The region's passion for family history has received a huge boost with the arrival of local Victorian documents online which previously would have needed a journey to London to research.
Dot com archive 1837online.com has made available the 1861 census for Yorkshire on its family history website – providing a detailed picture of what life was like for people living in the region in the mid 19th century.
The website – which is publishing 20 million 1861 census documents from all over the country – attracted 1.2m hits on the day it was launched three years ago, when its records only went back to 1901.
Not only can you now search online for Victorian relatives who lived in places such as Hull, York, Whitby, Keighley and Huddersfield, you can also search by address and find out who lived in your house in 1861.
The census provides some fascinating postscripts to the stories of some of Yorkshire's most famous families, including Patrick Bronte, father of literary sisters Anne, Charlotte and Emily, of Haworth, Yorkshire.
By the time the census was taken he had outlived all of his children and his wife, but Arthur Nicholls, who married Charlotte Bronte in 1854, stayed with his father-in-law long after she had died.
There are also insights into the past of Yorkshire's stately homes such as Beningbrough Hall and Gardens, York's "country house and garden", built in 1716.
We are now welcomed to the house by the National Trust. But at the time of the census, the mansion was occupied by a brother and sister, Payan and Lydia Dawnay, and 12 servants.
The number of famous namesakes will also raise a smile. Fourteen Ted Hughes lived in Yorkshire in 1861 and two Richard Turpins. The original Dick was a Southerner who went into hiding in East Yorkshire but was hanged at Tyburn on York's Knavesmire in 1739.
The fact the industrial revolution was in full swing in textiles, quarrying and mining is underlined by the number of people listing their occupations as cotton dyer, labourer at iron works, or coalminer.
The 1837online.com webmasters are confident that the launch of the 1861 census online will draw significant interest from the growing number of family and house historians who have made genealogy the third most popular hobby on the net.
Managing Director Colin Miller said: "By making the 1861 census for Yorkshire available, people are able to research their family history and local area in more detail than ever before.
"This move opens up the records to many more people and will undoubtedly add fuel to our existing appetite for all things family history." By logging on people can discover where their ancestors lived; who with; their ages, occupations, and even disabilities, he added.
The launch today in Yorkshire is part of the website's roll-out of the entire 1861 census for England and Wales, totalling more than 20 million records.
Not only will visitors be able to view the original 1861 census documents as they were written, but transcriptions of the data for every household, vessel or institution that was enumerated on the night of the census, making the records much easier to decipher and search.
Family historians would previously have needed to visit the Family Records Centre in London to manually search through this data. Mr Miller added: "The ability to locate different sets of records in one place on the internet is something that our customers will welcome.
"If you have so far traced your ancestors using birth, marriage and death records and drawn up a list of key dates and individuals, the next stop should be to search the census returns as this is the information that will really help bring your ancestors to life."
mark.branagan@ypn.co.uk