Archives and local studies

Need help?

Are you interested in researching your family tree or the history of your house? Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre (MALSC) can help you.

Staff at the Studies Centre are always happy to help you but if you are just getting started on building your family tree or need advice on how to progress further then additional help is available. Volunteer members of the Medway branch of the Kent Family History Society (www.kfhsocietymedway.ik.com) are on hand at the Studies Centre every Tuesday and Thursday morning from 9.30am to 12noon. Come along and they will be pleased to offer you advice and support. They also run occasional courses on researching your family history. Please ask MALSC staff for the dates of future courses.

MALSC resources

The following resources of particular interest to family historians are available at MALSC:

• Medway Ancestors - digitised parish registers of Medway and north-west Kent;
• Census Name Index – a card index of transcriptions of the 1841–1891 censuses of the Medway area;
• free access to online family history resources, including 1841–1901 censuses and birth, marriage and death registrations on AncestryLibrary.com. The latter is also now available at all branches of Medway Libraries.
• General Register Office (GRO) Births, Marriages and Deaths Indexes 1837-1960 on microfiche;
• street and trade directories;
• electoral registers;
• local newspapers and an online searchable index to references on the Medway Index to Local Newspapers (MILN) database;
• family history magazines;
• reference books on genealogy;
• photograph collections including MedwayImages online.

Visiting MALSC

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