Newsletter
- 17 March 2012
Success!
GRO holds BMD certificate prices
Last
chance to save on findmypast subscriptions
Use the
right button to speed up your online research
The
rarest search in the world
Are official records ever wrong?
Were
single mothers better off in the 19th Century?
Findmypast
heads for Westminster
The LostCousins newsletter is usually
published fortnightly. To access the previous newsletter (dated 6 March 2012)
please click here.
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Success! GRO holds BMD
certificate prices
Over the past 2 years I've been
campaigning for the General Register Office to take a more commercial approach
to the pricing of birth, marriage, and death certificates - one that reflects
the effect that prices have on demand for certificates. Requests under the
Freedom of Information Act, articles in this newsletter, and the feature that I
wrote for Family History Monthly must
have all have helped, but ultimately it may have been the brief discussion I
had with Theresa May, the Home Secretary, last November that had the most impact.
So I'm delighted to report that, despite
making a loss on certificates in the 2010/11 financial year and making 27 staff
redundant just before Christmas, either of which might have signalled a further
substantial increase in certificate prices, the GRO is holding the price at
£9.25 in 2012/13, even though the price of certificates from local register
offices will be going up by 11% from £9 to £10 (excluding postage) from 1st
April.
Our eventual aim must surely be to get
the same low-cost instant online access to the registers held by the GRO as Scotlandspeople offers to the registers held by the General
Register Office of Scotland. If this requires new legislation - as the GRO
claims - then the sooner it is brought before Parliament, the better!
Last chance to save on
findmypast subscriptions
You’ve got until midnight (London time)
on Monday 19th March to take advantage of the EXCLUSIVE 10% discount that I’ve
arranged with findmypast - and get a free LostCousins subscription worth up to
£12.50!
Sorry
- but if you’re currently a
findmypast subscriber you can’t take advantage of this offer. But on the other
hand, when your subscription comes round for renewal you can take advantage of
the 10% Loyalty Discount that findmypast offers. See here for full details of the loyalty scheme.
Whilst the prices of food and petrol are
rising, it's good to know that some things are coming down in price. Last year
you could have paid £129.95 for a 12 month Full subscription to findmypast (see
the old rates here if you're feeling
nostalgic), but subscribe today and you'll pay just £98.95 when you use the
discount code - even though there are many more records on the site now than
there were a year ago!
Is findmypast the right site for you? I
like it because it's easy to use and navigate, and has the most complete
collections of England & Wales censuses and BMD indexes - which are the
records I use most. Also, whilst I don't have any Scottish connections, I'm
glad to say that over the past year findmypast has added transcriptions of all
the Scotland censuses from 1841-1891 (with 1901 to follow shortly, I believe).
Of course, once you extend into the
realms of parish records, military records, and passenger lists, no one site
has more than a fraction of the total - and that's why some researchers
subscribe to two of the major sites, usually findmypast and Ancestry. However,
most people can't afford two subscriptions - so being able to access one site
at home and the other at your local public library is an alternative solution.
Tip:
if you don't already know what your library offers, now would be a very good
time to check - most libraries in England and many in other countries have a
subscription to either findmypast or Ancestry (usually the latter, because
they've been around for much longer). Most libraries also offer access to
newspapers archives, such as The Times and a collection of nearly fifty 19th century
newspapers from the British Library collection.
Please remember that findmypast.co.uk is
focused almost entirely on British records; there are other findmypast sites
around the world, but currently findmypast doesn't offer a worldwide subscription.
If you need to access overseas records so frequently or so extensively that it
wouldn't be feasible to rely on your local library, then - despite its faults -
Ancestry might be a better bet.
But for the vast majority of readers of
this newsletter findmypast is the best choice. There's an additional bonus if
up to now you've used one of the other sites - subscribing to findmypast will
give you the chance to access a completely new collection of records!
Here's how to secure both your 10%
discount AND your free LostCousins subscription - make sure you follow these
instructions precisely:
(1) Click here to go the findmypast website (it will open in a new
tab or new browser window), then either register or log-in (if you have
registered previously).
(2) Next click on Subscribe, enter the exclusive offer code LOSTCOUS1203 in the Promotional Code box, and click Apply to display the discounted offer
prices:
There is a slight possibility that you
might see a different screen - in this case look for the wording "Click
here if you have a promotional code" near the bottom.
(3) Choose the subscription you prefer,
bearing in mind that the 12 month subscriptions offer the best value. I'd also
recommend the Full subscription unless you're an absolute beginner since the
wealth of additional datasets are well worth the small additional cost (at the
discounted price of £98.95 the total cost of an annual Full subscription works
out at just 27p a day, considerably less than the cost of even a 2nd Class
stamp).
(4) When you receive your email receipt
from findmypast forward a copy to me at the usual address (the one I used to
tell you about this newsletter) so that I can verify your entitlement. Your
free LostCousins subscription can include your spouse or partner as well - just
make sure that the two accounts are linked together before you write to
me (the Subscribe page at the
LostCousins site explains how to do this).
Note:
your free LostCousins subscription (worth up to £12.50) is paid for by the
commission we receive from findmypast, so it is essential that you click the
link or the screen shot above just before you subscribe.
Use the right button to
speed up your online research
There are so many different record sets
at sites like Ancestry and findmypast that it can be time-consuming switching
from one page to another and back again. So don't do it!
A far better alternative is to open a
new tab within your browser each time you go to a new set of records. For
example, if you are using the 1911 Census at findmypast and want to look for
the marriage of one of the relatives you've just found go to the Search records menu, move down it until
you reach the Life events (BMDs)
entry, then instead of clicking the left-button as you may have done up to now,
click the right-button instead.
This displays a menu of options, one of
which is Open in new tab, or Open link in new tab, depending on which
browser you use - you can choose this option using either button.
Typically I'll have at least 4 tabs open
at the same time, one for births, one for marriages, one for deaths, and one
for censuses. I personally find it easier to keep track of which is which by
having them in a logical order, eg births followed by
marriages followed my deaths - but you may find a system that works better for
you.
The rarest search in
the world
There's a search that I use so rarely
that I can't even remember the last time I used it - and yet beginners use it all
the time!
Using an All Records search seems like the easiest way to find what you're
looking for - and yet it's the surest way of guaranteeing failure. Why? Because
every set of records includes different types of data, and to search a dataset
effectively you need to be very careful which boxes you fill in on the Search
form. Fill in too many boxes and you won't get any results at all - fill in too
few (or the wrong ones) and you'll get far too many results.
When you think about it, an All Records search has to be a
jack-of-all-trades - whatever you enter on the Search form it probably won't be
ideal for any of the record sets. In
fact, there might not even be a box on the form for some of the things you'd
like to enter.
When I wrote in my last newsletter about
searching the death indexes using a precise date of birth a handful of members
(I won't embarrass them by mentioning any names) wrote in to say that there
wasn't anywhere on the Search form to enter the day of birth. Of course there
wasn't - they were using the All Records
search.
Of course, you can't suddenly switch
from using the All Records search and
expect to get the best possible results - it takes a certain amount of
experience. But you don't want to stay a beginner for ever, do you?
Note:
sometimes an All Records search may be your only option, but there won't be
many occasions when it's the best option. In my experience it's most likely to
be worth trying if there is a very rare surname in your tree.
Are official
records ever wrong?
A couple of days ago I was chatting with
someone I'd just met. I eventually admitted what I do (it can be a great
conversation stopper - not everyone is as excited by family history as we are),
and somehow we got onto the topic of errors in official documents such as
certificates and military records.
At this point his eyes lit up, and he
told me the story of his grandfather, who had lied about his age in order to
fight in the Great War, but was sent to a unit behind the firing line when his
mother told the Army how old he really was.
This was a common tale - one of my
relatives claimed to be 2 years older in order to revenge his older brother,
who was killed in the same war; another claimed to be 7 years younger in order
to qualify. But what really interested me was when Daniel told me that he had a
letter from the Army confirming the story - and I thought that you might also
be interested in seeing it.
As you can see, it's a standard letter
that has printed on a mimeograph, with the details filled in by hand. With this
little snippet of information I was able to find Anderson Needham, aged 12, on
the 1911 Census and confirm that his birth was registered in the last quarter
of 1898. I also found his Medal Card, showing that he was awarded the British War
Medal and the Victory Medal, sometimes known as "Mutt and Jeff".
But going back to the title of this
article - official records are frequently wrong, either because of
administrative errors, or because the wrong information was supplied in the
first place (the saying "Garbage In - Garbage Out" may have been
invented in the computer age, but it encapsulates a problem that is as old as
the hills).
Errors occur for all sorts of reasons.
The first time I registered a death I wasn't prepared for all the questions I
was asked, and had to guess some of the answers. Fortunately I got them right,
but I might not have done.
Marriage certificates from the 19th
century are particularly prone to error. The ages of the bride and groom were
often adjusted to bring them closer together, and the details shown for the
fathers are often wrong. The fact that there is an error doesn't necessarily
imply deception - some illegitimate children were spun a yarn about their
parentage.
One of my female ancestors was
illegitimate, and no father's name was shown for her in the marriage register.
But the groom - who was legitimate - did the gentlemanly thing and omitted his
father's details too. Are there any similar examples in your tree?
Irish
Origins are offering a 20% discount on all subscriptions when you sign up
using the discount code STPATS2012 (expires 26th March). But don't forget there
are now lots of Irish records that are available online at FamilySearch,
at the National
Archives of Ireland, at Ask About Ireland, and at Irish Genealogy.
You can also get a 10% discount when you
take out a subscription at findmypast.ie
between now and Monday 19th March.
This
story by LostCousins member Heather Feather won joint 3rd prize in the
Federation of Family History Societies competition (LostCousins members also
won the 1st and 2nd prizes!).
My mother-in-law, Ada Annie Woon Feather (nee Hoskin)
1901-1976 told us three “tall tales” about her family. Having proved two during
over thirty years of family history research, I set out to prove the third:
“…the cousin who had a row of stitches round his forehead where the lion closed
its mouth.” Did she really expect us to believe that? Then we found a “new”
cousin, who was also a Hoskin. He had the same story
in his family, so now I knew which family should be my focus. It wasn’t until about two years ago that I
finally found a lion tamer in our family, but was the story the complete truth?
Ada’s father, John Woon
Hoskin, had six sisters. The youngest was Mary Ann
Colman Hoskin born in Plymouth, Devon in 1873. By
1891 several members of the family had moved to Fulham in London and Mary Ann
married on April 30th 1894 at the Register Office in Fulham. Her new husband
was John Gavett (born in Hackney, London in 1875) a
“professional bicyclist”. I wondered at first whether he was the circus
connection. The couple had three daughters: Florence Mabel born 1895, Kathleen
born 1897 and Ada born 1900, who died within a few months of her birth.
I searched marriage and death indexes to
find what happened to the two surviving girls and finally found a marriage for
Florence in Bradford, Yorkshire, in 1914. The index told me that her husband
was Thomas Ambrose Tallon, so out of curiosity I
ordered the marriage certificate. While waiting for the certificate to arrive I
looked for the couple on the 1911 census. I could not find Florence (she may
have been abroad with her father who was in the army) but, to my delight, found
Thomas in Sheffield, Yorkshire, where he, aged 27 and born in Boston,
U.S.A. was
listed at “The Jungle.” This was the home at the time of Bostock’s
Menagerie, with a hundred lions, and his occupation was an animal trainer. This
must be my man!! The arrival of the marriage certificate confirmed that he was
a lion trainer. The couple were married on April 18th 1914 at St.Jude’s Church, Bradford, Yorkshire.
I understand that a branch of Bostock’s Menagerie was
in Bradford at the time. The certificate does not note Florence’s employment.
The bride and groom gave their addresses as different houses in the same
street.
A search for children of the marriage
was fruitless, so I looked for their deaths. It did not take long to find that
Thomas Tallon had died on August 1st 1914 in
Hammersmith Infirmary. His 19 year old widow registered his death the same day,
giving their address as Bostock’s Menagerie,
Shepherd’s Bush Exhibition, Hammersmith. The cause of
Thomas’ death was “acute lobar pneumonia”. A medical friend tells me that this
type of pneumonia can be caused by an infection, so was a lion responsible as
mother-in-law had suggested? She grew up in Fulham, so may have met her
cousin’s husband. Family members will certainly have told her about him. Thomas
was buried in the Margravine Cemetery, Hammersmith on
August 5th 1914 (North front L 14). The “West London Observer” of April 5th
1914 describes the influx of visitors to the Anglo-American Exposition at the
White City, Hammersmith, so I imagine that the newly-weds travelled there from
Yorkshire soon after their wedding.
The National Fairground Archive has a project on
“The Jungle” and their web-site has a photograph of “Colonel” Thomas Tallon with his lions, with a copy of an advertisement
saying that he is America’s youngest lion trainer. There is also a photo of “Mlle.Gavette” with a group of polar bears. Could this be
Florence? The “Yorkshire Telegraph and Star” of October 29 1912, reporting on
the performers at The Jungle, says “…one great novelty was to see Polar bears
controlled by a smart girl trainer aged 15”. Was this Florence with a little
“journalistic licence” employed with regards to her age? Was this where she met
her husband? How did she become involved with the Menagerie?
Apparently while Bostock’s
Menagerie was at Crystal Palace in London in 1911 Thomas was prosecuted by the
R.S.P.C.A. for cruelty to a lion by teasing it, but the summons was dismissed.
The “World Fair” of October 29 1912 reported that a stag belonging to Earl
Fitzwilliam had escaped from Wentworth Woodhouse and made its way to Sheffield
where it was trapped in a garden. Members of Bostock’s
staff were called to deal with it and in the process Tallon
received a severe injury to his right cheek from the animal’s antlers. This was
treated in hospital – did he receive stitches, so was this the origin of the
tale?
I wondered what happened to the young
widow. I could not find another marriage for her, or a death, in the English
indexes, nor was there a further reference to her sister or parents. Passenger
lists from the United Kingdom gave me the answer. On November 7th 1914, with
her mother and sister, she sailed from Liverpool to New York on the S.S.New York. They travelled 2nd class and arrived at Ellis
Island on November 15th 1914. The records show that Florence’s occupation was
“animal trainer” and all three said that they were going to Henry Tudor, who
was the manager of “The Jungle” in 1911.
Records of Kathleen and her parents have
been found in California, but I have yet to discover what happened to Florence
after she arrived in the U.S.A. I assume that she continued her career with
animals. Of course, it is possible that she was pregnant when she left her
homeland.
I recently spoke to my husband’s niece
about my findings. As a child she spent a lot of time with her grandmother.
Before I had mentioned bears she said “I thought he was injured by a polar
bear.” So, which was the guilty animal? Lion? Stag? Or a Polar bear? Every answer brings a new question!
© 2012 Heather
Feather
Postcards reproduced by kind permission
of the National Fairground Archive
Just over a century ago crime detection
was transformed by the discovery that fingerprint evidence could identify the
guilty party, and DNA has had a similar impact in modern times. Of course, both
fingerprint and DNA evidence has on occasions been successfully challenged -
but that's usually because the samples left behind at the scene of the crime
have been less than ideal.
Nevertheless, if after reading the
previous articles about DNA in my newsletter you've been looking at the
different tests available at the Family Tree DNA website, you may have wondered why there are so many options
at different prices.
Ideally we'd all have our entire genome
sequenced. But even though the cost has come down from billions of dollars to
less than $10,000 it's still beyond the means of most of us (I can assure you
that I won't be having my genome sequenced any time soon!). Instead most DNA
tests focus on specific positions within the genome where variations are known
to occur, on the basis that if two people have the
same variations, the odds are that they are related can be calculated
statistically.
Of course, the more markers that are
tested the more matches can be made. It's a bit like discovering a cousin when
you click the Search button on your My Ancestors
page - if there's a match with just one relative you probably wouldn't feel as
confident as you would when (say) 5 relatives all matched. Often you can
increase the number of matches by adding more relatives to your own page, but
you're obviously limited by the number of relatives that the other person has
entered.
It's the same with DNA tests. You could
buy a 111-marker Y-DNA test, but if the potential relatives you're being
matched against have only bought a 67- marker test, or a 37-marker test it
won't improve the level of certainty.
If you read Catherine Stewart's
excellent article
in my last newsletter (and I certainly hope you did) you'll know that she
started off with a 12-marker test, then upgraded it in stages: first to 37-markers,
and then to 67-markers. It costs a little more to do it this way, but it does
mean that the initial outlay is lower. Of course, prices have fallen since
Catherine started her research, so you probably wouldn't want to start with a
12-marker test these days (except, perhaps, in conjunction with a Family Finder
test, when it costs just $50 extra).
I'm going to be contacting Family Tree DNA
about setting up a Calver study - although there are
over 6000 surnames being studied through DNA, my surname isn't one of them, and
I've always wanted to establish whether the name originated in East Anglia,
where it predominated in the 18th and 19th centuries, or in Derbyshire (where the
village of Calver is to found). All sorts of theories have
been put forward, but I don't find any of them convincing.
I shall let you know how it goes. In the
meantime, do let me know what puzzles you've solved (or created) as a result of
DNA tests!
Were single mothers
better off in the 19th Century?
I found this BBC article interesting
- and you may too.
Findmypast heads for
Westminster
Great news for anyone who has been
struggling to find their London ancestors! Findmypast have been awarded a
contract by the City of Westminster Council and the Westminster Archives Centre
to digitise over 10 million records including baptisms, marriages, and burials
but also rate books, apprentice records, and workhouse admissions and
discharges.
Registers and other records for most of
the rest of London are already online in the London
Metropolitan Archives collection at Ancestry. The Westminster records
should be available at findmypast later this year, and I'll let you know when
they are launched.
I had hoped that the new UK postage
rates would have been announced by the time that this newsletter was issued,
but even a telephone call to the regulator, Ofcom, couldn't elicit any information.
It's possible that the new rates will already be in effect by the time my next
newsletter appears, so this could be your last chance to act.
WH Smith are no longer offering a 5% discount
on books of 1st and 2nd Class stamps when you order them online, but it's
possible that you'll still be able to get a discount in stores - certainly the
Warwick store had a sign in the window when I was there a week ago. But even if
you have to pay full price the saving could be very substantial - next month the
price of 2nd Class stamps could go up by more than 25%, and it's likely that
there will be a similar rise in 1st Class prices.
Note: I understand that Superdrug are currently offering a 5% discount.
If you decide to take advantage of the
findmypast discount offer above, why not take advantage of my generosity as
well? If you link your LostCousins account to that of your spouse or partner,
or (if widowed) to that of a son, daughter, or in-law, you can claim a free
joint subscription covering both accounts. Linking two accounts together is
easy - simply enter the membership number for one account (shown on the My Summary page, the one you see when
you log-in) on the My Details page
for the other account. Like most things at LostCousins, it's something that you
only need to do ONCE.
The latest issue of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine includes an
interview with Sarah Rapson, the Registrar General, in which she states "I think
there's a lot we could do to provide family historians with better access to the data.
Were we to do that, it would need to be a priority for this government and we would
need to have legislative change."
Please keep sending in your news and
tips - many of the articles in this newsletter result from suggestions from
readers like you!
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2012 Peter Calver
and the contributors named
You
may link to this newsletter, and I have included bookmarks so you can - if you
wish - link to a specific article by copying the relevant entry in the list of
contents at the beginning of the newsletter. However, please email me first if
you would like to re-publish any part of the newsletter on your own website or
in any other format.