Newsletter
- 3rd April 2015
No more
costly BMD certificates?
We
need more powerful searches
Ancestry
is FREE for Easter ENDS MONDAY
2
million school records go online
Searching
genealogy books - an easier solution
People of
the British Isles: some amazing results
AncestryDNA:
a new option for British researchers
Report: Genealogy in the Sunshine
Review: The Daddy of All Mysteries
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No more costly BMD
certificates?
At 5.17pm on Thursday 26th March the
Deregulation Act received Royal Assent, finally freeing family historians from
the tyranny of the General Register Office.
But precisely how will it help? As Tom
Brake, Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, stated on 10th March when summarising
the amendments that had been proposed by the House of Lords:
"amendments
47 and 48 will allow records to be available other than in the form of a
certificate. Many family historians and genealogists do not need a certificate,
but merely the information contained within it. Providing alternative formats
will make it cheaper and quicker to obtain that information. The amendments
would provide the power to lay regulations to define how a person may access
birth, death, marriage and civil partnership records, the type of product that
can be issued, and the fee payable. The regulations could also introduce a
legal distinction regarding the age of birth, death, marriage and civil
partnership records. That will follow the precedent set in Scotland and Northern
Ireland where records are considered historical at 100, 75 and 50 years for
births, marriages and deaths respectively."
In other words, the GRO can no longer
argue that it would be illegal for them to provide information from the
registers of births, marriages and deaths for England & Wales in digital
format, or as an uncertified photocopy. As yet we don't know precisely what
will happen, although it does seem likely that the cheaper and swifter access
might only apply to historical records, which in Scotland and Northern Ireland
means births over 100 years old, marriages that took place more than 75 years
ago, and deaths from more than half a century ago.
These time limits reflect the
sensitivity of more recent data - they go a long way towards protecting the
privacy of those who are still living. It will still be possible to purchase certificates,
both for historic and more recent events, but it's likely that they will cost
just as much as they do today - and quite possibly more.
We need more powerful
searches
Gaining access to cheaper copies of
birth, marriage, and death entries is only part of the problem - we need better
ways of searching for the records. For example, identifying pre-1911 births can
be very difficult unless the surname is a rare one because the mother's maiden
name isn't shown in the indexes. Finding death entries is even more difficult
for the period 1837-1864, before the age at death began to be shown.
However, if we want to mine the records
for every scrap of useable data we need to be able to search on every
field. For example, I'd like to be able
to search marriage records by the ages of the bride and groom, the names of
their fathers, the groom's occupation, or even the names of the witnesses. I'd
like to be able to search death records by occupation, or to look only at
births where the father's name is missing.
Of course, there's a limit to what we
can hope to gain from a free search - and indeed, there may not be any free
searches at all. But whatever the charging structure, so long as the GRO's
target is to break even, rather than make a profit, we should get much more for
our money with the introduction of a far more efficient system.
Inevitably they'll need to involve
outside contractors - let's hope they'll have the good sense to involve a
company like Ancestry or Findmypast that knows about family history and
understands what we need!
Ancestry is FREE
for Easter ENDS MONDAY
Until midnight (London time) on Monday
6th April you can access all of Ancestry's UK records free at Ancestry.co.uk
- just follow this link
to see a list of all the records which are included. Make sure you save records on your own
computer, otherwise you won't be able to access the images when the offer ends.
It's a great opportunity to add extra entries
to your My Ancestors page - although
5 of the 8 censuses we use at LostCousins are always available free online, the
1881 Scotland and 1841 England & Wales, and 1911 England & Wales censuses
usually aren't.
Also, whilst the 1881 England &
Wales census is always free, finding your ancestors' extended families on that census
often depends on having access to earlier census years - I usually start in
1841 and trace collateral lines using a combination of the censuses and the GRO
indexes. Why are collateral lines important? Because ALL of your living cousins
are descended from collateral lines - that's what makes them a cousin!
Tip:
if you've never entered anyone on your My Ancestors page before, take a look at
this Getting
Started guide on the Help & Advice page.
2 million school records
go online
Six months ago 2.5 million records from
school admission registers and logbooks went online at Findmypast; today another 2 million records have
been added, and I was able to find the admission record for my wife's
grandfather, William Lloyd, who started at Ynys-y-bwl
British School in January 1900 at the tender age of 3 years and 18 days.
Copyright Glamorganshire Archives
Further down the page I found another
toddler who started school on his 3rd birthday! It's amazing what we can learn
simply by looking at the records that have survived, even when we don't find
our own ancestors listed. You can search all 4.5 million records currently
online here; a third and final tranche
will be added towards the end of the year.
When is a will not a will? That sounds like
a joke from a Christmas cracker, but for readers who wrote in recently to two
family history magazines it was far from funny.
In each case they'd been to the official website where they'd
ordered what they thought were wills, only to discover that their £10 had been
wasted - because there was no will. The Probate Calendars list not only wills
that have gone to probate but also administrations, where no will was found.
I'm sure that no reader of this
newsletter would have made the same mistake, but in any case the site has
recently been updated, as you can see from this screenshot:
Searching genealogy books
- an easier solution
Although there are a lot of
genealogy-related books available free online, I've always found that searching
them can be difficult. A new (and currently free) website called GenGophers makes the process quicker
and easier. Currently there are 40,000 books in the collection - another 60,000
should be added in the coming months.
People of the British Isles:
some amazing results
There are a number of projects which are
looking at the genetic ancestry of the British peoples, but People of the British Isles
is the one that really impresses me - and their latest
results are extremely interesting.
DNA samples from more than 2000
inhabitants of the UK whose 4 grandparents were born within 80km of each other have been compared
with each other and with samples from continental Europe to produce a map which
shows distinct genetic clusters (and therefore common origins) in different
parts of the British Isles.
The press release
explains now to interpret this map and includes other maps which are similarly
revealing - I'd urge you to take a look (it's a PDF document).
AncestryDNA: a new
option for British researchers
For a long time the Family
Finder test from FTDNA
was the only option for researchers in the UK who wanted to use autosomal DNA
testing to explore their ancestry. Recently 23andMe
started offering their test in the UK, and now AncestryDNA
are offering their own test - which uses Ancestry trees to help explore the
genetic matches that are found. Since finding the connection is one of the
biggest challenges when we get matches, this is a very interesting feature.
There are a few drawbacks - one is that
Ancestry are charging significantly more in the UK than in the US (£99 plus £20
shipping); another is that most of the results in their database are currently
from people who live in the US. Perhaps more worrying is that if you allow your
Ancestry subscription to expire you won't be able to access some of the
features.
Having previously taken the FTDNA test I'm
seriously considering taking the Ancestry test to find additional matches. If
you haven't yet tested this page
on the ISOGG (International Society of Genetic Genealogy) website compares the
different autosomal tests that are available.
Tip:
if you take the Ancestry test you can upload your results to FTDNA in order to
make matches there, but only the first 20 matches are free - after that you
have to pay $39 to unlock the remaining matches.
Report: Genealogy in the Sunshine
First let's get the bad news out of
way... we were very unfortunate with the weather. Not only did it rain on
several days, it was also unusually cool (although though not nearly as cold as
in England).
Ironically, on the one day when we were
expecting the sun to be hidden - the day of the eclipse - the clouds cleared,
and two of the attendees who had brought proper cameras and the right
filters got some remarkably good photos. The photos in this article were all
taken by David - I believe the first one was taken from the apartment in which
he was staying.
The course
began even before we arrived in Portugal, in a special area on the LostCousins
Forum where we could share 'brick walls' - then, for those who arrived early, I
negotiated a 10% discount for a Friday evening meal at the Rocha Mar restaurant opposite the entrance to the resort. That meal
couldn't have happened without using the forum to gather food orders in advance
because there were 35 of us, almost taking over the restaurant!
Saturday was
the day when most of the other attendees were arriving, so I didn't attempt to
organise anything for that day, but on Sunday we met up for an introductory
session at which badges were distributed - coloured bands identified us as
speakers, delegates, or non-participating companions. This was followed by an
ice-breaking session where around 90 of us were able to mingle over a glass or
three of bubbly (or fruit juice, though since we got through about 30 bottles
of wine but only one carton of fruit juice, I don't think many went for that
option). Two hours later, by the time the sun went down, most of us had made
some new friends!
The main
course sessions took place on weekday afternoons, but the course kicked off
with a Monday morning discussion on the Genealogical
Proof Standard, led by Else Churchill (Genealogist at the Society of
Genealogists, and one of the leading speakers in the UK).
I'm not going
to go through the talks one by one - we had so many excellent speakers - but
you can see the timetable for the week here; speaking for
the first time at Genealogy in the
Sunshine were Professor Rebecca Probert from Warwick University, John D
Reid from Canada, and also from Canada we had Donna Fraser, whose joint
presentation with her 'lost cousin' Dr Donald Davis really got into the hearts
and minds of the audience.
There was
something going on most evenings, so even those who travelled on their own
could socialise with other delegates, and the social events were also open to
non-participating companions, so nobody was left out. 36 of us took part in the
Safari Suppers, which proved a great way of getting to know people - whether
they were speakers, delegates, or companions.
But all good
things must come to an end, and our last day was marked by an astronomical
event - the partial solar eclipse. When we woke up on Friday morning the clouds
had parted, so there was a good view for those who had the right equipment,
like Ged and David:
The course
finished with two special sessions: the first was a real-death murder mystery -
Chris Paton told us about Scotland's longest unsolved murder case, in which his ancestor was the victim! We then
heard from Rebecca Probert about the early 19th century travels and travails of
the wife of a soldier in the British Army who fought in Spain and Portugal.
Not everyone
could make the end-of-course dinner, but 82 of us crowded into the O Farol restaurant at the resort on the
last night - and the question on everyone's lips was "Will you do it again
next year?".
We'll have to
see.......
How successful have you been in your
search for living cousins? The Match Potential figure shown on your My Summary page tells you how many new
living relatives you ought to have found by now, assuming average luck, based
on the number of relatives you've entered (from different censuses) on your My Ancestors page.
Every time you make an additional entry
your Match Potential goes up - but it also goes up when other members enter
their relatives. For example, my Match Potential went up from 6.7879 in
December to 7.0025 at the end of March.
Your Match Potential goes up fastest
when you enter relatives from the 1881 England & Wales census - the 1881
Scotland census is next, followed by the 1841 England
& Wales census and the 1881 Canada census. Remember that it's the members
of your direct ancestors' extended families - their brothers, sisters, nephews,
nieces and cousins - who are most likely to provide the vital links to your
'lost cousins'.
Genealogy
Printers will print family trees of almost any size and ship them almost
anywhere in the world! You'll get a 10% discount when you give your LostCousins
membership number when you ask for a quote (it's shown on your My Summary page
and begins with the letters 'LC').
Review: File Under
Family
Let me say right away that even I was
shocked by some of the language in this book. But it was used sparingly and appropriately,
not gratuitously - and there was no point at which I had any reservations about
recommending this wonderful book. I simply didn’t want it to end!
The heroine of the story is a trainee probate
researcher - or heir hunter. Having been contacted in the past by an heir
hunter who wanted to take a 40% share of the estate of my relative, I have a
fairly low view of them, so I should have disliked her - and yet the more I
learnt about Anna and her complicated life, the more I liked her. She wasn't
perfect, but she worked hard - and still found time to look after her family.
Assigned to a fairly straightforward
case - to trace the heirs of a middle-aged lady living on her own - Anna finds herself getting more and more absorbed in the case. But
that's not all that's going on in her life - though to tell you any more would
spoil the voyage of discovery that I enjoyed so much. It's a wonderfully human
tale, and whilst it's one which is more about families than family history that
didn't spoil my enjoyment in the slightest.
Highly recommended, File
Under Family is currently only available as a
Kindle book (but remember you can read Kindle books on almost any device - I
read this one on my smartphone). You can help to support LostCousins if you use
one of the links below (they'll take you straight to the relevant page at the
site):
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.com.au
I'm glad to say that there are going to
be three books in the series (this is the first) and the second one is out
already. I'll let you know what I think when I've read it!
Review: The Daddy of All Mysteries
A month ago Liz wrote "to recommend a book called
The
Daddy of All Mysteries, which is the true story of a woman's search for
her father - she was illegitimate and really only wanted to know if he had
loved her mother. I couldn't put it down as the story had many twists and turns."
Currently only available as a paperback
the book has 13 reviews on Amazon.co.uk,
ALL of them awarding 5 stars - and on top of that, the author turned out to be
a LostCousins member. I had to read it!
It falls neatly into two halves: the
first half talks about Jess Welsby's early life in
Liverpool, her eventual realisation that she was illegitimate, and the family
that she knew - all from her mother's side (they were Irish Catholics). Then
she describes how, after her mother's death, she came across a letter which
pointed towards the identity of her father - and that's when it really gets
interesting. A little clue here, a little clue there - suddenly the pieces
start to fall into place, though there are plenty of blind alleys and wrong
turnings, and inevitably some of the information she discovers turns out to be
misleading.
It's a tale that will inspire many to
have another bash at their own 'brick walls' - and Jess's joy when she
eventually meets people who knew her father reminds us all how family history
is about so much more than names and dates.
Whilst it isn't the sort of book I'd
normally read (because I get so many interesting stories sent to me by
LostCousins members, and have such limited time) - I'm not in the least
surprised that it has proved so popular with reviewers. Let's hope that it
becomes available as an ebook before too long!
This is where I'll post any last minute
additions.
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2015 Peter Calver
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