Dorset Ancestors Online
Dorset History Centre is working in partnership with the genealogy website Ancestry to make tens of thousands of images of original documents available online, so they can be accessed by family historians all over the world.
The Dorset Content Online project is a partnership between the Dorset History Centre and Ancestry. Records held at the History Centre have been digitised and made available via the Ancestry website.
You can either access these records through the
Ancestry website (opens in a new window) 
from home on a pay-per-view or subscription basis, or for free using our public computers at the History Centre.
Records currently available
- Parish registers: Millions of individual baptisms, marriages and burials (1538-2001)
- Wills and probate: 27,000 wills, administrations and probate inventories proved in church courts (1565-1858)
- Electoral registers (1839-1922)
- Parish Poor Law records (1511-1900)
- Bastardy records (1821-1869)
- Shipping records - crew lists (1863-1913)
Records due for launch
Other records due for launch at a later date are:
- Jury lists (1719-1922)
- Alehouse licensing records (1750-1828)
- Penal transportation records (1730-1782)
- Militia lists (1757-1799)
- Prison admission and discharge registers (1782-1962)
- Tithe apportionments and maps (1835-1850)
- Dorset Content Online - October 2011 update
Parish registers now online back to 1538, along with poor law records.
- Dorset Content Online - June 2011 update
The first set of Dorset records have now gone live on Ancestry.
- Dorset Content Online - April 2011 update
First records due to go live at end of May
- Dorset Content Online - March 2011 update
Digitisation work progressing well.
