I've not used electoral rolls as a a source before. Are these kept at Shropshire archives - and how easy is it to use them?
Thanks for any tips.
Mike
Thanks Steve, that's very helpful. I do have a readers ticket but live in Cumbria so don't get down that way very often. All the people I am interested in lived in small villages or on farms so I may get lucky.
Are the records on microfiche or paper?
Regards
Mike
Hi Mike
The registers are printed volumes on the shelves in the reading room, arranged by date within electoral divisions / constituencies. All of the places I have looked up at Shropshire Archives Newport (1950-70), Oakengates (1945-50), Tibberton (1921-73), Great Bolas (1954-73), Ercall Magna (1921-34) fell within the Wrekin Division / Constituency volumes. It can take quite a while to find even the pages for the parish you are seeking, but at least if it's a small one, once you have found the pages finding the people you're after is fairly easy. (We really need an app into which a surname can by entered, then the phone's camera can be used to scan printed pages and highlight the name on screen showing where it appears on the page! OCR on-the-go, as it were. For all I know, it already exists!)
My practice has been to look for people in the electoral registers while waiting for the next batch of documents I've ordered to be produced!
Good luck with your search.
Steve
Thanks Steve - excellent tips,
Mike
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Hi Mike
Shropshire Archives certainly has electoral rolls, they are kept in the reading room so you will need to obtain a reader's ticket to go in and view them if you haven't already got one.
My use of this particular source has been relatively limited, but I have to say I haven't find the electoral rolls easy to use. You have to know (or at least have a fair idea) of the addresses of the people you are looking for and even then it can take a while to track down the entry. Quickest results tend to be when the people you're seeking lived in a small village!
Despite the difficulties I have tracked down a number of entries for my Atcherley kin in electoral rolls at Shropshire Archives and also at Staffordshire Record Office. My searches have been in registers covering the post-1911 census period, in part because I have wanted to follow people's movements further into the 20th century, but also because during this period many more people were entitled to vote and so were included in the electoral rolls.
The absent voters lists produced listing voters who were away from home on military service are also very useful, giving details of which service and unit / ship plus service number.
I believe that Find My Past is digitising and indexing the British Library's collection of historic electoral rolls but quite when these will appear online (and what Shropshire coverage there will be) I don't know. They have been in the pipeline for quite some time (as were the recently released India Office records, also from the British Library). Finding people in indexed electoral rolls is of course much easier (so long as the OCR is of reasonable quality) and I have found those at Ancestry (e.g. for Birmingham) really useful.
Steve