Newsletter
- 30 August 2013
Free
migration records ENDS MONDAY
Soldiers'
wills and last letters home
Good news:
findmypast discount offer extended
Disappearing
inventor - the mystery deepens
Did your
ancestor help to found the Football Association?
Lost
Dambusters faces revealed
Britain
from the air: 1919-1953 aerial photos
Have you
downloaded Family Tree Analyzer?
The LostCousins newsletter is
usually published fortnightly. To access the previous newsletter (dated 22
August 2013) click here, for an index to articles
from 2009-10 click here, for
a list of articles from 2011 click here and for a
list of articles from 2012-13 click here.
Whenever possible links are included
to the websites or articles mentioned in the newsletter (they are highlighted
in blue or purple
and underlined, so you can't miss
them).For your convenience, when you click on a link a new browser window or
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nothing seems to happen then you need to enable pop-ups in your browser or
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To go to the main LostCousins
website click the logo at the top of this newsletter. If you're not already a
member, do join - it's FREE, and you'll get an email to alert you whenever
there's a new edition of this newsletter available!
Ten years ago I imagined a world in
which family historians who shared the same ancestors would be able to connect
up without publishing their trees
online for all to see.
It didn't take long to work out that
this could only be achieved if there was a system for matching researchers
automatically, so that neither needed to see the other's data - however the
only automated matching systems in existence were highly inaccurate, because
the data they depended on wasn't standardised. Two cousins could easily provide
very different information for the same relative simply because they used
different sources.
It took me several months of
head-scratching and experimentation, but eventually I realised that there was a
simple but highly effective solution - one that had been staring me in the
face. The England & Wales 1881 census was available free online, which
meant it was a source that anyone with an Internet connection could access -
cousins would enter precisely the same data because they'd be using exactly the
same source. And so, after many more months - spent designing, developing, and
testing - LostCousins finally went live in May 2004.
Since then over 27,000 people have been
matched with their living relatives, and about 10,000 of the relatives hadn't
previously been in contact; about one-third of the 'lost cousins' live on
different continents, which I find particularly amazing.
Out of all those matches just 23 have
been notified to me as incorrect or possibly incorrect - and there wasn't a
single instance of the matching system failing (in each case the erroneous
match was the result of one of the members involved inadvertently identifying
the wrong person on the census). That's as near to 100% accuracy as anyone could
possibly hope for.
There
is no other matching system that comes close, nor is there another website that
has a more experienced membership (the average LostCousins member has been
researching their family tree longer than I have).
I often get emails from people who've
just discovered the LostCousins site suggesting that I change it so it works in
exactly the same way as all the other sites they're familiar with.
Doh! If LostCousins did work in the same way as other
sites then its unique combination of advantages - accuracy, automation, privacy
and confidentiality - would be lost. It's a bit like suggesting to Vincent van
Gogh that he should paint like everyone else - and yes, these 'suggestions' do
sometimes make me feel like cutting off my ear!
The principle behind LostCousins may be
unique but it isn't hard to understand. Each member provides a 'slice' of data
from their tree which includes as many as possible of the relatives who were
alive in 1881, and the matching system compares the data each member provides
in order to identify the members who are related.
That's how it works - but why does it
work? Think for a moment about your own tree - whichever line you look at it,
there must have been someone on that
line who was alive in 1881, otherwise you wouldn't
even have been born. Naturally, the same applies to everyone else - we're all
descended from people who were around in 1881 and who would (if they were
living in Britain or Canada at the time, or in the US
in 1880) have been recorded on the census.
Of course, in real life things aren't
quite as simple as that - not every country has a surviving census from 1881
and people migrated - so there are some censuses from other years in the dropdown
list on the Add an Ancestor form.
However it's the 1881 Census that produces over 90% of all the matches that are
made between LostCousins members, no matter where in the world they live, so it's
the one that you should focus on if you haven't yet completed your My Ancestors page.
Tip:
you can use the Family Tree Analyzer program - free
to all LostCousins members - to identify the relatives on your tree who were
alive in 1881. Family Tree Analyzer was written by a
LostCousins member, and over the past three months it has been continually
improved thanks to feedback from members of the LostCousins forum. Download the
program here (unfortunately it
only works on Windows PCs, not on Macs).
Free migration records
ENDS MONDAY
Until 2nd September you can search many
of Ancestry's migration records free of charge when you click here.
Tip:
you can see a full list of the datasets that are included if you use the Old
Search, but you can access the same records whichever search you normally use.
Soldiers' wills and last
letters home
The Probate Service is for the first
time making available the wills and last letters home of 280,000 soldiers who
died in the Great War, including my great uncle Herbert. There is a charge of
£6 to download a document, which is the same as the standard charge for a will.
However, whilst the search works well, I
couldn't complete a purchase - there seems to a problem with the payment
system. This may, of course, have been fixed by the time you read this. (Now fixed - I received the will I ordered on Monday morning.)
Interestingly the home page suggests that soldiers' wills
are available from 1860-1986, but my test searches didn't reveal any results prior
to 1914, and there were only a few after 1918 (in 1919, 1920, and 1921). It
seems likely, therefore, that there will be a wider range available in due
course.
Note:
there is an article
on the BBC website which refers to 230,000 soldiers, but the Ministry of
Justice press
release gives 280,000 as the total.
By the way, a couple of years ago a book
of soldiers' last letters home was published under the title If
You're Reading This.... which might be of interest to some of you,
although I haven't read it myself. It covers the period from the Napoleonic Wars
right up to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Good news: findmypast discount
offer extended
Let's face it - in August most of us
would prefer to be on the beach than stuck in front of our computer. At least,
that's the argument I used in order to persuade findmypast to extend the validity
of the Exclusive discount code that offers 10% of all new findmypast.co.uk
subscriptions (and which was due to expire on 31st August).
Until the end of SEPTEMBER you can save
10% on any new subscription to findmypast.co.uk when you click here
and use the code LCW10
But that's not all - you can also get a
free LostCousins subscription (worth up to £12.50) AND a much-coveted invitation
to join the new LostCousins forum before it opens officially (priceless - only
1% of members have been invited, so it really IS a privilege).
To make sure you qualify for the bonuses
follow these simple steps (and read the small print at the bottom, in case it
applies to you):
(1) Click here
to go the findmypast website (it will open in a new tab or browser window),
then either register or log-in. If you are already logged-in when you arrive at
the website (perhaps because you've been checking out the latest data releases
before subscribing) log-out, then start again by clicking the link at the
beginning of this paragraph.
If you aren't taken to the Subscribe page automatically, click Subscribe in the top right hand corner.
Note: if the Promotional Code box isn't
shown it's because you haven't logged in yet (there are two screens that look
very similar).
(2) Enter the exclusive offer code LCW10 in the Promotional Code box, and
click Apply to display the discounted offer prices:
(3) Choose the subscription that's best
for you, bearing in mind that 12 month subscriptions offer by far the best
value (because the second 6 months is virtually half price).
The World subscription includes Ireland, Australia & New
Zealand, and the USA plus a few records from other
countries (click on the country name to see precisely which records are
included).
If you're only interested in British
records (England, Scotland, and Wales) the Full subscription is by far the best
choice - the Foundation subscription only offers basic records and is for
absolute beginners (don't even consider it!). The wealth of additional datasets
you get with a Full subscription are well worth the small additional cost,
especially when you consider that a subscription to just one of them - the British
Newspaper collection - would cost £79.95 if purchased separately.
(4) Before entering your credit card
details make sure that the price shown is
the discounted price!
If at any stage during the process you
are logged out (this often happens to me while I'm looking for my credit card),
or if your credit card isn't accepted for any reason, please start again at
step (1) to ensure that you qualify for your free LostCousins subscription.
(5) When you receive your email receipt
from findmypast forward a copy to me so that I can verify your entitlement (you
won't find my email address on the website, but it is in the email I sent
telling you about this newsletter). Your free LostCousins subscription will run
for 6 or 12 months and can include your spouse or partner as well - just make
sure that the two accounts are linked together before you
write to me (all you need to do is enter the other person's membership number
on your My Details page). If you already have a LostCousins
subscription I'll extend it.
Small print: these offers cannot be
combined with any other offers or discounts or backdated; if you are a current
findmypast subscriber you will receive a 10% Loyalty Discount when your
subscription is renewed automatically, so you won't qualify for either offer.
However if you upgrade your findmypast subscription before the renewal date you
should qualify for a free LostCousins subscription (provided you follow the
instructions above). Free LostCousins subscriptions are funded by the
commission we receive from findmypast, and that's why it's important you follow
the instructions to the letter - if you have any questions ask me before you
complete your purchase, because it will be too late afterwards!
I've now finished reading Aprons and Silver Spoons by Mollie Moran, the biography of a between-the-wars domestic
servant which I briefly mentioned in my last newsletter - it was fascinating,
and remarkably close in many ways to the fictional below stairs tales of Downton Abbey (a new series of which will be shown this autumn).
Mollie seems to have enjoyed
her life below stairs, even though her working day would begin at 6.30am and
she'd still be working at 9.30pm - I can't imagine many employees putting up
with those hours nowadays (although it can be par for the course for those who
run their own businesses). There are also some of Mollie's favourite recipes in
the book, some of which are borrowed from Mrs Beaton, but I'm looking forward
to trying out her cleaning tips (it's amazing what you can do with a lemon!).
John wrote to me this week
to tell me a remarkable story from his own family tree - in the course of his
research he discovered that his wife's grandmother Lily was a domestic servant
in the Broadstairs household of his 2nd cousins 4
times removed! Do you have any similar coincidences in your own tree, I wonder?
Going back to Downton Abbey, I discovered recently that Michelle Dockery, the
actress who plays Lady Mary, was born in Romford, Essex and went to the school right
across the street from the house where I spent the first 8 years of my life! If
only I'd been born 30 years later.....
Note:
there's more about Michelle Dockery and the girls who played Lady Mary's
sisters in this Daily Mail article
from 2011.
Disappearing inventor -
the mystery deepens
If you read the story of William Cantelo
in the last
issue you may have been tempted, as I was, to do some research into his
life.
I always take a sceptical approach
towards tales like this because most family stories are embellished in some
way, and my initial caution seemed justified when I noticed that the Wikipedia
page for William Cantelo gave his birth year as 'about 1838', rather than the
actual date of 1830. This was particularly intriguing because according to the story on the BBC website
William Cantelo not only owned an engineering company, he was also the licensee
of a public house. This seemed quite an unusual combination, as well as a bit
of a handful for someone who supposedly was also working on the development of
a machine gun.
On the censuses I found another William
Cantelo who was running a pub in 1871 - and he was born in 1838. Could the
stories of the two Williams have become merged into one? It certainly seemed
likely - until I discovered that the younger William emigrated
to New South Wales in 1877. However, Cantelo was a remarkably common name on
the Isle of Wight, and some of the others Cantelos
also had connections with firearms - searching the British
Newspapers collection at findmypast I had discovered a William Cantelo who
was a gunsmith (he died in 1862) and an Edward William Cantelo who sold
gunpowder in his iremongery shop (he was fined for
not renewing his licence).
Could I find verification that the
William Cantelo who owned an engineering company also
owned a pub? I decided to turn to Hampshire directories, which I found at Ancestry.
There in White's 1878 directory I eventually found the proof:
It's worth mentioning
at this point that Orchard Street was renamed Bargate Street not long
afterwards, and also that the Tower Inn (or Old
Tower Inn) was previously known as the Plumber's Arms.
In the 8th
April 1885 edition of the Hampshire
Advertiser it was recorded that the licence for the Plumber's Arms,
Bargate-street had been transferred from William Cantelo to William Webb; a
week later the same newspaper reported that William Cantelo had been sued by
one of his employees, a mechanic named Joe Hebdon, for unpaid wages of 7s 11d
(although Cantelo counter-claimed for 4s 8d in respect of work spoilt).
My guess is
that William Cantelo over-extended himself, trying to run two businesses and simultaneously
develop and market his inventions - and that as a result he ran out of money.
By disappearing he would have evaded his creditors, and whilst his son John continued
the engineering firm, in 1892 there was a further court case, this time
involving the sum of £32 13s 5d (Hampshire
Advertiser, 19th October), which hints at continued financial difficulties
for the Cantelo family.
In the 1891
Census William's wife Eliza was lodging at 26 Anderson's Road, and 3 years
later she was dead, at the age of 59. In the 1901 Census John Cantelo, who had
taken over the family business, was no longer an employer - he was a worker.
It's likely that when William
disappeared his wife didn't know the full story - I know of someone who
disappeared in similar circumstances a century later, and his wife only found
out what was going on when creditors came calling. For
some weeks she didn't know whether her husband was dead or alive, so I can
imagine it might have been the same for Eliza.
Who knows how she made sense of it all,
and what she told her children? Despite the superficial resemblance William
Cantelo and Hiram Maxim were two different people who just happened to be
working on similar inventions. Maxim could take the credit for millions of
deaths in the Great War; Cantelo left little behind but a mystery.
Did your ancestor help to
found the Football Association?
The Football Association will celebrate
its 150th Anniversary this year with a special ceremony at Wembley Stadium -
and they're inviting the descendants of the association's founders.
See this article
on the FA website for more details. Thanks to Pam for telling me about this
opportunity.
Lost Dambusters faces revealed
Just 3 of the 133 crew members who took
part 70 years ago in Operation Chastise, the raid on dams in the Ruhr valley
that was later immortalised in the film The
Dam Busters, are still alive. 8 of the 19 planes that headed off to Germany
were shot down, and 3 were forced to head back before reaching the target - but
the 8 planes that did get through delivered their loads with precision.
This week, for the first time, photographs
of all 133 were brought together - you can see them here on the BBC website. I'm
willing to bet that there are several people reading this who are related to
one of those brave airmen - do let me know.
Britain from the air: early
aerial photos
Britain From Above has over
47,000 high resolution aerial images of Britain from 1919-53. You won't find
every location, but I certainly found some photos of interest to me - it's a
fascinating guide to how the landscape has changed (and how it might change
again if building is permitted on 'green belt' land).
Have you downloaded Family Tree Analyzer?
Mel, who passed on the tip above also told me how useful he had found Family Tree Analyzer:
"Thanks
again for the news about the Family Tree Analyzer
program. I've been using it to highlight the names that I had not logged on
your site and after adding three or four new households I've found some more contacts/cousins.
I've still got a lot of names highlighted in red in the census reports that it
shows for the more distant relatives in my trees so a lot more work still to
do. No rest for the wicked!"
As I mentioned earlier, Family Tree Analyzer
is a free download for all LostCousins
members (although you'll need a Windows PC as it doesn't work on Macs). I'm not
going to attempt to explain everything that it does - there's documentation on
the download site - but a great way to get started is to use it to provide data
for the Older Fathers project I'm running.
To take part in the project simply
download Family Tree Analyzer
and use it to analyse your own family tree - I need to know how many boys and
how many girls were born to fathers of 55 or over (this information is given in
the Parent Age report - just email me
with the relevant numbers, not a copy of the whole report).
Just a reminder that whilst you won't
find my email address online - for obvious reasons - it was in the email you
received that told you about this newsletter. Indeed, you can use the address
in any of the emails you have received from LostCousins, because all of the
incoming mail comes to me.
Please don't send attachments unless I specifically
ask you - I aim to keep all my correspondence, but I often have to delete emails
with attachments in order to cut down the size of my backup files.
If you don't have my email address to
hand you can also use the Contact Us
form on the LostCousins website, but it's not ideal since the choice of
subjects is limited. When I'm swamped with emails (as I always am after sending
out a newsletter) the ones that get answered first are usually the ones with
the most descriptive subjects.
Have you ever tried boxing with one hand
tied behind your back? Or running with your bootlaces tied together? It's hard
to imagine why anyone would want to handicap themselves in that way.
And yet, when I correspond with family
historians I frequently come across people who have only ever used Ancestry, or
only ever used findmypast - ignoring the fact that apart from the censuses and
GRO indexes there's actually very little overlap between the records at the two
sites.
There are probably at least half a dozen
County record offices which are negotiating right now to put their parish
registers online - but whilst they will speak to Ancestry and findmypast
they'll end up doing a deal with one or the other, not both.
When I'm researching I might go from
censuses and GRO indexes at findmypast to probate records at Ancestry, and then
back to findmypast to look for newspaper articles - all in the space of 10 or 15
minutes. However I realise that most researchers can't afford to have
subscriptions to both sites, which is why it's worth checking what's available
at your local public library.
However, there's another resource you
may not have considered - your cousins. If you're collaborating on a particular
family line make the most of the resources you have between you - not just
subscriptions, but CD ROMs, books, and microfiche. Working together you'll achieve
more than either of you possibly could working alone.
This where any late
updates will be posted, so it's worth checking back after a few days.
I hope you found this letter interesting
as well as useful!
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2013 Peter Calver
You
MAY link to this newsletter or email a link to your friends and relatives
without asking for permission in advance. I have included bookmarks so you can
link to a specific article: right-click on the relevant entry in the table of
contents at the beginning of the newsletter to copy the link.
Please
DO NOT re-publish any part of this newsletter, other
than the list of contents at the beginning, without permission - either on your
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all concerned to provide a link as suggested above, not least because articles
are often updated.