Newsletter
- 28 November 2012
Warwickshire
Quarter Sessions Records online
Life
and death of a servant girl
The LostCousins newsletter is
usually published fortnightly. To access the previous newsletter (dated 18
November 2012) please click here; for an index to articles
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Warwickshire Quarter
Sessions Records online
Ancestry
have made available over 280,000 Quarter Sessions records for Warwickshire,
including Jurors' Lists, Hearth Tax Returns, and lists of Freemasons, Boatowners, Gamekeepers, and Hair Powder Certificates. For
more details follow this link.
There was a very positive reaction to my
Masterclass article Tracking down pre-1837 baptisms and marriage in the last issue - Guy
wrote from Texas to say "your masterclass
article in your most recent newsletter gives me new hope; it is the most useful
thing I have ever read on pre-1837 UK research".
There were one or two things that, in
retrospect, I wish I'd included - but since that one article was already 5
pages long, it's possibly just as well that I didn't! I certainly should have
emphasised how important it is to identify the family history societies that
cover the areas where your ancestors lived - many have transcriptions of parish
registers, usually on CD ROM or microfiche, and some offer a low-cost look-up
service for members.
There are also some commercial websites
that have indexed transcriptions covering specific areas, such as the Joiner Marriage Index (2.3 million
marriages from 3438 parishes in 28 English counties), and Durham Records Online (over 3.7 million
register entries, mainly from Durham but including a few from adjoining
counties).
And the fact that I didn't explicitly
mention non-conformists is most regrettable (particularly since I was brought
up as one!) - so I shall give them an article of their
own in the near future. In the meantime I'd suggest reading the Research
Guide at the National Archives website; it's also worth knowing that The
Genealogist has images and transcriptions covering most of the relevant
record sets in the TNA collection (click here
to see full details of the coverage).
Last, but not least, Elizabeth in the US
pointed out that FamilySearch have an extensive online library of digitised
books, including parish registers, which you can find here.
For years I've relied on the Batch
Number site created by Hugh Wallis to tell me which parish records are (or
aren't) included in the International Genealogical Index.
But recently Steve Archer (who produced
the Surname Atlas CD
ROM for the 1881 Census) has created a new site with - it
would appear - a more comprehensive listing of British and Irish records. There
are also added features: you can now see how many entries there are in each
batch, and for batches which cover more than one parish there's a breakdown by parish.
I've only recently discovered this new
site (thanks to Barry and Andy) so haven't had much time to try it out, but
from what I've seen so far it is a worthy successor to Hugh Wallis's site.
Please note, however, that the new site only covers Britain and Ireland (and
the Irish section is not yet complete).
You may recall that last
month I wrote about a baptism where the names of the parents were recorded
as James and Henry - I hazarded a guess that 'Henry' might have been a mistranscription of 'Mary'.
Tip:
remember that vicars typically didn't write up the baptism register at the time
of the baptism - it would be a little too risky when there was water flying
around - so they usually made notes and wrote them up later, though others
relied on their memory, which sometimes turned out not to be that reliable (I'm
sure that like me you've seen examples of register entries where the vicar has
left a blank for name he couldn't remember).
Subsequently I had a number of emails
from members who had examples in their trees of female ancestors who had names
that nowadays we would commonly regard as exclusively male. For example, Andrea
wrote from New Zealand to tell me about her female ancestor named Philip - and
how frustrating she found it when well-meaning people unfamiliar with the
family corrected it to Philipa or Philippa.
Andrea drew my attention to the comments
by Pauline Litton in her book Pitfalls
and Possibilities in Family History Research where she wrote "in
the past names like Anne, Florence, Lucy, Marie, Shirley, and Wendy were used -
particularly among the aristocracy - for men".
She continues "Florence
Nightingale, Charlotte Bronte's Shirley
and J M Barrie's Wendy are widely regarded as being the first use of these names
for women. On the other hand, Christian, Douglas, Julian, Matthew and Philip
were used as girls' names, as occasionally was Montague." As a
contemporary example she reminds us that the real name of the wrestler Big
Daddy was Shirley Crabtree - she might also have mentioned John Wayne, who was
really Marion Morrison.
When I come across a name in my research
I invariably make an assumption about whether that person was male or female,
purely on the basis of the forename - clearly I need to be more open-minded!
Life and death of a
servant girl
Did you see the recent BBC4 documentary
series Servants
- The True Story Of Life Below Stairs? I thought
it was fascinating, even though they stretched two hours of material to make
three one-hour programmes (I suspect the fact that I watched it alongside the
3rd series of Downton Abbey was a factor!).
The main surprise was that domestic
servants as we know them (from watching programmes Upstairs
Downstairs and Downton Abbey) were primarily a Victorian
invention - but the long hours and low wages were hardly a revelation. It was
good to see Peter Higginbotham, creator of the Workhouses website, and probably the
greatest living expert on the subject (he also showed up in another recent BBC
series the name of which currently escapes me).
Searching the British newspaper collection at findmypast
last week I came across the sad tale of a servant girl who took her own life at
Christmas - not in Victorian times, but in 1928. Kathleen Brewster, aged just
16, took her own life on Christmas Eve, by putting her head in a gas oven. It's
always distressing to hear of someone so young committing suicide, but when I
saw that this happened in the next street to the one where my father and his
family were living at the time, it made me shudder.
"She seemed quite
happy" according to the newspaper reporter, who had presumably spoken to
the householder, a Mr E Roberts.
Sadly that seems to have been far from the truth....
I'm delighted to report that findmypast.co.uk seem to have solved the
Search problems mentioned in my last newsletter. For example, you can now
search on forename and surname quite reliably, and when you add keywords it
reduces the number of results as it should do.
I am still having problems downloading
PDF images - but the solution
suggested in my last newsletter is, in any case, probably a better option in
the vast majority of cases.
Note:
a few members have asked why I recommended using the Print Screen button in
conjunction with the free Irfanview graphics program, rather than using the
'Snipping Tool' that's built into recent versions of Windows. By all means use
the Snipping Tool if you prefer, but I'll continue recommending Irfanview
because it allows you to undo errors, drag the borders of the rectangle, and
easily change the brightness and contrast to improve readability and save on
printer ink - all things that I frequently want to do.
Remember that the newspaper collection
is only included in your findmypast.co.uk subscription if you have a British
Full subscription or the new World subscription. Considering that a separate
subscription to the British Newspaper Archive would cost £79.95 for 12 months
you could be surprised how little findmypast are charging - click here to find out how much it would cost to subscribe or upgrade.
To search the British newspaper
collection at findmypast click here.
As Dr Bruce Durie's
Scottish
Genealogy is now in its 3rd edition I was very interested to hear that
he had written a new book entitled Welsh
Genealogy - not least because my wife has Welsh ancestry.
Researching in Wales is particularly
difficult, not just because of the preponderance of common surnames like Jones,
Davies, and Williams but also because to English eyes the place names are very
unfamiliar - the latter problem is compounded by the fact that spellings often
varied. Dr Durie provides a good explanation of the
problems and pitfalls relating to Welsh surnames, and for me this alone
justifies the cost of the book.
Welsh
Genealogy covers a lot of ground that
most LostCousins members will be familiar with, whether or not they have Welsh
ancestry, simply because there are a lot of common factors between researching
in Wales and in England (or, to a lesser extent, Scotland). However I do get the
impression that the author borrowed a little too much from his earlier book -
one blatant giveaway being the title for Chapter 6, which is Statutory Registers of Birth, Marriage, and
Death Post-1855 (it should, of course, be 1837; 1855 was the year when civil
registration began in Scotland).
Similarly in Chapter 5 he writes of the
1911 Census "Bear in mind that for 1911 only the summary books (as shown
in Chapter 5) exist." Leaving aside the recursive nature of the comment in
brackets, it seems he's writing about the Scottish census, not the Welsh
census.
For a book that's only just been
published it's also quite out of date in rather too many respects, particularly
when it comes to websites. For example, the author directs readers to the old
FamilySearch website (which closed for good in the second half of June) and writes
about findmypast.com (the British site has been findmypast.co.uk for about 3
years). He also suggests using The WayBack Machine at archive.org to access an archived
copy of blacksheepindex.co.uk (an excellent site that, sadly, is no longer with
us), but seems to be unaware that most of the information researchers will want
to see is in PDF files which unfortunately haven't been archived.
There's another blooper on p122 where a
screenshot of FreeREG is confusingly captioned FreeCEN - and to compound the error the illustration
clearly doesn't appear where the author intended it to. Incidentally, neither FreeCEN or FreeREG are in the index at the back - but there are
entries for Scotland (64 page references) and Scottish (43 page references)
which seems a little over the top for a book that's supposed to be about Welsh
genealogy. The list of occupations in Chapter 13 also includes some specifically
Scottish terms which also seem out of place.
The extensive chapter on Welsh
emigration and immigration goes through a long list of places where Welsh
relatives may have ended up, and will be of particular interest if you're
trying to trace collateral lines that seem to disappear from the records. And
whilst it won't be relevant to everyone, there's a long chapter on Welsh
heraldry. There's even a chapter on the Welsh language which is bound to come
in useful during your Welsh research.
If you have Welsh ancestry but don't
already have a good book on British genealogy, such as Mark Herber's
master work Ancestral
Trails, then Welsh
Genealogy will definitely prove useful - and I'd also recommend it for
anyone who's struggling with their Welsh lines and needs to kickstart
their research.
The one thing that most of us know about
researching in Ireland is how few records have survived - and yet I'm
continually amazed by previously unknown sources that turn up out of the blue. First
it was the Prison Registers at
findmypast.ie, then the Petty Sessions
records at the same site.
Last week Carmel wrote to tell me about
the Irish Army Census of 1922 which is available at the free Military Archives site. The census
hasn't been transcribed, so you'll need to have some idea of where your
relative might have been based in 1922, but Carmel managed to find several of
her relatives - so you may too!
If you have relatives who migrated to
Canada you'll be interested to know that the Royal British Columbia Museum is
in the process of putting images of birth. marriage,
and death registrations online. You can search free here.
Had it not been for the eagle eyes of a
member who is also an Ancestry subscriber I wouldn't have realised that their Privacy
Policy had been updated (for existing users of the site the new terms came
into effect on 14th October this year).
The paragraph that Michael found
worrying reads as follows:
"When you provide us with any
personal information, that personal information may be transferred to and
stored and processed in other countries which may provide a different level of
protection for personal data than in your country of residence. By providing us
with personal information, you specifically consent to the transfer, storage
and processing of personal information."
In other words "if we transfer your
personal information to a country that doesn't have any privacy laws we'll be
able to do anything we like with it". Or am I being cynical?
A letter in the latest edition of New Scientist magazine mentioned the
Liverpool Care Pathway, something I'd never heard of before, and when I started
searching for more information I found articles from the Daily
Mail and Daily
Telegraph that were more than a little bit worrying.
As a result of all the press coverage
and the complaints received the Care Minister, Norman Lamb, has launched an
inquiry but it will be a long time before the inquiry reports, and even longer
before its recommendations are put into effect. In the meantime - be wary!
A lot of members have bought copies of
Family Tree Maker following my recent tips, in some cases saving as much as £63
on an Ancestry World subscription. I reckon that in total LostCousins members
must have saved tens of thousands of pounds by following my advice!
However I possibly haven't always made
it sufficiently clear that I am not recommending the software, only the free 6
month subscription that comes with it - which is why I generally suggest buying
the 2011 version, which is typically much cheaper than the 2012 version.
Currently the 2012 Platinum edition is
as cheap as I can remember it, at £26.79 including UK shipping, whilst the 2011
edition is £19.99 plus postage, a total of £23.28. This means that for around
£50 you can save yourself the £109.40 that it would cost for a one-year Premium
subscription! Don't leave it too long - the price of the World edition has
nearly doubled since I tipped it at the beginning of the month.
That tip is primarily for members in the
UK, as Amazon won't ship this product to most countries overseas. But if you're
an Ancestry subscriber living outside the UK remember that subscribing through
your local Ancestry site is likely to cost you a lot more than subscribing
through the UK site. You'll find full details in this article
from October.
As I mentioned in the last issue there
are some amazing savings at Family Tree DNA right now - click here for more
details. If you need to know more about how DNA testing works you'll find a
compendium of my DNA articles in this special newsletter
that I recently produced for members on my North American mailing list.
Finally, this is the absolutely the last
call for entries for my 2012 jam competition!
This where any late
updates will be posted, so it's worth checking back after a few days.
I hope you've found this newsletter
interesting. As usual, several of the articles were inspired by members, so do
please keep writing in with your tips, comments, and questions!
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2012 Peter Calver
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