Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy (46 page)

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The Waterways Archive:
The Waterways Trust administers the Waterways Archive, a collection of material held in several county record offices as well as at two of the three National Waterways Museums located in Ellesmere Port and Gloucester Docks. Ellesmere Port is home to the David Owen Waterways Archive and Gloucester Docks to the British Waterways Archive. The Waterways Archive collections include records of boat owners and registered boatmen, toll records, and large carrying companies' archives, plans, drawings, technical records, documents, books, periodicals, oral history recordings and photographs. The collections from 15 archives, including the British Waterways Archive, David Owen Waterways Archive and National Archives of Scotland, can be searched on the Virtual Waterways Archive catalogue at www.virtualwaterways.co.uk. The Waterways Archives at Ellesmere Port and Gloucester Docks provide a research service at a fee for those unable to visit in person. You can find out more about these services from the National Waterways Museum website at www.nwm.org.uk. While the Virtual Waterways catalogue is a great place to begin your search for canal records, it does not have a comprehensive list of all documents held in British repositories, which is why a search of the county record office or local studies centre nearest to the canal is also wise.

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Scottish Canal Records:
The first canal to be constructed in Scotland was the Forth and Clyde Canal in 1792, with Scotland's canal network being completed in 1822. The National Archives of Scotland website contains company histories for the Caledonian Canal, the Crinan Canal, the Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal, the Forth and Cart Junction Canal, the Forth and Clyde Canal, the Glasgow Paisley and Johnstone Canal and the Monkland Canal, although some records of these companies are also held at The National Archives in Kew. The NAS has an online research guide explaining how to find canal records there with a list of document references for each company at www.nas.gov.uk/guides/canal.asp. The NAS warns researchers that
no lists of canal employees survive among its records, though names of canal proprietors and commissioners may be found.

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Irish Canal Records:
Many labourers employed to construct Scottish canals were in fact Irish. To locate records of Irish canal companies it is worth contacting the National Archives of Ireland, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum who have their own archive and library collections.

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Records in The National Archives:
Railway companies started to take over ailing canal companies and in the 1850s the Board of Trade Railway Department assumed responsibility for them all. This link means that much documentation regarding canals at The National Archives is found with that of railways, docks and roads in the RAIL series.
    A Railway and Canal Division of the Board of Trade was established in 1873 and the administration of canals became the duty of the Docks and Canals Division in 1934. The Transport Act 1947 nationalized the canals as well as the railways, and responsibility for operating inland waterways was transferred to the Docks and Inland Waterways Executive of the British Transport Commission, whose archives now form part of the British Transport Historical Records Section (BTHR) kept at The National Archives.
    The BTHR Section has a card index at Kew where records relating to particular companies, photographs, maps, plans, special collections, books, pamphlets and periodicals can be searched. The records of this section, mainly held in RAIL and AN series, date back much earlier than the 1850s because the rail companies inherited records from canal companies that may have been operating since the 1600s. The earliest substantial canal records held at The National Archives are those for the Wey Navigation, built between 1651 and 1653. Papers consisting of claims to the canal's profits can be found in E177.

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Parliamentary Archives:
After 1792 the construction of a canal required Parliament's permission, and as such Parliamentary Papers contain local and private Acts of Parliament and the Parliamentary Archives at the Houses of Parliament in London hold some plans and prospectuses for proposed canal constructions from 1794. From 1837 duplicates of canal scheme maps also had to be placed with the Clerk of the Peace and those records may be found among the Quarter Sessions' papers at the local record office. From 1795 the Clerk of the Peace also kept Registers of Boats and Barges for inland waterway craft that had to be registered with the name of the proprietor.

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River Transport Records:
River transportation for passengers was vitally important before large-scale bridge-building programmes made it possible to cross rivers at several points. The Thames in London, for instance, could only be crossed at London Bridge until 1750 when Westminster Bridge was opened. Watermen operated ferry crossings to carry people between the north and south banks of the river Thames. The Company of Watermen was formed in the 1500s to ensure passenger safety and fair charges. Officers were appointed by the Lord Mayor to issue licences to watermen, printed tables of fares were published from the early eighteenth century and in 1700 the Company encompassed lightermen as well as watermen. Lightermen unloaded cargo from ships and carried it to the port by lighter. Members of the Company of Watermen and Lightermen came from all parts of the river Thames between Gravesend and Windsor, and the Company's records can be found in the Guildhall Library Manuscripts Section in London. The Library's records, dating from the 1600s to the 1940s, include apprentices' bindings and affidavit books, quarterage books, records of contracts and ferry services, records of the Court of Complaint, and registers of lighters, barges and passenger boats. These documents hold the names of watermen and lightermen; some apprenticeship records include dates and places of baptism, while others hold addresses, places of mooring, dates of death, and information about earnings. The Guildhall Library has a research guide explaining more about their records for watermen and lightermen at www.history.ac.uk/gh/ water.htm.
    If you are unable to visit the Guildhall then Robert J. Cottrell has compiled indexes of Thames Watermen and Lightermen Apprentice Bindings 1692–1949, Apprentices' Affidavits 1759–1949 and Contract Licences 1865–1926, and offers a search service of his indexes for a fee. Enquiries should be sent to 19 Bellevue Road, Bexleyheath, Kent DA6 8ND.
    Another set of records that you can apply to be searched by post is John Roberts's Waterway Index, containing the names of around
10,000 people employed on inland waterways, from boat builders, canal agents, lock-keepers and toll collectors to boatmen, watermen, flatmen and navvies. The names have been extracted from a number of original sources and Mr Roberts will search his indexes if an enquiry is sent to 52 St Andrews Road, Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands B75 6UH.

The Inland Waterways Association (www.waterways. org.uk) and the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland (www.iwai.ie) are run by enthusiasts keen to keep the culture of canals alive. They may be able to help you locate information about the history of a particular waterway and their websites have links to associations linked to specific canals and navigations
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The London Canal Museum is a great place to learn all about the heritage of canals in the capital and their website has a useful Family History Checklist for anybody researching canal ancestors, at www.canalmuseum.org.uk/collection/family-history.htm. The website also has a comprehensive list of links to other useful sites for researching the history of canals and waterways. If you are researching ancestors who worked on the Thames in London then take a look at the Bargemen website at www.bargemen.co.uk, which has information about boat builders, owners, watermen, lightermen and dock workers around London and contains some family histories. The site is packed full of research guides for those exploring different types of Thames workers as well as indexes to wills of lightermen, the names of barges involved in the evacuation from Dunkirk, directories for lightermen and bargemen, and other useful sources for family historians compiled from various original documents.

While many canals were filled in or fell into disrepair after their demise, there has recently been a push to conserve some in the interests of heritage, to promote tourism and as a means of exploring a greener method of transport in the modern age. There are many canal associations who work hard to preserve the inland waterways that have weaved their way through the British landscape for around 300 years now, and they can often point you in the direction of surviving records documenting the canal's history and the lives of the people to whom they were important.

Private railway companies operated all lines in Britain until the Transport Act 1947 nationalized the railways in 1948 to form British Rail. The 1921 Railways Act had already merged most railway companies into the ‘Big Four' – the Great Western Railway, the London & North Eastern Railway, the Southern Railway and the London, Midland & Scottish Railway. In 1948 the British Transport Historical
Commission collected the records of the several hundred rail, canal and dock companies that were absorbed into the State. The records were initially kept at London, York and Edinburgh but have since been relocated: those records kept in Edinburgh were transferred to the National Archives of Scotland and those records held at London and York are now at The National Archives in Kew.

County record offices also hold a lot of material about the impact of the railways locally, and a search of the main archive databases mentioned already, in particular the National Register of Archives, can unearth many of these collections. The local county record office website for the area where your ancestor worked may shed light on their railway collections, like that of Cheshire Record Office, which has an online index to the staff registers they hold for Cambrian Railway, London & North Western Railway, Great Western Railway, and London & North Western and Great Western Joint Railway. The publication
Was Your Grandfather a Railwayman?
by Tom Richards contains a directory of the record offices around the British Isles that hold papers for various railway companies. Staff records for those people who worked after the Second World War are still with the railway industry for pension purposes, but staff records of workers employed on the railways since the 1960s can be obtained by writing to

The Strategic Rail Authority

55 Victoria Street

London SW1H 0EU

Staff records exist for many railway companies but they are difficult to use and are often poorly indexed, with no central index to the names of all railway employees. The records are arranged by company and some company papers will only give names, details of pay and positions, whereas others give a full service history and some companies have very few surviving staff lists at all.

It is necessary to know which of the 1,000 or so railway companies in operation since the nineteenth century your ancestor might have worked for in order to start looking for any records of his service. Simply knowing that
your great-grandfather worked as an engine driver in Liverpool will not be enough information because there were often several companies operating in most towns and each of their records is kept separately. Most companies merged to form larger companies so the company names changed frequently, and in this case it may be necessary to check the records of more than one company.
Railway Ancestors
by David T. Hawkings lists all the railway companies in England and Wales between 1822 and 1947 in alphabetical order with dates of the merger and details of name changes.

Griff Rhys Jones made the discovery that his maternal great-grandfather, Daniel Price, worked as an engine driver when he ordered the birth certificate for Daniel's daughter, Louisa Price (Griff's grandmother), from 1891. This one document allowed Griff to start a series of searches for more information. Of most importance was the address where the Daniel lived with his family in 1891 – Garston, Liverpool – which was confirmed by finding the family in the 1891 census. By investigating the local history of the street, Griff was able to establish that the house in which his great-grandfather lived had been built by the London and North Western Railway Company to provide accommodation for its workers. In turn, this led to a search at The National Archives for further information about Daniel's career with the company – but, although some staff records were identified in record series RAIL 410, there were none for the period in which Daniel served.

… find which railway company your ancestor worked for

1.
Census returns for railway ancestors sometimes give the initials of the company they worked for next to their job title, and the
British Railways Pre Grouping Atlas and Gazetteer
published by Ian Allen has a list of these abbreviations to help you decipher the company name they refer to
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2.
The
Gazetteer
has a map of England, Wales and Scotland showing the lines that ran through each station as well as a list of stations with the companies that owned or operated them. You can establish where your ancestor lived through certificates and census returns then draw up a list of all the possible stations in that area and the companies that your ancestor may have worked for. The next step will simply be a case of working your way through all those companies' records to see if you can find anything
.

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The Irish Railway Record Society preserves many historical records about Irish railways. Their website at www.irrs.ie has histories for 14 railway companies operating in Ireland since 1946
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Each company's staff records are divided into departmental registers, such as those for the Locomotive Carriage and Wagon Department, Traffic Department, or Electrical Engineer's Department. There was no uniform way of structuring departments so it can sometimes be tricky working out which department your ancestor's job title fell under. Appendix 6 in
Railway Ancestors
contains lists of staff trades and occupations with the type of department they might come under, and The National Archives' research guide ‘Railways: Staff Records' has some more common examples. Within the departmental records there are generally three types of records where you may find a mention of your ancestor: