TNA Records for Family Historians

This is a Zoom with the talk starting at 8pm (UK Time) – Zoom meeting will open at 7:15pm

Speaker:  Dr Amanda Bevan of the TNA

Summary: Family affairs and wars at sea: some reflections on the separate values of Chancery lawsuits and Prize Papers for researching in 16th-19th century family history, local history and international life at sea. These two quite different areas of legal records are both of interest for casting light on familial bonds, working lives, and perceptions of the world: one through the narrative presentation of problems and subsequent investigations in the Court of Chancery, and the other through the ships papers and mail taken from enemy ships captured by the British in wartime.

Speakers Biography: Dr Amanda Bevan is Head of the Legal Records Team at the National Archives. She is a specialist in the records of the court of Chancery in the early modern period, and spent 15 years working with volunteers to get over a million descriptions of law suits in Chancery searchable online. Since 2013, she has been working on a project to catalogue the Prize Papers – papers seized from ships captured in wartime between 1650 and 1815, and submitted to the High Court of Admiralty as exhibits to prove their enemy status. She is the author of several editions of Tracing Your Ancestors in The National Archives (last, 7th, edition, 2006).

To attend this talk you must pre-register using the link on the corresponding page in the Members’ Area here.