Family History Research in the British Jesuit Archives: Insights from a Case Study
- Rebecca Somerset
- 4 days ago
- 8 min read
Usually when we get an enquiry of a genealogical nature related to Jesuits of the British Province we provide a basic outline: i.e. date born, date entered the Society of Jesus, date ordained, date of death as well as offering a scan of the obituary. This rather limited response is due to time constraints.
Whilst preparing a private exhibition for the Society of Genealogists, held in July 2025, I began to realise there are many other rich sources that could contain information of interest to family members. Inspired by the photograph of the five Whiteside brothers, which we had provided for marketing of the visit, I decided to consider what resources in the archives would be useful to trace these biological brothers prior to as well as during their time as Jesuits up to and beyond their deaths.
Louis, Denis, Bernard, Austin and Philip Whiteside all entered the Society of Jesus at the turn of the 20th century. A previous blog post provides some background information about them. This blog post will explore the discoveries I made about what the rich sources held in the collection for family historians.
School Records
Many Jesuits attended Jesuit schools prior to entering the Society and in some instances, we hold school records or school magazines which might contain information about that individual and could enhance the picture being built up about that person.
As all the Whiteside brothers in question attended Jesuit schools, we are in the fortunate position to also have records for them pre-entry to the Society of Jesus. Louis, the eldest, was alone in attending Stonyhurst College whilst the remaining four brothers were educated at the Jesuit Mount St Mary’s College. The archives contained a printed ‘List of boys who have entered Mount St Mary’s College, Chesterfield, 1842-1926’ (Ref: MR/4) and this included a list of the four Whiteside brothers along with dates of entry to the College.
Among the few personal papers (I will return to the subject of personal papers below) that have survived for the Whitesides is a photograph album (Ref: SJ/209) created by Bernard which includes photographs of the boys’ time at Mount St Mary’s. Their obituaries speak of the boys’ sporting prowess particularly in connection with football, so it was lovely to be able to display images of Bernard with the football group in 1898.
The collection of school magazines, which is currently incomplete, did not contain any issues relevant to the Whiteside brothers, as far as could be readily determined. Further research would be required to confirm this conclusively. As discussed later, the digitisation of such resources would greatly facilitate research into these records for individual subjects.
On entering the Jesuits
Jesuits completed a ‘Little Life’ when they entered the noviciate of the Society of Jesus outlining their family situation (especially stating if any future assistance may be required by family members) as well as their education and things like their hopes with regards to missionary work. The date range for which we hold Little Lives is 1877-1898 and 1904-1932 so unfortunately not all of these records have survived. These are handwritten by each individual Jesuit and so are a wonderful opportunity to see that person’s handwriting.
I chose to display the Little Life for Philip Whiteside, the youngest and last brother to enter the Jesuits, as he mentions his brothers having entered as well as stating the situation with regards to the rest of his siblings.
During the life as a Jesuit
Jesuits kept good administrative records of their members. One example of this is the Province Register, which includes an entry for every Jesuit, which was sporadically updated to reflect the movement of the individual. This contains a variety of penmanship reflecting the changing person responsible for the upkeep though never named and appears not to have been kept up to date in later entries. Four volumes of Province Register exist in the archives. There is an index (Ref: 14/2/8) for these and they cover those entering the Jesuits from 1803 until 1914. I displayed the Province Register entry for Louis Whiteside, the eldest and first brother to enter.
It seems that the bound Registers were replaced by individual sheets documenting the movement of Jesuits in the early 20th century. These sheets were then migrated from one ledger to another entitled ‘Liber Defunctorum’ once the individual had died. On display was the sheet for Philip Whiteside SJ and the reverse of Louis Whiteside’s entry.
In addition, on an annual basis every Province of the Society of Jesus publishes a Catalogue listing all its houses, residences, and colleges. These lists indicate which Jesuits are assigned to each location and the roles they hold within their respective communities. If you would like to learn more about the potential research possibilities of the annual catalogues a previous blog post discusses this resource.
Then there are various internal publications, which may shed light on the life of an individual Jesuit. Perhaps the most obvious are Letters and Notice and Chaplains’ Weekly. The later is fully digitised and so can be easily searched for an individual’s name. Letters and Notices are gradually being digitised and OCR’ed. As part of the exhibition preparation I carried out a search of the Whiteside brothers name in the completed ones and had a handful of results in each volume. These were mostly in the ‘Changes and appointments’ and ‘Province News’ sections, but without the ability to quickly do a digital search it would not have been possible to discover these so easily. Although movements from a community to another can be traced through other sources, this mention in Letters and Notices can potentially narrow it down from a general year to a more precise date within that year. There is also the possibility to gain a bit more insight, such as an entry I discovered about Bernard Whiteside giving a mission to the best attended crowd (highlighted extract), information that would not be noted elsewhere. This demonstrates the need for digitisation and making these digital versions of publications available to researchers.
Another example this time from Chaplain’s Weekly, provided some insight into the experience of Austin Whiteside whilst a chaplain during the First World War. He served as a chaplain in both France and Italy from 1916-1919. His brothers Denis and Bernard also served as chaplains during the war from 1916 and 1917 respectively until 1919. Another extract (Chaplains’ Weekly No 7, 21 July 1918) provided the addresses for all three Whitesides who serves as chaplains.
In the case of the Whiteside brothers, various missionary magazines provided useful sources as well. Louis and Denis Whiteside served in the Guyana mission (1915-1933 and 1921-1933, 1936-1942 respectively) as did their nephew Leo (1939-1969, more on him below) with both Louis and Leo serving some time in Barbados as well. For example British Guiana Journal No 7, 1929 includes a photograph of the mission staff in 1930 which includes Louis and Denis. Austin and Bernard Whiteside spent time in South Africa on mission and the St Aidan’s Record 1948 marked Bernard’s retirement.
In other cases, parish or school magazines might provide information on other Jesuits who served in these places during their life’s work. Written contributions by a Jesuit may also be of interest to understand their thoughts and can be found in both Jesuit and external publications and printed sources such as Edmund Sutcliffe SJ’s Bibliography of English Province SJ 1773-1953 could assist in locating such.
At the time of the exhibition, the index work that volunteers have been doing for us in relation to the Blandyke Papers and Juvenilia had not yet sufficiently progressed for me to be able to easily determine whether we had any early written contributions from any of the Whitesides. The following week, our volunteer Lauren completed another box of the Blandyke Paper volumes and within one of the last issues she listed there was an article by Louis Whiteside! As the index work progresses this will be another source to find early writings by individual Jesuits. This highlights that the more extensively materials are catalogued or otherwise documented, the easier it becomes to identify connections between them. Furthermore, as these resources are made searchable through digitisation projects, they can be more readily utilised for research on individuals, particularly where series lack comprehensive indexes.
On death as a Jesuit
As already stated in the introduction, the inhouse journal, Letters and Notices, contains obituaries for Jesuits of the Province on their death and are a go to source for learning more about an individual Jesuit. On display was the obituary for Bernard Whiteside in which he attributes his and his brother’s vocation to their father.
The usual process for the personal papers of a Jesuit after their death is for this to be transferred to the Province following appraisal by the Superior often in consultation with the archives. Historically the transfer or selection process did not always result in much personal material surviving in the archives and the quantity varies from individual to individual. The British Jesuit Archives adheres to a 40-year post death closure rule on papers, but enquiries can be made to learn more about what papers may exist. Personal papers can be valuable for family history research, as they may include surviving materials such as family trees, photographs, and correspondence, and are therefore useful not only for researching the individual concerned but also for understanding wider family connections.
Finally, photographs will undoubtedly be an attraction. The photographs of individual Jesuits have been catalogued and can be searched online here (please note that only those who have died more than 40 years ago are discoverable, e.g. as of 2026 those who died pre 1986).
Photographs with labels can then be used to identify individuals in photographs without. For example, I had been able to determine Bernard and Philip in the family photograph due to existing individual photographs of them. As the youngest of the glass wearing member of the family, I had already determined that Austin was standing between Louis and Denis. With the help of the Guyana magazine find mentioned above, I was then able to confirm that Louis was sat in middle and Denis on far right. This was then useful in identifying individual brothers in Bernard’s photograph album. However, because they were brothers close in age, it was initially difficult to distinguish between them, and it was only through the addition of years and class names that this became possible.
As group photographs are digitised, it will be important to enhance metadata so as to identify, as far as possible, all Jesuits depicted, particularly in cases where individual portraits do not survive and individuals are represented only within group images.
Family connections
We are also considering how to document the blood relationship between Jesuits in a more obvious way in our cataloguing system. It was an enquiry, received around the time I was preparing for the above exhibition, that alerted us to the fact that the five Whiteside Jesuit brothers had a nephew who joined the Society. His mother had been a Whiteside, but his name would not have made the connection-Leo Buckley. We now have this on record. His obituary mentions a connection to the Whitesides; however, unless one knows to look for such links, more distant relationships—such as those between uncle and nephew or between cousins—may be less immediately apparent, despite their potential research value.
A guide for resources for researching family history in the British Jesuit Archives has been produced and can be found here.
If you have any questions about these resources or would like to make an appointment to consult such material, please get in contact.
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