Wales Biography

A biography is a brief history of a person’s life. In a biography you may find the person’s birth, marriage, or death information, the names of family members, or highlights of a person’s life. Use the information carefully since there may be inaccuracies.

Thousands of biographies have been gathered and published in collections, sometimes called biographical encyclopaedias or dictionaries. These collections usually include only biographies of prominent or well-known British subjects. Prominent residents of Wales may also be listed in English sources. Other works contain biographies of specific groups, such as painters, ministers, architects, and so forth. Important biographical sources include:


 * Dictionary of Welsh Biography Down to 1940. London, England: The Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1959. (Family History Library .)
 * Roberts, T. R. Eminent Welshmen: A Short Biographical Dictionary of Welshmen. 2 vols. Cardiff and Merthyr Tydfil, Wales: Educational Publishing Co., 1908. (Family History Library .)

Index to British and Irish Biographies

 * Manchester: Chadwyck-Healey, 1990. (Family History Library .) Indexes printed biographies published between 1840 and 1940. Biographies relating to the index are also in the Family History Library collection, found in the Author/Title Search of the microfiche version of the FamilySearch Catalog under British and Irish Biographies.

British Biographical Archive and Index

 * Glasgow University, Humanities Reference Systems Unit, ed. British Biographical Index. London, England: K. G. Saur, 1990. (Family History Library .) This is a surname index to the more than 1200 microfiche which comprise the British Biographical Archive. The British Biographical Archive indexes 324 biographical works published between 1601 and 1929. Biographies referenced in this index may also be in the Family History Library’s collection. The British Biographical Archive can be found in the Author/Title Search of the microfiche version of the FamilySearch Catalog under British Biographical Archive.

Other sources are listed in the Place Search of the FamilySearch Catalog under:










 * Wales

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