’ve done quite a bit of visiting the ancestors over the years, often accompanied by my husband and dog. The trick is to intersperse the family history with other sightseeing and activities and, above all, to know where to draw the line. There are certain family history activities I would not expect anyone else to put up with. Obviously, visits to the archives and local history libraries fall within this bracket. I would also make a distinction between a small, picturesque churchyard and a huge, sprawling, possibly unkempt municipal cemetery. I would definitely walk alone around inner city industrial or derelict areas where ancestors used to live in streets and houses that no longer exist. For all of those, if I can’t make the time to go alone, I don’t go.

A bit of ancestral tourism can involve an hour’s diversion, or a full or half day during a week away. But whether we’re going alone or with companions, there are things we can do to plan ahead to ensure we make the most of our valuable time there.

What to see

There are certain buildings and features I home in on when visiting an ancestral town:

the churches or chapels where my ancestors were baptised, married or buried;
the churchyard;
municipal and/or public cemeteries;
former homes and work/business premises;
historic buildings and landmarks, and just getting to know the area;
pinpointing where an ancestral home that no longer exists used to be;
if I’m alone, probably the local County Record Office.

Perhaps you have more suggestions or useful experiences? If so please do leave a comment.

Today’s post will deal with churches and churchyards. The rest will be covered in future posts.

The church

Most of us will never see a photograph or portrait of any of our ancestors beyond the generation living in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. I have long thought of the parish church as a stand-in.

I take several photographs of the church from outside, and then if possible move inside to sit awhile and take more photos. I have a particular connection with baptismal fonts. It seems very personal to me to know I’m standing exactly where my ancestors once stood, right before the font where their child, also my ancestor, was baptised. It’s almost like a portal to that long-ago time. I also photograph the altar and any other significant features. Some of the churches are of wider historical significance, and beautiful to see. You may also find monuments on the walls or around the church honouring the memory of your ancestors, or possibly inscribed flagstones.

Before you go

It cannot be emphasised enough that you need to allow plenty of time for this research stage. You may need to spend quite a bit of time tracking down this information.

Chances are you already know which churches are important in your family history, since you’ll have records from the parish registers, but what we now need to do is look online to see if the church has a website. The Church of England has a site called A Church Near You which includes a page for each church. Some also have their own website with history and lots more information. There may also be information on a local history/ heritage website, or even a Facebook page.
For other denominations, Roman Catholic churches may be listed by diocese at The Catholic Church. Baptist churches may be found via The Baptist Union of Great Britain. Quaker Meeting Houses can be located via Quakers in Britain, and so on. Alternatively, you can do an online search for a specific known church or chapel. Again, what we need from all this is the website.
Really importantly, check when the church will be open. Some are open for visitors to walk in any time, but many open only on certain days or certain times of the day, like for a regular lunch or coffee morning. The website may specifically give times when visitors are not welcome to wander around, and clearly we must be mindful of services and private prayer. Obviously, we can photograph the exterior even if the church is closed, but it’s always disappointing not to be able to go inside – and all the more so if you could have organised your visit for the following day when it would have been open.
Check that it is in fact the same church your ancestors used. It may have been completely rebuilt, or at least renovated or had later additions. Based on this information you may decide not to go – perhaps an image of the original church might be better for your needs.
Baptismal fonts, too, may have been replaced. Again, it’s good to check this before you go.

Twelfth century baptismal font carved of stone and set on a stone plinth in a church.

St Mary’s church at Kettlewell in Yorkshire’s Upper Wharfedale has been rebuilt twice since the original Norman church was founded in 1120. Of that original twelfth century church, all that remains is the baptismal font. My 7x great grandfather was baptised at this very font (but in the original Norman church) in 1678.

Image: © Janice Heppenstall

A quick tip!
When visiting a lot of places on one trip you can easily forget which photos came from which church/ churchyard. I always take a photo of the noticeboard outside featuring the name of the church and other information.

If you can’t get there – or if the church has been rebuilt

Even if you can’t visit yourself, much of the above information is still useful and interesting. I always feel more of a connection if I’ve taken the photographs myself, but you will generally be able to find images online. Searching for your church (or any building of interest) and adding “wikimedia commons” to your search term will return a selection of images that are free to use provided you credit the photographer.
Paintings, sketches and engravings of a former church may also be located in this way, and while researching you might find other interesting information. Some of my ancestors were amongst the early dissenting worshippers at the Unitarian Mill Hill Chapel in Leeds. The present chapel was rebuilt around 1849, but images of the original chapel are to be found online. While following a link for one of these images I found [this article] and learned that some of the pillars of the original chapel were removed to a park in north Leeds. I will now have to try to work a visit to that park into a future ancestral tourism trip!

The churchyard

Strictly speaking, the cemetery alongside or adjacent to the church is referred to as the ‘churchyard’, ‘graveyard’ or ‘burial ground’. Before around the mid-1800s, most burials – and not just burials of Anglicans – took place in the graveyard of the parish church. Although other denominations kept their own records of deaths/burials, the official burial had to be conducted by an Anglican clergyman in accordance with the Church of England prayer book service. You will therefore find burials of ancestors of different faiths in the Church of England parish registers – and you may also find additional records in the registers of their usual places of worship.

The parish register will give the name of the deceased, date of burial and possibly some additional information, such as date of death; if a child, the father’s name; if a woman, the husband’s name; and possibly the cause of death. What it rarely says is where, exactly, the person is buried and that’s unfortunate because that’s what we need right now. I have seen references on parish registers to ‘in the churchyard’; and my 8x great grandfather’s burial record states that he is buried in the ‘South Ile’ [South Aisle] at Wakefield All Saints. There would once have been an inscribed flagstone, but these have long been replaced and no map survives. When I visited I walked up and down the aisle a few times, certain that he was there somewhere but not knowing exactly where. So to be sure of finding our ancestor’s resting place, what we need is a map.

Extract from burial register, 1663. The extract is in seventeenth century handwriting and reads 'South Ile Will[ia]m Clareburne de Westgate buried eodem die' — Will[ia]m Clareburne burial 6 Jul 1663, Wakefield All Saints.
Original data: West Yorkshire Archive Service; Reference: WDP3/1/3

Before you go … and this could take some time!

Find out if a map of the church and churchyard burials exists, and if so, where. Many thanks to friends/ colleagues at the South Central branch of AGRA for help with compiling this list:

An original map could be held at the church or at the local County Record Office
If at the Record Office, it is likely to be found under ‘Miscellaneous’ records for that particular parish.
If an official original record doesn’t exist, there is the possibility that volunteers may have compiled something
Some County Record Offices have maps compiled by their volunteers.
A map may have been drawn up by ‘Friends of’ a particular graveyard.
Often, the local Family History Society may have mapped a graveyard. You may need to be a paid member of the Society to access the information on their website; or you may find a map inside the church itself – it’s worth checking this before you visit.
There is the possibility that a map may be incomplete
An original map/record may be only partially complete.
For maps created by volunteers, unless they were working with an official/ original list of plots and names, there is the possibility that they may only be able to include occupants of plots as seen on headstones, and that remains in unmarked plots may not be included.
Even if the precise location of your ancestor’s grave is not known…
based on parish registers, time periods, and denomination, a church official may be able to tell you in which section of the graveyard your ancestor was buried.
Check if anyone in your family has a photograph of the headstone – making it easier to identify when you’re walking around the churchyard. Even a photograph of the unmarked grave may have clearly identifiable gravestones close by, thereby enabling you to work out the precise location of that unmarked grave.
You may find information online at FindAGrave. Although FindAGrave does not have maps, it gives precise plot information. My experience is that they tend to have more records from municipal cemeteries and that parish graveyards are perhaps at this stage an ongoing project.

In the future, it may become easier! The Church of England has created a digital map and database of all burial grounds in England. This does not include specific burial plots. However, the National Burial Grounds Survey (which I wrote about HERE) is under way and will eventually build into a detailed map and record of all burial plots for all Church of England dioceses signing up to the scheme. You’ll find a map of progress HERE and more information elsewhere on that website.

If you can’t get there

You may still be able to get plot information via one of the above resources, and possibly a photo of the gravestone. A general photo of the churchyard may be available online.

*****

I hope this has given you some ideas for visiting ancestral churches and churchyards – or indeed an ‘Ancestral Staycation’. My next post will look at visiting public and municipal cemeteries.

Monarchs and Jacobites Part 2

Posted on 31st May 2025 by English Ancestors

In my last post I explained how a desire to understand more about the Jacobites led to the compilation of an overview of all English/ British monarchs from Henry VII to George I. I wanted to understand:

The descent of the throne: how each monarch relates to his or her predecessors and where unclear, why they were installed.
The role of religion in decisions about the Crown, as well as attitudes towards Roman Catholics, Puritans and Nonconformists during the reign of each monarch.
What connection this had with the Jacobites.
And finally – although to be honest this was something that piqued my interest during the research rather than something I set out to do – how this connects with certain documentation we might come across as family historians.

This is the second part of my exploration. The first post covered Henry VII to Charles I. This post starts with the Interregnum followed by the Restoration of Charles II, and ends with George I. It is of course a quick overview focusing just on the above, not a learned analysis!

Interregnum, or Commonwealth Period
Part 1 of this overview ended with Charles I, who was beheaded in 1649, the act which started the Interregnum. Reading about Charles, we understand there were a number of tensions leading to the civil war and ultimately the Interregnum. One of these was Charles’s religious position. The Church of England was sandwiched between the high ceremony of the Roman Catholic church and the Puritans, who wanted a simpler form of worship. Charles, however, favoured a ‘high church’ within the Church of England. His marriage, too, to the Catholic Henrietta Maria, raised concerns among Protestants. On top of this, Charles’s belief in the Divine Right of Kings exaccerbated both religious and political tensions. Parliamentarians, many of whom were also religious reformers, were angered by Charles’s favoritism towards Catholics. They sought to limit his power and influence, not only on religious matters but also more broadly, since Charles often clashed with, overruled and even dissolved his Parliament for an eleven-year period.

In light of all this, following the execution of Charles I, England was declared a Republic. Initially Member of Parliament for Huntingdon, Oliver Cromwell rose to prominence as leader of the Parliamentarians and ultimately ruled as Lord Protector. The Commonwealth period was a time of great religious and social change. Cromwell wanted to establish a more just and equitable society. Yet he was a devout Puritan who believed this would be achieved through spiritual and moral reform. During this period the Church of England was disestablished,the House of Lords abolished, and Puritanism gained prominence. Many restrictive laws were passed to regulate moral behaviour. Theatres were closed down, strict observance of the Sabbath was required, and celebrations of Easter and Christmas were banned.

Charles II, reigned 1660-1685
After the execution of Charles I in 1649, the Scots viewed his son, also Charles, as his rightful heir. Wishing to maintain a monarchy in Scotland and England, they invited him to Scotland. The young Charles had been sent to safety in France – not only the homeland of his mother, but also the realm of his uncle, Louis XIII. In 1643 the Scottish Covenanters had entered into an alliance with the English Parliamentarians, including a pledge to work towards the establishment of Presbyterianism in England. Now the Scots, particularly the Covenanters, viewed Charles II as a potential leader who could uphold Presbyterianism in the three kingdoms (Scotland, Ireland, England). In accordance with their wishes he signed the National Covenant, affirming Presbyterianism as the official religion in Scotland. On 1 January 1651 Charles II was crowned by the Scots at Scone – the last coronation to take place in this historic Scottish coronation site. However, a few months later, the decisive defeat of the Scottish army broke the power of the Presbyterians in England and Scotland, ending the relevance of the Solemn League and Covenant. Once more, Charles was granted sanctuary in France, and the English government announced that henceforth, England and Scotland were to be one Commonwealth.

After Oliver Cromwell’s death in 1658, there was a desire to restore the monarchy. The first election returned a government that was fairly evenly divided on political grounds between Royalists and Parliamentarians, and on religious grounds between Anglicans and Presbyterians. In 1660, after signing the Declaration of Breda, Charles was invited to London and restored to the throne as Charles II. Through the Declaration, Charles promised those who recognised himself as monarch a general pardon for crimes committed during the Civil War and the Interregnum. Most of Cromwell’s supporters were granted amnesty, but fifty were not. Nine were executed, the others given life imprisonment or excluded from office for life. Cromwell’s body was posthumously decapitated. Charles also promised religious toleration, with liberty of conscience. Finally, he promised to rule in cooperation with Parliament.

Image: King Charles II

by John Michael Wright, c. 1660–1665 National Portrait Gallery, London

Source: Wikipedia, Public Domain

Portrait of King Charles II by John Michael Wright. The King is seated and holds the Sovereign's Orb. He is dressed in fine robes of red, white and blue with jewels.

However, after elections the following year, a new overwhelmingly Royalist and Anglican Parliament was sworn in, bringing with it a series of limits to the religious toleration with which more advanced genealogists will be familiar. These included a requirement for municipal officeholders to swear allegiance, the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer, the Conventicle Act of 1664, which forbade religious gatherings of more than five people outside the Church of England, and a prohibition for clergymen who had been expelled from their parishes for church services not conforming to the newly enforced Anglican requirements from coming within five miles of that parish. As Puritanism lost its momentum, theatres reopened and as a release from the restrictions of the Commonwealth period, bawdy ‘Restoration comedy’ became a recognisable genre. For the first time, female actors were required to play female roles. The Restoration was therefore a time of great social change.

Charles II, however, had family arrangements that placed him very much at conflict with limits on religious tolerance. On 21st May 1662 he married Catherine of Braganza, the Roman Catholic daughter of King John IV of Portugal. The marriage was celebrated in two ceremonies at Portsmouth – a Catholic one, conducted in secret, followed by a public Church of England service. It’s worth remembering here that Charles II’s mother, Henrietta Maria, was also Roman Catholic, that Charles had spent most of his life in exile in France, and that Louis XIV of France was his first cousin. In 1670, by treaty agreed between the two cousins (The Treaty of Dover/ Secret Treaty of Dover), Charles committed, amongst other things, to convert to Catholicism at some point in the future. In return, he would receive a secret pension from Louis that he hoped would give him some freedom from Parliamentary scrutiny of his finances. He would also receive a financial bonus from Louis plus the loan of French troops to suppress any opposition when his conversion was made public. The Treaty remained a secret, and Charles never did convert. However, against the wishes of Parliament, he did issue the Royal Declaration of Indulgence of 1672, by which he attempted to suspend laws that punished recusants from the Church of England, thereby extending religious liberty both to Protestant nonconformists and to Roman Catholics. The following year he was compelled by Parliament to withdraw the Declaration.

Charles died in 1685. Having no legitimate children, he was succeeded by his brother.

James II of England/ VII of Scotland, reigned 1685-1688
Like his older brother Charles II, James had lived in exile in France during the Commonweath period, and served in the armies of Louis XIV until the Restoration in 1660. However, in 1669 James had converted to Roman Catholicism. There had therefore been concern at the prospect of his acceeding to the throne, but on the whole a hereditary succession was viewed as preferable to the possibility of a further republican commonwealth. It was, in any case, considered that the reign of James II / VII would be merely a temporary Catholic interlude. By his first marriage to Anne Hyde, James had one son who died, and two daughters. At the insistence of their uncle Charles II the daughters, Mary and Ann, were raised in the Church of England.

In 1687 James II/ VII issued the Declaration of Indulgence. As with the 1672 Declaration issued by his brother, this was an attempt to promote religious tolerance by suspending penal laws enforcing conformity to the Church of England, allowing people to worship freely in their homes or chapels, and ending the requirement for oaths of allegiance for government office. However, in a period when fear of Catholicism was widespread, he had already made enemies of Anglican bishops as well as Lords and Members of Parliament, on one occasion in 1685 proroguing Parliament and ruling without it. He then continued to promote the Roman Catholic cause, dismissing judges and others who refused to support the withdrawal of laws penalising religious dissidents and preventing the appointment of Catholics to important posts in academic, military and political positions. By 1688 most of James’s subjects had been alienated.

Portrait of King James II of England and VII of Scotland. The King is standing and wearing armour on his upper body, along with a gold sash. His left arm rests on a scarlet-feather trimmed helmet. He is wearing the long curled wig of the period.

Image: King James II and VII

Artist unknown.

Source: National Portrait Gallery, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In April 1688 James II/ VII reissued the Declaration of Indulgence. Two months later his second wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a son and heir: James Francis Edward. The baby was baptised according to the rites of the Roman Catholic church. It was a final straw: fearful of a Roman Catholic dynasty in the making, on 30 June 1688 a group of Protestant nobles invited William of Orange to come to England with an army. When William arrived on 5th November 1688, many army officers defected, joining him against the king. The following month James II/ VII fled with his wife and baby son to France, where he was received by his cousin Louis XIV. This overthrowing of James II/ VII is what is referred to as The Glorious Revolution, 1688-89.

The descent of the throne is about to get very complicated!

William III (reigned 1689-1702) and Mary II (reigned 1689-1694)
We have already met William and Mary. Mary is the oldest daughter of James II and VII, by his first wife Anne Hyde. It was mentioned above that at the insistence of their uncle, Charles II, Mary and her younger sister Ann were raised in the Church of England. Charles also arranged for Mary to marry the Protestant Prince William of Orange – that same William who arrived in 1688 by invitation of the Protestant nobles to overthrow the King – that King being his father-in-law.

In fact not only Mary but also William of Orange had a claim to the British throne. Both were grandchildren of Charles I. William was descended from Charles I through his mother, Princess Mary, who was the eldest daughter of King Charles. The soon-to-be queen Mary, as we have seen, was descended from Charles I via his second son James II and VII.

Image: William III and Mary II

Painting: Sir James Thornhill; Photo: James Brittain derivative work: Surtsicna (cropped)

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Portrait of William III and Mary II. The couple are seated. Both wear a crown and both have a Royal Sceptre. The Sovereign's Orb is set between them. William is wearing armour on his upper body and the long vurled wig of the period. Both wear fur-trimmed robes.

In 1689, it was declared by Parliament that James had abdicated by deserting his kingdom. William and Mary were offered the throne as joint monarchs but were required to accept a Declaration of Rights, later enshrined in the Bill of Rights of 1689. The Statute remains a cornerstone of English constitutional law, setting out basic civil rights, resetting the relationship between monarch and Parliament, providing guarantees against the abuses of power that had become commonplace, and changing the succession to the English Crown. James II / VII and his heirs being now excluded from the throne, this exclusion was extended to apply to all Roman Catholics. The Toleration Act of the same year allowed for freedom of worship for dissenting Protestants, but not to Roman Catholics or Jews. ‘Tolerance’ only went so far. Nonconformists were required to swear oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, they continued to be excluded from holding political offices and positions at universities, but they could meet to worship as they wished, provided they did so in registered meeting houses and with licensed dissenting preachers. However, it was better than the previous position and was considered a reward for Protestant dissenters who did not support James II / VII.

Mary reigned until her death in 1694; William continued until his death in 1702.

Anne, reigned 1702-1714
Leaving no children, William and Mary were succeeded by Mary’s sister Anne, who reigned until her death in 1714. When she, too, died childless (her only surviving son having predeceased her), the line passed to Sophia, Electress of Hanover, who was the granddaughter of James I/ VI via her mother Elizabeth, and was the nearest Protestant relative.

Portrait of Queen Anne by unknown artist of the seventeenth century. The Queen is seated and is wearing a fine robe of gold and cobalt blue with fur trimming. She is holding the Sovereign's Orb.

Image: Queen Anne

Artist unknown, 17th century

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

George I, reigned 1714-1727
In fact Sophia had died two months before Queen Anne, meaning the line passed to her son, George Ludwig. Although there were around fifty Roman Catholics who would have had a stronger claim were it not for the exclusion, George I acceeded to the throne in 1714. The reign of the House of Hanover, which would continue in the United Kingdom until Queen Victoria’s death in 1901, had commenced.

Image: George I

Artist: Godfrey Kneller

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Pedigree Chart
In the following chart you can see all the monarchs mentioned in the above account, together with the others mentioned as essential to the line of descent. There are also two more people, descended from James II and VII and his second wife Mary of Modena. We will now turn to look at them.

The Jacobites
Were it not for the exclusion of Roman Catholics from the succession to the English Crown, one of the people who would have had a stronger right to the throne than George I was of course the son of the exiled James II / VII. The old king had died in France in 1701; and his son, James Francis Edward Stuart, who had been created Prince of Wales in July 1688, considered himself James III and VIII.

Following the coronation of George I – who spoke very little English and whose loyalties and thoughts were primarily with Hanover – riots and uprisings broke out in various parts of the United Kingdom.

‘Jacobites’ had been active since The Glorious Revolution. They sought to restore the Stuart line to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland, but the reasons for their support were complex and varied. A central tenet of Jacobitism – the political ideology behind the movement – was that kings were appointed by God, and therefore the post-1688 regime was illegitimate. This view was particularly strong amongst the Episcopalians in the Lowlands. There was also opposition to the Act of Union of 1707. Many Jacobites believed the Stuarts would reverse the Union and restore Scottish independence. Akin to this were clan loyalties and traditions, and the enduring sense of marginalisation by the English and British government. Consequently, in Scotland, Jacobitism was strongest in the Western Highlands and in Perthshire and Aberdeenshire. However, given the origins and connections between the Scottish clans and Ireland, there was a Roman Catholic element to the support too, and indeed Jacobitism was also strongly supported in Ireland. There were also pockets of support in Wales and parts of England; and the Stuarts received some backing from France and other countries.

After an unsuccessful invasion in 1715 James – the would-be King James III/ VIII, nick-named ‘The Old Pretender’ – lived in papal territory, and from 1718 until his death in 1766, resided in Rome. Here, he established a court-in-exile, creating Jacobite Peerages and operating an unofficial consulate. In 1719 James married Maria Clementina Sobieska, with whom he had two sons. The second son, Henry Benedict Stuart would become a Cardinal of the Catholic Church. The first, born 31st December 1720, was Charles Edward Stuart. We know him as ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’. He was also nicknamed ‘The Young Pretender’. It was Bonnie Prince Charlie who led the Jacobite Rising of 1745, culminating in the Battle of Culloden.

Armed with all of the above information, the Scottish history outlined in Reunion will make more sense. You will also be well-prepared should you wish to tackle Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander! However, I hope it will also be of use in understanding the odd document you’ve found in your own family research. For example, I now understand what was behind a document countersigned by my 7x great grandfather at York Castle in 1745 pledging allegiance to the king (George II) against the ‘Rebellion in Favour of a Popish Pretender’.

It has been quite time-consuming to put this together. I had never had a great deal of interest in the Kings and Queens of England/ United Kingdom; my personal interests lie with the ordinary people. However, working on this has given me a great context within which to place all of the changes in attitudes and leniency towards Nonconformists in the 1660s, 1670s and 1680s – and this is a period when a number of my own ancestors were converting to Nonconformist practices. I even looked at a chart of Kings and Queens of England last week and was able to spot immediately that Lady Jane Grey was missing! I hope you will find it interesting and useful too.

Ryan Littrell’s ‘Reunion’ and Y-DNA in family research

Posted on 31st Mar 2025 by English Ancestors

I’ve just finished reading Ryan Littrell’s book Reunion: A Search for Ancestors, published in 2012. It’s an account of how, following a surprising find amongst old family papers, Ryan set about uncovering the story of his Scottish ancestors. A complete beginner in family history at the time, his interest was purely on his mother’s paternal line, the McDonalds. He wanted to learn about the clan and whereabouts in Scotland his family originated.

If you have a Scottish clan ancestral line, particularly Clan McDonald/ MacDonald/ Macdonald or simply Clan Donald, then I think you’ll find this book interesting and helpful. It will also be useful to anyone wanting to know more about Y-DNA testing, and how it can be used in genealogy. Alongside this, you’ll see an example of an active Y-DNA surname project, and learn more about how you might be able to use this type of DNA testing in your own research.

None of the above apply to my own family research. For me personally, I realised as I was reading that there was a gap in my knowledge of Scottish history and particularly the Jacobite movement. I’ve since been exploring that, and this, broadly, will be the topic of my next post. Today’s post focuses on the Y-DNA.

After a more general introduction, from Chapter 8, Ryan’s story alternates between his developing knowledge about his own family and the Clan history. Starting with events of around a thousand years ago, the history moves forward in time as Ryan’s own research moves backwards so that at some point the stories meet. The documentary research was hampered by the fact of being spread over several counties in four different American states. At times a professional genealogist was hired to plough through documents in archives local to the places where his family had lived in the States. I did wonder at times why baptism registers were not mentioned. Perhaps they had been used, but they were not included in the account. In the UK, they would have been a starting point for any research prior to 1837.

So it was, really, the way the usual documentary research was used alongside Y-chromosome DNA (Y-DNA) testing that was the more interesting part for me. Used alongside wider Clan history reading, this was key in helping Ryan to home in on his ancestral home and indeed other Y-DNA testers descended from the same people.

How Y-DNA tests work
The main DNA test we use for genealogical research is autosomal. Autosomal testing is useful for finding ancestors and close blood relatives up to around five generations back. Y-DNA is different, and we use it in genealogy for a very specific reason.

Y-DNA is passed from fathers only to their sons. This means every male can be shown to be connected to his father, his paternal grandfather, great grandfather, and so on, right back through time. Passing largely unchanged down the male line, it links back thousands of years.

A Y-DNA test places each tester into a group known as a Haplogroup. Individual Haplogroups are often associated with specific parts of the world. For example Haplogroup E is primarily found in Africa, with some presence in other regions; Haplogroup O is primarily found in East and Southeast Asia. A number of Haplogroups are to be found in Europe. These include Haplogroup R, common in Europe and parts of Asia. At the very top of each of these Haplogroup lines is one man. We will never know the names of these individual men, but each one is the furthest ‘identifiable’ ancestor of every male sharing that broad Haplogroup.

Over time, there are mutations on the Y chromosome. We use these mutations to work out how far back two male testers share a common ancestor. If they both share a particular mutation this is evidence that their common ancestor lived after the mutation occurred. Another way of looking at this is that when mutations occur, a new branch in the Haplogroup occurs. If a mutation occurs for one brother in a family, his descendants will have the mutation but his remaining brothers and their descendants will not.

In this way, as a result of mutations, the wider Haplogroup can increasingly be subdivided, and this enables us to place a tester in ever more specific branches, or Subclades, of the Haplogroup. For example, the Haplogroup R has two branches, or subclades: R1 and R2. R1 is further subdivided into two descendent subclades: R1a and R1b.

Surname Projects
Since Y-DNA follows the direct paternal line, assuming that there have been no adoptions, no elective name changes and no ‘non-paternity events’, the line should coincide exactly with the surname. This has led to the creation of Y-DNA Surname Projects, often run by experienced leaders who may be able to recognise specific branches of the surname based on the very specific subclade as revealed by the Y-DNA test.

It was one of these Y-DNA surname projects that Ryan Littrell joined when he was carrying out his own research. Through them, he learned that the MacDonald clan, also known as Clan Donald, is associated with the R1a and R1b haplogroups. Testers potentially descended from a man named Somerled, who is important in the Clan’s history, are associated with the R1a haplogroup, while The Macdonalds of Sutherland, for example, belong to the R1b haplogroup, specifically the R-FTA93010 subclade.

As his connection to the McDonalds was through his mother rather than his father, Ryan was not able to test his own Y-DNA for this project. Instead, he needed to find a male member of his mother’s McDonald family who was prepared to test. His mother’s uncle was happy to do so, and it was his Y-DNA test results that Ryan worked with thereafter. Working with the surname group, these test results enabled Ryan to connect with a small number of testers whose origins could be traced to a specific village in the Scottish Highlands. Through connections and visits to the area, more McDonald men offered to test and they too shared the same subclade.

Ultimately, this combination of documentary research, Y-DNA testing, reading about the history of the clan and speaking with distant cousins who had grown up in the area, enabled the small group of distant cousins to work out where they fit into the history of the Clan.

You will have to read the book yourself to find out how, but I hope this account has enabled you to work out whether firstly this book and secondly Y-DNA testing might help you in your research.