Newsletter
- 19th December 2015
New
sites for old: Ancestry pantomime is no joke
GRO
consultation: the tension mounts
Booking
opens for AGRA conference
Free UK
Genealogy to launch consultation at January conference
'Lost'
parish registers rediscovered
The
Wright stuff: how to extend your tree beyond 1911
Polar
bear family tree reveals surprises
1939:
the discoveries keep on coming MILLIONS OF NEW RECORDS ADDED!
Free
magazines - thanks to your local library
Another letter
to Santa found in chimney
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
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We're approaching the end of a momentous
year so I wanted to start this newsletter by reminding you of some of the key
events in the world of genealogy during the last 12 months.
- At 5.17pm
on Thursday 26th March the Deregulation Act received Royal Assent: section 98
allows the government to regulate how the General Register Office birth
and death registers are searched, and the form in which copies of
information may be provided; section 99
is an equivalent provision in respect of the GRO marriage registers. Finally
there is a realistic prospect of online access to digital copies of
register entries at an affordable price.
- On 30th September
the 100,000th LostCousins member registered, achieving a target that I set
myself in 2004, when LostCousins began. During 2015 we also passed the
milestone of 2.5 million relatives entered by members on their respective My Ancestors page.
- Then, in
the early hours of Monday 2nd November, the 1939 Register was launched -
the most important release of records for England & Wales since the
1911 Census, almost 7 years before.
The pace of change is certainly
increasing, and whilst change isn't always welcome - see below - it is
inevitable. Unfortunately it's only by embracing the possibility of change that
we get an opportunity to shape it....
New sites for old:
Ancestry pantomime is no joke
In the last newsletter I reported on
Ancestry's decision to stop selling Family Tree Maker - a momentous decision
given the way in which this tree program links to Ancestry, and one that caused
a certain amount of consternation amongst users (although the fact that they
will continue to support existing users for at least a year helped to soften
the blow, and means that nobody needs to be panicked into making decisions that
they might later regret).
Now Ancestry have
decided to cleanse their Augean stables by ditching their old site, which many
subscribers had continued to favour over the new one. There was virtually no
warning: it was announced on the Ancestry
blog on 14th December, and became effective the following day - so it's
hardly surprising that it sparked vociferous protests and some venomous
comments.
My personal experience of the new site
has been generally positive - I've felt that the search results have been more
relevant than before, although I didn't attempt to compare the sites systematically.
However I appreciate that there are many who feel differently - in 4 days more
than 500 comments were posted on the blog, very few of them supportive.
Whilst I explained
back in August how to switch back to the old site, at the same time I suggested
that anyone doing so provide feedback and offer suggestions (for many years I
ran a software development and publishing company, so I know how important input
from users can be). Ancestry might well consider that subscribers who didn't
try out the new site during the changeover phase, or switched back to the old
one without providing any constructive criticism, had abdicated their role in
the decision process.
GRO consultation: the
tension mounts
Yesterday afternoon representatives of
family history societies met at the General Register Office in Southport (I'd
love to know what was said); on Monday afternoon there will a similar meeting
in London at which Else Churchill from the Society of Genealogists and
representatives of family history societies in the south of England will be
present.
On Monday morning I will be meeting the
GRO with representatives of a number of firms from the world of genealogy (mostly
probate researchers, judging from the list of attendees). If I'm allowed to,
I'll report on the outcome in my next newsletter, but it's important to bear in
mind that we're not likely to see be able to access BMD records online for at
least a couple of years - government departments have less flexibility than
commercial organisations like Ancestry and Findmypast.
Booking opens for AGRA
conference
The Association of Genealogists and
Researchers in Archives (AGRA) is holding a one-day conference in Cambridge on
17th September 2016 entitled "Demolishing Brick Walls"; there's also
a formal dinner at St John's College the evening before (the after-dinner
speaker will be Sarah Williams, editor of Who
Do You Think You Are? magazine and a good friend of LostCousins).
The first two speakers to be confirmed
were Professor Rebecca Probert and Debbie Kennett, both of whom spoke at Genealogy in the Sunshine this year, but
the full program and booking details are available here.
Free UK Genealogy to
launch consultation at January conference
Free UK Genealogy - the charity formerly
known as FreeBMD - will be holding a half-day conference on the afternoon of
Saturday 30th January. All transcribers for FreeBMD,
FreeREG, and
FreeCEN have
been invited, though most will be attending online, rather than in person - I
will be there as a member of the press.
According to the invitation I received:
"The main reason to hold this conference is to
begin a consultation process with our volunteer transcribers, past and
present. We are inviting comments on a proposed Transcriber's Agreement.
The agreements will secure the future of your transcriptions as resources
free to access and use by all, forever, by making them open data. Open
data is data that people are free to use, re-use and redistribute - without any
legal, technological or social restriction - subject, at most, to measures
that preserve provenance and openness. On 30th January we will also be
launching a consultation on the wording of the agreement, and also on the
way we will make the change to being an open data organisation."
FreeBMD volunteers have transcribed just
over 250 million BMD index entries since the project began in the late 1990s -
it's an amazing project, and whilst these days we expect to find indexed
transcriptions of the GRO indexes at the major subscription sites that hasn't
always been the case.
'Lost' parish registers
rediscovered
It's not often that records that were
thought to be lost resurface, so this good news story from Kent could be an
early Christmas present for some of you! It came to me from Linda Elliott (a
volunteer at Sandwich Guildhall Archives) via Judy, a LostCousins member in New
Zealand:
"Recently re-discovered two parish registers
which should have been surrendered to the archives under the 1978 act, but
somehow everyone forgot they existed. They are from a chapel here in Sandwich
attached to almshouses. I was asked to look in a
chest they had there and document what was in there...... carol service sheets
from the 1990's, altar cloths, various prayer books donated to the chapel by
Victorian town worthies and - almost at the bottom - a baptism register and a
burial register dating from 1805. Sandwich Guildhall Archives will be scanning
them next week to add to our collection and then they will be deposited in the
Diocesan Record Office in the Close of Canterbury Cathedral."
At this stage it isn't clear whether the
rediscovered registers from St
Bartholomew's Chapel will be added to the Canterbury Collection at
Findmypast - but let's hope that they will.
I'm 'Enery the Eighth, I am
My grandmother used to sing this music
hall song when I was young, and apparently so did Peter Noone's
grandfather. Peter Noone is better known as the lead
singer of Herman's Hermits (though when the band was formed he'd already had
one career in the limelight as a child actor in Coronation Street).
At one time in the mid-60s Herman's
Hermits were as popular in the US as the Beatles - and on 7th August 1965 their
version of the old-time song went to No.1 in the Billboard chart, knocking the
Rolling Stones (and 'Satisfaction') off the top.
I was reminded of the song when I read
an email from Zoe, who was prompted to write by my article about The Three
Johns:
"William Harris, a pork sausage maker from
Holborn and his wife Betsy Harris were quite clearly stuck for names after the
birth of son William in c1876 and when their 2nd son was born in c1878 he was
blessed with the name William Numbertwo. The two
Williams were followed by a younger brother c1879: William Numberthree.
"Fortunately the next child to bless the Harris
family was a girl c1880 who was named after her mother, Betsy. And then another
girl c1882 was named Betsy Numbertwo followed in
c1884 by Betsy Numberthree and finally c1887 came Betsy Numberfour.
"The family lived in St John Street St Sepulchre,
which is part of the Smithfield area of Holborn - famous for its meat markets,
and there are two further births I found in the BMD indexes. One in Holborn in
1897 for William Number F Harris, and one in 1900 for
William Number F Harris again. They appear in baptism
records being christened William Number Four Harris and William Number Five
Harris. Their father? William Number One Harris,
Sausage maker, obviously keen to carry on the family tradition of both occupation
and naming patterns."
© Crown Copyright Images reproduced by courtesy of The
National Archives, London, England and Findmypast
The extract from the 1891 Census above
shows just how strange this family was: William put himself first, his
manageress second (though he doesn't seem to want to divulge her forename, or
perhaps didn't know it); then come his sons - William Numberone,
William Numbertwo and William Numberthree.
Only then does he record his wife Betsy, followed their daughters Betsy Numberone, Betsy Numbertwo, Betsy
Numberthree, and Betsy Numberfour.
As Americans sometimes say,
"Heavens to Betsy!".
The Wright stuff: how to
extend your tree beyond 1911
The Masterclass
in the last issue set out the main strategies that I use - and you can also utilise
- in order to identify relatives who were born in England & Wales after
1911. Because it's often possible to identify living relatives who are not
actively researching their family history it opens up opportunities that might
not arise during normal research.
I thought it might be helpful to
demonstrate the techniques in practice using an example from my own family tree:
in this case I'm particular keen to track down living descendants because the
baptism of my great-great-great grandmother Elisabeth Goode is missing - at
least, it's not in the baptism register of St Innocent's, Great Barton, which
is where she said she was born in 1851 and 1861. Whilst I've deduced who her
parents probably were - and there's a
convenient 4 year gap in the baptisms that have been recorded for the couple which
supports my theory - DNA testing seems the best chance of eventually proving
it, so I need to track down at least one of the descendants of the other children.
Appropriately it's the Wright family
that will ultimately determine whether I'm right, and on the 1911 Census
Frederick Herbert Wright and his wife Mary Rose had just one child, 6 year-old
James Frederick Charles Wright. Three forenames is good news when you're
looking for events after 1911 because until 1966 only one forename is shown in
full, so it can be tough to find the right person when all you've got to go on
is one forename and one initial.
I soon discovered his marriage - I
searched between 1923-43, and as you can see, there is
only one person with the right initials amongst the 373 results, and he's at
the top of the list:
This tells us that he married in the
Epsom registration district to a lady with the surname Down - clearly one of
the Epsom Downs (not one of my best jokes, but probably better than anything
you'll find in a Christmas cracker)!
The next step is to look for births to a
couple with the surname Wright where the mother's maiden name is Down. Once again I searched over a 21-year period, this time
10 years on either side of 1940:
When you're looking at a list of births
which may or may not relate to the same couple it's useful to re-sort them in
order of birth year (being able to re-sort Search results is one of my favourite
Findmypast features):
Looking at the names, the dates, and the
places it's quite feasible that all of these boys were born to James and his
wife, but there's an easy way to eliminate much of the guesswork (and this tip
is definitely one to 'Wright Down' for future reference). Just search for
marriages again, but this time looking for ALL marriages between a man named
Wright and a woman named Down - because if any of those births doesn't belong to my Wright family, it
must belong to another couple with the same surnames.
I searched for marriages in the 20 years
up to 1943, the date of the latest birth. We can immediately eliminate over
half of the results because they involve a woman called Wright and a man named
Down (the opposite of what we're looking for); of the remaining 3 marriages we
can probably ignore the one in Durham, because it's 300 miles away - which
leaves just 2, the one we're interested in and that of Frederick E Wright in
Fulham registration district in 1941.
Clearly Frederick can't have been the
father of the Wright boys who were born between 1933-37,
but it's very likely that he's the father of David, whose birth was registered
in Fulham in 1943. Similarly I can now be pretty confident that John, Roger,
Brian, and Alan are all the sons of James Frederick Charles Wright - because
there's no other couple whose sons they could be (I'm ignoring the faint
possibility of a couple marrying in a different country then moving to Surrey).
Whilst my next step is to follow up with
the marriages and children of James' four sons I'm not going to do it in print
because it involves living people - but hopefully I've demonstrated sufficient
that you will be apply to apply the same techniques to your own tree.
From tips about re-sorts to tips about resorts
- in the next article I'm going to tell you about the cliff-top village in
Portugal where we've gathered for the past two years for the genealogy course
with a difference.
The beautiful Rocha Brava resort on the
Algarve was the venue for Genealogy in
the Sunshine in March 2014 and 2015 - and I hope we'll be back there in
2017. But it's a lovely place to go for a relaxing holiday at any time - that's
why my wife and I bought a quarter-share in an apartment at Rocha Brava in
2008, and why I volunteered to join the committee that represents the 600
owners a few years ago.
As I've brought so many LostCousins
members out to Rocha Brava over the past two years I've been able to negotiate
an exclusive discount - stay at Rocha Brava at any time during 2016, and you'll
get a 5% discount on their already competitive rates. To secure your discount
ensure you book direct with the resort, by sending an email to: anabela@rochabrava.com and quote the code LOSTCOUSINS at the time of
booking. Even better, for bookings in April and June your discount will be
doubled to 10%.
Find out more about the resort, the
facilities, and the prices at the Rocha Brava website; the rates currently reflect an
early booking discount for the period April to October, so book now and you'll
save even more! If you do decide to take a holiday at my favourite resort, let
me know, and if I happen to be out there at the same
time I'll drop by with a bottle of chilled sparkling wine.
Polar bear family tree
reveals surprises
New
Scientist yesterday reported a study
based on DNA testing and 45 years of observation which enabled the researchers
to draw 6 generation family trees for a group of polar bears in the Western
Hudson's Bay area.
There were 4449 bears in the survey: the
most surprising discovery was of identical twins, the first reported occurrence
in polar bears, whose twins are usually non-identical. There were 6 cases of
adoption - in 4 of those cases the mother seems to have lost her own litter,
but in the other 2 cases the adopted cubs joined existing litters, and the
researchers surmise that polar bears might not be able to count!
There was only one clear example of
incest, which was between two half-siblings - this was probably inadvertent as
studies in other bear species suggest that they aren’t very good at identifying
their kin. All in all, the bears appear to have been more civilised than many
human families....
1939: the
discoveries keep on coming MILLIONS OF NEW RECORDS ADDED!
I'm still getting emails from members
about discoveries they've made in the 1939 Register, or - and this is increasingly
common - by following up clues that they found there.
Graham didn't know what had happened to his
grandfather, so finding him living with another woman in 1939 was a great clue.
This led him to discover their marriage in 1942 - and enabled him to confirm
that a death certificate he bought some years ago, but assumed was for someone unrelated,
was in fact that of his grandfather. Why had he thought it was the wrong one? Because
the occupation was wrong, and he didn't recognise the name of the informant, described
as the son of the deceased.
Now he knows that there was at least one child born to the marriage
- the uncle who he previously knew nothing about. Researching further he discovered
that his grandfather had been cited as co-respondent in a divorce case as long
ago as 1926, so there could well be other uncles and aunts. As Graham says,
it's no wonder that there were no photographs of his grandparents in the house
when he was growing up.
I've got a similar story in my own tree
- in 1939 my father's cousin was living with a man who wasn't her husband, and
going by his surname. No wonder I haven't been able to track down her children:
they were born after 1939, but as I had found them in the GRO birth indexes
under her first husband's surname I had naturally assumed they were his
children (so that's how they were shown on my tree).
Only when I was writing this article did
it cross my mind to check whether the births had also been indexed under the name
of the second husband - they had! Clearly he must have been shown as the father
on the birth certificate - and had it not been for the 1939 Register I might
never have realised, since my cousin didn't remarry until after both children
were born.
But it doesn't end there - I've now
discovered that there were two more children born after they married in 1947. As all four of the children are old
enough to have children and grandchildren of their own, there could well be a dozen or more living cousins of mine just waiting to be
found!
Of course, not everyone is as delighted
with the 1939 Register - in fact, one reader wrote into Who Do You Think You Are? magazine
suggesting that it might have been better if the release of the 1939 Register had
waited until 2039, when all the records will be open! I don't know how
seriously it was meant, but since nearly half of the people reading this
newsletter are unlikely to be around in 2039, it seems a pretty mean thing to
say.
She argued that the 1921 Census will be
much more useful when it arrives in 2022. Well, maybe it will - though it won't
have as much information as the 1911 Census - but since not one of the discoveries
I've personally made in the 1939 Register could possibly have been made using
the 1921 Census I don't see it as a substitute. What about you?
UPDATE: around 3 million records have
been added since the launch last month, including that of my late mother, who had been
evacuated to Ipswich. It's worth having another look to see who you can find - and if
you use one of the links below you can save 20% on your first household.
Free magazines - thanks
to your local library
My local library, like many others,
offers free online access to over 150 magazines through a service called Zinio. You can read the magazines in the library or at home,
and there's a free app that you can use to read offline (although I haven't
tried the app yet).
Another handy resource offered by Essex
Libraries - and many others - is the Times Digital Archive 1785-2008 (I use
this quite a lot for fact checking - after all, you can't believe what you read
on the Internet!).
If I go into the library I can access
both Ancestry and Findmypast - again, totally free; it's certainly not as
convenient as having access at home, but if you can only afford one
subscription it's worth checking out which site(s)
your library subscribes to. There's lots, lots more that I haven't mentioned,
so why not check out your local library - you might be surprised at what's on
offer, and how much can be accessed from the comfort of your own home!
Another letter to Santa
found in chimney
In the last issue I wrote about
a 1930s letter than had been found in a chimney - and, just as that edition
went to press, news came in of a second letter, this time from the 1940s. You
can read about it here, on the
BBC website. Have you ever made a similar discovery?
Over the years I've cooked many
Christmas dinners, so I'm going to start this festive tips column with some
suggestions based on my own experience:
- If, like
me, you like to have lots of different vegetables, you can save a lot of
time, effort, and hob space by opting for frozen baby sprouts and petits pois and cooking them
in the microwave
- I've been
microwaving Christmas Puddings since I got my first microwave oven nearly
35 years ago (and by the way, it's still working!)
- Dessert
wines with Christmas Pud are a fairly recent
fashion, but not everyone likes their sticky-sweetness; since the 1980s my
wine of choice has been red Zinfandel from California, because it goes as well with the
pudding as the turkey
- If you
leave the turkey out overnight so that it can adjust to room temperature
before you put in the oven, make sure that the cat can't get to it!
- Remember to
remove the giblets - do it at the earliest opportunity
If you fancy something different this
year, check out this blog posting from the Essex Record Office about Mince
pies through the ages.
I'm sure I don't need to remind you to that most battery-powered devices don't come with batteries,
but have you thought about providing rechargeable batteries? They're a little
more expensive to buy, but can save a fortune over the life of the device - and
you can now buy them pre-charged, so that they are ready to be used immediately.
My wife and I have found that Amazon
own-brand batteries are very reliable - we use them in all sorts of devices:
fitness equipment, torches, clocks - even our blood
pressure monitor.
Christmas is a great time to share
memories with family and old friends - but why not use a camcorder, or an app
on your smartphone so that you can keep a permanent record? Also, if you're planning
to make international phone calls at Christmas - or any other time - open an
account with 18185, whose
service I've been using for about a decade. There's no up-front cost or
subscription - simply use it when you want to. With 18185 it costs me less to phone
Australia than to call my next door neighbour using BT - that's how cheap it
is!
If you're buying a new
mobile phone, whether for yourself or someone else, make sure that it's unlocked
(often referred to as SIM-free).
It's a false economy to buy a phone that's locked to a particular network,
especially since many networks don't allow tethering, or charge extra.
What's tethering? Simply the most
wonderful invention of the past decade - it allows you to use your mobile as a WiFi hotspot so that you can access the Internet using
other devices (and so can anyone else, if you give them the password). GiffGaff is my
network of choice, since tethering is allowed in almost all cases - and, because
there's absolutely no commitment you can choose if and when you buy a Goody Bag
(they last for 30 days and start at just £5). Even better, calls between
GiffGaff users in the UK are free, even if you don't have a current Goody Bag. Follow
this link to
order a free SIM and we'll both get £5 extra credit when you activate it.
Finally, a reminder about this year's
Christmas Competition, which started last weekend and continues until Twelfth
Night (you'll find full details here). The
great thing about this particular competition is that to enter you need only search
for your cousins - which is, after all, why you joined
LostCousins in the first place!
And what better time to
find new cousins than Christmas?
Millions of new records have been added to
the 1939 Register - see the article above.
I'd like to offer my best wishes to you
and your extended family for the festive period, and thank you for your support
and encouragement over the past year.
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2015 Peter Calver
Please
do not copy any part of this newsletter without permission. However, you MAY
link to this newsletter or email a link to your friends and relatives without
asking for permission in advance - though why not invite them to join
LostCousins instead, since standard membership, which includes this newsletter,
is FREE?