Masters’ Certificates now available on Ancestry

12 Sep 2012

Readers of the blog may be interested to learn that a project to digitise the Museum’s collection of masters’ certificates has been completed. The certificates are now available to search and view via the genealogical website ancestry.co.uk. The Ancestry website also features a guest blog from our very own Mike Bevan! The masters’ certificates are a fantastic resource for researchers interested in somebody who served in the merchant navy as a master or mate between 1845 and 1927. You can find out more about them by reading our research guide, available here. Whilst sites such as Ancestry allow access to manuscripts from anywhere in the world, this particular archivist still thinks there is a certain pleasure to be had from viewing the original document. In addition to free access to Ancestry from our reading room computers, the Caird Library remains the only place where researchers can get their hands on the real thing! Richard Assistant Archivist