Introduction

Family history research thrives on dates and places but the key bits of information we genealogists need to see are family names. This section of our website may just give you what you need to fill in some of the blanks regarding your watermen ancestors.

When any of us undertake research in depth into any complex subject it is usual for us to record our findings in a database. Once upon a time that might have been a notebook or a collection of handwritten cards but more commonly today it will be a computer database or perhaps a spreadsheet. Those record repositories hold information, which although perhaps collected many years ago, remains relevant to new generations of historian today. We believe that whenever possible the data that had been collected should be published for others to examine. The alternative would be to repeat the same research which would typically take many, many hours, if not years, of effort.  

Making that data available to others, given the large variety of databases and spreadsheets out there, could be technically challenging and expensive. The YWHS way is to, whenever possible, keep things simple so we aim to regenerate such valuable reports in Portable Document Format (PDF). With the tools available to us we are then able to publish those reports which, combined with simple search facilities, we think will address most of our viewers needs. 

The Collection

It is early days in the curation of these reports so there are only a few to see so far. David Scrimgeour’s 1881 census database offers you the opportunity to look at the data collected for Yorkshire’s watermen appearing in that census. Ron Gosney amassed a significant collection of data from 1850/51 when researching mariners from Knottingley, Yorkshire and two views of his records are shared below.