Newsletter - 11th August 2018
Canadian WW1 records complete - at last!
Can you help with this cold case?
23andMe
link with pharmaceutical company
Do DNA tests identify equal numbers of maternal & paternal cousins?
DNA discounts UPDATED
Cloning: dogs today, grandpa tomorrow?
Time to change your passwords!
Review: Tracing Your
Church of England Ancestors
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
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Canadian WW1
records complete - at last!
When Library and Archives
Canada announced in 2014 that they planned to make available online all of the service records for the men and women who
volunteered to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force in World War 1 - whether
as soldiers, nurses, or chaplains - they hoped the project would be complete by
the end of the following year.
But in the event it was only
this week that LAC announced
that the 5 year project (it actually began in 2013) was complete - all 620,000
records, many extending to dozens of pages, are now available free online (you
can search them here).
I've found 6 of my 1st cousins
twice removed amongst the soldiers who fought for the Canadian army - 5 had
recently emigrated, but what the other was doing in Canada, I have no idea (his
family were in Norwich, England). Only 4 of the 6 came back - one was killed in
battle, the other died of a self-inflicted wound (how awful things must have
been for him to take his own life).
Can you help
with this cold case?
An article published
on the BBC News site on Friday morning shows a photograph of a man whose body was
found near Weston-Super-Mare a year ago, but whose relatives have yet to be
traced by police.
Documentation found with the
body suggests that his name was Peter Thomas Harrison, born in Birmingham around
1956 or 1957, but I can’t find a matching entry in the GRO's birth indexes at Findmypast - though there is a Peter L T Harrison who was
born around the right time:
Estimates from Ancestry
suggest that we each have around 1300 relatives who are 4th cousins or closer,
so there's an excellent chance that one of the 65,000 recipients of this
newsletter is related to the mystery man. If so,
please get in touch with Avon & Somerset Police right away!
UPDATE: the BBC article has now
been updated to show that next-of-kin have now been traced. I understand a LostCousins
member provided the names of his brother and sister to the police on Friday, but
they may well have had other leads.
Coincidentally my wife and I
started watching the first series of Unforgotten on Thursday evening: it begins with
the discovery of a body hidden under a concrete floor - in that case the only
clue to his identity was a car key.
Emmeline Pankhurst is a
familiar name, but it's not the name she was born with. Pankhurst was, of
course, her husband's surname - she may have been a leader in the fight for
women's suffrage, but she still took her husband's name when they married. Her
maiden name was Goulden.
What I didn’t realise until
recently was that she wasn't always Emmeline - when she was born her forename
was registered by her mother as Emiline, a far rarer
spelling. By the time she married barrister Richard Marsden Pankhurst at St Luke,
Weaste, Salford in 1879 she was using the more common
spelling, but in the 1871 Census her forename is garbled, whilst in 1861 I can’t
find her at all (she's certainly not with her parents - but see Stop Press). I can’t find a record of
her baptism, either, though I've only looked online.
I spotted the difference in
spelling when Dave Annal, author and professional genealogist, posted a GRO
copy certificate for the birth of Emiline Goulden on Twitter, pointing out that her birth had been
registered three months late (it should have been registered within 42 days of
the birth). I decided to get a copy of the original entry from the local register
office, just in case an error had been made in copying the entry, but it
confirmed the discrepancies:
This is only the second
certificate I've seen for a late birth registration, or to be more precise,
only the second where the correct date of birth is given. Though there's even
some doubt about that - Emmeline Pankhurst always claimed she was born on
Bastille Day, 14th July.
Another story about Mrs
Pankhurst is that she was imprisoned in the tower of Big Ben (now known as
Elizabeth Tower), but according to the Parliamentary
Archives there is no record of her incarceration there.
Tip: not all local register offices can provide
facsimiles of register entries - some will supply typed or handwritten copies
instead. I contacted the register office to check before placing my order.
23andMe link with
pharmaceutical company
23andMe, the second-biggest consumer
DNA testing company (after Ancestry) has announced a collaboration with Glaxo
Smith Kline, the global pharmaceutical company originally founded in England
(at one time their head office was just a few miles down the road from LostCousins).
GSK are investing $300
million in 23andMe according to GSK's announcement,
though I couldn't see it mentioned in the email 23andMe customers received from
CEO Anne Wojcicki.
I recently tested with
23andMe - there are some nice features, but I was matched with far fewer
cousins than at Ancestry, probably because 23andMe attracts users who are more interested
in health than ancestry (so opt out of the
cousin-matching process). And my closest cousins haven't responded, which is a
bit frustrating.
But this tie-up is all about health,
not ancestry, and you don’t need to be a 23andMe customer to benefit from the
innovations that result from the collaboration. It'll be interesting to see how
it works out - there's an initial 4-year period, with an optional 5th year.
Do DNA tests
identify equal numbers of maternal & paternal cousins?
I was asked this question
recently - and the only thing that surprised me was that nobody has asked
before!
Of course, other things being
equal you will get roughly equal numbers. But there are usually confounding
factors that have far more impact on the numbers than the inherent randomness
in the way that DNA is inherited.
For example, if one side of
your family came from Outer Mongolia it's likely that far fewer cousins from
that side have tested. Similarly, if one side is Catholic you can expect many
more cousins on that side - because Catholics tend to have big families.
So both the absolute number of cousins and the likelihood
that those cousins have tested will have an impact on the numbers.
But they're not the only
things that can skew the numbers: some cousins will be more likely to show up
than others - because they come from populations where marriage between cousins
is (or was) more prevalent. For example, a recently-published research paper
indicated that cousin marriages were still relatively common in the US in the first
half of the 19th century - the effect of this is to make genetic cousins appear
more closely-related than they really are.
To get an idea of how this
could work in practice, just imagine that the ancestors of everyone alive in
the US today arrived on the Mayflower. There would be some DNA segments that
everyone (or almost everyone) shared, so no matter how many generations went
by, the same markers would be found.
For a more modern example,
see this story
about identical twin sisters who married identical twin brother. If their offspring
married (marriages between 1st cousins are perfectly legal in half of US states
as well as in many countries, including the UK) they'd just be mixing up the
same DNA.
DNA discounts UPDATED
There are currently THREE
offers that I'm aware of - see below - and I'll continue updating this article with any
new offers that become available during the currency of this newsletter, so
please check back before placing an order so that you can support LostCousins by using my links.
Please note that the only DNA testing companies I've
used and the only ones I recommend are Ancestry, 23andMe, Family Tree DNA, and
Living DNA. If you’re ever tempted to buy a DNA test from a company that isn’t on
that list I suggest you contact me first - it could save you a lot of
heartache!
By far the best test for
knocking down 'brick walls' is Ancestry DNA - for a whole range of reasons, but
most important for me is their enormous user base (around 10 miliion, far more than anyone else). But if you need to track
your direct male line back more than 4 or 5 generations you'll need a Y-DNA
test from Family Tree DNA - and the Y-37 test is currently discounted by $40.
IMPORTANT: please log-out from Ancestry
before clicking the link below.
Ancestry.co.uk (UK
only): SAVE 25% (ends 11.59pm on 21st August)
Ancestry.com (US
only): SAVE 40% (ends 11.59pm PST on 20th August)
Family
Tree DNA (Worldwide) SAVE UP TO 20% on most tests (ends 31st August)
Cloning: Fido
today, Grandpa tomorrow?
Should you get your pet's DNA
tested? According to an article
in Science magazine you should exercise
caution. But there's even more that you can do with doggie-DNA if you have the
money….
In this Vanity Fair article
you can read how rich dog-owners are paying up to $100,000 for clones of their recently
departed pets.
Ethically there's a big
difference between cloning dogs and cloning humans, but I'm not sure that the
science is so very different. A century ago eugenics was all the rage - see my article
from April 2017 about Bernard Mallet, who was the Registrar General from
1909-20 and thus had the ear of prominent politicians. A generation later
eugenics was tainted by the ghastly experiments carried out under the Nazis,
but before long there will be few witnesses left - perhaps future generations
will be told it was all a hoax?
The good news is that nobody
is going to want to clone you or me - anyone who has the resources to do it
will want to clone themselves (or somebody important to them) - so we don’t
need to worry that our DNA samples will be misused. Indeed, it's arguable that the
more ethical applications there are for DNA testing, the more alert society
will be to any misuse of the technologies that occurs.
Time to
change your passwords!
All of you will be aware that
billions of email addresses have been stolen over the past few years, but in the majority of cases the hackers were unable to get their
hands on the associated passwords.
Nevertheless spammers are making the most of the passwords they've
managed to steal from the more insecure sites, and are emailing users with
threats, and demands for money - I've received several at my personal email addresses.
I'm lucky, because I
generally use a different email address for each website I register with, so when
one of the websites I've registered with is careless with my information, I know
precisely which one it was. (I'm also very careful with passwords - though for
obvious reasons I'm not going to tell you my strategy!)
Here are some tips that will
help you stay safe. First of all, you can check
whether your email address has been stolen by hackers. You can do this using
the "Have I Been Pwned?" website (according to Wikipedia it holds
records for nearly 5 billion accounts from over 250 data breaches, so there is
a good chance your email address is amongst them).
Secondly, you can use the
same site to check whether your password has been stolen - I discovered that a
password I used in 2005 appears in the list, though other more recent passwords
don't (thankfully!). If your password is '12345' don’t even bother checking -
it appears in the list over 2 millions
times!
Don't use the same password
at multiple sites if you can possibly avoid it - there are password managers
that will remember passwords on your behalf, so that all you need to remember yourself
is the master password (ie the one for the password
manager). You'll find a 2018 review of free password managers here.
Whatever your password
strategy, you can help me and help yourself by choosing a unique* password for your LostCousins
account (or else stick with the temporary password that was issued when you
joined). There is a warning on the My Details page, but I know from
experience that people don’t always read instructions (including me on
occasions!).
* it would be OK to use the
same password at the LostCousins Forum if you wished,
but don’t use it at any other site
Bear in mind that hackers also
get email addresses from the address books of people whose email accounts
they've hacked - so if hackers have got your email address they might have got
it from one of your friends. They might even have got it from the Internet - it's amazing how many people have published their email
addresses online at one time or another (Google will tell you whether you've
done it yourself).
Review: Tracing Your Church of England Ancestors
If you chanced upon this book
you might, given the pictures on the front cover, assume that it's only of
interest to those who ancestors were ordained into the ministry.
But if so you would be
mistaken - for in fact, this comprehensive work devotes relatively little space
to the clergy, focusing mainly on their flock. In other words, it’s a companion
to the same author's Tracing Your
Non-Conformist Ancestors which I wrote about in May 2017 (you can re-read that
review here).
The opening chapter of Stuart A
Raymond's book provides a potted history of the Church of England and, whilst
it's quite hard going, it sets the stage for what follows - so my advice is to
stick with it. One particularly interesting fact I learned was that creating a
new parish required an Act of Parliament - this helps to explain why the church
was so slow to respond to the population movements prompted by the Industrial
and Agricultural Revolutions.
Chapter 2 is entitled
"The Structure of the Church of England", and this helps the reader
to understand why the records are organised in the way that they are. It also
solved a mystery that I'd long puzzled over - why landed gentry had the power to
appoint clergy in certain parishes. Many will also welcome the explanation of
the changing meaning of the term 'curate'.
Chapters 3 to 8 deal with the
types of record you might find, where to look for them, and what they might
tell you. There's also advice on how to assess the evidence you find, warning
especially about the dangers of relying on transcripts. All very sound, and
well worth reading no matter how experienced you are (or think you are!) -
there were lots of useful snippets that I picked up along the way.
Inevitably there is the odd
blunder: on page 74 he writes that the copies of marriage register entries
submitted to the GRO by clergy were recopied into the GRO's own registers - in
fact the loose sheets were bound into the GRO's registers (so certificates
ordered from the GRO will normally show the vicar's handwriting). And the short
section headed "Parish registers on the Internet" on page 76 is
horrendously out of date - whilst it ends with the catch-all sentence "No
doubt many more parish registers will be digitized by the time you read this
book", the text that precedes it could have been written years ago (and quite
possibly was). Another surprise was that Dade registers are mentioned, but
Barrington registers aren't - but these are all minor quibbles in the context
of such a comprehensive work.
In Chapter 9 the focus is on
charities, missions, and religious orders, with a particular
focus on their staff and beneficiaries - then at last, in Chapter 10 he
comes to "Tracing Anglican Clergy". The final chapter details other
relevant sources that have not been covered in the preceding chapters.
Read Tracing Your Church of England Ancestors to get a better
understanding of church records - not
just the registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials that we're all familiar
with, but also the lesser-known records that can provide added insight into our
ancestors' lives. There is a Kindle version, but I suspect most people would be
happier with the paperback - especially since you're likely to be able to buy
the paperback more cheaply.
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Wordery
Next Tuesday,
14th August, the latest genealogy mystery from Steve Robinson will be released
- and it's well worth waiting for!
Letters from the Dead is the 7th novel to feature the cuddly American genealogist
Jefferson Tayte, who has relocated to the UK from
Washington. Now that he has a wife and child JT is trying to avoid dangerous
assignments, and the task set by his Scottish client seems safe.
But, as you've probably
already guessed, it doesn’t work out that way - perhaps the fact that the
client's name is Damian should have been regarded as a bad omen? However I'm glad to say that the worst of the violence
occurs off-screen, so anyone who shared my concerns that these books were
getting a little too gory will be relieved.
The story switches smoothly
between 21st century Scotland and 19th century India (still under the control
of the British East India Company) and revolves around the disappearance of a
fabulous - and possibly mythical - gemstone.
Set mainly in Drumarthen House, the crumbling ancestral pile that's more
of liability than an asset, the present day storyline is
reminiscent of Agatha Christie's Ten
Little Niggers as - one after another - the suspects became victims. But as
in Christie's novels there are innumerable twists in the plot - more than once
I thought I'd solved the mystery, only to discover that I'd got it completely
wrong!
Sherlock Holmes also came to
mind, especially The Sign of Four -
but was Steve Robinson simply stringing me along? You'll have to read the book
to find out!
Letters from the Dead is available either as a paperback or as a Kindle
book - and you can support LostCousins when you use
the links below (even if you end up purchasing
something completely different).
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca The
Book Depository
Just over two years ago I briefly reviewed The Children Act, Ian McEwan's novel
focusing on a judge
in the Family Division of the High Court, and the decisions she has to make,
both in her work and her personal life. It's a wonderful piece of writing - I
simply couldn’t put it down, reading the entire book in little more than a day
- and I thought about it repeatedly as I was carrying out my jury service last
month.
I've just discovered that it
has been turned into a film, which will be released in the UK on 24th August. Starring
Emma Thompson, in a performance that Melanie Phillips in The Times described as "a mesmerising and intensely moving
piece of acting", it promises to be one of the few films that lives up to
the book on which it is based.
If you haven't read the book
yet there's a treat in store - and you can pick one up at a bargain price if
you're not worried about having the latest edition (which ties in with the
movie):
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca
This year's weather has been
so topsy-turvy that I was pleasantly surprised to discover a good crop of
blackberries in the hedgerows - and as a result I've been able to make a batch
of Spiced Blackberry & Apple Jam. I first experimented with this jam two
years ago, and found it delicious - if anything it's
even better this time! You'll find the recipe I used here
- though as usual I adapted it slightly, reducing the amount of sugar and
adding a couple of handfuls of currants to give it a more Christmassy feel.
For tea on my wife's birthday
we had scones with freshly-made, and still slightly-warm, Spiced Blackberry
& Apple Jam - absolutely delicious! Of course, you
might be wondering whether I add the jam or the clotted cream first - but in
fact I do neither! My healthy version of an English Cream Tea uses Philadelphia
Light in place of the cream - just as tasty, but far fewer calories.
Our elderberries are just
ripening, so my next jam is likely to be Blackberry & Elderberry, a
combination which I initially found a little bland, but later learned to love.
I might even make plum jam this year - it’s the first time we've had a sufficiently
large crop - though we also like them lightly-poached for breakfast (also very
healthy, since I use stevia instead of sugar, and serve them up with fat-free
natural yoghourt). Must remember to add some star anise - it really lifts the
flavour!
This week we had a new
addition to our family - at least, it seems that way. I bought a Clever Dog WiFi
Smart Camera so that we could keep an eye on our cat when we're away - and
it has been fascinating, even though we've been at home all week! I bought mine
from My Memory, but they're also
available from Amazon. Follow this link to buy the same one as me - it's a better
model, but only costs a few pounds more.
Bev found young Emmeline in the
1861 Isle of Man census - she was staying with her maternal grandparents. The spelling of her forename is unclear, but
could be either Emmelin or Emmelen.
You can save 30% on any
subscription to British Newspaper Archive when you follow this
link (offer ends 25th August). The offer applies only to the intial subscription, so to lock
in your 30% saving for a whole year choose the 12 month subscription (less than £5 a month).
You can save even more than expected when you buy a
DNA test from Ancestry.co.uk - the shipping charge has been halved. See the update email circulated
today (17th August) to all UK members for more details. Please use the link in the article
above so that you can support LostCousins.
Peter Calver
Founder,
LostCousins
© Copyright 2018
Peter Calver
Please do NOT copy or
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instead, since standard membership (which includes the newsletter), is FREE?