Ancestors in Specific Locations:
Buckinghamshire, England: Useful Sources and Links for Buckinghamshire

The list of books here provides a bibliography for the information included on the Buckinghamshire pages. It also makes a great a place to start for doing your own research about the context of your ancestors’ lives. As of now, I haven’t included books that cover the how-to aspect of English genealogy. Books that mostly contain information about Western Europe in general are included in the Useful Source and Links for Western Europe page.

The websites section below provides links to further information, including how-to instructions for this area (and all of England). Be sure to try the Records section for help on how to get the most out of the records in this region.

Books:

Briggs, Asa. The Age of Improvement 1783-1867, second edition. London: Longman, 2000.
This history contains information about English history in general during the noted time period including information about voting, the Reform Act of 1832, and the crisis years of 1837-38.

Davis, Richard W. Political Change and Continuity 17760-1885: A Buckinghamshire Study. Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1972.
This book focuses on Buckinghamshire with information about the prominent industries and the politics there.

Evans, Eric J. The Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain 1783-1870, third edition. Harlow, England: Longman, 2001.
Some information about education and the numbers for the numbers of infants dying before age one come from this book. The claim that the years leading up to 1832 was the time that England was closest to revolution was made by Evans.

Humphries, Jane. “Standard of Living, Quality of Life.” In A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Britian. Chris Williams, editor. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2001.
Among other things, this book tells about the adult literacy rate and average life expectancy.

Hunt, Julian. Buckingham: A Pictorial History. Chichester, West Sussex, England: Phillimore & Co. Ltd. in association with Buckinghamshire County Library, 1994.
This book, mostly composed of old photographs, also contains information about lace making and the falling population of Buckingham.

Lipscomb, George. The History and Antiquities of the County of Buckingham. London: J. & W. Robins, 1841.
This book contains population numbers for each town in Buckingham.

Murphy, Derrick, Richard Staton, Patrick Walsh-Atkins, and Neil Whiskend. Britian 1815-1918. London: Collins Educational, 1998.
The numbers on voting, total numbers in different religions in the 1851 census, and other general information on English history can be found here. It has an easy to understand analysis of the Reform Act of 1832 and the events leading up to it.

Royle, Edward. Modern Britain: A Society History 1750-1997, second edition. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.
Chapter six of this book describes the religious climate of England, their history of dissent, and the origins of various dissenting groups. This book also describes rural poverty, standards of living, education, diet, and the number of people belonging to different classes.

Sheahan, James Joseph. History and Topography of Buckinghamshire. London: Longman, 1861.
This book provides detailed descriptions of the buildings and land in each parish in the county.

Vernon, Muriel T. and Desmond C. Bonner. Buckingham: A History of a Country Market Town, third edition. Milton Keynes, England: Grillford Ltd., 1984.
This detailed history describes the town church and other things.

Websites:

Genuki Website: www.genuki.org.uk

The Genuki website is an incredible helpful resource jam-packed with resources for anyone looking for their family from the United Kingdom or Ireland. Try this page: http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/ to access a list of the counties in England for specific information about a particular county. The Buckinghamshire page is located at http://met.open.ac.uk/genuki/big/eng/BKM/. From here, you can access an extensive amount of further information. The Towns and Parishes section has links to each town in the country, including a brief description and history, information about records, and even usually a link to a photo. Within the Genuki website, look at: http://met.open.ac.uk/genuki/big/eng/BKM/ for numbers on how many people in the various towns attended certain churches.

http://www.familyhistoryonline.net/ - Family History Online is a pay-per-view source run through the Federation of Family History Societies. Here, for a small fee, you can search numerous records from Buckinghamshire and other places throughout England such as census and burial records among others.

http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/ - The Free BMD site seeks to make records available, as it names implies, for free. It is a constantly growing database whose aim is to eventually transcribe all of the civil registration records (begun in 1837) of births, marriages, and deaths. Although not complete yet, it contains a huge number of records which you can search quickly and easily. On their main page, you can also find links to newer projects which seek to make census and parish records also available online and free of charge.

http://www.bucksfhs.com/ - This link takes you to the Buckinghamshire Family History Society. Among other useful things, they have some databases they will search for you for a small fee. (I used their marriage index to successfully locate a family I had spent dozens of hours looking for.)

http://www.bucksgs.org.uk/ - The other society of this locality, Buckinghamshire Genealogical Society is located here.