Newsletter
- 5 May 2012
Save
on findmypast subscriptions EXCLUSIVE
Is the
cost of your hobby going up?
Ancestry
terms & conditions revised
FamilySearch - old site on the way out?
Dorset
crew lists online at Ancestry
Massive
DNA project offers hopes for better health
When is
a nephew not a nephew?
The
results your cousins deserve
British
woman registers 161 word name!
Irish
births, marriages, and deaths
GRO
obstinacy holds back research
Unnamed
birth registrations - follow up
Missing
wills discovered in boxes
Documentaries
of the 1940s go online
The LostCousins newsletter is
usually published fortnightly. To access the previous newsletter (dated 16
April 2012) please click here.
Whenever possible links are
included to the websites or articles mentioned in the newsletter (they are
highlighted in blue or purple and underlined,
so you can't miss them).For you convenience, when you click on a link a new
browser window or tab will open (so that you don’t lose your place in the
newsletter) - if nothing seems to happen then you need to enable pop-ups in
your browser.
To go to the main LostCousins
website click the logo at the top of this newsletter. If you're not already a
member, do join - it's free, and you'll get an email to alert you whenever there's
a new edition of this newsletter available!
Save on findmypast
subscriptions EXCLUSIVE
The forecast isn't great for the Bank
Holiday weekend, so I decided this would be a great time to arrange a discount
at findmypast - and thankfully they agreed! The offer will run from Saturday
5th May to 11.59pm (London time) on Monday 21st May, but in view of the weather
outside it probably makes sense to sign up right away and spend the weekend
exploring - and adding - to your family tree.
Follow the instructions carefully,
because when you save 10% on a findmypast subscription using the exclusive
offer code, you can save 100% on a LostCousins subscription. That's right - you
can get a free LostCousins subscription that runs for the same period as your
new findmypast subscription, so the total saving could be as much as £23.50!
Please
note that the offers don't apply to renewals (which already benefit from findmypast's generous Loyalty Discount - see here for full
details). But it needn't be the very first time that you've ever had a
findmypast subscription - if you are rejoining
findmypast after a break you'll still qualify (and you could well be amazed at
how much more you get for your money - see the next article!).
During the offer period EVERY findmypast
subscription, even the most expensive, costs less than £99,
or about 27p a day! What else can you buy for 27p these days - one cigarette,
or half a postage stamp?
Here's how to take advantage of these
TWO great offers:
(1) Click here to go the findmypast website (it will open in a new
tab or new browser window), then click Subscribe
and either register or log-in (if you have registered previously).
(2) Now enter the exclusive offer code LOSTMAY12 in the Promotional Code box,
and click Apply to display the
discounted offer prices:
Depending on the exact sequence of events you
may see a different display - but the information will be the same. The
important thing is to make sure that the discounted prices are shown before you
select your subscription.
(3) Choose the
subscription you prefer, bearing in mind that the 12 month subscriptions offer by
far the best value (because the second six months is virtually half price). 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.
(4) If during the process you are logged
out for any reason, or if your credit card isn't accepted, start again at step
(1) to ensure that you qualify for your free LostCousins subscription.
(5) When you receive your email receipt
from findmypast please forward a copy to me 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).
Tip:
if you want to share this offer with other researchers, don't simply pass on
the code. Instead, please send them a link to this newsletter - because that
way they might be inspired to link up with their own 'lost cousins'.
Is the cost of your hobby
going up?
According to research by
the Halifax bank that was published in Monday's Daily Mail, gardening is the only hobby where the costs aren't
growing. And yet, when I look at how much I spent on researching my family tree
10 years ago I'm convinced that it's far better value now.
For example, the first subscription I
took out - to Ancestry - cost me about £65, but only gave me access to one
census (1891). There were no parish register images - indeed, hardly any of the
resources that I use nowadays were available online then. I could access the
1901 Census online, but it was pay-per-view only, and in the space of 12 months
I spent over £150 on that one census!
I remember when 1837online launched - it
was the first site to offer online access to the complete GRO indexes of
births, marriages, and deaths, but you had to browse each quarter's indexes
individually. Checking my records I can see that I spent £240 on credits in
2004 alone! Mind you, it still worked out cheaper and quicker than travelling
to the Family Records Centre, and I ended up with a complete set of entries for
two of the key surnames in my tree.
In 2007 I took out my first subscription
to findmypast (the new name for 1837online). A 12 month Explorer subscription
cost £99.95 in those days, but only offered 3 censuses and I still had to
browse the GRO indexes.
How have things changed in the space of
5 years? To take out the top subscription with findmypast today would cost just
£98.95 for 12 months (provided you take advantage of the discount I've
arranged) which is less than you would have paid in 2007, even though the
number of complete England & Wales censuses has increased from 3 to 8.
But that's not the only improvement in
the course of 5 years - the GRO indexes are now fully searchable, so it takes
seconds rather than hours to find an elusive entry, and major resources such as
the National Burial Index, tens of
millions of parish register entries, transcriptions
of 7 Scotland censuses, Army and Merchant
Navy records, and key datasets from the Society
of Genealogists have all been added.
The cost of BMD certificates aside, I
reckon that in terms of what I get for my money, researching my family tree is
the cheapest it has ever been!
Ancestry terms
& conditions revised
Ancestry recently revised their Terms
& Conditions, and this initially caused some consternation, because the
new terms excluded the use of the site by professional researchers. It seems,
however, that this was an inadvertent alteration, and the words now refer to
"personal or professional family history research".
Around the same time Ancestry announced
their 1st quarter results, which showed that they had gained 390,000 new
subscribers during the 3 month period, but lost around 220,000 existing
subscribers. According to their announcement they spent $88 acquiring each new
subscriber, which by my calculations works out at over $34 million - an amazing
amount of money, particularly when you consider how many subscribers left
during the same period.
There's a saying that it's better to
keep the customers you've got rather than spend a fortune looking for new ones,
so perhaps they would do better to follow findmypast's
example and offer a Loyalty Discount to
subscribers who renew?
FamilySearch - old site on the way
out?
The old FamilySearch site is not only
being superseded by the new one, it is being gradually dismantled. LostCousins
member Mike wrote to me recently to complain that it's no longer possible to
search any censuses at the old site - which is a shame because the layout of
the Household Record was ideal for anyone entering their relatives from 1881 on
their My Ancestors page at the
LostCousins site. Even using the link on the OldFamilySearch.com website I set up
won't help because you'll be redirected by FamilySearch to their new site.
The information you need is still
provided at the new FamilySearch site, but not in nearly such a convenient
format, and you can't get a single printout that shows the complete
transcription for an entire household. My advice is to use findmypast - not only do they offer FREE
access to the 1881 England & Wales census transcription, you can get a
printout out of the entire household that is even better than the one that FamilySearch
used to offer.
Note:
Ancestry also offer free access to the 1881 transcription, but you can't easily
get a printout that shows an entire household. Even if you're an Ancestry
subscriber you'll probably find that findmypast offers a better solution.
Remember that when you're entering
relatives from the 1881 Census you should take the information from the
transcription, and not from the handwritten census page. Should you wish to
include corrections or additional information please do
so in the optional section of the form provided for this purpose (but it won't
be used in the matching process).
Dorset crew lists
online at Ancestry
Ancestry have digitised crew
lists held at Dorset History Centre with over 50,000 entries. They almost
all relate to ships that were registered at Dorset ports such as Weymouth and Bridport, but the crew members could well have come from
further afield - indeed I found some who were born as far away as Colchester,
Scotland, Germany, and Denmark. You can currently search the records free, but
to view the images requires a subscription or credits.
Findmypast
have the biggest online collection of crew
lists, with over 400,000 entries, including some of the Dorset records you'll
find at Ancestry. They also have a huge collection of Merchant Navy records, with over 1.3 million
entries.
Massive DNA project
offers hopes for better health
The UK Biobank
charity has recruited 500,000 volunteers aged between 40 and 69 who have donated
their DNA, medical history, and details of their lifestyle with the aim of
helping researchers to find treatments for illnesses such as cancer, diabetes
and heart disease.
Unfortunately it's now too late to become
part of this ground-breaking project, but many of us will benefit from the
discoveries that are made - and the impact on the health of future generations
could be massive.
Note:
because of illness I've only just ordered the kit for the DNA tests that I
wrote about in the last
newsletter - but hopefully by the time you receive my next
newsletter my samples will be on their way back to Family Tree DNA. I can't
wait for the results - what a shame the process isn't quite as quick as on CSI!
When is a nephew not a
nephew?
Last year I wrote about the confusion
that can arise from the archaic use of the term 'father-in-law' when referring
to one's step-father, and how this might cause
confusion when interpreting wills and census entries (you'll find the original article
here).
Nowadays we use the term 'nephew' to
refer to the son of a brother or sister, but recently I discovered that the word
was once used for a grandson. Apparently in Kent this usage was common until
quite recently, and searching Google for 'dialect nephew meaning grandson' I
discovered that this meaning was also used in Norfolk. The word nephew derives
from the Latin nepos which originally meant 'grandson', but
apparently it later acquired the same meaning as our word 'nephew'.
Note:
the term nephew was also used to describe the illegitimate son of a clergyman.
It's almost exactly 50 years since my Uncle Les died
suddenly, at the tragically young age of 39. The strange thing is, although he
was by far my favourite uncle, he wasn't really an uncle at all - he was
married to my mother's best friend (they met when they worked in the same
factory during the War).
The photo on the right shows me on
stilts being supported by Uncle Les (I suspect this photo was taken in April
1953, when I was two and a half, because I stayed with my aunt and uncle while
my mother was giving birth to my sister). You can see what great times the two
of us had together! I often wonder what would have happened had he not been
taken from us at such an early age.
I mentioned in this newsletter a year or
two back how I'd been fortunate to get a copy of some old cinefilm
footage that had been shot by Uncle Les in the 1950s and early 60s - but it was
only last year that I discovered that a reel to reel audio tape from 1960 had
also survived (the cine film was, of course, silent).
This week, for the very first time, I
was able to hear my voice from over half a century ago. Cor
blimey, you'd think that I was an East Ender from the way I spoke, though I was
born and brought up in Ilford, which was then on the very outskirts of London
(there was - and still is - open countryside within 15 minutes
walk from our house).
Tape records and cine cameras were an
expensive luxury in the 1950s - however, in the 21st century most of us can
make recordings for posterity. But do we? When things are commonplace we often
value them less, not more.
What will you be leaving behind?
The results your cousins
deserve
I don't charge for my advice, even
though it can be invaluable, but I do find it annoying when having spent an
hour or more responding to a member's enquiry they fail to take my advice.
Not long ago I told a member who was
reluctant to accept what I told him that "whether or not you follow my
advice you'll get the results you deserve". I can't remember his exact
words in response (the word 'sarcastic' may have come into it), but all I was
doing was giving him the benefit of my long experience. Goodness me, if I
didn't know how to get the most out of the LostCousins site after 8 years
running it, there really would be something wrong!
One of the great things about
LostCousins compared to sites like Facebook is that we're all grown-ups here,
so I don't feel the need to tiptoe around the subject - I may not come from
Yorkshire, but I nevertheless believe in speaking plainly, and if there's
something that needs saying, I'll say it.
If I come across someone who is being
selfish - only thinking of their own needs, and not
those of the cousins they've yet to meet - I don't hesitate to remind them that
LostCousins is for people who want to share information with other researchers
who are their living relatives. I'm sure you'd agree that if they still aren't
prepared to help their own cousins, then there's absolutely no point them being
members!
Tip:
half an hour spent entering relatives from the 1881 Census is often all it
takes to find your first new cousins - or for them to find you. Remember that
it's the brothers, sisters and cousins who had families of their own in 1881
who are most likely to link you to your living cousins.
British woman registers
161 word name!
Dawn McManus from Hartlepool decided to
promote her charity by changing her name - to one that is so long that I'm not
going to print it here. The BBC article not
only gives her name in full, it also lists some other people who have chosen strange
names.
I just hope that the woman formerly
known as Dawn doesn't turn out to be a relative of mine - I have a feeling my
family tree program wouldn't be able to cope!
Note:
it probably wouldn't be possible to register such a long name at birth;
according to a 2008 Freedom of Information response
the length of a name is restricted by the space available in the register.
Irish births,
marriages, and deaths
Your
Family Tree recently printed a
feature entitled 'BMDs for Beginners', which was full of useful information -
until it came to Ireland. The article implied that you can't search the indexes
of births, marriages, and deaths online - which isn't
true, as regular readers of this newsletter will know.
At the new FamilySearch
site you'll find Ireland births, marriages and deaths from 1864-1958, as well as Protestant marriages from
1845 onwards (Northern Ireland isn't online after 1921, but you can order the
films through your local LDS Family History Centre). Although you can't view
the index pages online, all the information has been transcribed (with a few
errors and omissions, no doubt), so you can place an online order for
certificates with the GRO in
Dublin, or the GRONI in
Belfast.
But there's even better news.
FamilySearch not only filmed the indexes, but also some of the registers - again
these aren't online, but should be available through your local Family History
Centre. Check the catalogue at
FamilySearch for the film numbers and to see the period of coverage - if the
entries you're looking for were filmed you won't need to pay for certificates!
Tip:
according to the May newsletter from the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical
Studies findmypast.ie will be
adding to their collection of Irish Petty
Session Records this month.
GRO obstinacy holds back
research
England & Wales were the first
countries in the UK to introduce civil registration in 1837; Ireland followed
in 1845 (marriages) and 1864 (births and deaths), then Scotland in 1855 - yet
the General Register Office for England & Wales is the only one to completely
restrict access to its registers of births, marriages, and deaths.
You can view Scottish registers online
at Scotlandspeople, and Irish
registers at your local LDS Family History Centre, but - except for marriages
that took place in church - the ONLY way to see what's in the England &
Wales registers is to buy a certificate.
Perhaps if Sarah Rapson,
the Registrar General, were to research her own family tree she might realise
what we're up against!
You'd think that given the drop-off in
certificate orders since the 2010 increase in prices, that
the GRO would want to get their customers' opinions on price. Any commercial
organisation would surely want to know whether their customers would buy more
at lower prices - but not, apparently, the GRO. They recently invited customers
to complete an online survey
- but it skirted around the most important topic, as LostCousins member Alan
pointed out when he told me what the GRO are doing.
Unnamed birth
registrations - follow up
In the last issue I wrote about children
whose births were registered simply as male or female. In most cases this was
because the children died before a name could be chosen, but I noted a number
of instances in which the birth could not be matched with a corresponding
death, most of them in the early years of civil registration.
Paul wrote to tell me that after
searching extensively for the birth of his great-great grandfather (who was
shown as 1 year old in the 1841 Census) he eventually concluded that his birth
must have been registered simply as 'male'. Fortunately, when he ordered the
certificate it turned out that his hunch was correct. The child was registered
just 4 days after his birth, even though the time limit was 42 days - perhaps
the registrar didn't fully inform the mother of the regulations?
Remember that some births, marriages,
and deaths were announced or reported in local newspapers - there are now over
5 million pages online at the British
Newspaper Archive, with an eventual
target of 40 million by the end of the decade. You will occasionally find
stillbirths recorded in a newspaper - it's probably the only way you'll find
out about them.
Tip:
if you have a Platinum subscription to Genes
Reunited you can get access to the British Newspaper Archive
for just under £40 a year.
When you do find yourself in the
position where ordering a certificate is the only way to resolve the problem,
remember that the GRO no longer requires you to provide the index references.
Provided you give them enough other information they'll search a three-year
period - and refund your money if they can't find an entry that matches. Thanks
to Lawrence for reminding me of this option.
Catherine in New Zealand used local
birth indexes to find her relative, who was born in 1838. Local indexes often
(though not always) show the mother's maiden name, information that only
appears in the GRO indexes from the 3rd quarter of 1911 onwards. Visit UKBMD to find out whether local indexes exist for the areas
of interest you.
Note:
some births are still registered without a forename being provided. According
to a GRO Freedom of Information response
in 2010 there were 22 in 2007 and 19 in 2008, of which 3 and 4 respectively had
forename(s) added later.
What is a 'nurse child'?
In "HMS Pinafore", by Gilbert
& Sullivan, Little Buttercup sings:
A
many years ago
When
I was young and charming
As
some of you may know
I
practiced baby-farming.
To these words the chorus respond
"Now this is most alarming!" - and indeed, the
practice of baby farming did indeed cause much concern in the late 19th
century, as I reported in my January 2010 article.
But not everyone who looked after
somebody else's child was a baby farmer, in it for the money, and caring little
for the welfare of the children who had been entrusted to them. There were also
perfectly legitimate cases of women who took in a 'nurse child' - nowadays we
would call them foster mothers. This informal arrangement would sometimes be
short-term, perhaps because the mother was ill, or undergoing a difficult
confinement - but in other cases the child might end up being adopted (until
1927 this would also have been informal).
Of course, there would have been many
cases where the child's aunt or grandmother would have helped out - I'm sure
most mothers preferred to call on relatives rather than strangers.
Sometimes the child might be looked
after in his own home. When the 1911 Census was taken my father's mother was in
hospital - although I've yet to discover where - and his elder brother (who was
only 7 months old) was being looked after by a live-in nurse. They weren't a well-off
family - my grandfather was shown as a lace warehouseman in the census - but my
grandmother was often ill, and someone had to look after the children. After my
father was born in 1916 he was frequently in the care of a girl called Martha,
and as she appears in several family photographs, she must have become almost like
a member of the family.
Amanda wrote to tell me that her great-great-great
grandfather had, according to his death certificate, "died by the
visitation of God", and wondered how unusual this was.
There's a website that
interprets and explains archaic medical terms, and it was to this that I turned
for an explanation. It seems it was used where there was no obvious cause of
death, or where death was an unexpected consequence of an action (such cases
would, almost inevitably, be referred to the coroner).
After 1874 it was compulsory to give the
cause of death on a death certificate, so the phrase shouldn't appear on later
certificates.
Missing wills
discovered in boxes
300,000 soldiers' wills have been
discovered by the Probate Service in cardboard boxes, and it appears that
because they were handled by War Office (later the Ministry of Defence) that
they have never been entered in the Probate Calendars (which are currently online at Ancestry, and are a key resource for
the post-1858 period).
I understand that they relate to
soldiers and non-commissioned officers who died during conflicts from the
Crimean War up to World War 2, and that they will be made available online
before the end of this year.
Following my article in
the last newsletter about the new indexes available on the National Archives
website, Sue wrote to remind me that the London
Gazette is another good source of
information.
Tip:
if you are searching for naturalisations in the London Gazette archives try
both spellings - 'naturalization' as well as 'naturalisation'. The former is
more common in early records, the latter in later records.
While you're at the Gazette site try
searching for 'aliens restriction', which will find
references to the Aliens Restriction Act, 1914 and to Aliens Restriction Orders
- some of which include lists of individuals and foreign-owned businesses.
Documentaries of the
1940s go online
The British Council has recently made
available online an archive of over 120 short documentary films dating from the
1940s which were designed to demonstrate the British way of life to the rest of
the world in order to counteract any negative propaganda put about by the
Nazis. You can view the films free by clicking this link.
Some other film collections that can be
viewed free online are British Pathé, the East Anglian Film Archive, and the British
Film Institute collection at YouTube.
One of the most-recently posted BFI documentaries features a 1938 outing to Southend by a group of old-age pensioners from West London
- I bet somebody reading this newsletter will recognise one of them! Click here to take a look.
I've also just been looking at some of
the hundreds of films in the BBC Nation on Film collection. I was
fascinated to see several films made at Geevor Tin
Mine in Cornwall as my visit there in 1973 was the only time I've been a mile
below the earth's surface.
There are any number of people after
your money, and any number of nefarious means that they'll use to separate you
from it.
Over the next six weeks 76,732 people
will be receiving letters or emails from the Financial Services Authority
warning them that they are on one of the lists of 'suckers' that they have
uncovered during an ongoing fraud investigation. I
bet you it won't be long before the scammers are using similar tactics - perhaps
warning about fake emails purporting to be from the FSA!
Mind you, considering that I send out
nearly 60,000 emails in the course of 2 or 3 days whenever I issue a
newsletter, it does make you wonder why it will take the FSA 6 weeks to contact
everyone on their list. It's a bit tough if your name is near the bottom of the
list, and the scammers get to you first!
On a more positive note, overseas
members - especially in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand - can still
save between 20-50% on Ancestry subscriptions by switching from their local
site to Ancestry.co.uk (see my article
in the last newsletter for more details). It's so easy to save,
I don't know why everyone hasn't done it!
If you live in the UK you can save over
50% on an Ancestry Premium subscription by purchasing Family
Tree Maker 2011 Platinum from Amazon
(although you have to install the software to activate the free 6 month
subscription, you don't have to actually use it). If you're planning to use the
software you might prefer to spend a few pounds more for the 2012
version.
Alternatively, save 100% on an Ancestry
Worldwide subscription by using your local public library! Most libraries in
England (and many in other countries) have a subscription to Ancestry Library
Edition, which offers most of the features of a Worldwide
subscription - the best that Ancestry offer.
Later this year my wife and I will be
going to a family wedding, and because the celebrations will be going on until
midnight we've decided to book an hotel room. I never
book accommodation without first checking the Trip Advisor
website, because it would be foolish to spend money without first checking what
other guests have said. Of course, I don't always take their advice - some
people are less concerned about dust on top of a wardrobe than others - but at
least I make an informed decision. (By the way, I don't just read reviews - I
also write them, and I'd encourage you to do the same.)
Another great place for reviews is Amazon.
Even if I end up buying elsewhere - which doesn't often happen, because
Amazon's prices are usually very competitive - I feel much more comfortable
knowing what other purchasers think of the product.
Tip:
you can also sell at Amazon
- I do from time to time, and I've been very pleased with the results. It's a great
way to dispose of items that are sitting in a cupboard unopened (eg unwanted Christmas presents), though you can also sell
used or nearly-new goods. If you're prepared to be patient you can get very
good prices, especially for hard to find items, or out of print books.
Finally, when you take advantage of the
findmypast discount I've arranged (see above for full details) make sure you also
take advantage of my generosity by claiming a JOINT subscription to
LostCousins. A joint subscription covers TWO LostCousins accounts (normally the
second account would be in the name of your spouse or partner, but if you have
been widowed you can link with a child, grandchild, or in-law).
This where any last
minute amendments will be recorded or highlighted.
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
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.