Newsletter – 13th
April 2023
Hampshire parish registers online at Ancestry
BREAKING NEWS
Suffolk parish registers to go online in 2025
Findmypast to allow tree sharing
MASTERCLASS: finding birth
certificates in England & Wales
Scottish BMD registers “the envy of the world”
Protecting historic cemeteries
Looking forward to the Coronation
The LostCousins
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Hampshire parish registers online at Ancestry BREAKING
NEWS
Four
years ago I revealed
that Hampshire parish registers were (briefly) online at FamilySearch – but
even before my newsletter went to press they had vanished, with access restricted
to LDS Family History Centres and affiliated libraries.
Then, two years ago
Ancestry contracted to put the Hampshire registers online, and the first
tranche of more than 1.5 million baptism entries are now on the Ancestry site (the
examples I looked at had been scanned in colour, which is always a bonus):
Hampshire,
England, Church of England Baptisms 1813-1921
I
suspect that the remainder of the registers will go online before the end of
the year, but I cannot confirm this at the current time.
Please
note that Southampton and Portsmouth parishes are not included in the Ancestry
collection – the Southampton registers are held at Southampton Archives (see
the PDF list of holdings here)
– whilst Portsmouth parish registers are online at Findmypast.
Tip:
there are over 3 million transcribed entries from Hampshire at Findmypast
to keep you busy while you’re waiting for
Ancestry.
Suffolk parish registers to go online
20
years ago I spent much of my free time in record offices
– mainly the London Metropolitan Archives in Clerkenwell, Hertfordshire
Archives and Local Studies in Hertford, Essex Record Office in Chelmsford, and
the West Suffolk branch of Suffolk Archives in Bury St Edmunds.
In
those days there were no parish registers online, and even though many entries
had been transcribed the coverage was patchy. Around 15 years ago Essex began
putting their registers online (though the entries within them were unindexed),
then Ancestry and Findmypast took up the challenge, and within 5 years London
(Ancestry) and Hertfordshire (Findmypast) parish registers were not only online
but indexed.
Four
years ago Ancestry added indexes to the Essex
registers (though the images are still only accessible through Essex Archives),
but Suffolk County Council had still not decided what to do – they were still toying
with the idea of emulating what Essex had done when the pandemic hit.
Last
month Ancestry finally won the right to digitise Suffolk parish registers and
other records, and according to my contact at Suffolk County Council they
should be online by 2025. Ancestry have exclusive
rights until 2029.
There
was another piece of good news about Suffolk Archives recently – it now seems
virtually certain that the West Suffolk branch in Raingate
Street, Bury St Edmunds will not be closing (as had been feared) but relocating
to a new premises on Western Avenue. You can read more about the decision here,
in the minutes of the council meeting held on 21st February.
Tip:
if you don’t want to wait until 2025, you’ll be pleased to hear that volunteers
from Suffolk Family History Society have transcribed millions of register
entries, and the collection is expanding all the time. Some of the transcribed
records are at Findmypast,
but most are only available on CD ROMs or in digital downloads from the Suffolk
FHS shop.
Findmypast to allow tree sharing
Last
week Findmypast introduced tree sharing, something that they’ve been reticent
to offer in the past. I haven’t had a chance to check it out myself, but here’s
what Findmypast told me:
There are two ways to share your family tree
with friends and family when logged in to your Findmypast account.
If you want to share with selected individuals,
simply generate a unique link for each person as needed and share this to grant
them access. Alternatively, you can generate a temporary link which expires
after seven days to share with as many people as you like.
Those with a link will be able to see all
deceased people in your family tree and view facts about those deceased people.
They will not be able to see any information about living people, photos, or
media, regardless of whether you’ve marked them as private or public in your
tree settings. They will not be able to make any edits to your tree.
You can edit access permissions for any link
that you’ve shared, adding or removing the ability to
see people marked as living in your tree, and revoke access entirely via the
tree settings page, under sharing settings.
There
are three key features that set LostCousins apart from most other genealogy
sites: automation, privacy, and accuracy.
Automation means that you can
repeat ALL of the searches you’ve ever carried out by
pressing ONE button – there’s no need to re-enter anything, because your search
criteria are permanently recorded on the My Ancestors page.
Privacy wasn’t a major
concern for most people when I founded LostCousins in 2004, but these days we’re
all far more conscious of the need to keep personal information away from
prying eyes – so I’m glad it was something that was
built-into the system from the beginning. At LostCousins nobody can see your
entries, even after you’ve been matched, nor can they see your name unless you agree
to correspond with them. Furthermore, even if you do agree to correspond with
another member they won’t find out your email address
unless both of you agree to exchange addresses.
Accuracy is crucial because we’re
all so busy these days that we can’t afford to spend time figuring out whether
someone we’ve encountered online really is a cousin of ours. Over the past 19
years the LostCousins matching technology has proven to be 100% accurate – the very
few mismatches have been the result of someone identifying the wrong individual
on the census, a mistake anyone could make if the surname is a common one.
Let’s
talk some more about accuracy…. whilst the chance of a false match is
negligible, there is a small possibility of a genuine match being missed
because some of the data entered doesn’t match the census. That’s why some
years ago I added a ‘checking arrow’ alongside most entries on your My
Ancestors page – clicking the grey arrow instantly carries out a census
search so that you can review the information and make changes or additions.
Tip:
when you add a new household from any of the England & Wales censuses to
your My Ancestors page you can use the arrow to confirm that you’ve entered the
correct references.
I’ve
now taken this a stage further for the England & Wales 1881 census. The ‘gold
standard’ for this census is the LDS transcription, which for many years was available
at all of the major sites – but in recent years
Findmypast have used a slightly modified transcription, and it has been
modified further as a result of users submitting corrections to them. The
England & Wales censuses at FamilySearch have all been sourced from
Findmypast, so the only site which still has the unmodified LDS transcription
for the 1881 Census is Ancestry.
Note:
whilst Ancestry also accept corrections from users,
they retain the original version.
In
an ideal world the grey arrows for the England & Wales 1881 census would
link to Ancestry, but this would be very difficult to achieve because Ancestry have
split this census into four: England,
Wales,
Isle
of Man, and Channel
Islands. Although they do have a search which includes all of those territories
(plus Scotland)
there are no boxes on the search form for the references which identify a
specific census page.
Where
there is a difference in the 1881 entries at Findmypast and Ancestry it almost
always relates to the names. For example, looking at the entries for my 2nd
cousin three times removed Thomas C Smith I noticed that whereas the LDS
transcription correctly shows his first name as ‘Thos’, the Findmypast transcription
has ‘Thomas’. Discrepancies like this rarely result in a match being missed
completely – usually a red exclamation mark flags up the entry for checking, as
in this case:
To
view what you’ve entered for a relative just click their name on your My
Ancestors page – this will take you to the Edit Ancestor form:
The
good news is that there are some new buttons on this page:
· the Findmypast button
which will search the England & Wales 1881 census using the references you have entered
· two Ancestry buttons,
one for the England census, and one for the Wales census - again they'll search using the census references
When
you click any of those buttons the search results will appear in a new browser
tab – it’s quick and easy to establish from the Ancestry results that the
correct version of the name is Thos C Smith, so I can click the Confirm
button at the bottom of the page – this will remove the red exclamation mark.
Incidentally
I can also see that it’s very likely my cousin took his information from Findmypast,
and as we have successfully matched on two other members of the household (the
ones with a blue tick) I can send him a message suggesting that he might want
to review his own entry for Thomas.
Note:
his entry would also have been marked with a red exclamation mark, but if he checked
against Findmypast he might have well have confirmed
his entry as correct.
You
don’t need to go to your LostCousins account to try out the new buttons – you
can use the ones below:
Tip:
whilst you DON’T need a subscription to either site, because the 1881
transcripts are free, you WILL need to log-in
As
Easter approached I decided to look at children whose
parents named them ’Easter’. I anticipated that, given the timing of Easter, almost
all of the births would be registered in the second
quarter of the year, but this proved not to be the case – in fact, barely 60%
were.
Near
the top of the list were two girls whose births were registered in South
Shields in 1915: both were shown as Easter C Adams in the original quarterly
indexes, but referring to the modern GRO birth index I found that in each case
their middle name was ‘Catherine’:
My first
thought was that given how unusual the name was there must be a possibility
that both entries referred to the same child, and that somehow the wrong maiden name had been shown for the mother when it was first
registered.
This
proved not to be the case, as you can see:
The
biggest surprise was that neither birth occurred around Easter – indeed, one of
the girls was born 4 days before Christmas, which surely would have inspired a
different choice of name? Both of the fathers were
rivetters by trade, so I suspected that they were brothers or cousins, and this
was confirmed by the 1891 Census:
© The National
Archives. All Rights Reserved. Used by kind permission of Findmypast
There
was another Easter Catherine Adams whose birth was registered in South Shields
in the early years of the 20th century:
The
mother’s maiden name was sufficiently rare that it was possible to identify the
parents’ marriage with confidence: this revealed that the father was John
Hedley Adams, another member of the same family. But this birth was registered
in the third quarter of 1902, so again the name couldn’t have been chosen
because of the timing – so I decided to look for other ‘Easter’ births in South
Shields, and this entry caught my eye:
Not
only was the mother’s maiden name Adams, the birth had
been registered in the 2nd quarter of the year. I decided to take a
closer look:
Jane
Isabella Lawrence, née Adams, was the eldest daughter of Thomas and Catherine –
and her baby was born just over a week before Easter. So
was this the origin of the name within the Adams family? It certainly seemed
likely, until I looked up the marriage of Thomas Adams and Catherine Moon – it turned
out that she had married as ‘Esther Catherine’, though her birth had been
registered as ‘Catherine’:
Catherine
Moon was born on 12th April 1847, 8 days after Easter – but she
would have celebrated her 5th birthday on Easter Monday, 1852 and
her 10th birthday on Easter Sunday 1857. Is it possible that she was
nicknamed ‘Easter’ by her family, and used that name when she married?
Perhaps
there’s somebody from her family reading this who can provide a definitive
answer?
MASTERCLASS: finding birth certificates
in England & Wales
It's very frustrating when we can't find an ancestor's birth
certificate - but often the 'brick wall' only exists because we've trusted the
information in the records that we have found. Let's look at some of the
key reasons why a certificate can't be found....
·
The forename you know your ancestor by may
not be the one on the birth certificate
Sometimes the name(s) given at the time of baptism would differ
from the name(s) given to the registrar of births; sometimes a middle name was preferred,
perhaps to avoid confusion with another family member, often the father.
Although it was possible to amend a birth register entry to reflect a change of
name at baptism, most people seem not to have bothered.
There can be all sorts of reasons why a different forename is used - one of my
ancestors appears on some censuses as 'Ebenezer' and on others as 'John' (which
I imagine was the name he was generally known by). In another family the children
(and there were lots of them) were all known by their middle names. Similarly,
one of my relatives was registered as Fred, but in 1911 his own father - my
great-grandfather - gave his name as Frederick.
·
Middle names come and go
At the beginning of the 19th century it was rare to have a middle
name, but by the beginning of the 20th century it was unusual not to have one.
Some people invented middle names, some people dropped middle names they didn't
like, and sometimes people simply forgot what was on the birth certificate.
Sometimes they switched their names around for a reason: one of my distant cousins swapped his first
and middle name when he married for the second time, and as his second marriage
was only two years after the first, I suspect it was bigamous.
·
The surname on the certificate may not be the
one you expect
If the parents weren't married at the time of the birth then usually (but not always) the birth will be
indexed under the mother's maiden name; the main exception is where the mother
was using the father's surname and failed to disclose to the registrar that they
weren't married. In the early days of civil registration some illegitimate
births were indexed under the surnames of both parents (the examples I've seen
are mostly from the 1840s), but this anomaly was corrected when the GRO
recompiled the indexes in the 21st century.
Surname spellings were not fixed in the 19th century, and some continued to
change in the 20th century. For example, the spelling of my grandmother's
surname changed between her birth in 1894 and her marriage in 1915 and it wasn’t
an error, because everyone in her branch changed the spelling. Many surnames of
foreign origin changed around the time of the First World War - even the Royal
Family changed their name.
·
You're looking for the wrong father
Often the best clue you have to the identity of your ancestor's
father is the information on his or her marriage certificate. Unfortunately marriage
certificates are often incorrect - the father's name and/or occupation may well
be wrong. This is particularly likely if your ancestor never knew his or her
father, whether as a result of early death or
illegitimacy. Not many people admit to being illegitimate on their wedding day
- and in Victorian Britain illegitimacy was frowned upon, so single mothers
often made up stories to tell their children (as well as the neighbours).
If the groom's name is the same as the name given for his father you should be
especially wary - when you're struggling to find a birth it is a strong hint
that the father isn’t who the marriage register says he is. However it might only be the
surname that's wrong - illegitimate sons were often named after their putative
father.
Whether or not the birth was legitimate young children often took the name
of the man their mother later married, so always bear in mind the possibility
that the father whose name is shown on the marriage certificate is actually a
step-father.
·
You may be looking in the wrong place
A child's birthplace is likely to be shown correctly when he or
she is living at home (few mothers are going to forget where they were when
they gave birth!), but could
well be incorrect after leaving home. Many people simply didn't know where they
were born, and assumed it was the place where they remembered growing up. So the most accurate birthplace is the one given by the
father or (especially) the mother of the person whose birth you're trying to
track down; the least accurate is likely to be the one in the first census
after they leave home.
Enumerators also made mistakes, and sometimes added extra information that makes
it even more confusing. For example, my great-great-great grandmother was born
in Lee, Kent but the 1851 Census shows her as born in Leith, Scotland - clearly
the enumerator could have misheard 'Lee' as 'Leith', but he wouldn't have
mistaken 'Kent' for 'Scotland', so he must have added that bit himself. Her
father was shown on the same census (but by a different enumerator) as born in
Hatcham, Surrey – which was nearby. In fact he was
born in Fetcham, Surrey which was much further away – the enumerator might not
even have heard the name before. Both of them were
born before civil registration began, but the enumerators' errors would have
been just as confusing had they been born after 1837.
Another common error made by enumerators was to switch the birthplaces of the
head of household and his wife. This probably happened when copying them from
the household schedule to the summary book – remember that prior to 1911 we don't
get to see the schedules filled in by householders..
·
You may be looking in the wrong period
Ages on censuses are often wrong, as are the ages shown on marriage
certificates - especially if there is an age gap between the parties, or one or
both is below the age of consent (21). Sometimes people didn't know how old
they were, or knew
which year they were born but bungled the subtraction; ages on death certificates
can be little more than guesses, or may be based on an incorrect age shown on
the deceased's marriage certificate. Remember too that births could be
registered up to 42 days afterwards without penalty, so many will be recorded
in the following quarter - and they could be registered up to 365 days
afterwards on payment of a fine. Some births were re-registered years later
after the parents married.
In my experience, where a marriage certificate shows 'of full age' it's
often an indication that in reality at least one of them was under 21. It was
only very recently that vicars were given the power to require evidence of age
and identity.
·
The birth was not registered at all
This is the least likely situation, but it did happen occasionally
- most often in the first few years of registration, though it wasn't until
1875 that there was a penalty for failing to register a birth. However, to be absolutely certain that a birth wasn't registered you would
need to have almost as much information as would be shown on a birth
certificate – so for practical purposes it's a possibility that is best ignored
until all other paths have been thoroughly investigated.
·
The GRO indexes are wrong
This is also quite rare,
but did happen occasionally - despite the checks that were
carried out. Fortunately the
indexes that the GRO made available on their website in November 2016 were
compiled from scratch, so most indexing errors will have been eliminated
(although inevitably some new ones were introduced).
·
The GRO indexes have been mistranscribed
Transcription errors can prevent you finding the entry you’re
looking for, so make use of indexes at other sites.
How can you overcome these problems? First and foremost keep an open mind - be
prepared to accept that any or all of the information you already have may be
wrong. This is particularly likely if you have been unable to find your
relative at home with their parents on any of the censuses.
Obtain all the information that you can from censuses, certificates,
baptism entries and other sources (such as Army records). The GRO's new birth
indexes show the mother's maiden name from the start of civil registration -
the contemporary indexes only include this information from July 1911 onwards.
And don’t assume that the same information will be shown in the baptism
register as in the birth register - if the birth was registered before the
baptism the forenames could be different. (Whilst it was possible to update the
birth entry following the baptism - hence the final column on birth
certificates - this rarely happened.)
Don't stick to one site just because you have a subscription
Almost all of the sites that have indexed
the quarterly birth indexes have done so independently, so entries that have
been incorrectly transcribed at one site may well be correctly transcribed at
other sites. Make use of free searches – even subscription sites allow free searches
(though you may have to register first)
Note: the indexes at Ancestry for the period up to 1915 were
provided by FreeBMD,
so you’re likely to get the same results from both sites, although FreeBMD's
indexes include some corrections that aren't reflected in the Ancestry
database. Similarly the
indexes at FamilySearch are provided by Findmypast.
The GRO's online index of historic births is completely free,
though the search options are very limited, with very poor fuzzy-matching.
Furthermore, although maiden names are included from 1837 onwards you can’t search
on maiden name only. Findmypast offers
much better search options, and you probably won’t need a subscription because
a free search provides a lot of information. Although maiden names currently
aren't recorded for every birth between 1837-1911, the fact
that at Findmypast you can search by maiden name alone is incredibly useful.
Note: the way in which the new birth indexes have been compiled by
the GRO differs from the procedure followed when the original quarterly indexes
were created. See this article
for an explanation of the differences, and the implications thereof.
When you can't find someone living with their parents on the censuses…..
The less information you can find, the more likely it is that the
little you already have is incorrect or misleading in some way. Consider how
and why the information you have might be wrong by working your way through the
list above - then come up with a strategy to deal with each possibility.
Sometimes it's as easy as looking up the index entry for a sibling to find out
the mother's maiden name; often discovering when the parents married is a vital
clue (but don't believe what it says on the 1911 Census - the years of marriage
shown may have been adjusted for the sake of propriety).
If you can't find your ancestor on any census with his or her
parents then you should be particularly suspicious of the information you have
- it's very likely that some element is wrong, and it is quite conceivable that
it is ALL wrong. Tempting as it is to hold on to clues when you have so few of
them, sometimes you can only succeed by letting go, and starting from scratch.
Middle names that could also be surnames often indicate illegitimacy
- it was usually the only way to get the father's name onto the birth
certificate. And if your ancestor has an unusual middle name, try searching for
other birth registrations which include the same name.
Official records are often wrong
Don't assume that just because something appears in an official
document, it must be right. Around half of the 19th century marriage certificates I've seen included at least one error, and as
many as half of all census entries are also wrong in some respect (I'm not
talking about transcription errors, by the way). Army records are
particularly unreliable - one of my relatives added 2 years to his age when he
joined the British Army in 1880, and knocked
7 years off when he signed up for the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1914.
Some people really were named Tom, Dick, or Harry but over-eager
record-keepers might assume that they were actually Thomas, Richard and Henry. My grandfather
was Harry, but according to his army records he was Henry (just as well he had
two other forenames - which were recorded correctly - otherwise I might never
have found him).
Births were registered locally, and some local indexes are online
If you are absolutely convinced that you know when and where your
ancestors was born, you could try ordering their birth
certificate from the local register office. But first make use of local BMD
indexes where they exist (start at UKBMD),
and don't forget to look for your ancestor's baptism - sometimes we forget that
parents continued to have their children baptised after Civil Registration
began, but as more and more parish registers, Catholic registers, and
non-conformist records become available online they are increasingly important sources.
Consider the possibility that one or both of the parents died when your ancestor was
young - perhaps there will be evidence in workhouse records. Have you looked
for wills?
Marriage witnesses and signatures on marriage certificates can be valuable
clues
Could the witnesses to your ancestor's marriage be relatives? When
my great-great-great grandfather Joseph Harrison married, one of the witnesses
was a Sarah Salter - and I later discovered (after many years of fruitless
searching) that this was the name of his mother. Her maiden
name wasn't Salter, by the way - nor was it Harrison
- and it was only because the Salter name stuck in my mind that I managed to
knock down the 'brick wall'.
Another marriage witness with a surname I didn't recognise proved
invaluable when I was struggling with my Smith line - he turned up as a lodger
in the census, helping to prove that I was looking at the same family on two
successive censuses, even though the names and ages of the children
didn't tally, and the father had morphed from a carpenter to a rag merchant.
Do your cousins have the answer?
Remember that you're probably not the only one researching
this particular ancestor -
and one of your cousins may already have the answers you're seeking. Someone
who has approached the problem from a different direction will have collected different
clues, and might well have solved the mystery through
routine research. Indeed, they might never have seen it as a mystery – perhaps
they inherited the family Bible, a handwritten family tree, or even the
original birth certificate? So make sure that you
have entered ALL your relatives from 1881 on your My Ancestors page,
as this is the census that is most likely to link you to your 'lost cousins' – and
remember that because your cousins are descended from the branches of your
tree, the best way to find them is to enter the relatives from the twigs and
branches of your tree.
Will the certificate be correct when you eventually find it?
Finally, remember that even when you find the birth certificate the
information shown might not be correct; for example, if the child is the
youngest in a large family, consider the possibility that the mother shown on
the certificate was actually the child's grandmother (see this article for
an example).
When a birth was registered by one parent the name of the other
parent could only be recorded in the register if the parents were married (or
claimed to be married); as a result some
births registered by the mother named the wrong father, and (more rarely) some
births registered by the father named the wrong mother. You can see another
example of a birth certificate which names the wrong mother here.
Note: although this Masterclass relates to England & Wales it’s
likely that much of the advice will also apply to searches in other parts of
the British Isles, and in other countries around the world.
Scottish BMD registers “the envy of the world”
National
Records of Scotland (NRS) was formed 12 years ago when the General Register
Office for Scotland merged with the National Archives of Scotland – so it’s perhaps
not surprising that on their website they write
that “Scotland’s registers of births, deaths and marriages are the envy of the
world”.
If
you research is largely confined to England & Wales you might well be surprised
to discover how much more detailed the information is on Scottish certificates –
for example, mothers’ names have been shown in the marriage registers since
1855, when civil registration began in Scotland, whereas England & Wales registers
only included this information from May 2021, 166 years later!
Follow
the links on this page
to see what information was routinely included in the birth, marriage, and
death registers – you might indeed be envious!
Mind
you, not all Scottish registrars were as diligent as they should have been –
this article
on the NRS site demonstrates how, in 1880, one part-timer was criticised for his
sloppy records. His excuse? He’d got married!
I
read recently about a company that plans to install computers in homes to
provide heating and hot water, a suggestion that sounds quite ludicrous until
you realise that the only difference between a computer and an electric heater
is that a computer does something useful with the electrons before they end up
as heat.
In
fact it isn’t a new idea – back in June 2011 researchers from Microsoft and the
University of Virginia presented a paper making the same suggestion at a cloud computing
conference (you can read a report on
their presentation here).
And on the other side of Atlantic yours truly had come up with the same idea some
months earlier – though in the circumstances it’s probably just as well that I
decided to focus on LostCousins.
It's
not unusual for people to come up with similar ideas, just as it’s not unusual
for family historians to view the same records – indeed, that’s what gave me
the idea for LostCousins back in 2003. In those days the 1881 Census was the
only one that was easily accessible, and it struck me that if I only I knew who
else was looking at the same entries we could collaborate on future research.
These
days it’s even more important for family historians with common interests to
collaborate – whilst there are many more records online, we’re up against more ‘brick
walls’ than ever before. 20 years ago I had about 10 ‘brick
walls’ that were holding me back – now I have well over 100, far more than I
could possibly deal with even if I was able to devote all of my time to
research.
You
may not have as many ‘brick walls’ as I do, but I can guarantee that nobody
reading this has fewer ‘brick walls’ in their family tree than they did 20
years ago – that’s because behind every ‘brick wall’ there are always at least
two others waiting to block our path!
When
we have so much on our plates, going it alone really isn’t a viable strategy – connecting with
our ‘lost cousins’ so that we can collaborate on the ‘brick walls’ that we
share makes perfect sense, especially when we’re already pressed for time. Ironically
members who haven’t completed their My Ancestors page tell me it’s because
they have such limited time to research their tree – but isn’t that a bit like
saying you haven’t got the time to find someone to fix your washing machine
because you’re so busy washing your clothes by hand?
Always
remember that LostCousins is here to SAVE you time by connecting you with the experienced
family historians who are researching some of your ancestors (the ones
who are also their ancestors). Why do
everything yourself when you could share the workload with people who are just
as keen as you are to knock down your ‘brick walls’?
Tip: occasionally you’ll
connect with a cousin who has already knocked down one of your ‘brick walls’ –
not because they’re smarter or more experienced than you, but because they
started with different information. When that happens it’s a bonus!
Protecting historic cemeteries
Readers
of this newsletter were as shocked as I was to read
about the desecration of the graveyard of Emmanuel Church, Forest Gate (in east
London). We all know that what happened was wrong, but how should disused burial
grounds be managed? I subsequently found some helpful guidance
on the Historic England website under the heading Management of Historic
Cemeteries.
Note:
Historic England was formerly known as English Heritage – in 2015 the
organisation was split into two, with Historic England taking on the statutory
and protection role, and the English Heritage Trust shouldering responsibility
for the management of the historic properties.
For
even more detailed advice see the Guide for Burial Ground Managers
issued by the Department of Constitutional Affairs in 2005 – it is in PDF
format, and can be downloaded here.
I wonder who will be the first family historian to get permission to exhume an
ancestor for the purpose of taking a DNA sample?
The
Y-chromosome is passed unchanged from fathers to their sons, so it has the
potential to reach back hundreds or thousands of years to identify people who
share a common patrilineal ancestor.
The
recent recovery of Beethoven’s DNA from locks of hair has prompted increased
interest in distant connections to historic figures. According to FamilyTreeDNA my 3rd cousin is related to Beethoven,
which means that I am too, through my maternal grandfather – though as the connection
is estimated to date back 4600 years it could hardly be classed as a close
relationship (perhaps that’s why my piano lessons were such an abject failure).
On
my father’s side I’m apparently related to Bill Gates – which might explain why
we both founded software companies in the 1970s, though not why his company (Microsoft)
was just a teeny weeny bit more successful than mine (Supersoft). Perhaps the fact that our common ancestor lived
17000 years might have something to so with that….
But
I only have to go back 4400 years to my common
ancestor with Crick and Watson, the discoverers of DNA, as well as Craig
Venter, who played a major role in the sequencing of the first human genome.
That particular connection, by the way, is through my father’s
mother’s mother’s father.
These
factoids might be fun, but they’re of little or no consequence to serious family
historians – partly because connections that pre-date historical records and
even surnames are of doubtful practical value, but also because it has been calculated
that EVERYONE with Western European ancestry shares a common ancestor as
recently as 1000 years ago. On similar lines, it has been theorised that most
British people alive today are descended from William the Conqueror – though,
of course, only a few can show how they’re descended from him (and even
that may depend on late medieval pedigrees of questionable accuracy).
Go
back 5000 years and it’s possible that everyone alive today is descended from
everyone who was alive then who has living descendants! You can find out more
on this page from
the ISOGG website.
Note:
talking about ancestors, one of my great-great-great grandfathers was born in
Salcombe, Devon – which has just been named the most expensive seaside town in
the UK (according to this BBC article). But my
ancestor was born into a poor fishing family and though he headed off to London,
it was to work as a dock labourer – he died in his 40s.
Looking forward to the Coronation
In
just over three weeks King Charles III will be crowned at Westminster Abbey,
and to celebrate this momentous occasion LostCousins will be COMPLETELY FREE from
Monday 1st May, the 19th birthday of LostCousins, until midnight
on Tuesday 9th May.
(In
case you’ve forgotten, Coronation Day is Saturday 6th May – it’s
easy for me to remember because it would have been my father’s 107th
birthday.)
The
9 days of the offer represent a great opportunity for existing members to
connect with their ‘lost cousins’, but it’s also a good time to invite new
members to join.
Remember,
the best way to make connections is through the 1881 Census – and this applies whether
your ‘brick walls’ are in the 17th century (like most of mine), or more
recent. Start entering relatives now, and you’ll be ready to make those
connections when the offer starts.
Tip:
if you have any questions it’s best not to wait until
the offer has started – I’m likely to be very busy then (though not because I’ve
been invited to the Coronation – unlike some of you).
I
read yesterday that some of the major supermarkets are cutting the price of
milk, and whilst it’ll still be considerably more expensive than a year ago, at
least it’s a step in the right direction. Hopefully this week’s decision to
allow chickens back outside will help to reduce the price of eggs, another
staple food item.
There’s
also the possibility of falling energy prices later this year, thanks partly to
the efforts we have all made to reduce demand (the milder winter in Europe also
helped). It might seem unlikely now, but last month’s revised forecast from the
Office of Budget Responsibility suggests that the rate of inflation will fall
below 2% next year.
Do
you remember Tupperware? Back in the 1960s Tupperware parties were all the
rage, but now the company may go out of business according to a news article I read. Other
memories of my youth include the man who went door to door with a suitcase full
of brushes (made by Addis, if I remember rightly), and ‘the man from the Pru’ who came round once a month to collect the premiums.
Earlier
this month it was the 50th anniversary of the first mobile phone
call – you can see a picture of the phone the inventor used here. When I bought
my first mobile phone in 1989 it cost me £759 – over £2000 in today’s money –
and all I could do with it was make phone calls! How times have changed…..
After
3 difficult years life is back to normal for many, but my wife and I are still
being cautious when we leave home – wearing masks whenever we’re indoors, and taking care to avoid unnecessary close contact
with others even when we’re outdoors. Some people might think we’re a bit
strange, but at least we’ve stayed healthy.
If
you are going to wear a mask it makes sense to choose one that actually works! I recently came across a spreadsheet which
compares the effectiveness of hundreds of different types of mask – you can
download it here.
According to the spreadsheet the masks we wear (AirPop
Pocket) are 96.93% effective at filtering out small particles in the air, which
makes them about 15 times better than the sort of masks handed out at doctors’
surgeries, but there are many on the list which are even more efficient. Do you
have a particular recommendation that you would like to share?
This is where any major updates and corrections will be
highlighted - if you think you've spotted an error first reload the newsletter
(press Ctrl-F5) then
check again before writing to me, in case someone else has beaten you to
it......
I’ll be back soon with more news from the world of genealogy: in the
meantime please keep adding relatives from 1881 to
your My Ancestors page – it’ll not only benefit you, it’ll also help
your cousins.
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2023 Peter Calver
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