Boyd's Inhabitants of London & Boyds Family Units
The wide geographic range and period covered by Boyd's Inhabitants of London and Family Units make these records a "must search" for all family historians, regardless of where you think your ancestors came from.

About Boyd's Inhabitants of London
In Percival Boyd's day Boyd’s Inhabitants of London was known as his Citizens of London and it appears as such in older reference works. Anthony Camp, former Director of the Society of Genealogists, urged the change of name to Inhabitants of London since not all of the people indexed were citizens in the strict sense of being Freemen of the City. All are, however, residents of London even if not born there.

The appearance of the first index volume to the Inhabitants of London was announced in the Genealogists' Magazine in March 1939 (vol. 8, p 280); this was followed by a further 237 volumes. In March 1944 an article entitled London citizens by John Beach Whitmore appeared, which discussed Boyd’s collection in detail. The collection includes 60,000 handwritten sheets, each dealing with a single family. On average, an Inhabitants of London sheet contains the names of 6-7 people.

About Boyd's Family Units
Percival Boyd continued his work on Boyd's Inhabitants of London with a further, identically formatted set of records covering families from all of the British Isles and abroad. This set of records, Boyd's Family Units, contains just over 10,000 hand-written sheets, each dealing with a single family. His introduction to the first (of 34) volumes states that that "this ... volume consists almost entirely of, (1) the families of members of the Drapers Company of London, (2) Family Bibles from Vol.XII of Crisps Fragmenta Genealogica. He felt that "It should be possible to amplify many of these sheets as the years go by." Sadly, perhaps, this did not happen, but what Percival Boyd and his collaborators have left is a further exceptionally rich source for the family historian. The subsequent volumes used a very wide variety of sources, though these are only occasionally mentioned on the sheets, and then usually only on the sheets completed by Boyd himself - quite a large proportion of the Family Units are in hands other than Boyd's.

On average, a Family Units sheet contains the names of over 12 people though like the Inhabitants of London sheets, this number varies greatly. The index to the Family Units (which is combined with that for the Inhabitants of London) contains the names of over 137,000 people, and covers the period 16th to early 20th centuries.

In contrast to the Inhabitants of London, the geographic coverage of the Family Units is very wide: while the majority of families are from within England, there are many from Scotland, the USA, Ireland, Australia, Canada, South Africa and elsewhere. The families overseas generally have strong links to places in England. There are often large sequences of records from specific counties; Yorkshire seems to have a particularly large number of records.

A large proportion - around a third - of the families in Boyd's Family Units are London-based. For this reason, coupled with the identical structure of the Family Units and the Inhabitants of London sheets, we decided to combine the index to the Family Units with that for the Inhabitants of London. The combined index contains the names of well over half a million people.

The Family Sheets
The family sheets themselves are self explanatory (click here to see Example Family Sheet).

The box (the “Subject Box”) at the top right of the sheet gives surname, Christian name, marriage date (or an estimate: one year before the baptism of the first known child). Occasionally the date section is divided in two vertically with a date in the right hand half and this is usually the date of his will.

There are spaces provided in the sheet for: At the foot of the page, there are often references (usually abbreviated) to the sources of information from which the family has been reconstructed.

Abbreviations used in Boyd’s Inhabitants of London & Boyd's Family Units

The Example Family Sheet shows the type of information which can appear. Many sheets contain considerably less information, but some contain much more. The average number of names per sheet is 6-7, but some sheets contain dozens of names. The online index contains nearly half a million names.

Many sheets have additional notes on the facing page (back of the previous sheet). When you retrieve the image of the Family Sheet after a search on British Origins, there will be a button shown if there are such notes, so that you can view them if they are on the previous images. (Some images contain the both the Family Sheet and the verso of the previous page.)

Differences in surnames on the Family Sheets
As in his Marriage Index, Boyd had a somewhat cavalier approach to surnames. He tended to use a “standardised” version of the surname in the Subject Box, but thankfully the version in the first line of the sheet appears to have been the one used by the man. Since these two surnames often differ (eg Brinkly/Brinklow, Eston/Elston, Slow/Slowghe) the British Origins index to Boyd’s Inhabitants of London & Boyd's Family Units always includes the surname from the Subject Box and from the first line.

Period covered by Boyd’s Inhabitants of London & Family Units
The tables below show the number of people included in Boyd's Inhabitants of London & in Boyd's Family Units by century. The high proportion of 17th century names in Boyd's London Inhabitants makes this source of particular interest to North American-based researchers with pioneer ancestry. The entries in Boyd's Family Units are much more evenly spread in time, with a similar coverage for the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

Boyd’s Inhabitants of London

Period Percentage of names
1209-1299 0.01%
1300-1399 0.32%
1400-1499 1.52%
1500-1599 21.12%
1600-1699 60.72%
1700-1799 14.49%
1800-1899 1.78%
1900-1948 0.04%
Total 100.00%


Boyd's Family Units

Period Percentage of names
1216-1299 0.16%
1300-1399 0.29%
1400-1499 0.87%
1500-1599 14.25%
1600-1699 27.60%
1700-1799 27.37%
1800-1899 26.67%
1900-1934 2.80%
Total 100.00%



See also:  Help on Searching - Boyd’s Inhabitants of London & Boyd's Family Units
  Boyd’s Inhabitants of London - Example Family Sheet
  Boyd’s Inhabitants of London - Freemen of London and London Livery Companies
  Boyd’s Inhabitants of London - Whitmore’s Article
  Boyd’s Inhabitants of London - Sources of Information
  Boyd’s Inhabitants of London - Abbreviations Used
  Logged in users search the collection

Presented in association with the Society of Genealogists www.sog.org.uk