Newsletter - 10th January 2015

 

 

Nottinghamshire transcriptions go online

ScotlandsPeople add more BMDs

New Year Competition extended WIN UP TO £150 IN CASH!!

MASTERCLASS: Tracking down pre-1837 baptisms and marriages

How to be accurate - and why it matters!

Using Family Tree Analyzer to spot errors

Checking your My Ancestors entries

Online will service still isn't working perfectly

Frustrated with Findmypast?

Reading between the lines

Rags to riches - how a laundry maid became a Viscountess!

Mystery artist identified

Birthday Book puzzle solved?

Review: A Suitable Young Man

Genealogy in the Sunshine - more places released

Stop Press

 

The LostCousins newsletter is usually published fortnightly. To access the previous newsletter (dated 25th December) 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 2012-14 click here. Or use a Google search prefixed by 'site:lostcousins.com' - that's what I do!
 

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). If one of the links doesn't work this normally indicates that you're using adblocking software - you need to make the LostCousins site an exception (or else use a different browser, such as Chrome).

 

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!

 

 

Nottinghamshire transcriptions go online

This week Findmypast have made available online over 1.75 million parish records for Nottinghamshire which have been transcribed by members of the Nottinghamshire Family History Society. You can find out more here.

 

ScotlandsPeople add more BMDs

On 1st January each year ScotlandsPeople add an extra year of birth, marriage and death registers to their online collection. This year the additions are 1914 births, 1939 marriages, and 1964 deaths.

 

What a shame we aren't allowed to see the equivalent registers for England & Wales - those Scrooges at the GRO in Southport are still insistent on sticking with the paper-based system devised before Queen Victoria came to the throne.

 

Their attitude seems to be "If it was good enough for King William IV it should be good enough for you"!

 

All I can say is "Bah, humbug" (to quote Charles Dickens)!

 

New Year Competition extended WIN UP TO £150 IN CASH!!

As so many members didn't receive my Christmas newsletter until this week (because it went to their office email address) the closing date for the New Year Competition has been extended - the winners will now be chosen on Tuesday 3rd February.

 

The competition is open to ALL LostCousins members who joined before midnight on Christmas Eve - you don't need to be a subscriber, or to be taking part in the LostCousins project.

 

To have a chance of winning the First Prize of a One-Year Subscription to Deceased Online, the only website specialising in records from local councils, AND up to £150 in cash simply use your My Referrals page (or your personal referral link, which you'll find on your My Summary page) to invite a fellow family historian - whether a friend or relative - to join LostCousins.

 

There are also 10 Runners-Up prizes - each will get a FREE one-year LostCousins subscription worth up to £12.50, AND a FREE digital photo repair/restoration worth up to £8.99 donated by Repixl, who have already produced stunning results for hundreds of LostCousins members.

 

Here are some suggestions for people to invite:

 

 

There's another set of prizes for the new members you sign up - the First Prize is up to £150 in cash, and there are also 10 Runners-Up prizes (as above). Please see this article in my last newsletter for full details of the competition.

 

Tip: if you received this email at your work address please consider using your personal email address instead - so many of the best offers are at weekends or holiday times.

 

MASTERCLASS: Tracking down pre-1837 baptisms and marriage

Researching ancestors who lived in England & Wales is usually fairly straightforward until we get back to 1841, the date of the first census, and 1837, the year that civil registration began. But then it becomes much tougher, for a number of inter-related reasons. In this masterclass I'm going to first talk through the problems, and then explain how you can overcome them.

 

Why we need to use different techniques

When we're researching after 1837 we can refer to the GRO indexes, which (in theory at least) list everyone who was born, or married, or died in England & Wales. Once we get to 1841 we can refer to censuses which (again, in theory) list everyone in the country on a certain night. Best of all, those indexes and censuses are available online, so anybody anywhere can get access to them.

 

But before 1837 we don't have either of those available to us - prior to the introduction of civil registration parish registers are by far the best sources of early information (and often the only surviving documents that name our ancestors). Most people were baptised, most of those who have descendants alive today got married, and the one thing you can be sure of is that they eventually died, in which case they'll almost certainly have been buried somewhere.

 

However, even though the vast majority of baptism, marriage, and burial registers have survived, the registers are scattered across the nation. In most cases the original registers are held by the county record office, which means you cannot go to any one record office - not even the National Archives - and expect to find all the baptisms for (say) 1797. Indeed, even if you visit the repository of the registers you're seeking the chances are you'll only be able to view them on microfilm.

 

Many registers have been transcribed, often by volunteers, and in some cases the transcriptions have been made available online. However you can't just go to one website and search through every parish register that has ever been transcribed, because some transcriptions are available at one site, some at another - and even if you have the time to visit them all, many of the transcriptions are only available at subscription sites, so you may not be able to access them. Furthermore, some of the transcriptions are only available on CD ROM or on microfiche - usually through family history societies - and many registers have NEVER been transcribed

 

Faced with such a different situation some researchers just give up - research pre-1837 is so different that they are scared to even try. Some try, but fail - either because they don't fully understand how best to make use of the available resources, or because they don't realise just how much is available to them.

 

Because of the way that records are scattered across the country, across the Internet, and across different media, it's tempting to adopt an unfocused "where shall I try next" approach. Now, I'm not a professional genealogist, but one thing I do know is that professional genealogists always search logically and methodically, and above all they record where they have searched and what they have searched for. I can't count the number of times members have written to me saying they've searched everywhere for a certain baptism, yet when pressed they can't tell me which parishes they've searched, which periods the searches covered, or even - in some cases - precisely what surnames and spellings they looked for.

 

Start by gathering the evidence

First collect all the evidence that indicates - no matter how obliquely - where and when your ancestor is likely to have been born. Sources of information will often include early censuses, marriage certificates, and death certificates - all of which can be helpful, but can also be misleading.

 

Many people didn't know where they were born, so often the birthplace they gave when the enumerator came round is the place - or one of the places - where they grew up. Some people didn't know how old they were - they might have known when they were born, but that isn't the question on the census form. It asks for their age, and not everyone was capable of subtracting one year from another, particularly if the years were in different centuries.

 

Remember too, that it was the householder who was responsible for completing the form (or supplying the information to the enumerator) - the ages and birthplaces of adopted children, stepchildren, servants and visitors are particularly unlikely to be correct.

 

Search the IGI

Your next step will often be to search the International Genealogical Index at FamilySearch; the IGI probably has more parish register entries than any other website, and yet it's free! Now and again I'm lucky enough to find someone who looks as if they may be my ancestor, and has a sufficiently rare name that there are unlikely to have been two of them around in the same place at the same time. However, not many names are that rare - indeed, many of the surnames we now think of as rare were once quite common in certain parts of the country.

 

Tip: some researchers assumed that the IGI disappeared along with the old FamilySearch website. It's true that there was a time when the IGI was not available at the new FamilySearch site, but you can now find it here.

 

There are two types of entries in the IGI - those that are described as Community Indexed and those that are Community Contributed. The former are extremely reliable, but the latter are very variable - for example, there are many entries which are clearly not taken from parish registers and are often simply conjecture. It's perhaps just as well that the two sets can only be searched separately!

 

If you don't find the entry you're seeking in the IGI it's usually because the register that contains the entry hasn't been transcribed and included in the index. Although FamilySearch has at some point microfilmed most of the surviving parish registers, only about half have been transcribed and indexed - so half the baptisms and marriages you're looking won't be in the database at all.

 

Tip: hardly any burials for England & Wales are included in the IGI.

 

How can you find out which registers are included? The simplest way is to refer to Steve Archer's site (which covers Scotland and Ireland as well as England & Wales). As well as listing the years of coverage by parish and by event the site also gives the relevant batch numbers - searching by batch number is not only a great way to limit your search to a specific parish, it's a great way to overcome transcription errors or entries that have been recorded incorrectly by the clergyman who conducted the service (when you omit the person's name you'll get a listing of all the entries in the batch).

 

What should you do if the parish you're interested in is included in the IGI, but you still can't find the entry you're looking for despite searching through the relevant batch (in case there has been a major transcription error)? This suggests that the event didn't take place where you think it did, or when you think it did - or didn't take place at all (not all children were baptised).

 

Find out which other parishes are nearby

There are at least two ways to do this. One is to use a 'parish locator' (such as the free ParLoc program) to get a list of all the parishes around the town or village where you believe your ancestor to have been born or married. In the country you might use a 5 mile radius, but in London that could give you a list of 100 or more parishes - so a radius of 1 or 2 miles might be more appropriate.

 

Tip: the nearest parish church may have been in a different parish - the size and shape of parishes varies enormously.

 

The fact that I haven't been able to find the baptism or marriage in the IGI strongly suggests that it's recorded in a register that isn't included in that index, so I go back to Steve Archer's invaluable website to find out which parishes aren't included in the IGI for the relevant period - and they’re the ones that I focus my attention on.

 

However my preferred solution is to use the maps at FamilySearch - these are wonderful but only cover England & Wales.

 

At the old FamilySearch site you were limited to the IGI, which hadn't been added to for many years - but the new FamilySearch site has a wealth of other records. For example, there are 69 million baptisms in the dataset described as England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975, and 16 million marriages under England, Marriages,1538-1973. Many of these entries are also found in the IGI, but some are different. I believe these records sets are based on the Vital Record Index which was previously distributed on CD ROM.

 

Tip: those records can also be searched at Findmypast.

 

FamilySearch has indexed transcriptions, but not images, for Cheshire, Plymouth & West Devon, Yorkshire, and Wales, and many images, mostly indexed, for Norfolk. FamilySearch also has parish register images for part of Kent, but these are not generally accessible online unless you are at a FamilySearch Centre (there are 4500 of them around the world). There are also many images that can only be viewed at partner sites, such as Ancestry or Findmypast - so you'll need a subscription for the partner site. In practice you'll probably find it easier to search these records at Ancestry or Findmypast rather than hopping from one site to another.

 

Although you can search all of the transcribed parish register entries with a single search from the FamilySearch home page, you won't find any records that are only present as unindexed images. It's therefore essential that you're aware of the unindexed images at the FamilySearch site that may be of relevance to your research.

 

To find out which records FamilySearch has for a particular country, click on the map that you'll find here.

 

The list of records is divided into two sections, transcribed records and untranscribed images. A camera icon indicates which of the transcribed record sets have images associated with them, but this doesn't necessarily mean you'll be able to view those images.

 

Tip: an often overlooked feature of the new FamilySearch site is the 'wiki', which provides information about individual parishes, often including details of online sources of register transcriptions (follow this link to see an example).

 

Another free site with a large collection of transcriptions is FreeREG - at the time of writing it has 15 million baptisms, nearly 5 million marriages, and over 10.5 million burials in its database. However, they're not evenly spread across the country: some counties are very well catered for (Norfolk in particular), but others less so - however it's fairly easy to see what is and isn't there. Other volunteer-led projects include the Online Parish Clerk sites: they don't exist for every county, but the counties with by far the best coverage are Cornwall, with over 2.2 million entries last time I checked, and Lancashire with nearly 8 million records.

 

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the contents of some parish registers were published as books, and your best chance of finding them is through sites such as the Internet Archive, another free site, where a search for (say) 'Kent parish registers' brings up a long list of registers that have been printed in book form and digitised for all to see (you'd pay to see some of these records as subscription sites!). Another similar site is Google Books - inevitably there is a big overlap between the two.

 

A straightforward Google search is always worth trying, as quite a few individuals have transcribed parish registers and posted the results on their own websites, and some record offices have information that you can search free online, for examples Hertfordshire has a range of records including a marriage index, whilst Medway Archives have posted registers for their part of Kent online (not transcribed, but at least they are at your fingertips - and free).

 

Subscription and pay-per-view sites

An increasing number of parish registers and/or register entries are becoming available online at Ancestry and Findmypast. When I first wrote on this topic in February 2010 there were no register images available at either site, but now you can search WarwickshireDorsetLancashireWest YorkshireLiverpool, and most of London at Ancestry, and Cheshire, Devon, Hertfordshire,  Plymouth & West Devon, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Westminster, most of East Kent, large parts of Yorkshire, and much of Wales at Findmypast. Findmypast also has unindexed register images for Lincolnshire.

 

Tip: many cities and metropolitan boroughs have a record office which holds the registers for their area, so that, for example, the Lancashire collection at Ancestry doesn't include records for every town that was originally part of the county. However Findmypast's Cheshire collection does include Stockport, and also Warrington - which is now in Cheshire, but was previously part of Lancashire.

 

Both Findmypast and Ancestry have millions of other parish records in transcription form, although quite a few of the records in Ancestry's collection have been taken from books which you might be able to access free online. Durham Records Online has over 4 million transcribed records from County Durham and Northumberland. The Joiner Marriage Index has over 2.5 million marriage records from over 3700 parishes in 31 counties.

 

Essex Record Office offer online access to most of their parish register collection - and whilst the subscription is quite steep at £85 a year (the cheapest subscription is £5 for one day), for many people with Essex ancestors it's the most practical solution. I live in Essex, but it would cost me more to drive to Chelmsford and back than to buy a 24 hour subscription, not least because of the cost of parking when I get there. On the other hand, a visit to ERO would allow me to access a wide range of other records which aren't available online.

 

Society of Genealogists library

Many of the largest collections of transcribed records held by the Society of Genealogists are available online to members: these include Boyd's Marriage Index, which has particularly good coverage in some of the counties (eg Suffolk and Essex) that are least well represented in the IGI; for a PDF list of all the online collections click here. Over 9 million of the records are also available through Findmypast.

 

The Society of Genealogists has many more records in its library, including an amazing collection of records on CD ROMs and microfiche collected by family history societies and other organisations. Non-members can use the library on payment of a fee, which ranges from £5 for 2 hours to £18 for a full day - more details are available here.

 

Record offices and archives

When you're within striking distance of the relevant record office there's no substitute for visiting in person - but check first what's available online so that you don't waste your time there looking up records you could just as easily (or perhaps, more easily) have searched from the comfort of your own home. When I was beginning my research I wasted a lot of time searching parish registers that had already been indexed for the IGI - I should, of course, have focused on the unindexed parishes.

 

Many record offices and archives will do research on a paid basis - a typical charge is £30 per hour, which sounds a lot but in my experience is usually money well spent. However independent researchers usually charge much less, and some record offices will provide as list (especially if they don't offer a research service themselves). Please bear in mind that the inclusion of a researcher on the list is not necessarily an endorsement of that researcher.

 

The importance of the Register of Banns

One of the key reasons we search for the marriages of our ancestors is to find out the maiden names of our female ancestors (of course, if they gave birth after 1837 you'll usually find this information on the birth certificate). If the couple lived in different parishes, which was not unusual, they had to decide which one to marry in - and typically it would be the bride's parish that was chosen. This creates a slight problem, because we unless she survived until the 1851 Census we won't know where she was born (and even then, it wouldn't necessarily be the parish where she was living at the time of her marriage).

 

Fortunately the banns register often comes to our rescue. Most people married by banns, rather than by licence, and if the couple lived in different parishes the banns would necessarily be read out in both, and so would be recorded in the Banns register for both parishes. However, there are not nearly as many banns registers available online as marriage registers - you're more likely to have to have to pay a visit to the record office.

 

Success?

When we find the baptism or marriage that we've been searching for it's such a relief that we often drop our guard, and forget to assess the information as critically as we should. In the next article I'm going to talk about some simple things you can do to dramatically increase the chances that the information in your tree is correct.

 

How to be accurate - and why it matters!

You've found someone with the right name, who was baptised or married at around the right time in the right geographical area. So is it all right to add them to your tree, or should you attempt to verify that you've found the right person - and if so, how?

 

There really is nothing worse in genealogy than identifying the wrong ancestor, because every step you take from then on is likely to be wrong. If the person whose baptism or marriage you were seeking has a common name then you should definitely be on your guard - and in determining whether a name is common don't judge it by the standards of today, but by those of the time and locality that you're researching. Many surnames that have virtually disappeared today were once common in certain localities, and forenames that even in former times were relatively rare considering at the country as a whole, could be quite common in some counties.

 

For example, when you look at the country as a whole the forenames Roger and Nicholas were fairly rare in the 18th century - but in Devon, where some of my ancestors hail from, they were quite common.

 

Remember that if you're relying on online resources you may only be searching a limited subset of the parishes, especially if you're searching in the IGI, at FreeREG, or at an OPC site. You may only have found one or two events that appear to fit the facts - but there could be many more that haven't been transcribed and indexed. Just because you've only found one baptism or one marriage that fits doesn't mean that you've found the only one that fits.

 

Note: researchers who don't live in Britain should acquaint themselves with the geography of the area they're researching; the GENUKI site is a good place to start. If you live in the US bear in mind that English counties are usually a lot bigger than the US equivalent - more like a small state - so if you only know the county where your ancestors came from there could be hundreds of parishes to search.

 

What other evidence might you gather to prove that the person you've found IS indeed your ancestor? And even more important, how might you prove that he or she ISN'T. The point I'm making is that we shouldn't simply be looking for confirmation that we've got it right - we should search just as assiduously for evidence that we've got it wrong. Sometimes the absence of evidence to the contrary is the best proof available!

 

The first thing I do is look for more events that seem to relate to the same family, to try and build up a better picture. If you've found what you think is your ancestor's baptism, look for other baptisms where the parents have the same or similar names - remember that the further you go back the more common spelling variations are, partly because there was many people were illiterate, but also because for a long time spelling wasn't considered particularly important.

 

Note: even William Shakespeare couldn't make up his mind how to sign his name - and, perhaps surprisingly, not one of the six surviving signatures in his own hand have that first 'e'. See Wikipedia for more on this topic.

 

Sometimes it will gradually become obvious that there were two families where the parents had exactly the same names - or were so close that the vicar might easily have confused them. Usually it will be fairly easy to separate them out based on the timings and the choice of names - and often other information in the register will help, such as the abode or occupation of the father. Even if only one family had a child with the same name as your ancestor it's still important to separate out the two families, because your next objective will be to find the marriage of the parents - and you need some way of determining which couple it is who married.

 

Simple logic should be your guide. For example, it is extremely unlikely that there would have been two surviving children with the same name in the same family; and it would be quite unusual if one of the sons wasn't named for the father. And if your ancestor was John Smith and his parents were William and Mary, it's fairly likely that John wasn't their first son.

 

If you can work out the years during which a couple were having children you're half way to working out when they married and when they were born. I've often seen researchers assume, having found the baptism of an ancestor, that his or her parents were born about 25 years earlier, but unless you have reason to believe that your ancestor was the eldest son or daughter it's quite possible that the parents were much older, perhaps as old as 45.

 

The names of marriage witnesses often provide helpful clues, but the burials register is an even more important source of information. Many researchers have convinced themselves that they've found the right baptism (and hence the right parents) only to discover many years later that the child died in infancy.

 

Even when you are fairly certain you've identified the right family, don't stop researching other families in the local area with the same surname - after all there's a reasonable chance that they are all related to each other.

 

Linking up with other researchers who share the same ancestors is a great way to verify that you're on the right track - provided that you haven't all gone down the same wrong path. Some time ago I linked up with half a dozen cousins who, though researching independently, had all made precisely the same mistake - they believed their ancestor was telling the truth when he gave his father's name on his wedding day.

 

But that's an exceptional situation - the chances are it will never happen to you. So my advice is to do everything you can to find your cousins, short of publishing your family tree online. The safest and most accurate way to do this is to complete your My Ancestors page - with just 97,000 members LostCousins certainly doesn't have the largest membership of all the websites that aim to reunite you with your living relatives, but we certainly have the most experienced membership (the average LostCousins member has been researching longer than I have).

 

Using Family Tree Analyzer to spot errors

The Family Tree Analyzer program for Windows was developed by a LostCousins member to perform all sorts of tasks - indeed, if you set things up in the right way you can even get it to tell you which relatives you've forgotten to add to your My Ancestors page!

 

But it can also perform more basic checks on your tree - for example, Viv in Australia wrote to tell me that FT Analyzer had picked up a glaring error - one of her ancestors had been shown as dying before she married!

 

You can download Family Tree Analyzer FREE by following this link - it also has its own area in the LostCousins forum (you don't need to be a member of the forum to read the discussions).

 

Checking your My Ancestors entries

When you enter relatives from the England & Wales censuses on your My Ancestors page you can click the Click to check the references against the census symbol to carry out a free census reference search at the Findmypast site. This enables you to verify that you've entered the census references correctly - it only takes 2 seconds - and that you haven't made any errors or omissions.

 

For example, here's the entry from my page showing my great-grandparents and their family in 1881 - try clicking one of the grey arrows:

 


Calver, John

http://lostcousins.com/images/icon_tick_blue.gif

1842

B M D

Click to check the references against the census 1354/34/4

England & Wales 1881

8

Click to add another member of this household

Calver, Emily

http://lostcousins.com/images/icon_tick_blue.gif

1842

B M D

Click to check the references against the census 1354/34/4

England & Wales 1881

9

Click to add another member of this household

Calver, George William

http://lostcousins.com/images/icon_tick_blue.gif

1866

B - -

Click to check the references against the census 1354/34/4

England & Wales 1881

Blood relative

Click to add another member of this household

Calver, Alice

http://lostcousins.com/images/icon_tick_blue.gif

1868

B M -

Click to check the references against the census 1354/34/4

England & Wales 1881

Blood relative

Click to add another member of this household

Calver, Ernest Albert

http://lostcousins.com/images/icon_tick_blue.gif

1873

B - -

Click to check the references against the census 1354/34/4

England & Wales 1881

Blood relative

Click to add another member of this household

Calver, Florence Minnie

http://lostcousins.com/images/icon_tick_blue.gif

1875

B M -

Click to check the references against the census 1354/34/4

England & Wales 1881

Blood relative

Click to add another member of this household

Calver, Harry John Buxton

http://lostcousins.com/images/icon_tick_blue.gif

1877

B M D

Click to check the references against the census 1354/34/4

England & Wales 1881

4

Click to add another member of this household

Calver, Elizabeth

http://lostcousins.com/images/icon_tick_blue.gif

1879

B - -

Click to check the references against the census 1354/34/4

England & Wales 1881

Blood relative

Click to add another member of this household

 

Tip: because the census references for the 1841 and 1881 census apply to an entire page, with several households, and only the first 20 results are shown, you may need to look at the next page of results.

 

You can also use this feature to check your entries from the Ireland 1911 census, in which case the search will use the National Archives of Ireland website. I hope to offer searches for other censuses in due course, but at the moment it isn't technically possible.

 

Tip: when you're entering relatives from the 1880/81 censuses you should use the transcription, even when it's wrong, but when you enter relatives from other censuses it's what the handwritten census shows that matters. This information is displayed on the Add Ancestor form along with other important advice.

 

Online will service still isn't working perfectly

There are still problems with online ordering of England & Wales wills from 1858 onwards - as I reported a few months ago, the emails which tell you that the wills you've ordered are ready for downloading don't seem to be co-ordinated with the actual availability. In my case it meant that two of my wills were ready for downloading long before the email arrived, whereas the third wasn't available until some time after I received the email. In my case the delay was less than a day, but members have reported much longer delays, especially over the Christmas period.

 

To be fair, it is still described as a beta site - so some glitches are to be expected. But in my opinion the contractors didn't test the system properly before it went live. Let's hope the Probate Service haven't paid the bill yet!

 

Frustrated with Findmypast?

Once I figured out how to use the new Findmypast site I realised that it was a great improvement on the old site - but I still get emails from members who are struggling.

 

Here's my secret: when I search at Findmypast I search a specific record set, by selecting it from the 'A-Z of record sets' (ie the last option in the 'Search Records' menu).

 

 

It's so easy when you know how!

 

Reading between the lines

If you're ever tempted to pay money to a family history website that hasn't been recommended in this newsletter you might want to stop and ask yourself "If this website is so good, why hasn't Peter mentioned it?".

 

Even if a website is free you won't necessarily find me recommending it - if it isn't obvious who runs a website, where it is based, and how it is financed I get very suspicious (and so should you). You also won't find me recommending "link farms", websites which simply link to other websites and have little or no content of their own.

 

Warning: it's very difficult for writers who have a daily genealogy blog to review every site before they write about it, and as a result some simply republish press releases they've received. This isn't a criticism of the bloggers themselves - if I had to produce a daily newsletter I'd have the same problems as they do - but it is something readers should bear in mind.

 

Rags to riches - how a laundry maid became a Viscountess!

Tony sent me this wonderful true story about his great-great aunt Ellen - if you came across it in a novel you might think it was ludicrously improbable:

 

"Ellen Griffiths was a laundry maid, and the daughter of a gardener. To everyone's surprise, she married a Viscount, the Right Hon. George Alan Broderick, fifth Viscount Midleton and Baron Broderick of Midleton, County Cork, where he owned about 30,000 acres, and second Baron Broderick of Peper Harow, his country estate in England. They were married on 14 May 1833 at St George Hanover Square, when she was just twenty one and he was twenty six. George succeeded to the peerage in 1836, and assumed the tasks of managing his vast estates and building and maintaining his homes.

 

"Several busts of Ellen were commissioned by George, an indication of how much he felt for her. Their marriage, however, began to suffer after a dozen years or so. As a result, Ellen left her husband, and within a couple of years he committed suicide on 1 Nov 1848 by inhaling fumes from burning charcoal. In the last years, his mental state had deteriorated to the point that Ellen had written several letters documenting his erratic and strange behaviour. All this came out at the inquest where it was discovered that George had admitted privately that it was all his own fault that his wife had left him.

 

"The Dowager Viscountess Midleton received an ample income from the Midleton estate and married Richard Quain F.R.C.S., F.R.S. on 25 April 1859. Quain,who was an Irishman, became Surgeon Extraordinary to Queen Victoria. They had been happily married for almost thirty years when Ellen died in 1886.

 

"Ellen had bore no children in either marriage, but she had adopted one of her nieces, Fanny Griffiths. Most of Ellen's immediate family felt her benevolence through first class education or help with employment. Fanny married a farmer, who mistreated her to the point that she left him. He also eventually committed suicide, this time with dynamite! This can't be genetic! She brought up her only child who eventually married in Brighton and had a couple of children.

 

"When growing up in Ilford, my father we used to have a full size white marble bust of Ellen, but mother sold it when my father died. We would really like to find it again, and to make contact with Fanny's descendants."

 

Mystery artist identified

 

In November I explained how  when LostCousins member John Makin and his wife Alice discovered a sketchbook dating from the first half of the 20th century thery decided to try to identify the artist. The first sketches dated from 1925, and had been made on the voyage of the Balmoral Castle to South Africa in December of that year - so John and Alice started with a list of the 225 passengers on that ship.

 

Now the mystery has been solved! If you read their blog describing the search you can get a feeling for just what it was like as they closed in on the anonymous artist.

 

Note: so that they could share their voyage of discovery with other researchers they published a little book featuring the sketches (you can get it through Amazon or direct from John's website).

 

Birthday Book puzzle solved?

The quest that John and Alice embarked upon reminded me of the challenge I set readers of this newsletter at Christmas 2012. I had come across a Birthday Book amongst a box of books that I'd bought around 10 years previously at an auction of 'household effects' in Great Dunmow, Essex - and the challenge was to see whether we could identify the owner(s) of the book.

 

As an experiment I set up a wiki where those of us taking part could post information and exchange ideas. If you want to take a look you'll need a user name and password - the user name is 'lostcousins', and you'll find the password right at the bottom of your My Summary page.

 

By the spring of 2013 we had identified the last owner of the book as Christine M Coleman, born in 1914, but we couldn't get any further - so I was amazed (and delighted) this week when out of the blue I received an email from a new LostCousins member, Clare in Canada, who is her niece! I hope that in the coming weeks and months we may be able to piece together more of the story.

 

Review: A Suitable Young Man

It's not often that I review a work of fiction that isn't about genealogy, but I enjoyed A Suitable Young Man so much that I just had to tell you about it. The author of this extremely enjoyable book is Anne L Harvey - who many of you will know from her articles in family history magazines - and the story takes place in 1956, against the background of National Service and the Suez Crisis.

 

I'm not familiar with the area of Lancashire where it's set, and I was only 6 years old at the time, but I'm glad to say that this didn't spoil my enjoyment in the slightest - the people and locations seemed so real that I thought at first that it must be semi-autobiographical. Judging from the effusive email I received from a LostCousins member both the period detail and the geography are spot on - this is what Val wrote:

 

"I am only half way through but can tell now that it will be the best book I have ever read. I can see Rivington Pike from my kitchen window and my daily walks take me 'up Rivington' or to Horwich.

 

"In reading the book I am reliving my youth, everywhere the characters go I also went, and the last train on a Saturday night out of Blackpool was spot on. It used to be an exciting/frightening ride home where the lads did take the light bulbs out and throw them out of the windows. Fortunately I was with my own Teddy Boy boyfriend so felt safe enough. Like Kathy my parents did not like my Teddy Boy but we rode out all the rough seas and later married.

 

"We had 55 years together but he sadly passed away last year, so this book is evoking some extra special memories for me. I have to keep putting the book down because I don't want it to end….."

 

I didn't want the book to end either - so I was absolutely delighted to discover that Anne has another novel in the pipeline. A Suitable Young Man is a skilful recreation of Britain in the mid-1950s which reminded me what it was like to be young - and whilst some people might pigeonhole the novel as romantic fiction, so was Pride & Prejudice. Mind you, there is one big difference between Jane Austen and Anne L Harvey - Jane Austen wasn't a LostCousins member!

 

You can buy A Suitable Young Man from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, and Amazon.com.au (note: if you use these links LostCousins may benefit even if you end up buying something completely different).

 

Genealogy in the Sunshine - more places released

I started the New Year in the best possible way - with a leisurely game of tennis in the sunshine, followed by a swim in a lovely warm pool and a spot of sunbathing!

 

You're right - I wasn't in England, though I was in Europe and not the Tropics. For the very first time my wife and I spent New Year away, at the Rocha Brava resort on Portugal's Algarve coast where Genealogy in the Sunshine will take place in March.

 

By choosing our dates carefully we kept the cost of flights down to £100 each (return), so it was a really cheap holiday in the sun - and I even got a suntan. The timing was great - sunshine and blue skies every day - and we were among the first to swim in the resort's new covered and heated pool, where the water temperature hovered around 28 degrees.

 

In March the weather should be even warmer - January is the coldest month on the Algarve, with daytime temperatures comparable to England in May. But going over for New Year was well worthwhile - because I managed to persuade the resort to make available some additional apartments for the course in March. So if you are interested, please take a look at the website I've set up - and get in touch with me right away!

 

Stop Press

This is where I'll post any last minute additions.

 

In my next newsletter I'm going to provide some advice on knocking down 'brick walls' - a perpetual problem for family historians like you and me!

 

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Peter Calver

Founder, LostCousins

 

© Copyright 2015 Peter Calver

 

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