Newsletter
- 23 February 2013
Show
report: Who Do You Think You Are? Live
Crime
records online now at findmypast
DNA tests
for £30! ENDS THURSDAY
Genes
Reunited offers 15% discount ENDS THURSDAY
National
Library of Wales to digitise newspapers
Yorkshire
records to be digitised
Hertfordshire
parish registers online at last
Visiting
the graves of my ancestors
Manor
Park Cemetery over-run by brambles
Second
source for information on entertainers
Birthday
Book challenge goes online
Car
crash reveals time capsule
Palaeography:
the study of old handwriting
Ancestry
change cancellation procedure
The LostCousins newsletter is
usually published fortnightly. To access the previous newsletter (dated 8 February 2013) click here, for an index to articles
from 2009-10 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 tab will open (so that you don’t lose your place in the
newsletter) - if nothing seems to happen then you need to enable pop-ups in
your browser.
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!
Show report: Who Do You
Think You Are? Live
It may have been an illusion, but I got the impression
that there were slightly fewer stands at this year's show - but on the other
hand it left more room for the crowds of visitors, and without a doubt it's
still an amazing event.
The program of workshops provided an
opportunity to hear from dozens of well-known names - and I'm not talking about
the so-called celebrities, but the real celebrities of the family history
world, people like Else Churchill, Chris Paton, Peter Christian, Audrey
Collins, and Peter Higginbotham (the man who has almost single-handedly put
workhouses on the genealogical map). Professor Rebecca Probert was also there
signing copies of her book, Marriage
Law for Genealogists - sadly I hadn't brought my well-thumbed copy with
me!
Surprisingly there were no announcements
of new or forthcoming data from Ancestry, but there were some very interesting
announcements from findmypast, as you'll see from the following articles - plus
an amazing offer from Family Tree DNA that you could find extremely hard to
refuse.
I had to wait until late in the day to
take my photographs, otherwise you would scarcely have seen the stands, which
for much of the day were surrounded by crowds of visitors. Rather than fill the
newsletter with so many photos that it becomes indistinguishable from a tabloid
newspaper I've created a separate web page, which you'll find here.
Crime records online now
at findmypast
Over half a million crime-related records, some of
which include 'mugshots', became available at findmypast.co.uk
on Wednesday - and such was the publicity they attracted that for a time the
site was overwhelmed by the demand! The records, held by the National Archives,
cover the period 1817-1931 and will be supplemented over the coming months by
another 2 million records from 1770-1934.
I've already found one of my distant
relatives - he was sentenced to 12 months hard labour in 1898, but it clearly
wasn't his last offence because he was in prison again at the time of the 1911
Census. But it's not just criminals that you'll find in the records - another
of my distant relatives was a victim of crime.
For more details see this News
article. I'm told about 10% of the records currently online include
photographs so you might be able to put a face to one of the skeletons in your
closet!
When I started writing about DNA testing
5 years ago I warned members not to pay the high prices then being asked for
tests which could only ever tell you about your direct paternal line. Then you
could have spent hundreds of pounds for a very basic Y-DNA test, and I warned
members that prices would be coming down over the coming years.
However even I was surprised, when I arrived at the
show, to discover that Family Tree DNA were offering 12-marker Y-DNA tests for
just £30. Now there's only one reason why you might not take a DNA test - only
males inherit their father's Y-DNA.
Tip:
most female researchers are able to persuade a male relative to provide a DNA
sample (remember it has to be a relate who has the same surname as your father)
But don't
let that put you off - it will be entirely up to you whether you upgrade in the
future, and the good news is that if you do, it won't be necessary to provide
another DNA sample.
Note: the £30 offer is ONLY available at the Show. However until the end of
February you can order the same test online for $39 (which is actually slightly
cheaper, although I suspect there will be a few dollars extra for postage).
Click here for more details.
Genes
Reunited offers 15% discount
Another Show offer that runs until the
end of the month provides 15% of any new 12 month subscription to Genes
Reunited.
Whilst I wouldn't recommend choosing
Genes Reunited over findmypast (because, although they are part of the same
group, findmypast caters much better for experienced researchers like you and
me), it is well worth considering a Standard subscription. For just £20 (less
15% when you use the code WDYTYA13)
you'll be able to search for other researchers whose tree is in some way linked
to yours.
Whilst the average Genes Reunited user
isn't nearly as experienced as the people you'll find at LostCousins, there are
an awful lot of them (a figure of 10 million has been quoted in the past), so
the chances of finding someone who shares a particular part of your tree are
quite good.
Click here to find out
more about what is on offer.
National Library of Wales
to digitise newspapers
Experts from the National Library of
Wales were at the Show advising visitors and showcasing their latest project, Welsh Newspapers Online. It
will soon - possibly within weeks - be possible to search up to 100 newspapers
and periodicals free of charge - the collection is expected to include 2
million page.
If you follow the link above you'll find
a list of the publications that will be included.
Yorkshire records to be
digitised
At the Show findmypast
announced a major project involving not one, but SIX archives which hold
records relating to Yorkshire. The Yorkshire Digitisation Consortium comprises
the East Riding Archives and Local Studies Service, the Borthwick Institute for
Archives (University of York), the North Yorkshire County Record Office,
Teesside Archives, Sheffield Archives and Local Studies, and Doncaster Archives
and Local Studies.
Until now the largest collection of
Yorkshire records online has been the 8 million entries from the West
Yorkshire parish registers at Ancestry. Yorkshire is the largest county in
England, so these new plans are excellent news for family historians.
Hertfordshire parish
registers online at last
In the last newsletter I complained
about the delay in putting Hertfordshire
parish registers online. Well, someone at findmypast must have taken my words
to heart because I discovered yesterday that nearly 2 million parish records are
now online - about half of the intended total.
Even though it was very late when I
finally got back from the show last night I couldn't resist searching the
records in the hope that I might be able to extend some of the Hertfordshire
lines in my tree - and thanks to findmypast's excellent wildcard search I was
able to find the baptism of my great-great-great-great-great grandmother Mary
Elbourne in 1752. When she married in 1770 the spelling was Elbun - but since
she made her mark that was probably just the curate's interpretation of the
name she gave (and who's to say which spelling, if either, is correct?).
Click here
to find out exactly which parishes are covered by this release. I can't promise
you'll be as fortunate as I was, and knock down a 'brick wall' with your very first
search, but if you have ancestors from Hertfordshire this is a great
opportunity to take your research back another generation or two. I'll
certainly be very busy of the coming weeks filling in some of the gaps in my
tree!
Tip:
there are some useful name indexes at Hertfordshire
Names Online including marriages, apprentices, wills, and criminal records.
Visiting the graves of my
ancestors
I don't get much opportunity these days to work on my
own family tree, but this week I visited Manor Park Cemetery for the first time
to visit the graves of some of my ancestors.
It was only the week before last when Deceased Online added 103,000 records
from 1931-2010 that I discovered that three of my direct ancestors were buried at
Manor Park, including the grandmother who I never knew. (42,000 cremation
records from 1955 onwards were added this week, and the remaining burial
records should go online within the next few weeks.)
One side of Manor Park Cemetery is
bounded by the main railway lines from London Liverpool Street to Southend,
Colchester, and beyond. Back in the 1960s and 1970s I must have travelled on
that line thousands of times on my way to or from London, but not once when I
gazed out of the carriage window did I realise that I was looking at the final
resting place of my ancestors.
My paternal grandmother died just three
years before I was born, yet nobody ever mentioned where she was buried -
indeed, I had presumed until a fortnight ago that she had been cremated,
because I knew she hadn't been buried with my grandfather, who died when I was
4 years old. Sadly, when I did eventually find the plot there was no headstone
- I couldn't even find an inscription on the stone surrounding the grave. Was
this the result of post-war austerity, I wonder, or perhaps because my
grandfather remarried just over four months later and never got round to
finalising the arrangements?
Buried in the next grave were her
parents and two of her siblings - although only one is commemorated on the
headstone. However, the inscription does mention that the five children who
died young are buried elsewhere in the same cemetery - hopefully when the
earlier records are made available online I'll be able to identify the three
who didn't appear on any census, and who up to now I've only known about from
the statistics on the 1911 Census return.
Manor Park Cemetery
over-run by brambles
It had taken me the best part of half an hour to find
my ancestors' graves, even though it was a relatively small plot, because most
of the numbers on the graves had worn away or were obscured by weeds - and
there was no discernible logic to the layout. However it could have been worse
- far worse - because in the same block there were many graves that were almost
completely covered by thick brambles which must have been growing for many
years.
On a nearby tree there was a notice
apologising for the state of the cemetery "Our planned working schedule
had been delayed earlier this spring due to the heavy rainfall". I'm not
sure why heavy rainfall would have prevented the clearance of the brambles, but
in any case some of the stems were so thick that they clearly hadn't sprung up overnight.
To be fair, most of the cemetery was
reasonably well-kept, which made it all the more surprising that some of the
graves had been allowed to become over-run with brambles and other vegetation.
And at least it hasn't been turned into a supermarket or a housing estate -
yet.
I dare say some of you think of me as
rather wild, but the Peter in this story is a German boy who is said to have been
found in a forest in Hanover, unable to speak and walking on all fours.
Brought to England as a curiousity by the
future Queen Caroline in 1726, he eventually died in 1785 and was buried at St
Mary's in Northchurch, Hertfordshire according a BBC article.
There is a picture of his headstone on the BBC website, and the grave has just
been Grade II listed by English Heritage - which will ensure that it is
well-looked after.
Note:
if you want to know more an account of Peter's life written 200 years ago can be
read here.
The Durham
Mining Museum website is an excellent source for information about mines in
the North of England and the miners who risked their lives to dig them. There
is a name index with thousands of men and boys who died in mining accidents,
some as young as 12 or 13.
I'd like to thank Carole for drawing my attention
to this wonderful resource, which also includes links to other sites related
to mining - so don't disregard it simply because your relatives were miners in
other parts of Britain.
Second source for
information on entertainers
I've written in the past about the
archive of The Stage, which is an excellent place to
look for information about ancestors who trod the boards, or otherwise
entertained the public in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
But I wasn't aware until Yvonne wrote to
me that another similar publication, The
Era, is included in the British
Newspaper Archive collection (which can also be accessed at findmypast
if you have a Full or World subscription). The issues online cover the period
1838-1900, and you'll find all sorts of performers from actors and
musicians to circus artistes and
showmen.
Birthday Book challenge
goes online
The solution to my Christmas Challenge -
the identity of the owner of a century-old Birthday Book - is still proving
elusive, although the members working on the puzzle have done some incredible
research.
It's the first time I've set a challenge
to which I didn't already know the answer, which makes it a bit of an
experiment - indeed, if I'd know how tough a nut it would be to crack I don't
think I'd have put it in the newsletter! Ten days ago I came to the conclusion
that the only way we would solve the problem is to collaborate, and I set up a
'wiki' where members taking part could post their discoveries and put forward
hypotheses or suggestions for further research.
Note:
a wiki is a website where multiple users can contribute information and edit
the contributions of others without any technical knowledge - Wikipedia is the
best-known example.
The wiki has been an amazing success -
the cross-fertilisation of ideas has brought us to the point where a solution now
seems within grasp. However, the invitation to join the wiki went out only to
those members who had written to me with partial solutions - I know that there
must be many who have tackled the challenge but not written in. If you're one
of them I'd encourage you to follow this link and take a
look at the research so far - you may discover that you can fill in some of the
remaining gaps.
Note:
to edit the wiki you'll need to register, but you can read what other people
have written without registering.
Perhaps the most important of the page
on the wiki will be the one headed Lessons
learned, because ultimately that's what challenges like this are all about.
Researching people who aren't in our family tree allows us to be more
objective, helping to broaden our vision and create awareness of resources that
we might not normally consider using.
Car crash reveals time
capsule
Ipswich School seems to be at the heart
of the Birthday Book challenge, so I was interested to read on the BBC website
about a 'time capsule' that came to light when a car crashed into a Tudor
building in Ipswich (you can read the article here).
Have you ever created a time capsule and
left it for future generations to discover? I suppose that in a sense the
Birthday Book that many of us have been studying so avidly is a time capsule -
it has certainly focused our attention on a group of people who are long-dead
and might well have been forgotten had that book not turned up.
Talking of Birthday Books and discoveries
reminds me that a member wrote in about an amazing coincidence - some while ago
his mother went to a nearby market town and walked into a second-hand bookshop
that she had never visited before. There, lying open on the counter, was her own
grandmother's Birthday Book! She bought it, of course.
Palaeography: the
study of old handwriting
I've always been pretty good at reading
other peoples' handwriting, but trying to read old handwriting is a lot more
challenging than reading bad handwriting - not least because some of the words
and abbreviations may be unfamiliar, spelled differently, or used in different
contexts from those we're familiar with.
Even if you are researching in the first
half of the 19th century you're likely to come across the 'secretary hand' in
which wills were generally copied, and this can be quite challenging,
especially if you haven't encountered it before.
Jill wrote from Australia to remind me
that's a very good tutorial on the National Archives website, which you'll find
here;
there's also a beginners guide to Latin here.
February has been an amazingly busy
month for me - apart from the newsletters I've written and the hundreds of
emails I've responded to, I've attended a family funeral and celebrated my 10th
wedding anniversary (on the same day), been to the Who Do You Think You Are? show, and set up both my very first wiki
and my very first forum.
I've now reached the stage with the
forum where I need some help to populate it with key information so that it
will be a valuable resource on the very first day it launches. There's nothing
complicated - it's simply a matter of sourcing details such as where the
records offices are for each county - but if you are an experienced forum user
that would be a bonus, especially since I'll be looking for people to help me
moderate the forum.
If you'd like to be involved during the
pre-launch phase and can spare an hour or two, please drop me an email listing
counties where you have particular interests, and - if you're also interested
in becoming a moderator - describing your previous experience of forums
(whether as a contributor or moderator).
Note:
so far about 4,000 members have indicated their interest in the forum - if
you'd like to join them please adjust the 'Join forum' setting which you'll
find under Privacy Settings on your My Details page at the LostCousins site.
Ancestry change
cancellation procedure
It seems it's getting more difficult to cancel an
Ancestry subscription if you subscribe to their Australian site - until recently it was possible to do it online, but it
seems that now you have to telephone them (thanks to Graham for
letting me know).
This change has come soon after Ancestry
were taken over by a private equity fund - although that may simply be a
coincidence. Personally I'd rather Ancestry came up with a more positive way to
encourage subscribers to continue, like a loyalty discount (something that
findmypast have offered for several years). Instead I've heard tales of substantial
discounts being offered to persuade subscribers to change their mind, which
seems rather unfair to the loyal members who pay the full price.
Many of us are known by nicknames or
diminutive forms of our proper names, so I was interested to come across this web page which
not only lists some of them, but also explains how they came about.
The article about cancelling Ancestry subscriptions has been amended to refer specifically to the Australian site..
I hope you've found this newsletter
interesting and that you'll make full use of your membership of my site to link
with the cousins you don't yet know (your 'lost cousins'). By the way, Peter's Tips will return in the next
issue.
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 own website, in an email,
on paper, or in any other format. It is better for all concerned to provide a
link as suggested above, not least because articles are often updated.