Newsletter
- 10th February 2017
Save 20% at British Newspaper Archive ENDS WEDNESDAY
New parish records at The Genealogist
Incorrect ages in the GRO's new online death
indexes
GRO's PDF Pilot Phase 2 has closed
Local register offices to be surveyed
Might it one day be possible to order local
certificates from the GRO?
Release of 1642 'census' delayed EXCLUSIVE
Guest article: The Heraldic Visitations and
their value to genealogists
Save $20 on DNA tests at 23andMe.com US ONLY
WARNING: popular email addresses are being
discontinued
Review: Putting
Your Ancestors in their Place
The LostCousins newsletter is usually
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Save
20% at British Newspaper Archive ENDS WEDNESDAY
Between now and Wednesday 15th February you
can save 20% on new Annual subscriptions to the British Newspaper Archive,
which has hundreds of millions of articles from more than 720 British and Irish
newspapers. It's an ever-expanding resource - just over 18 million pages have
been digitised and indexed so far, but the target is an amazing 40 million
pages.
To take advantage of the offer follow
this link
(you'll also be supporting LostCousins, by the way). Whilst all of the articles
in the archive are also available through the Findmypast site if you have a
World subscription (a Britain or Ireland subscription offers access to
newspapers from the respective islands), the search facility at the British
Newspaper Archive site is far more powerful - try it!
And, if you missed it, be sure to check
out the article
in the last issue about the new 'In Pictures' feature.
New parish records at The Genealogist
Last year The
Genealogist made available more than 2.1 million parish records (mostly
baptisms) from Hampshire - they were released in partnership with Hampshire
Genealogical Society.
Now they've added
another 280,000 parish records, this time from Essex, Cumberland, and Norfolk.
Essex is of particular interest, because whilst images of the parish registers
are online at Essex Ancestors there are no transcriptions at that site, and
many of the registers have never been transcribed. Millions of other parish
records will be added to The Genealogist during 2017.
Tip:
you can save £20 on a Diamond subscription to The Genealogist if you follow
this link.
Incorrect
ages in the GRO's new online death indexes
I'm still receiving emails about a
problem which I spotted and reported to the GRO in October (even before their
online indexes were launched), and subsequently wrote about in three
newsletters between 4th November and 9th December. One article was headed
" What you really need to know about
the GRO's new birth and death indexes", another "WARNING: Millions of
incorrect ages in the new GRO death indexes", so they should have caught
the eye of most readers.
I'll briefly reprise the key points: in
cases where the age at death was recorded in the register as X days, X weeks,
or X months this number often appears in the indexes as if it is the age in
years. For example, someone who died at the age of 22 months will at first
sight appear to have died at the age of 22 years.
This is bad news if you're searching for
infant deaths, but at least you can make allowances once you're aware of the
problem. And there's a positive side to the story too - once you've discovered
the right entry you're getting a little bit of extra information that you
wouldn't otherwise find out unless you ordered the certificate.
The GRO are not only aware of the
problem, they also have a warning on their website.
Tip:
the customised Google search at the top of each newsletter allows you to
quickly find articles from past issues; in the unlikely event that you don't
find the article you're looking for first time, try changing the wording.
GRO's
PDF Pilot Phase 2 has closed
Phase 2 of the General Register Office's
PDF trial has now closed - I don't suppose any LostCousins members used the £45
same-day service, which clearly wasn't aimed at family historians (I certainly
didn't!).
Phase 3 is much more likely to be of
interest to us - this will provide PDF copies of register entries that have yet
to be digitised at a price of £8. Whilst this is only a small saving in cost
compared to a paper certificate (£9.25), it's potentially a big saving in time
for those who live overseas.
The start date hasn't been revealed -
the GRO website currently states "Details of the commencement of phase 3
of the PDF pilot (PDF copies of our non-digitised records) will be published
here shortly". If the launch date is announced before the next issue of
this newsletter I'll add the information to the Stop Press below.
I understand that Phase 3 will run for 4
weeks or until 40,000 orders have been placed. Because the GRO only has online
indexes for events which have been digitised you'll need to source the
references at FreeBMD (or one of the other sites that has indexed the entries)
and input them during the ordering process.
Local register offices to be surveyed
When phase 3 is over local registration
services will be asked to provide information to the GRO about their sales of
certificates during the period of the PDF Pilot, and to compare them with their
projections as well as actual sales for the previous year.
The GRO is committed to minimising the
impact of any changes they make at national level on the local services, so
let's hope this doesn't prevent them continuing the PDF service which so many
of us have fond invaluable.
Might
it one day be possible to order local certificates from the GRO?
The registers held by the General
Register Office are copies of the registers held locally, so whether you order
a certificate or a PDF from the GRO you won't see your ancestors' handwriting.
The good news is that often the handwriting of the registrar (or the vicar, in
the case of a church wedding) will be more legible than the original; the bad news
is that an error may have been made during the copying process.
When you order a certificate from a
local register office they may be
able to provide you with a facsimile of the original register entry showing the
original handwriting- it depends whether they have the right equipment
available. I suspect that most of us would prefer local certificates were it
not for the fact that they're more expensive to buy, and more difficult to
order.
I've suggested to the GRO that it might
be possible for them accept orders for local certificates via their website. I
realise that it wouldn't be a trivial thing for them to implement, but if they
did it would help to offset any negative impact from the new services that the
GRO are offering - and, I suspect, the total number of certificates ordered
would increase further.
What do you think?
Release of 1642 'census' delayed EXCLUSIVE
In December 2015 it was announced on the
blog of the Parliamentary Archives that the Protestation Returns of 1641-42 (the
closest thing we have to a census for this period in history) were in the
process of being digitised, and that it was hoped to start uploading the images
during 2016.
This didn't happen, and I heard
yesterday that this was the result of technical issues which have caused the
plans to be put on hold for the time being. However it is possible to
order images from the archives for "a small fee"; you can find out
which returns are held using the map search that you will find here.
Guest
article: The Heraldic Visitations and their value to genealogists
I'm
delighted to have persuaded LostCousins member Tim Powys-Lybbe,
who knows far more about this topic than I ever will, to write a brief article
based on his recent fascinating post on the Society of Genealogist's mailing
list:
At first sight the visitations are too
good to be true. They are the pedigrees of all the landed gentry plus a few
merchants from the 16th and 17th centuries at intervals of forty or fifty years
and compiled by County. The answer to a family historian's dreams, all the
genealogy done for you and ready to copy in to your own family tree.
All you have to do is to go to Chris
Phillip's excellent medieval genealogy site
and grab hold of nearly all the volumes.
But to get the best value from these
volumes, it is vital that you understand how they were produced:
The Heralds received Royal Commands to
visit the counties and establish the coats of arms and pedigrees of those
entitled to bear them (armigers).
Mostly the heralds got lists of the
candidates from the Sheriffs of each county and then either the sheriffs or the
heralds would write and ask them to attend at points on the herald's proposed
tour, or Visitation, of the county concerned. The armigers would be asked to
bring with them some evidence like a seal or a written pedigree of descent of
the arms.
The heralds for later visitations would
bring with them a copy of the earlier visitation which would make perhaps half
of his task a little easier. The herald's task was to satisfy himself that the candidates
had the right to their arms and that they knew who were next in line. The
heralds had the right to disallow arms and some disallowing did happen.
When the armiger and the herald got
together, one has to imagine what they did. A pedigree might be produced. A
sceptical herald might demand some evidence. But as the successful armiger
would be paying a fee, it was in the herald's interest to give value for money
and accept the possibly grubby pedigree without question. Certainly the
evidence of some of the pedigrees is that the ones in the earlier, 16th
century, visitations could be fanciful in the extreme.
Why didn't the heralds do a proper job? The
King, or Queen, paid them a stipend for their work, perhaps twenty or so pounds
a year, was that not riches enough for them to do their job properly? But a proper
job could only be done by reference to the deed chests or to the government
Rolls, Inquisitions Post Mortem, or Feet of Fines. It was too risky to cart valuable deed chests
around the country and in any case all the government records were in London or
sometimes carted around in the wagon train of the sovereign. Quite simply it
was impossible for the heralds to do a proper job.
Then what did the armigers know? They
were not lawyers, they could not understand their deeds and they had no idea
about the Government Rolls. All they knew in reality was the names of the
people who brought them up, their parents and possibly their grandparents. So
their evidence for any pedigree laid before the herald could not go back any
earlier than the candidate's grandfather.
Anyhow some pedigree was written down
and the armiger usually signed it. If you can find a document with a signature
on it, it is either the original or a skilled copyist's copy of the signature
or a forgery. Take your pick!
The signed documents then went back to
London and the College of Arms. Some of them are still there. A few were
removed by persons unknown and have ended up in a prize collection. And many
copies were made; some of the copies were scholarly copies, just that. Some of
the copies included later material. Some of the copies include foreign material.
The printed Visitations were made, almost without exception, and that was
because the Original had escaped the College, from copies.
Mostly the printed Visitations include a
Preface in which the compiler gives information on which document he principally
used as the source of his visitation. In the 19th century the compilers would
not be allowed to use any surviving original in the College of Arms, later they
were able to get their work checked against any originals or the Master College
copy. Only in the last 30 years of so have the printed visitations been
compiled from the College's master copies. And there are still some visitations
for which no printed copy is available (Shropshire 1663 being a notable example
of this problem). You must read the Preface or you will fail to be aware of the
sometimes severe limitations of some of the printed versions.
Mostly, then, the printed Visitations
are neither primary Documents nor even Transcripts of such. Mostly they are
secondary documents, much the same as the pedigrees in Burke's and Berry's
volumes.
This is not to say these secondary
documents are of no use, they are: they give you suggestions of what to look
for and what to try to find. So they can be called Finding Aids and should be
referred to if any of your ancestors should turn out to be landowners of the
16th and 17th centuries.
Footnote
This article originated in response to a
question in the Society of Genealogists mail discussion list. It also included a reference to esquires
being attorneys. This is true in the USA
to this day, a legal attorney is an esquire and I even believe there is some
legal dictate on this practice. But in
England esquires have never quite had this sort of rigid definition. I have seen various compilations of the people
who may call themselves esquire. But I
have never seen any official document that appoints someone to being an
esquire, it just is not the way we operate.
When I was born, it was the standard practice to call everyone esquire
when writing to them. Now that practice
has fallen by the wayside. Esquire means
nothing.
© 2017 Tim Powys-Lybbe
Save $20 on DNA tests at 23andMe.com US ONLY
Until midnight on Valentine's Day
readers in the US can save $20 on DNA tests from 23andMe.com by following this link. In the US 23andMe
offer a choice between ancestry-only tests and tests which also provide
health-related information - in the UK (which isn't included in this offer)
only the combined tests are on offer - you can find out more on the UK site.
WARNING:
popular email addresses are being discontinued
EE, the company that took over Orange,
has announced
that all of the email addresses associated with Orange and Freeserve
are to be closed in May. The addresses are those which end in any of the
following:
Orange.net
Orangehome.co.uk
Wanadoo.co.uk
Freeserve.co.uk
Fsbusiness.co.uk
Fslife.co.uk
Fsmail.net
Fsworld.co.uk
Fsnet.co.uk
Over 3000 LostCousins members currently
use one or other of those email services as their primary email address - which
means that they won't receive my newsletters after May, unless they update
their My Details page with their new
address. Are you one of them?
But it isn't only the members who use
these addresses themselves who will be affected - looking down my My Cousins page I can see that two of my
cousins and one other relative use those addresses, so unless they update their
My Details page I could lose touch
with them!
Tip:
if you exchange email addresses with another member using your My Cousins page
the address shown on your page will be automatically updated when the other
person updates their My Details - it’s just one of the many reasons why you
should exchange addresses in this way and not include your email address in a
message.
And, of course, it's not just the
cousins you've met through my site who might be affected - I suggest you look
through your address book to see if there are any contacts who use those
addresses.
EE are suggesting that their users
switch to Gmail. That's actually a very good suggestion - Gmail may not be the
only free email service around, but it seems to be the most reliable (it's the
only webmail service that I use or would consider using).
Tip:
Gmail is not only very good at identifying spam, you can configure it to pick
up email from other addresses if you wish. You can even send email via Gmail
but have it appear that it was sent from one of your other addresses - this can
be very handy if you're travelling.
Review:
Putting Your Ancestors in their Place
This book is subtitled "A Guide to
One Place Studies", and as Janet Few is
vice-chair of the Society for One-Place Studies and has over 30 years of
experience in family and local history research, she is just the right person
to be writing it!
It may be only a slim volume - just
under 100 pages - but it is crammed with invaluable advice. People set out on
One-Place Studies for a variety of reasons, but as a family historian I would
be sorely tempted to research the two adjoining Suffolk villages where so many
of my ancestors were born, baptised, married, and buried. I'm sure that if I
did I would discover a web of connections between my ancestors and many of the
other inhabitants - I already know about some, of course, but without
investigating more deeply I'll never spot the inevitable marriages to distant
cousins.
But until I read Janet Few's book I hadn't seriously considered embarking on a
One-Place Study - so rather than simply recommend this book to anyone
contemplating such a study, I believe that it is relevant to every family
historian, since we all have villages, hamlets, streets and neighbourhoods that
were home to our ancestors.
Even if you don't embark on a One-Place
Study after reading this book it's likely to inspire you to follow new lines of
research - but if you do, remember that LostCousins can accommodate One-Place
Studies, offering you the opportunity to link to others whose ancestors lived
in the locality.
When I bought this book at Amazon I was able to get a signed copy sent
direct to me by the author - though this option wasn't available when I checked
just now. The cover price is £7.95 - you're unlikely to find it any cheaper, but if
one of the suppliers sells out you may find that it is much more expensive, especially
if the publisher has run out of stock (in which case my advice is to wait for it to
be reprinted).
Review:
Lost England 1870-1930
Weighing in at 7 pounds, Lost England isn't the sort of book
that you'll read in bed, but nor will it stay unread on your coffee table - it
is crammed with black and white photographs of an era that few of us will
remember, but which most will have heard about from parents, grandparents, or
great-grandparents. I haven't counted, but I reckon there must be around a
thousand of them spread liberally over the book's 500-plus large format pages.
Because they're organised geographically
it's tempting to look for photos of the places we know well, and ignore the
rest, but that would be a great shame - most of the scenes would have been
common in towns and villages across the country.
Although it came highly recommended I
thought long and hard before buying this book, which has a cover price of £45 -
about 10 times the average cost of the books I buy - but I managed to pick up a
copy for about £28 (including postage) on Amazon.
You can support LostCousins by using one of the links below:
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca The Book Depository
The book that's currently occupying most
of my spare time is The Somme Legacy
by MJ Lee, which was released on Kindle yesterday, and is the second book in
the Jayne Sinclair series of genealogical mysteries (you'll find my review of
the first book here).
Sinclair is a former police officer, so her approach to genealogical
investigations is a little different from mine, but most of the techniques she
uses will be familiar to all of us.
The story begins in July 1916, just a
few weeks after my father was born, and a few months before his father headed
off for France seeking revenge for the death of his brother at Ypres (I'm sure
most of us have family connections to this crucial period of the Great War). As
the plot unfolds the action switches between 1916 and 2016…. and that's all I
can really tell you at the moment, because even I don't know how it is going to
end (although it's reassuring to know that there is another Jayne Sinclair
mystery in the works!).
You don't need to have read the first
book to enjoy this one, but since my review of The Somme Legacy won't appear until the next newsletter you've got
plenty of time to catch up.
I've also started reading The Grass Roots of English History,
the latest and - sadly - the final work by David Hey, Emeritus Professor of
Local and Family History at the University of Sheffield, who died last year
shortly after completing the book. The scholarly nature of the volume is
evidenced by the 16 pages of bibliography, but it's nevertheless crammed with
insightful information about the world that my ancestors - ordinary people, not
nobles or clergy - inhabited.
If you live in the UK then this year (2016/17)
is the first tax year that the new Savings Allowance has applied - it offers
the opportunity to earn up to £1000 in interest without incurring any tax
liability (note: the limit is £500 if you’re lucky enough to pay Higher Rate
tax).
But how can you earn £1000 in interest
when the rates are so low, typically less than 1%? You'd have to have over £100,000
on deposit to earn that much in a year!
For the rest of us the chance of earning
£1000 seems slim - unless you consider peer-to-peer lending. I typically earn
about 3% on 30-day investments with Ratesetter - and
if you follow this link you can get a £100 bonus by investing £1000 or more for
at least a year. I've also invested with Zopa -
nothing like hedging your bets - and whilst your money will be lent for up to 5
years you can choose the Zopa Access option which
enables you to get your hands on your money if you need it. Again you can earn
a £50 bonus by following this link and investing
£2000 or more.
As usual I'm obliged to point out that
I'm not a financial adviser - I'm simply telling you what I do myself.
Peer-to-peer lending isn't as safe as putting money in the bank or under your
mattress.
Findmypast have just added 3 million Catholic records for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia from 1757 to 1916 as well as for the British Archdioceses of Westminster and Birmingham from 1657 onwards. In time there will be 100 million exclusive Catholic records - follow the appropriate link for more details:
Until the next time,
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2017 Peter Calver
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