Newsletter
- 12th May 2013
Save 10%
on all findmypast.co.uk subscriptions
Twin
studies reveal connections between Europeans
Have
you ever met your 'lost cousins'?
Fire at
the National Library of Wales
City
of London Cemetery: grave risks for ancestors
Brighton
burial records disappearing
Correcting
errors on certificates
Ancestry
data problems cause confusion
Up to
1 million Facebook accounts at risk
The LostCousins newsletter is
usually published fortnightly. To access the previous newsletter (dated 25
April 2013) click here, for an index to articles
from 2009-10 click here, for
a list of articles from 2011 click here and for a
list of articles from 2012-13 click here.
Whenever possible links are
included to the websites or articles mentioned in the newsletter (they are
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Good news - I've been able to negotiate
an exclusive discount code for readers of this newsletter. You can save 10% on
any new findmypast.co.uk subscription!
Whilst this offer doesn't apply to
subscriptions to other findmypast sites around the world (findmypast.com, findmypast.ie,
or findmypast.com.au) the UK site is the only one that currently has ALL of
findmypast's British records. It's also the only site where you can search the
British records using the traditional search that most of us are used to, so
even if you had to pay a little extra to subscribe to the British site it would
be well worth it. Remember that if you need to access records from Ireland,
Australia, or the US you can do so from the UK site with a World subscription.
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 - that way they
might be inspired to link up with their own 'lost cousins'.
As we've just celebrated the 9th
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(1) Click here
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then either register or log-in. If you are already logged-in when you arrive at
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Note:
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The World subscription includes Ireland, Australia & New
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If you're only interested in British
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are well worth the small additional cost, especially when you consider that a
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Small print: these offers cannot be
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However if you upgrade your findmypast subscription before the renewal date you
should qualify for a free LostCousins subscription (provided you follow the
instructions above). Free LostCousins subscriptions are funded by the
commission we receive from findmypast, and that's why it's important you follow
the instructions to the letter - if you have any questions ask me before you
complete your purchase, because it will be too late afterwards!
Twin studies reveal connections
between Europeans
This week's New Scientist
reports research suggesting that the languages of Europe and Asia have all
developed from a common language that existed at the end of the last ice age,
about 15,000 years ago. The proposed link between languages as diverse as
Inuit, Japanese and Greek is controversial but intriguing.
At the same time Nature
reported DNA-based research which suggests that any two Europeans are likely to
have many common ancestors who lived around 1,000 years ago. If you want to
know more these FAQs go
into a lot more detail (the technique they used seems to be similar to that
used by Family
Tree DNA with their Family Finder test).
Of course, as family historians we need
to know not only that there's a connection, but also what the connection is -
and that's the real challenge. I am probably related to William the Conqueror,
just as you are but, if we can't come up with the historical records that
demonstrate the connection, it can't become part of our family history.
Have you ever met
your 'lost cousins'?
The aim of LostCousins is to connect
members researching the same ancestors so that that you can share information
with your cousins - and also, perhaps, collaborate on future research.
Nobody expects you to physically meet
your cousins, and in any case because one-third of the matches are between
members on different continents there are many cousins who could never meet
face to face (though I suppose that now you can make free video calls using
services such as Skype
the definition of face to face is changing!).
Over on the LostCousins forum there's
been a debate going on about the merits of actually meeting up with a 'lost
cousin'. I haven't met most of the 'lost cousins' I've found, but I must say
that those I have encountered have all turned out to be delightful (I can only
hope their impressions of me were similar!).
Gillian wrote that "One of the most
moving moments of my life was squatting by the grave of our 5xgreat
grandfather, who died in 1745, with my sixth cousin". I think a lot of us
would love to have an opportunity like that - I know I would.
But what about you - have you ever met
up with a 'lost cousin'? The members who email me with the best stories will
get an exclusive pre-launch invitation to join the forum so that they can post
them there.
A month ago, with little fanfare, the
National Library of Wales made available an online index to thousands of crew lists and
other documents for 544 merchant vessels registered in Aberystwyth - there is
an entry in their blog on April
15th. Note: I originally thought that the images were online - this turns out not to be the case.
Tip:
there are transcriptions of over 33,000 crew lists at findmypast.
Fire at the National
Library of Wales
The day after I published my last
newsletter the National Library of Wales, which also holds wills, parish
registers, and many other documents of importance to family historians, was
struck by a fire which destroyed part of a roof. Some of the collections
suffered damage, but it isn't yet clear what records were affected.
A firm of funeral directors in the West
Midlands is looking for the next of kin for 150 urns containing ashes of the
departed (see this BBC News story for
more details). Most of the urns date back 20 years or more, and one goes back
to 1953!
They plan to scatter the ashes if nobody
claims them as a result of this latest appeal - according to an article from last year the
National Association of Funeral Directors published guidelines in 2011 stating
that unclaimed ashes must be stored for at least five years, with efforts being
made to locate the rightful recipient, before a funeral company could dispose
of them.
City of London
Cemetery: grave risks for ancestors
Thanks to LostCousins member Peter (yes,
there are over 1000 members with the same name as me!) I discovered this week
that 205 plots at the City of London Cemetery in Manor Park, one of the largest
cemeteries in the country, are to be re-cycled. According to the announcement:
We have selected an area within the Cemetery that we
are calling the “Heritage Area” in which we intend to extinguish the rights of
burial, remove memorials, increase the space for burials, and re-use the
graves.
I found it more than a little
incongruous that they chose to use the word 'heritage' given their planned
course of action! The announcement continues:
The City of London Corporation may do this in
accordance with Section 6 of the City of London (Various Powers) Act 1969 and
Section 74 of the London Local Authorities Act 2007. These graves are located
in square's 21, 22, 36, 37, and 52, and will be marked accordingly within the
cemetery grounds, these square numbers are shown on our cemetery map.
Somewhat unhelpfully the link to the map
of the cemetery that they provide doesn't work, but I managed to find a copy here.
If relatives object then the burial plot will be left untouched for at least 25
years - but that depends on the relatives being aware of what's happening. The official
notice only lists the plot numbers, not the names of the occupants or the
owners.
To ascertain whether any of my
relatives, hundreds of whom lived in east London in
the late 19th and 20th centuries, are buried there is virtually impossible -
the burial registers are unindexed. The cemetery charges £100 per name per year
if the exact date of death isn't known, and £25 even when it is, so it would
cost thousands of pounds to check whether any of my relatives are buried there.
My next thought was to visit the
cemetery and record the names inscribed on the memorials for the 205 plots
included in the scheme, but according to the Superintendent Registrar my
suggestion:
"is not really a
practical one as almost all of them no longer have a memorial on them. The memorials on these graves were cleared in
the 1950s and 60s as the graves had become dangerous and derelict, and the
owners could not be traced at that time following a similar process to the one
we are following now."
That would suggest that when the
memorials were removed they didn't make a note of the inscriptions - whoops! He
also told me that:
"It is also important to note that the 205 graves
that are currently listed are the latest phase in what is now some 1800 graves
that the City of London has extinguished the Rights of Burial on since 2003 and
this number will increase as the process continues, making the current process
the only practical way forward for us."
Clearly matters are only going to get
worse - unless changes are brought in. Ironically a few years ago the cemetery
staff began scanning the registers and putting them online, but they only
managed 1856-61 before the project was put on hold. Surely it's about
time the law caught up and made it compulsory for cemeteries to index burials
and make the data available online before
digging up remains and moving or destroying memorial stones?
Brighton burial records
disappearing
Kathy noticed a short note at findmypast
which indicates that "14,242 parish burial records from St Nicholas /
Hanover Chapel, Brighton, Sussex will be removed from findmypast.co.uk on 27
May 2013". This means you've got little more than 2 weeks to look for any
of your relatives!
It's unusual that records are removed -
we're more used to them being added. I imagine there's a story behind the
announcement - for example, it may be that the correct permissions weren't
obtained by whoever transcribed the records.
Correcting errors on
BMD certificates
We all know that historic birth,
marriage, and death certificates sometimes include erroneous information -
indeed, when it comes to 19th century marriage certificates it would be more
appropriate to say 'often'. Even today errors are still made occasionally, most
commonly on death certificates, but until Chris wrote to me recently I didn't
know how difficult or expensive it would be to arrange for an entry to be
corrected.
Chris's mother died of a stroke, but
when Chris subsequently took a DNA test he discovered that he had a mutation
involved in Haemachromatosis, a hereditary disease
that results in excess iron accumulating in the body. Taking into account his
mother's other symptoms, it because clear that it was this previously
undiagnosed disease that had been the true cause of his mother's death - and as
Chris had inherited the mutation he understandably wanted his descendants to be
in possession of the facts.
At this point I wasn't sure if it would
be possible to make a change, but I suggested that Chris contacted the GRO -
who recommended that he complete this form
and provide a letter from the doctor who had certified the death explaining the
error and stating what the cause of death should be.
I decided to research further to see
what other forms exist, and what other changes can be made. I found quite a
collection! If you want to see what's available start here
on the GOV.UK website - it has links to forms for adding the father's name to a
birth record, and correcting birth, marriage, or death records, but you might
also find some of the other information of interest.
Ancestry data problems
cause confusion
If you are, or have been, an Ancestry
subscriber you'll be aware that their indexes of England & Wales Births, Marriages,
and Deaths from 1837-1915 were sourced from FreeBMD - and you'd therefore
expect their indexes to be at least as accurate.
Indeed, when I searched for marriages in
the 1st quarter of 1872, specifying the volume as 6d and the page number as 569
there were 6 results compared to just 2 at FreeBMD - so on the face of it
Ancestry was producing better results.
However, when I looked more closely I
realised that the 6 results included marriages from 4 different Registration Districts
- which is impossible because all the entries on a page should be from the same
district. You can also see that only 2 of the records are linked to an image,
which suggests the others are completely spurious (mind you, it seems that
wouldn't stop Ancestry from charging £22.99 for a copy of a non-existent
marriage certificate - the Order Record link worked).
I was alerted to this problem when June
contacted me - she was trying to find the marriage of her great-grandfather
Solomon Surch. That's such a rare name that it ought
to be easy to research, yet whilst FreeBMD and findmypast show him as marrying
Eliza Gibbins in 1887, Ancestry show him marrying
Sarah Beals in 1872. You can imagine how confusing
this was for June, particularly since Solomon was shown as a bachelor when he
married Eliza!
Of course, you have to expect the
occasional transcription error - but in this case Solomon Surch's
marriage had been displaced by 15 years, so it clearly wasn't a transcription
error. It got worse when I looked closer - the entry for William Henry Woodthorpe should have been recorded as 1905, not 1872 (a
33 year difference). These are not transcription errors - the data has clearly
been corrupted, and whether the corruption is accidental or deliberate it
represents a dangerous trap for family historians.
I did wonder whether these might be
isolated incidences, but many of the other marriage entries that purport to
relate to 1872 are from other years - for example, John S H S J Morphett who
actually married in 3rd quarter of 1915 is shown by Ancestry as marrying in
1872, 43 years earlier.
In all, Ancestry lists 1,163,440 people
who married in 1872, but only about 400,000 in each of the years on either
side. This suggests that around 750,000 1872 entries are bogus, an incredible
number - and worse than that, they're almost certainly missing from the years
where they actually belong.
There are other problems with the GRO
indexes. For example, if you fast forward to 1972, almost 3000 births
registered in Portsmouth are ascribed to Oxfordshire, and there are similar
problems in other years (thanks to John for pointing this out); over 25,000
births registered in Brighton are attributed to Hampshire. John tells me that
he's been complaining to Ancestry for 4 years about these problems - but I
trumped this by explaining that 7 years ago I pointed out that 72,000 people on
the 1881 Census are incorrectly shown as living in Harmmersmith
- and that's still not been put right. Ironically it's one place name that
Ancestry certainly ought to have known how to spell - because their UK offices
are in Hammersmith!
I
recently stumbled across some interesting articles from the Blackburn Standard,
21st July 1900 edition, which I thought might be of interest to readers of this
newsletter.
Note:
the clipping is reproduced with the kind permission of the British Newspaper
Archive; the image was created courtesy of the British Library Board. You can
get 15 free credits when you register for the first time at the British
Newspaper Archive.
The first article was somewhat
surprising - but having heard so much about King Edward VII's dissolute life as
Prince of Wales it perhaps shouldn't have been a great surprise to read that his wife banned
intoxicating drinks from the dinners celebrating Queen Victoria's Diamond
Jubilee in 1897.
But the reason I spotted the article was
the gobbledygook in the penultimate sentence - I wonder whether anyone can tell
me what it signifies? There's a free LostCousins subscription for the first
correct answer!
However, it's
amazing how one things leads to another, and coming from Essex the bottom
article was a real bonus. An automatic ringer for church bells - it's like
something out of Wallace
& Gromit!
I tried to find a copy of the patent to
make sure that it wasn't an April Fool joke that had
been innocently repeated, but without success - I wonder if any evidence of the
machinery still survives in the church?
And if you're wondering what an article
about a church in Essex is doing in a Blackburn newspaper then you'll be
surprised to learn that similar articles appeared as far away as New Zealand!
(Try a Google search for "automatic
ringer" Runwell if you don't believe me.)
These articles are a good example of the
serendipitous discoveries that we can make when we're not constrained by
credits! You can access more than 6 million pages from the British Newspaper
Archive if you have either a Full or World subscription to findmypast.co.uk
(see above for details of the current discount offer).
After circulating the 60,000 members on
the mailing list for this newsletter to let them know that the 25th April issue
was available I received a number of emails from members concerned that the
links in my email had been tampered with. They were right - although in this
case the tampering had been done with the best of motives, presumably by the
member's ISP.
As you'll know if you read my March
newsletters a lot of email accounts have been hijacked recently (most usually
Yahoo addresses, or BT addresses run by Yahoo) which has meant that many people
have received emails which, though apparently from friends and relatives,
contain links to dangerous websites. The extra code inserted into the link
provided a preview of the target website, and invited the recipient to indicate
whether it was a genuine site, or a suspicious one:
Hopefully nobody clicked the first
option - falsely reporting a website as malicious can have all sorts of
far-reaching consequences. If you're ever in doubt, remember that you can
always get to my latest newsletter from the main menu at the LostCousins site:
Although there are fewer spam emails
arriving in my inbox this month than in recent months, they are still
predominantly from people with Yahoo addresses. Gmail still seems to be the safest
option.
Up to 1 million
Facebook accounts at risk
Facebook isn't a site I use or
recommend, but I know that a lot of members have Facebook accounts - so I
thought I'd better pass on this warning.
Researchers at Rutgers University have
discovered that Hotmail addresses can be reallocated to someone else as little
as 9 months after they have become inactive. Like many websites Facebook allows
users to reset their password by submitting their email address - so in theory
it's possible to gain access to someone else's Facebook account by becoming the
new owner of a Hotmail address they no longer use. The researchers gained
access to 15 Facebook accounts belonging to other people before abandoning the
research because of the ethical and potential legal problems - they estimate
that up to 1 million Facebook accounts could be vulnerable.
Indeed, someone could even get access to
your LostCousins account using the same technique but it's far less likely
because - unlike Facebook - we'll only send an automated password reminder to
your primary email address. Still, it's another good reason to update your My Details page when your email address changes - and to avoid using Hotmail (which is
often targeted by hackers).
According to the New Scientist article which reported this research Google have
confirmed that Gmail addresses are not
recycled, so it's another reason to choose Gmail if you need a webmail address.
One of the first things I did when I
started researching my family tree more than a decade ago was to buy a book
called Ancestral
Trails by Mark Herber. Even now I still refer
to it from time to time, so when I saw that I could get a nearly new copy of
the 2nd edition, published in 2005, for around £8 including postage I jumped at
it (the book has 870 pages and weighs several pounds).
I've always been pleasantly surprised by
the condition of the used books I've bought at Amazon
- and sometimes the saving can be quite considerable, as it was in this case.
I spent the gloriously sunny Bank
Holiday weekend on the Norfolk Broads, which is a notoriously difficult place
to get a mobile phone signal, let alone mobile Internet - but I was pleasantly
surprised to find that having switched to GiffGaff I now
get a signal when my wife (whose phone is still on Orange) doesn't. I'm also
paying a lot less than she is - for £10 a month I get 250 minutes of phone
calls (more than I can possibly use), unlimited texts, and 1GB of mobile
broadband (very generous). But for me the most important feature is being able
to turn my phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot so that I can use my laptop - most mobile
phone companies don't allow 'tethering' (in fact, even GiffGaff don't allow it
on their unlimited Internet plans,
which start at £12).
It's worth checking whether your phone can be turned into a Wi-Fi
hotspot - if it's a smartphone there's a good chance that it can. And if you're
tempted to try GiffGaff, click here to get a
free SIM and £5 of free credit with your first top-up. Incidentally, GiffGaff
came top - by quite a margin - in this month's Which? magazine survey of pay-as-you-go
providers, so it's not just me recommending them.
Regular readers of this newsletter will
know that I sometimes write about stamps. This week Royal Mail released a set
of stamps called Football
Heroes, and I was absolutely appalled to see the picture of England's World
Cup-winning captain, Bobby Moore - it looks nothing like him! I won't say that
I could have painted a better likeness myself - but I bet there are plenty of
LostCousins members who could have done. Although Bobby Moore is one of my sporting
heroes I never met him, although I came within a few feet of him on many
occasions - not on the football field, of course, but in the pub he ran after
his retirement.
I've altered the article about Aberystwyth Crew Lists
to make it clear that the images aren't currently available online.
If you're one of the lucky members invited
to join the LostCousins forum prior to the official launch, why not head off there now to vote on your
favourite artices in this newsletter?
I hope you've found this newsletter
interesting and that you'll make full use of your membership of my site to link
with the cousins you don't yet know (your 'lost cousins'). After all, that's
what LostCousins is all about!
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2013 Peter Calver
You
MAY link to this newsletter or email a link to your friends and relatives
without asking for permission in advance. I have included bookmarks so you can
link to a specific article: right-click on the relevant entry in the table of
contents at the beginning of the newsletter to copy the link.
Please
DO NOT re-publish any part of this newsletter, other
than the list of contents at the beginning, without permission - either on your
own website, in an email, on paper, or in any other format. It is better for
all concerned to provide a link as suggested above, not least because articles
are often updated.