Newsletter
- 29th May 2014
Findmypast
find thousands of missing WW1 army records
Masterclass: how to find a missing spouse between 1837-1911
How are
you reading this newsletter?
Surrey
Land Tax records go online
Merchant
Seamen & Royal Naval Reserve
Soldiers'
wills at Scotlandspeople
Books that
may be of interest....
British
Newspaper Archive now has over 8 million pages
Convict
pardons added to New South Wales database
Charles
Booth's London poverty survey
The
curious case of Mrs Peckett
The LostCousins newsletter is
usually published fortnightly. To access the previous newsletter (dated 7th
May) 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
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newsletter) - if nothing seems to happen then you need to enable pop-ups in
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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!
Findmypast find thousands
of missing WW1 army records
For many years Ancestry
have had a collection of army personnel files dating from WW1, but as around 60%
of the files were destroyed by Nazi bombing in 1940 I wasn't surprised to find
that my paternal grandfather's records were missing. (You can read more about
the WO 363/364 record collections on the National
Archives website.)
However, when findmypast
recently released their version of the collection it included nearly 600,000 additional
names. Some were taken from casualty lists, but there were also complete personnel
files which had never been published online before - including the records for
my grandfather that I had previously believed to be lost! I now know far more
about his war service than ever before, and have discovered that he received a
provisional pension for a year after discharge (some problem with his knee that
I'm struggling to decipher).
It's a great discovery - but what a
shame I was unable to find these records before my father died 3 years
ago...... perhaps you'll make a similar discovery before it's too late? You can search all 4.2 million records here.
Note:
the BBC, in conjunction with the Imperial War Museum, has started out on a
nationwide roadshow to give people hands on experience of life in the Great War
and to help them discover the role their ancestors may have played. But I wonder
how realistic it can be - will they be digging trenches, for example? There's a
video clip here that will
give you an idea of what it's about.
Masterclass: how to find a
missing spouse between 1837-1911
In the last issue I challenged you to
find out who Lewis Lister Peckett married in 1872 -
and whilst nearly everyone who wrote found the right person, very few used the
technique that I'd recommend. These days so much is handed to us on a plate
that it's easy to forget the basics; indeed, some newer researchers reading
this may never have learned them.
I hope that after working through this
tutorial you'll understand why, even though I have subscriptions to both
Ancestry and findmypast, I sometimes choose to use the FreeBMD website to look
up entries in the GRO indexes for England & Wales.
You probably know that whilst the surname
of the spouse isn't shown in the indexes prior to 1912, it can usually be
inferred from the list of other names on the same page of the register. This is
because the GRO's marriage register pages look very much like the pages from
church marriage registers, which I'm sure you'll have seen when looking through
parish records.
The GRO indexes identify the precise
register page (just as the census references you enter under My Ancestors identify a precise census
page), so if you searched through all the indexes for a particular quarter
you'd expect to find an equal number of men and women - usually 2 of each (but
in earlier years there were 4 of each). Findmypast and Ancestry have done all
the hard work, so that when we look up a marriage at their sites the names of
the possible spouses are shown - most of the time. For example, if I look up my
great-grandfather's 1864 marriage at findmypast, this is what I see:
Since I know from the census that his
wife was called Emily (and not Mary Ann) I wouldn't need to buy the marriage
certificate - although in this case I did, because I wanted to see what, if
anything, it said about Emily's father.
When you have a subscription to Ancestry
or findmypast it's natural to look up everything at that site - even if you can
do it for nothing at another site. However there are good reasons why you might
eschew your expensive subscription and instead look the record up at FreeBMD,
which has also transcribed the GRO indexes (thanks to the efforts of
volunteers, including many LostCousins members).
Here are the search results at FreeBMD
(I looked for a John Calver marrying in 1864):
Note that registration district and page
number are links; click on the district to find out which parishes were
included (this will vary as boundaries changed). Click on the page number to
see a list of the other entries on the same page of the register, ie:
Note that
Emily Buxton's name isn't listed. FreeBMD transcribers don't make many mistakes
- and those they do make are often corrected by other transcribers, since about
half of the entries have been transcribed twice by different people.
What do you
do in this situation? I know that John's wife was called Emily from the
censuses. Clearly there's one name missing from the search results, and whilst
I could go to Ancestry or findmypast there are good reasons to stay with
FreeBMD, as you'll see in a moment.
The simplest solution is to search for
all the Emilys who married in Thingoe
registration district in the last quarter of 1864:
As it happens, one of those surnames
stands out - because my grandfather's full name was Harry John BUXTON Calver - but let's assume that I didn't have a clue which
was the correct Emily. I'd probably work my way through the list starting from
the top, not least because the first two entries differ by only one digit from
the '952' that I'm looking for.
Remember that by clicking on the page
number I can see all the entries on that register page:
As you can
see, there are 4 entries - and equal numbers of brides and grooms - so the
chances are that Emily Barton's entry hasn't been mistranscribed. So next I'd
click on the second entry:
Interesting -
only one result, which certainly suggests that the page number has been
mistranscribed. I can click on the spectacles icon to see the original image:
It would be
hardly surprising if the page number had been transcribed, since the final
digit is incomplete. I'd like to think that I'd have read it as a '2', not a
'0', but I'm certainly not convinced that I would have done, especially if this
was just one entry out of hundreds.
Tip: different websites have different copies of the
indexes - findmypast has a much better copy of this page, so it's not
surprising that their transcriber got it right. One of the reasons that there
are many wrongly transcribed1920s marriage entries at Ancestry is because the
transcribers were working from very poor copies. However, as you'll see in a
moment, sometimes the indexesthemselves
are wrong.
By the way, if this all seems a bit
longwinded, it's because I want to ensure that everyone reading this knows how
to make the best use of FreeBMD - and why it can be advantageous to use FreeBMD
even though you have a subscription to another site.
Now that you understand the principle, why
not see if you can use it to find out who Lewis Lister Peckett
married in 1872? Carrying out the search yourself will help you to remember the
technique so that you can apply it when researching your own tree.
But whether or not you succeed, I'd
encourage you to read the second half of
this tutorial, which you'll find towards the end of the newsletter.
How are you reading this
newsletter?
There are at least three ways to read
this newsletter - on your computer screen, on a tablet, or on paper - and whilst
you might think it's simply a matter of personal preference, you're likely to
miss an awful lot if you rely on a print-out.
Why? Firstly, because I don't go into
detail when there's a perfectly good online source I can direct readers to -
this keeps the articles shorter and enables me to include more in each issue.
Secondly, because many of the websites I write about have thousands (or
millions) of pages, so it makes perfect sense for me to provide links that will
take readers direct to the relevant page.
And finally, because most of the money
that keeps the LostCousins website (and this newsletter) going comes from
newsletter readers clicking on links. If, instead of clicking on a link, you do
a Google search or use a bookmark there's no possibility that any subsequent
purchase you make will benefit LostCousins.
By not printing the newsletter you'll be
saving paper and ink - which helps the environment - and as all the newsletters
since February 2009 are online, and will remain online indefinitely, it really
isn't necessary. Should you have difficulty reading the newsletter on screen
it's worth remembering that you can change the text size using the Zoom
function in your browser, and the page size by resizing the browser window -
you can't easily achieve that with a printout!
Tip:
if you disable cookies in your browser (they're usually enabled by default)
then the websites you buy from won't have to pay any commission. That's good
news for the big websites such as Ancestry, Amazon and findmypast that don't
have to pay out - but very bad news for the small websites like FreeBMD, UKBMD,
and LostCousins that rely on this income. So please don't disable cookies!
Surrey Land Tax records
go online
Ancestry have added nearly 2 million names taken from Land Tax
records for the county of Surrey which date from 1780-1832 - you can search
them here.
Other Surrey records added recently include 200,000 names from lists of Jury-qualified
Freeholders and Copyholders covering the period 1696-1824, and - perhaps
more interesting - nearly 65,000 Licensed
Victuallers from 1785-1903.
In the last newsletter I wrote, somewhat
jocularly, about the sale of titles including manorial Lordships - however, I perhaps
should have taken the opportunity to mention how important manorial documents
can be in tracing local and family history back to mediaeval times.
Although the National Archives does not
have any manorial records online, they are in the process of compiling an
online version of the Manorial
Documents Register. It currently covers about half of England and all of
Wales (another 10 English counties are in the process of being added). The
register pinpoints the locations of manorial records, which often aren't in the local record office - as
you may possibly have expected).
Merchant Seamen
& Royal Naval Reserve
Ancestry.co.uk have added two indexes previously only available at the
National Archives website: the first is to records of over 100,000 medals
awarded to merchant seamen who served during World War 2 - you can search them here.
The second index is to the service records of over 130,000 members of the
Royal Naval Reserve - you'll find it here.
Note: these are just indexes -
images of the records themselves are currently only available through the
National Archives site, at a cost of £3.30 each. The main advantage in having
these indexes at Ancestry as well as at the National Archives is that it makes
them more readily accessible.
Soldiers' wills at Scotlandspeople
Scotlandspeople
have this week made available the wills of 26,000 Scottish soldiers who served
in the Great War - for example on the right (image courtesy of the National
Records of Scotland) you can see the will of Andrew Cox.
Andrew Cox was the uncle of Dundee-born actor Brian Cox CBE. The eighth
child of Hugh Cox, a dock worker, and his wife Elizabeth he was a rope-worker
before the war, and possibly also a reservist, as he was with the 1st
Battalion, Highland Light Infantry, soon after the outbreak of war.
On 14 September 1914, around the time Andrew embarked for France, he made
his will in favour of his mother, as many unmarried soldiers did. This meant
Elizabeth Cox would receive his pay, a pension, and any savings and personal
property.
On or before 18 March 1915 he was killed at the age of 22 in the Battle of
Neuve Chapelle - but as so often happened, his body was never identified.
Scotlandspeople also has the wills of about 5,000 Scots who served in
World War 2, and a small number for those who fought in the Korean War or took
part in other operations between 1857-1964. It's free to search the wills, but
it will cost you 10 credits or £2.50 to view a will.
In the past two newsletters I've written about vaccination and the records
that have survived: however, I was quite surprised to hear from Laura that
records of her great-great grandfather's admission to the Marine Society School
in 1811 showed that he had already been vaccinated.
The surprise was because it was only in 1796 that Edward Jenner began his
trials into vaccination, so Lorna's ancestor must have been one of the first to
benefit from the discovery.
When I investigated further I discovered that vaccination wasn't the first
solution to be proposed: as long ago as 1721 the practice of variolation -
deliberately infecting people with a mild strain of smallpox - was introduced
into Britain from Turkey by the wife of the British ambassador. However it was
a risky procedure which sometimes resulted in the patient dying.
Note: you can read more about
vaccination here on
the Jenner Museum website.
Another email about vaccination came from Margaret, who told me that
whilst she knew that her father's elder sibling had died as an infant, it
wasn't until she discovered a letter insisting that the child be vaccinated
that she had enough information to be able to track down the child. Margaret
wrote:
"It
was the only formal evidence there was that the baby had actually existed. As a
result I was, years later, able to send for the death certificate of Joan
Eileen who had died the day she was born at home in Bethnal Green in 1929. How
my mother-in-law's heart must have ached on receiving this cold missive six
months after her first baby had died at birth."
Even more horrific than smallpox, the Black Death - a form of plague - killed
millions across Europe between 1347-51. However recent research (reported in
this BBC News article)
suggests that people lived longer after the Black Death than they had done
before, with the effect continuing for several generations. A number of reasons
have been suggested: one is that the plague was more likely to kill the weaker and
less mobile members of society, but it could also be because the reduced
population was better fed.
Books that may be of
interest....
Lorna told me that when she was in contact with the Marine Society the archivist
mentioned a book called Life
in Nelson's Navy (by Dudley Page - not to be confused with the much
shorter Kindle book with the same title). Lorna found it useful, and it's
certainly got good reviews at Amazon
- and when I checked just now there were second-hand copies available for just
1p (plus postage).
But the book that I can't wait to read is The
Lost Empress, the new Jefferson Tayte genealogical mystery from Steve
Robinson - however, it won't be out until October, though you can pre-order the
Kindle version from Amazon.co.uk
(in which case they won't charge you until the release date). At Amazon.com
they're also accepting orders for the paperback, whereas at Ancestry.ca
you can only pre-order the paperback - the Kindle version isn't even mentioned!
Let's hope that in due course all versions are available in every territory,
because I know how popular his first three books were with LostCousins members.
British Newspaper Archive
now has over 8 million pages
There are now over 8 million newspaper pages online at the British
Newspaper Archive - the earliest are from 1710, the most recent from 1954.
Tip: it's now only £9.95 for a one
month subscription - a third of what it used to cost - and the page limit has
been removed!
Convict pardons added to
New South Wales database
The 140,000 records in the New South Wales Convict Database now include
20,000 entries relating to pardons. You can search the free index here.
Three weeks ago I received the following email from a new member who
joined at the beginning of the month:
"Thank
you for the newsletter - my first and it has provided me with the information
to track down my Irish ancestors at last! I have only just joined Lost Cousins
and already have corresponded with a cousin in Australia who I am going to be
able to meet when she comes to Britain in August."
I can't guarantee that all new members
are going to find a new cousin in Australia but I do know that, because she
completed her My Ancestors page
within a few days of joining, this new member thoroughly deserved her success.
Tip:
if you've yet to complete your My Ancestors page check out the illustrated
'Getting Started' guides on the Help
& Advice page. Remember that it's the 1881 Census that is most likely
to link you to your living relatives, so enter everyone you can find in this year
before turning your attention to other censuses.
Charles Booth's London
poverty survey
One of the key visual reminders of the
deprivation in late 19th century London comes from Charles Booth's map, which show the streets and tenement buildings of the
city in different colours according to the level of deprivation. For example,
black represents:
"the lowest
class which consists of some occasional labourers, street sellers, loafers,
criminals and semi-criminals. Their life is the life of savages, with
vicissitudes of extreme hardship and their only luxury is drink"
You can find out more about Booth's
classifications here, but
what I really wanted to tell you about is a new online version of Charles
Booth's map which, though in beta test, can be viewed here. The fact that they it can be
overlaid on modern day maps really brings home how much change there has been
in some parts of the metropolis.
Note:
some years after Booth's work another survey was carried out which was
published in 1912 as 'Family life on a pound a week'; the book
by Maud Pember Reeves is one of the most powerful
works I have ever read. According to Amazon I bought my copy on 2nd January
2003, just months after I began to research my family tree - you can now pick
up second-hand copies for as little as 1p (plus postage), so it's a bargain as
well as an eye-opener.
The curious case of Mrs Peckett
Have you already found the answer to the
puzzle I set in the last newsletter? I described the technique earlier in this
issue, so I hope by now you'll have the answer.
Here's what you'd see if you searched
for Lewis Lister Peckett's marriage at FreeBMD
(Ancestry and findmypast give similar results):
Four entries
(all shown in bold, which indicates that two separate transcribers have reached
the same conclusion) - but three of them are male, and two of those are clearly
the same person. Clearly one of the brides is missing.
We know that
Mrs Peckett was called Mary Ann, so let's search for all the Mary Anns who
married in Holbeck during that quarter:
Only three
results, which makes our task easier - and the first entry is just one digit
different, which makes it the favourite. More importantly, for this entry the
name of the registration district is shown in italics, which indicates that the
page number shown is not in the expected range for this district. However, it
is shown in bold, so two separate transcribers have read it as 598.
To see what
has gone wrong, click on the spectacles icon to view the original image:
Without a
shadow of a doubt the page number has been printed as 598, not 398, so the
mistake must have been made when the indexes were originally compiled 142 years
ago.
Note: at FreeBMD you can't correct an error of this
type - because the transcription is correct - but you can add a postem . However, PLEASE
don't do it when I set a challenge in my newsletter as it can spoil things for
everybody else!
Because of the location this particular
puzzle could also have been solved by searching the West
Yorkshire parish register collection at Ancestry, but of course most parish
registers aren't online (and after 1837 some people chose to marry in the
register office). FreeBMD covers the whole of England & Wales and includes
non-conformist and register office marriages as well as those that took place
in the parish church.
As you've seen, there are errors in the GRO's
records - not just in the indexes, but also in the registers themselves. Some of
you may have read A
Comedy of Errors, or, The Marriage Records of England and Wales, 1837-1899
by Michael Whitfield Foster, who was offered unprecedented access to the GRO's microfilm
copies of the registers in order to carry out his research. He found all sorts
of errors and omissions, but the good news is that we can solve many of the
problems using FreeBMD.
Until midnight on Friday you
can save up to 91% on brand new books at The
Book People. I had a quick look through the 300 books and sets on offer -
the ones that stood out for me were the World
Atlas of Wine (reduced from £75, the price of case, to £8, the price of a
bottle); The Big Allotment Challenge which
accompanies the TV series (£5, down from £20), and the Biggles Collection (15 books for just £10) - I enjoyed the books so much
when I was a boy. Don't worry too much if you miss the deadline - I'm sure there
will still be plenty of bargains!
A lot of people are laughing about the
proposed self-driving cars that Google are planning to manufacture - but when
you think how older people and those with disabilities could benefit I don't
think it's a laughing matter. Of course, there will always be a few
scaremongers who reckon that automated cars are dangerous - but when I consider
that 90% of road accidents are the result of human error, it's pretty obvious
to me which is going to be safest in practice. Automating cars is nothing
new, by the way - the average new car already has about 50 microprocessors.
30th May: findmypast have just released over 4 million transcribed parish records for Devon
- you can find out more here
I hope you've found some useful snippets
in this edition - the next issue will be out in early June.
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2014 Peter Calver
You
MAY link to this newsletter or email a link to your friends and relatives
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