Partnerships

The Family History Federation promotes interest in researching family history and encourages membership of member societies.

We are a member of the Federation and have both used its services and contributed to the large scale projects which it has promoted.

Greater Manchester Police, Museum not only collects and preserves archive material and objects relating to the history of policing in the Greater Manchester area, but acts as an important resource for community engagement, where visitors can talk to staff and volunteers about policing.

Working from a card index, we created a computerised index of former Manchester Police officers from the founding of the force up to 2000.

Henshaws is one of the oldest charities in the UK dating from the opening of a 'School for the Indigent Blind' in 1837. Today Henshaws supports individuals, families and their carers who are living with sight loss as well as a range of other disabilities.

No individual records survive of the many Henshaws inmates, but prior to World War 2 their names and basic details were published in the charity's annual reports. To provide such information as was available on both the inmates and staff, we scanned the annual reports from 1840 onwards and produced an index of names which appear in the reports 1840 to 1940, including also those named as donors or as leaving bequests to Henshaws in their wills.

Manchester Crematorium was opened in 1892, the second crematorium to open in the United Kingdom. It remains a private company to the present day. The company was badly affected by the 1940 'blitz' in which its offices in central Manchester were badly damaged, with the loss of all of its records, including its registers.

With the support of the company, a team of volunteers recorded the memorials at the crematorium. Further projects, drawing on newspaper obituaries and other sources have recovered somewhat over 60% of the lost register entries. The resulting records assist both society members and those who enquire directly to the crematorium about ancestors believed to have been cremated there.

The Manchester Jewish Museum’s collection is made up of objects, documents, photographs and oral histories charting the many stories and experiences of Manchester Jewish life.

We have indexed birth and marriage registers relating to the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue.

The National Cooperative Archive looks after the historical records of the cooperative movement. Among these records are the business registers of James Broome, funeral directors of Ardwick, whom the cooperative movement had taken over. Such registers are unusual survivors, most either having been lost or remaining in private hands.

By agreement with the National Cooperative Archive we scanned and indexed the registers so that researchers with ancestors whose funerals were undertaken by the company could learn something about the funeral, where it took place and how much it cost.

Salford City Archives hold the administrative records for the City of Salford.

In an unusual project, we have created an index of early motor vehicles and their owners from the records of motor vehicle registrations held by the Archives, an index of value to family historians and motor enthusiasts alike.

The Salford Diocesan Archive collection includes papers, manuscripts, ledgers, correspondence, printed material, photographs and memorabilia preserved from the working documents of the Diocese.

In a long-running project, which has been greatly assisted by the Diocesan Archivist, we have transcribed baptism, and some marriage and burial registers for numerous Catholic churches in the Diocese of Salford.

Founded in 1823 as a school for deaf and dumb children, Seashell Trust is dedicated to providing a creative, happy and secure environment for children and young people with complex and severe learning disabilities which include little or no language abilities.

One of our current projects is to scan and index the pupil admission records for the Royal Manchester School for the deaf and Dumb, the forerunner of today's charity. The records will be of assistance both to family historians whose ancestors passed through the school and to researchers into the causes of deafness.

The National Archives is home to millions of historical documents, which were created and collected by UK central government departments and major courts of law.

In one of the Society's largest and longest-running projects, which extended over ten years, volunteers transcribed the details from the water-damaged portions of the 1851 census returns for Manchester. The project made access possible to the records of some 180,000 Mancunians which were otherwise unavailable.