Stuart A. Raymond, B.A.(Keele) Dip.Lib. (Wales) MA (Adelaide) Cert. Th. (Exeter) studied history and politics at Keele University before training as a librarian in Aberystwyth. He began his career as librarian of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society in 1975, and spent the 1980s working in Australian academic libraries. Whilst he was working at what was then the YAS, he began researching the probate records of a Cornish parish. In Australia, this became an MA thesis at the University of Adelaide.
In 1990, he returned to England, and has been writing bibliographies, handbooks and manuals for family historians ever since. These included his series of county bibliographies, which aimed to identify every printed source likely to be of interest to genealogists. He has also written a series of web directories, and used up almost 100 ISBNs.
More recent titles include, amongst many others, Introducing Family History (2nd ed., Family History Federation, 2020), and Tracing your Poor Ancestors (Pen & Sword, 2020). His My Ancestor Was an Apprentice (Society of Genealogists, 2010) is of particular relevance to the Pharos course on Apprenticeship records. Students taking his course on seventeenth century records may find several of his titles useful: Tracing Your Ancestors' Parish Records: A Guide for Family and Local Historians (Pen & Sword, 2015); My Ancestor Was a Gentleman (Society of Genealogists, 2012), The Wills of Our Ancestors (Pen & Sword, 2012), amongst others. He has recently turned his attention to local history; many of the sources discussed in his seventeenth century course have been used in his Stourton before Stourhead: a history of the parish 1550-1750. (Hobnob Press, 2019).
Stuart has a particular interest in studying the sources of family and local history: their origins, contents, and uses. His Researching Local History: Your Guide to the Sources (Pen & Sword, 2022) provides an overall view of sources of interest to local historians (most of which are also of interest to family historians). Currently, he is researching the local history of Avebury without the Stones, 1550-1800, and is preparing an edition of the family papers of the lords of the manor of Avebury for the Wiltshire Record Society.
Stuart now lives in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, where he serves as a member of the Canalside Benefice Parish Church Council, and as book reviews editor for the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine.
