On Monday we took a visit to the Jersey Archive which is the islands national repository holding archival material from public institutions as well as private businesses. The Jersey archive is used for information on multiple information sources for example, people often go to the Archive to find out about :

Family history is one of the most popular reasons people visit and go into the archive. The archive allows people to find and research into previous family members that they might not have met. It allows the public to go on a discovery through their past and find out about ancestors not only that but about their lives, their personalities and values. There is an extensive collection of books, family trees, letters to and from loved ones, indexes of baptism, marriages and deaths but also valuable ornaments and pictures that are all carefully and delicately looked after.

Jersey Heritage is delighted that the Channel Island history is collected and kept safely at the Jersey Archive. The Jersey archives have people working there with experience of over 30 years who are more than willing to help members of the public re-discover grey areas in their backgrounds. For people that may have not been living here for long it is a good place to start when trying to begin a family tree. The archive also holds a collection of occupation registration cards aswell. These cards are valuable as they contain invaluable information on your ancestors. The entire civilisation of Jersey had to have one of those cards unless they were foreign which meant they would be given another form of registration card called an Alien card which was often blue. The archive holds over 31,000 registration cards of people that lived on the island during the time Jersey had been occupied. Each card contained information like the persons address, name, date and place of birth, maiden name and their current occupation. The card also has a passport sized photo on it in black and white. The archive also has military records, criminal records, education records which tend to be the next most popular pieces of information people want to find out. Records such as the first world war roll of honour and rolls of service can give people more information into what they might be looking for. Some peoples anscetors might have appeared in court, sent to prison or even deported from the island, finding out details of their offences like that can sometimes piece someones knowledge of a certain individual. The archive also holds many police records, court documents and prison registers that can be used to find out if any of our ancestors are criminals. The online catalogue of the Jersey Heritage page holds over 200,000 document that are held as hard copies at the Jersey archives.

Below is an example of a registration card:

I selected her name at random due to me not having family over in Jersey during the time it was occupied. This is because I was born in Madeira so most of my family if not all of my family lived there apart from the odd one or two that moved to the UK. However, when I was at the archive I did search for people that had my surname and middle name, although not being successful with my second name Da silva I did find a couple of Abreu’s. I did confirm with my mum later on that evening that we didn’t have any family In Jersey during the occupation and during the war but not soon after it ended my family members began to move across.