Newsletter
- 18th June 2014
Ancestry
offer: 4 months for just £20 ENDS SUNDAY
Key
resources: a quick guide to Ancestry's main record collections
Using
Ancestry to find 'lost cousins'
LostCousins
member solves dustbin baby mystery with DNA test
Using DNA
to knock down 'brick walls' #2
Have
you ever browsed your chromosomes?
Missing
from the Queen's Speech?
If I
don't come home - letters from D-Day
The LostCousins newsletter is
usually published fortnightly. To access the previous newsletter (dated 11th
June) 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
highlighted in blue or purple and underlined,
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website click the logo at the top of this newsletter. If you're not already a
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Ancestry offer: 4
months for just £20 ENDS
SUNDAY
You've got just 5 days to take advantage
of Ancestry.co.uk's amazing generosity: until
midnight on Sunday a 4 month Premium subscription (which gives UNLIMITED access
to ALL of Ancestry's UK and Ireland records) will cost
you just £20. By my calculations that's less than 17p a day - not bad when you
consider that it includes well over a BILLION records!
In case you're not familiar with
Ancestry, or haven't explored the site recently, I've set out in the next
article some of the most important resources on the site - because even if
you've already got a subscription to another site, there are bound to be millions
of records that only Ancestry has (hardly surprising when you consider that
they have the biggest collection in the world).
Click here to take advantage
of the offer (but please note the small print below). This offer is designed to
attract NEW subscribers - so naturally existing subscribers will not qualify -
but if you are a lapsed subscriber you might (by far the simplest way to find
out is to click the link).
Special
terms & conditions
Offer
based on purchase of a monthly Premium membership at the special offer price of
£5 per month for 4 months. Offer available until 22 June 2014 at 23:59 GMT.
Offer not valid for members with current subscriptions. To ensure you get
continuous access to Ancestry.co.uk your monthly Premium membership will be
renewed automatically at the end of each month unless you cancel beforehand,
and your chosen payment method debited at the standard rate applicable at that
time for a monthly Premium membership.
I probably won't have time to send out a
reminder, so don't delay, otherwise you might miss out completely!
Key resources: a
quick guide to Ancestry's main record collections
Even if you're already an Ancestry
subscriber you might find this a useful reminder of some of the key highlights
amongst the wealth of collections.
PARISH
REGISTERS
No one website has all the data you need
to trace your British ancestors, but Ancestry has more digitized pages from
English parish registers than all other genealogy sites combined!
There's particularly good coverage of
major cities, including:
The parish register collection also
includes registers from the following counties:
Lancashire
(excluding metropolitan boroughs)
Other counties are represented by
transcriptions rather than images, and the coverage varies enormously from
county to county. Use the Card
Catalogue to see how many records there are in a given dataset.
CENSUSES
Ancestry has all of the England &
Wales censuses from 1841-1911 including images of the handwritten schedules;
there are also indexed transcriptions of the Scotland censuses from 1841-1901.
A particularly useful feature of the search is the ability to include multiple
family members with specified relationships, since it allows searching on
forenames only.
You can search all or any of the UK
censuses from this page.
MILITARY
RECORDS
The main strength of the military
records collection is in First World War records, where Ancestry has most of
the surviving service
and pension
records. In addition, the WW1
Medal Roll index cards comprise the most complete collection of WW1
soldiers - approximately 90% of soldiers are included, which makes it a very
useful resource.
You can search all or any of the
military datasets starting from here.
MIGRATION
RECORDS
Lists of incoming
and outgoing
passengers survive from 1890 to 1960 (there are also a small number incoming
lists from 1878-1888, but most were destroyed in 1900). Only ships which
travelled outside Europe and the Mediterranean are included in these Board of
Trade records, but with nearly 40 million entries between the two collections
they are a major source of information for family historians.
Although the outgoing lists are the
obvious place to look for evidence of emigration, sometimes people came back to
visit their family "in the old country", and when this happens you
can pick up all sorts of clues. For example, I only discovered that one of my
cousins in Canada had married his brother's widow in 1925 when I saw the two of
them travelling back to the UK for a visit in 1960.
PROBATE
RECORDS
The National
Probate Calendar is an amazingly useful source, listing just about every
will and administration in England & Wales between
1858-1966. Now that it costs £10 to send off for a copy will it's
imperative to make sure that your ancestor actually made a will, and that it
went to probate (not all wills need to be proved).
If your ancestor died before 1858 you
might even find a copy of the will online - Ancestry have Prerogative
Court of Canterbury (PCC) wills from 1384-1858 (and yes, I do mean 1384 -
how's your Latin?), Gloucestershire
Wills & Inventories from 1541-1858, and Dorset
Wills & Administrations from 1565-1858.
AND MUCH, MUCH MORE......
I don't have time to tell you about
everything but look out particularly for electoral registers, voters lists,
school admission & discharge registers, Poor Law records, and the BT
Phone Directories up to 1984 (great for following up on 20th century
relatives).
Using Ancestry
to find 'lost cousins'
There are millions of family trees at
Ancestry, with over 3 billion entries (inevitably there will be some
duplication) and amongst these trees there are likely be dozens which have been
posted by cousins of yours.
But before exchanging information with
people you find always verify their connection to your ancestors - many people
who post public trees are less experienced than LostCousins members, and
therefore more likely to make mistakes (a large tree is probably just as likely
to be an indication of inexperience as of experience). Bear in mind that if you
provide information to a cousin who has an online tree they're likely to add your data to their tree. I'm always careful only to pass on information that's
directly relevant - I never share my entire tree with anyone.
Many experienced researchers choose not
to post their tree online, but you can still make use of your Ancestry
subscription to find them - through LostCousins! To have a reasonable chance of
linking to your cousins you need to enter their ancestors as well as your own,
and whilst the 1881 England & Wales Census transcription is free, other
censuses aren't - so you need a subscription to trace your collateral lines.
Why is it necessary to enter your
cousins' ancestors? Because if you only enter your ancestors and they only
enter theirs, you'll only match if your common ancestor(s) were still alive in
1881 - and that obviously won't be the case for the vast majority of your 'lost
cousins'.
By definition someone who is a cousin is
descended from a collateral line (otherwise known as a side line) - for
example, your 1st cousins are descended from your parents' siblings, your 2nd
cousins are descended from your grandparents' siblings, and so on. When you
research those collateral lines and bring them forward in time you're opening
up new paths to discovering 'lost cousins'.
You can use Ancestry to track what
happens to your ancestors' siblings, starting from 1841 (or even earlier if the
parish records are online), and going all the way to 1881: you'll want to find
their marriages, their children, even their grandchildren. All of their
descendants are cousins of yours, and the cousins recorded on the 1881 Census
might well lead you to some of the thousands of cousins who are alive today -
your 'lost cousins'.
LostCousins member
solves dustbin baby mystery with DNA test
When LostCousins member Frances decided
to use DNA testing to find out whether or not a family story was true she
didn't expect to solve a mystery that had featured in national newspapers back
in 1968. In November of that year, almost exactly 9 months after Valentine's
Day, a new-born baby girl was found abandoned - wrapped in a laundry bag and
left by the dustbins outside a block of flats in Walthamstow.
Rushed to Whipps
Cross Hospital the little baby survived, and she was fortunate to be adopted by
Les & Daphne Fuller, who had three children of their own - but it wasn't
until she was 21 that she realised she was a foundling. Like so many adopted
children she wanted to know more, and in 2011 the Daily Mirror once again took up the story - as Michelle, now 43
years old with two children of her own, pleaded for help in finding her natural
parents (you can read the article here).
Meanwhile Frances was longing to find
out whether it was really true that she had an ancestor who had been a slave in
the Caribbean - and after reading my DNA articles she decided to take a Family
Finder test with Family
Tree DNA. Last year Michelle also decided to find out whether a DNA test
could help with the conundrum that not even national newspaper coverage could solve
- and she too chose to test with Family Tree DNA.
In January 2014 Michelle was delighted to
discover that she had been matched with Frances - who immediately realised that
as she had had two uncles who lived in Walthamstow, one of them could be
Michelle's father. By this time one of the uncles had passed away but John, her
other uncle, had been 38 and single at the time that Michelle was conceived -
and though by now in his 80s he readily agreed to take a DNA test, which
confirmed that he was Michelle's father.
On Saturday the Daily Mirror broke the story
- and I'm delighted that Frances immediately came to me, so that she could
share her experience with other LostCousins members.
A final thought: just as LostCousins can
only connect cousins who have entered the same relatives on their My Ancestors page, Family
Tree DNA can only connect cousins who have taken the same DNA test.
Michelle and Frances had quite different reasons for testing their DNA, but
thank goodness they did! Will you be able to help your cousins by testing your DNA?
Note:
last weekend Family Tree DNA passed the milestone of 1 million DNA tests!
Using DNA to knock down
'brick walls' #2
The Family Finder test that Michelle and
Frances took is the 'lucky dip' of DNA tests - you simply can't predict what
you'll discover. However, when you want to knock down a specific 'brick wall'
it's better to use Y-DNA and mtDNA if you possibly
can - because the way that these parts of the genome are inherited you can zero
in on a specific ancestral line..
In the last newsletter I showed you how
you might identify an ancestor in your direct paternal line using a Y-DNA test.
Of course, if you're female you won't
have inherited your father's Y-DNA - so you'd need to find a male who is
prepared to help out. This might be your father (if he is still alive), your
brother, your father's brother, or your father's brother's son - or any cousin
who is descended in the direct male line from the ancestor you're trying to
find out about.
On the other side of your tree you'll
find the direct maternal line - your mother's mother's
mother and so on. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed
from mother to child, so in theory you can investigate your ancestors in that
line using mtDNA tests - but in practice it isn't
that easy, because mtDNA mutates far more slowly than
Y-DNA.
Why is the slower mutation rate a
problem? It means that even if you have an exact match, your common ancestor
could be more than 500 years ago, ie before parish
registers began. Even if your common ancestor lived more recently, tracing the
maternal line is always more difficult - because the surname changes with every
generation you have to find each female ancestor's marriage before you can start
looking for their baptism.
In any case, most of the time the 'brick
walls' in our research aren't conveniently on the extreme edge of our tree -
they're somewhere in the middle. For example, in the diagram above Taken from
the previous article) Arthur Dent was illegitimate, but can't passed his father's Y-DNA to his daughter Mary, because only
sons inherit Y-DNA. However, it's quite possible Mary Dent had one or more
brothers who would not only have inherited Arthur's Y-DNA but also passed it on
to their own sons.
Because surnames and Y-DNA are both
passed from father to son, when you're trying to solve a paternity issue you
generally need a male cousin with the same surname as the son whose father is
unknown or in doubt. This is a rough and ready guide - when you've identified
some possible candidates double-check that they will have inherited Y-DNA from the
unknown father by tracing it on a family tree diagram.
Sometimes you'll know that the right
person exists, and how to get in touch with them; sometimes you'll know they
exist, but not how to contact them; sometimes you won't even know that they
exist. This is where LostCousins can help - by connecting you with cousins
who'll either be able to provide an appropriate DNA sample themselves, or else can
put you in touch with another family member who has inherited the DNA you need
to test.
Tip:
remember that occasionally the person you'd like to provide a sample won't be a
relative - or at least not according to written records. To find people like
this use the 'DNA research' feature of LostCousins - it allows you to enter
people who aren't relatives, but whose descendants' DNA might be able to solve
a mystery in your family tree.
Have you ever
browsed your chromosomes?
If you take a Family
Finder test at Family Tree DNA you're likely to be matched with hundreds of
people, but not all of those matches will justify immediate investigation. For
example, I'm currently matched with 349 people, but just 7 have a predicted
range of 2nd to 4th cousin, whilst 27 are in the range 3rd to 5th cousin.
If you're trying to find someone who is
a 4th or 5th cousin there are a quite a lot of family lines to consider (32 and
64 respectively) and if either one of you has a 'brick wall' within the last 5
or 6 generations the connection between you may not be obvious.
Indeed, there may be no connection at
all - it's possible for two people to have common sections of DNA purely by
chance (this is often referred to as 'Identical by State', although 'Identical
by Chance' would be more realistic).
Where it starts to become interesting is
when there are three or more people who share the same stretch of DNA, because
then it becomes much easier to figure out which is the relevant line. At Family
Tree DNA you can use the Chromosome Browser to visually compare your matches
with up to 5 others to see whether there is any commonality.
For example, when I picked 5 of my 34
closest matches at random I got this display (I've only shown the first 10
chromosomes as there weren't any matches with the others):
As you can see, I've got a match with
two potential cousins in the same area of chromosome 1, and a match with two
others in chromosome 9. It could just be a coincidence, but it's something to
bear in mind as I attempt to figure out whether and how I'm related to them.
Missing from the
Queen's Speech?
After the State Opening of Parliament 2
weeks ago, when the Queen delivered a speech outlining the government's
legislative programme for the new session, a number of political commentators
highlighted the relatively small number of bills that will be put before parliament.
If they're right, surely this would be a
great time to present a bill that would surely be supported by all the major
political parties - one that dragged the moribund General Register Office out
of the 19th century into the 21st?
A year ago I demonstrated
how making the historic registers of births, marriages, and deaths available
online would meet the aspirations set out in the Civil Service Reform Plan, where it states
that:
"Central
government where possible must become a digital organisation. These days the
best service organisations deliver online everything that can be delivered
online. This cuts their costs dramatically and allows access to information and
services at times and in ways convenient to the users rather than the
providers."
Instead, Andrew Dent - the Director of
Civil Registration and Deputy Registrar General - recently suggested that the
GRO would meet its obligation simply by putting the indexes of births,
marriages, and deaths online!
Sorry, Mr Dent, that simply won't do -
those indexes have been online for years, thanks to FreeBMD and commercial
sites such as Ancestry and findmypast. In fact, the GRO's main contribution so
far has been to stop the sale of the indexes, which means that to find out
about births, marriages, and deaths for the past 6 years you have to go to one
of just 7 libraries around the country AND LOOK THEM UP ON MICROFICHE!!!!!
Personally I don't think any legislation
is necessary to make the historic registers available online - a dose of commonsense is all that's really needed - but if it takes a bill to wipe the complacent
grin off the GRO's face then so be it.
When I spoke to my MP, a former Deputy Speaker, he suggested that a one
sentence bill would be sufficient to fix the problem!
Whilst that might be a little optimistic
it's worth bearing in mind that the Act
which set up the civil registration system in 1836 wasn't much longer than the
average LostCousins newsletter, so a paragraph or two should suffice to give a
little tweak to the legislation - and a much bigger tweak to the noses of the
GRO top-brass.
In the 1980s we laughed at the antics of
the civil servants in Yes,
Minister and Yes,
Prime Minister; in the 1970s we cried with laughter as Basil mismanaged
Fawlty Towers; at the turn of the millennium we
winced as we watched The
Office. When you consider that the General Register Office is based in
a former hotel, surely it’s got all the key ingredients for a classic comedy?
If I don't come home -
letters from D-Day
Ever since I got my first VCR in 1978
I've been recording TV programmes of interest so that I can watch them when it
suits me - and there was invariably a last minute scramble to find a blank
tape. I could only afford three when I started because a 3-hour tape cost the
equivalent of £70 in today's money, and the VCR was rented, because to buy it
would have cost £695 at a time when the average worker took home around £200 a
month.
Of course, these days it's so easy to
catch up on programmes we've missed using BBC iPlayer and ITV Player that
recording them when they're own seems rather old hat - but I still do it, not
least because I archive some of them to DVD or Blu
Ray so that I can watch them if the day ever comes when I'm short of things to
do!
Anyway, one of the advantages of this
brave new world is that I can tell you about programmes after they've been on, and after
I've watched them myself - which makes me a lot happier recommending them. For
example, this week I watched If I don't come home -
letters from D-Day, which ITV broadcast on Thursday 5th June, the eve of
the 70th anniversary. It focused on 4 of the soldiers and sailors who took part
in the assault, and included not only their letters but also interviews with
their children and other relatives.
It was excellent - and I'd thoroughly
recommend it to anyone who remembers World War 2 or has family members who were
involved in the conflict, whether or not they were on the Normandy beaches.
You'll find it on ITV Player here
(my apologies if overseas readers are unable to access it).
At one time I used to have time to go to
local auctions where, perhaps inevitably, most of the lots came from the house
clearances. Even though my interest in family history was yet to flourish I
used to despair at the number of personal items, such as photograph albums,
that had been consigned for sale with no indication of who the owner had been.
At least they survived - and might
perhaps one day find their way back to the family - but many things are thrown
away or burnt, even though family historians (and social historians) of the
future would find them fascinating. Thank goodness most people reading this
newsletter are able to scan photographs and documents so that a digital copy
survives, even if the original is lost.
Of course, once you've got a good
quality scan you can give copies to those relatives who are interested - if
there are large numbers you might want to record them to CD ROM or DVD-R (I'm
sure you'll be making a copy for yourself anyway - hard drives and memory
sticks don't last forever).
It's not only executors and
administrators who commit bad deeds - some of the people we trust most are just
as guilty. Did you know that some solicitors and mortgage lenders destroy the
original deeds once a property has been registered - and that they do this
without reference to the owner? Quite apart from the shame they should feel for
ordering the destruction of historical documents belonging to somebody else,
don't they realise that land registration isn't completely cut-and-dried -
mistakes can be made, and it may only be possible to put matters right if the
original deeds are available?
I have written about this before, but it
was many years ago, so I'm grateful to Joyce and Christina who both wrote to
remind me.
Last July I wrote
about the way that my late father's file was marked "Not for
resuscitation" when he arrived in hospital for the last time - and
expressed my concern that neither he nor family members were consulted, or even
told about this decision (I only discovered about it when I obtained my
father's hospital records after his death).
Subsequently I was told by a couple of LostCousins
members who had worked in the NHS that it was quite normal - nothing to worry
about. But I did worry about it, especially when I got further into the file
and saw that a doctor had written "End of life" 3 days before my father
died - and again nobody told the family. It was just hours before Dad died that
a doctor finally told me what was going to happen.
I wasn't alone in thinking this was
wrong. Yesterday the Court of Appeal ruled that doctors have a legal duty to consult with and inform patients if they
want to place a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order on medical notes - see this BBC
News story for more
details.
First of all, a big thank you to
everyone who has sent me their favourite fudge recipe - there's amazing
diversity so I'm going to have to try out as many as I can. Surprise
ingredients included vinegar and garlic (though not in the same recipe), and
also marshmallow.
Next month the Tour de France is coming
to England - and at one point they planned to cycle past the end of my road.
The bad news is that they subsequently decided to change the route; the good
news is that before they did, Essex County Council committed to resurfacing the
roads on the route, and repainting the white lines, so we haven't done too
badly out of it.
When I was young one of my favourite
meals was pilchards on toast, and I recently discovered that sardines in tomato
sauce make a lighter and very tasty substitute - and they're high in Omega 3,
which could be a bonus (depending which research you believe). Talking of
research, I read recently that paracetamol (acetaminophen)
is not nearly as benign as had been thought when it comes to stomach bleeding -
it could be just as harmful as ibuprofen (New
Scientist 31st May). Sometimes I just don't know what to believe!
One source of information that I do
generally find reliable is Which? magazine, which I've
subscribed to for many years (my mother also subscribed in the late 1950s and
60s - so she must have been one of the first). I find it particular helpful
when I'm buying a domestic appliance, or a car, because when you're buying
something that should last 5 or 10 years you want the best possible value for
money - but I also find it useful when it comes to supermarket products
because, contrary to general opinion, price isn't a particularly good guide to
quality. And, because the Consumer's Association is a charity, I know that the
money I pay them is going to a good cause.
Finally, a reminder that just as you
can't fight with one hand tied behind your back, it's difficult to research
your family tree if you only have access to one of the two leading websites.
Why? Because, once you get beyond the censuses, their record collections are so
different.
Just as I was finalising this newsletter
I discovered that findmypast have taken over Origins.net - I'll tell you more
about this in the next issue. And if you were experiencing any problems logging
in at Ancestry.co.uk, or with the links to the Special Offer page, I'm glad to
say that everything's now back to normal.
Thanks for taking the time to read my
newsletter - I hope you find it useful.
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2014 Peter Calver
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