Newsletter - 9th August 2019
New marriage
procedures to take effect in December? BREAKING NEWS
East India Company ships' logs online FREE
Understanding GRO index references
British Newspaper Archive tops 33 million pages
Save 30% on British Newspaper Archive subscriptions
Confused (and confusing) BBC article questions DNA
testing
Save 25% on DNA tests ENDS SOON
Masterclass: How to make the most of your DNA results
Stranger Than Fiction: Part 3 of 'The Life and Times of Eliza Fairchild'
Review: Tracing Your Freemason, Friendly Society
& Trade Union Ancestors
1000th anniversary of St Benet's Abbey
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New marriage
procedures to take effect in December? BREAKING NEWS
Just as I was finalising this
newsletter I discovered that the long foreshadowed marriage
registration procedures are to take effect from 2nd December. Please see this
blog article
for more details.
East India
Company ships' logs online
When I began my research much
of the information online had been uploaded by individual researchers who had
transcribed parts of censuses or parish registers relevant to their own
research, but realised that their efforts would be more meaningful if they
shared the information with the genealogical community at large. Nowadays there
is a wealth of information available at sites like Ancestry, Findmypast, and
FamilySearch - often supported by images of the source documents - but thankfully
there are still private individuals beavering away behind the scenes.
The following article was
submitted by LostCousins member Alan:
"During
his research into the early 1800s my pal Bryant Bayliffe
came across a Captain Thomas Gabriel Bayliff of the
Honourable East India Company
Service who commanded the Huddart, a vessel which sailed from London to India
and back in 1806-7.
"The
ship's log is preserved in The British Library, London and Bryant set to work
transcribing it, and ferreting out Shipping and Law Reports from contemporary
newspapers. Most of the logs' entries are much to do with bearings and weather
but this one turned out to include not only an interesting account of a
dramatic incident at sea, but one which was the precursor of a unique action at
law which became famous for clarifying the use of Martial Law at sea by
Captains of private vessels in time of War.
"On
the return voyage Capt. Bayliff saw two suspicious
vessels which he thought could be a threat so he
ordered passengers to their quarters. One of them, a Mr Boyce refused to obey
even after some angry exchanges and, ignoring a threat of being clapped in
irons he was manhandled from the deck and locked up. All this happened during
the Napoleonic Wars; a Captain's word was law on his own ship, a fact which had
been explained to Boyce.
"Boyce
took great exception to this incident and when the ship docked at the tiny
island of St Helena he disembarked and made his own way back to England where
he commenced an action against Capt. Bayliff for
wrongful imprisonment and assault, and another to recover the extra expense of travelling
home by a different vessel. Surprisingly, Boyce won both his cases and received
small sums in damages.
"An
interesting tale in its own right but not the end of the
story. The BBC TV series, Garrow's Law (2009-2011) is loosely based on fact
and centred on William Garrow (1760-1840) a young
attorney whose aggressive defence of clients helped establish the modern
adversarial system now used in most common law systems. Although best known for
his criminal defence work Garrow, who rose to the
highest ranks in the law, was the attorney who acted for Boyce.
"It
is a surprising fact that although for much of the 19th and 20th centuries Garrow's work was forgotten it was cited as recently as
1982 in the Supreme Court of Canada and in 2006 in the Irish Court of Criminal Appeal.
"A
full account of the Huddart's voyage and its sequel can be found here"
Transcribed accounts of other
HEICS ship's voyages can be found at the same site - it's an unusual resource
that will provide vital clues for some researchers, and useful background for
others.
Our ancestors usually weren't
thinking of us when they created the records on which we now rely. Occasionally
there will be a child who has given a family surname as a forename (though
equally often this indicates illegitimacy), but otherwise there are few clues,
and there may even be some 'red herrings'. The challenge for researchers is to
keep an open mind.
"I
always read your newsletter with interest - I am not very serious about hunting
relatives, but many of your articles are fascinating. I thought I would pass on
two little snippets as a kind of warning to researchers! I have not specified
names to protect those relatives still living who could be embarrassed - and
please don't mention my name if you publish any reference to these events.
"Firstly,
I was trying to find out the ancestry of a 'cousin' whose mother was in fact
adopted. He had established who his grandmother was, a single woman who gave
birth in a seaside town in England: but her birth was in Ireland. I managed to
trace the location (a rural area in N Ireland, near the border) and who appeared
to be the person: but no apparent record of birth. But when I was able to see
the actual birth certificates online, it became clear: the child was given a
name at birth, but several weeks later the name given at baptism was different!
Both names were recorded on the certificate. Subsequently a younger daughter
was given the same name at birth as the previous child, but this time the name
stayed. Suddenly all the dates fitted! This 'change of name' at baptism proved
a tricky obstacle, two children who had been initially given the same name.
"Secondly,
up to the present day. My nephew's grandmother was married to his great-grandfather!
Researchers would find that quite baffling and assume a mistake. However, what
happened was that my mother and also her future husband
had been widowed. My mother's son (my brother) then became the partner of her
husband's granddaughter (generational differences bringing them into the same
age group), and they had a son. Hence he can quite rightly
say that his grandmother married his great-grandfather! Now if it can happen
today, it could have happened in close-knit communities in the past, so we need
to be cautious and never to assume the obvious!
"I
hope you find that of a little interest. Thank you for the extraordinary flow
of information!"
Understanding GRO
index references
What would you think if you
came across these two entries in the GRO birth indexes?
Two births with the same forename
and surname, in consecutive quarters of the same year, and with precisely the
same index references - you'd probably suspect that there was some connection,
and that perhaps the second entry was a correction of the first.
But you'd be wrong - it's all
just a coincidence. There were separate registers for each quarter, but each
register contained the births for the same registration districts as the
corresponding volume of the previous quarter. If you search at FreeBMD you'll find that the page numbers for Hungerford
births were 247-262 of volume 2C in the June quarter, and 249-268 of volume 2C
in the September quarter - and as each page would have had up to 10 entries the
chance of the same name appearing on the same page in different quarters is quite
high.
Note: this is a variation
of the Birthday
problem - the paradox that you only need to have 23 people in a room for
there to be a 50% chance that two of them have the same birthday. Even surnames
that are quite rare across the country can be fairly common
in a particular locality - names like Smith and Brown are common because
they're found everywhere, not because there are a lot of people with this name
in a given location. Marshall is a fairly common
surname - there were 50,000 people with this surname in Britain at the time of
the 1881 Census, and it was more than twice as common in Hungerford as across
the country as a whole.
In the example above you can
tell that the parents of William Charles Marshall weren't married, though you
cannot be certain whether Marshall is the surname of the mother or the father
without checking the original quarterly indexes - if the names of both parents
were recorded in the register the entry will usually have been indexed under
both surnames. At FreeBMD you can search for all the
entries on the same register page - if the same birth has been indexed twice
with different surnames this will usually be apparent.
In our research we're likely
to come across many things that are coincidences - and many that aren't. Understanding
how the GRO filed and numbered entries will help you distinguish between the
two.
Many years ago
I noticed that there were just three examples of the name Florence Minnie
Calver in the GRO birth indexes:
As you can see, two were in
the same registration district, which meant that the volume number was
identical and that the page numbers were within a similar range. Having read
the first part of this article would you expect there to be some connection
between these three births?
There's no obvious evidence
that they were connected, but in fact they were all cousins. The first Florence
Minnie was my great-aunt, who died almost 20 years before I was born; the
second was her 1st cousin, who died just 4 years before I was born, having been
a widow; the third was another 1st cousin, who died as an infant.
When local registrars
submitted birth, marriage, and death register entries to the GRO they were
copied onto loose pages - it was these pages that were bound together to create
the GRO's register volumes. Each entry was an exact manuscript copy of the
original (including the sequential number from the local register) - which
means that if you want to see your ancestors' handwriting you'll need to order the
certificates locally, and not from the GRO (but check first to ensure that the
local registrar has the right equipment to make a facsimile copy, and is
prepared to do so).
Note: there were occasional
transcription errors, so in theory local certificates are a more reliable
source - on the other hand it is often easier to read the names of marriage
witnesses from GRO certificates.
Most of my ancestors were poor
'ag labs', but John Calver, the brother of my great-great-great-great grandfather
was able to get a position as coachman to Nathaniel Barnardiston,
a member of a distinguished East Anglian family. It was a position he seems to
have held for much of his working life - so I was interested to discover this blog
article which describes
the duties of a domestic coachman..
British Newspaper
Archive tops 33 million pages
There are now over 33 million
pages - and, by my calculations, over 400 million articles - from newspapers
and magazines in the British Newspaper Archive. But although the collection
goes back to the early 18th century, you won’t find many articles until the second half of the 19th century -
not because the newspapers haven’t survived, or because the population was
illiterate, but because the taxes levied on newspapers from 1712 until the
mid-19th century were so high that few could afford to buy them.
According to The
Circulation of Newspapers in the Early Nineteenth Century, an article by A Aspinall published in
1946, there were only slightly more newspapers sold in the whole of 1783 than
on any one day in 1938. In 1801, the year of the first census, only 16 million
were sold - fewer than 2 per head of the population.
Save 30% on
British Newspaper Archive subscriptions
If you have a Pro or Ultimate
subscription to Findmypast you'll already be familiar with the breadth of the
newspaper archive, but you may not realise that searching at the British
Newspaper Archive is much more powerful. For example, you can restrict your
search to articles added to the archive between specific dates - this avoids
the problem of having to plough through hundreds of search results you've seen
before in the hope of finding a handful of new ones.
Until midnight London time on
Sunday 18th August you can save a hefty 30% on the cost of a 12 month
subscription to the British newspaper Archive - bringing the cost down to
little more than £1 a week. Please use this link
so that you can support LostCousins, and enter the code BNA30SUMMER so
that you can secure your 30% saving.
Confused (and
confusing) BBC article questions DNA testing
August is the time of the
year when journalists are scratching around for something to write about, and
whilst this year is different for political commentators, who have plenty to
write about, other correspondents are sifting through their files looking for
something they can regurgitate.
Headlined "I gave my DNA
away. Can I get it back?", Jane Wakefield's article is a
hotchpotch of information that will mislead some readers because of the way
that it jumps between different aspects of DNA and from one test provider to
another, casting aspersions but rarely being precise. It's a bit like writing
an article about restaurants which mentions food allergies, rats, and the fact
that some restaurants employ ex-prisoners
Read the article if you want,
but don’t take it too seriously. If there was really something to worry about you'd read about it in this newsletter!
Save 25% on
DNA tests ENDS SOON
Ancestry.co.uk are
discounting their DNA tests by 25% until Monday 12th August, bringing the price
down from £79 to £59 excluding shipping. If you've already tested it's an
opportunity to pick up a couple of extra kits for your cousins; if you haven't,
it’s a chance to buy a test for a fraction of what I paid for my first DNA
test! Please use the link below so that you can support LostCousins:
Ancestry.co.uk
- £59 (save 25%) plus shipping until 12th August
Ancestry have by far the
largest database of autosomal DNA tests, but if you have ancestors from
continental Europe it's worth considering MyHeritage. There are special offers
in the UK and Australia:
MyHeritage
(UK) - £59 until 12th August (free shipping when you order 2 or more kits)
MyHeritage
(Australia) - $59 until 12th August (free shipping when you order 2 or more
kits)
FamilyTreeDNA are discounting all of their
tests until the end of August, but the most attractive offer is the 37-marker
Y-DNA test at US$129, reduced from $169. Y-DNA only looks at a single line but
can be invaluable if you are struggling to find written proof; it works best
when you have another sample to compare against - only around 700,000 males have
taken a Y-DNA test so the chance of getting a useful match when you test
speculatively is fairly low.
FamilyTree
DNA - multiple savings until 31st August (please note that links in earlier
newsletters no longer work)
Masterclass:
How to make the most of your DNA results
Note: I've updated
this Masterclass since it was published in May 2018
Before you begin - forget those ethnicity estimates,
at least for now
If you've tested for the
first time you might think that the easiest part of your DNA results to
understand is the ethnicity estimates - but you’d be wrong. Although they're
getting better, ethnicity estimates are most accurate at continental level, so
if your ancestors all originated in Europe you probably won’t learn anything
helpful.
My advice is to consider ethnicity
estimates as being for amusement only: even if they are correct, and it’s unlikely
they are, the areas are often large, ill-defined, and overlapping. To add to
the confusion different companies compile their
estimates differently, using different reference panels and different areas.
Introduction to autosomal DNA
If you’re male and you've
previously tested your Y-DNA you might be expecting a set of numbers, For
example, I tested 111 markers on my Y-DNA and I can see from my results how
many repeats I have at each of those 111 sites - comparing my Y-DNA with that
of other males who have tested is easy, and when I do the number of differences
provides a rough guide to how closely related we are.
Autosomal DNA is very
different - your DNA is sampled at around 650,000 to 700,000 sites across your
chromosomes using a specially designed chip - a sort of miniature laboratory - and
there are two readings for each site (because the autosomal chromosomes come in
pairs). Although it sounds like a very large number, there are more than 3 billion
base pairs in our entire genome, so the test is looking at fewer than one base
in 4000. The bases are chosen because they are known to vary in the general population:
however the majority don’t have have
any known medical significance.
Looking at the raw data isn't
going to tell you anything - it takes a clever computer program to compare your
results with those of millions of others who have tested, identifying common
segments of DNA. But even when those segments have been identified, there's
nothing to say which ancestral line they came from - there are no names
attached, nor any dates. Indeed there's nothing to say
which half came from your mother or your father.
No matter how much experience
you might have as a family historian, it would be understandable if, when the
results of your DNA test came through, you were completely flummoxed about what
to do next. There's a simple reason for this - we're used to working backwards
from what we already know, so there's a clearly defined path, ie: find our ancestor's baptism in order to discover (or
confirm) who their parents were, then find the parents' marriage, then find the
baptisms of the parents and so on, working back a generation at a time.
The challenge
But when we're matched with a
genetic cousin, someone who appears to have inherited an identical segment of
DNA, we're faced with a very different challenge - we usually don’t know which
of our ancestors we inherited that segment from, and the chances are the person
we're matched with won't know either. It's rather like trying to do a complex
jigsaw without first seeing the picture on the box.
Most of the matches we make
with DNA cousins will be many generations back, since we have many more distant
cousins than we do close cousins. The final column of the table below indicates
roughly how many cousins you might expect to find if you and they all took the
Ancestry DNA test:
Based on Table 2 from: Henn
BM, Hon L, Macpherson JM, Eriksson N, Saxonov S, Pe'er I, et al. (2012) Cryptic
Distant Relatives Are Common in Both Isolated and Cosmopolitan Genetic Samples.
PLoS ONE 7(4): e34267. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0034267
Revised using Ancestry DNA
estimates for the chances of detecting cousins and the expected number of 1st
to 6th cousins for those of British ancestry; the numbers for 7th to 10th
cousins are my own guesstimates
Of course, in practice only a
small fraction of your cousins will have tested - even Ancestry, by far the
biggest providers of autosomal tests, have only sold about 15 million tests -
but you can nevertheless reckon that the cousins you're matched with will be
distributed roughly in proportion to the figures shown above. In other words,
over 99% of your matches will be with relatives who are at best 5th cousins,
and could well be 8th cousins or even more distant. This won't necessarily be
apparent when you look at your list of matches because there's a tendency for
matches to appear closer or more distant than they really are.
Tip: Ancestry won't show any of your DNA matches as
more distant than '5th to 8th cousin', but it's very likely that amongst them
there are many who are more distant - possibly up to half of them. Once you get
beyond 3rd cousins the length of the shared segment(s) is only a very rough
guide to how closely you are related - you could share a 20cM segment with a
10th cousin, but no detectable DNA with a 3rd cousin. The same limitations
apply at other sites too, of course.
This amazing chart from
Blaine Bettinger's blog shows how variable the
amounts can be, and how this affects the amount of DNA shared by more distant
relatives:
In each box there are three
figures: the lowest and highest amounts shared between relatives of each order,
together with the average. However the average only takes
into account matches - if there was no detectable shared DNA it isn’t taken
into account in the averages (but does show in the range).
What you will notice is that
the average stabilises at around 12 or 13cM even for the most distant
relationships in the chart. For example, you can see from the first table that the
average DNA shared between 8th cousins is just
0.055cM, but the average in this chart is over 200 times greater. How can this
happen? I's because unless there's a matching segment of at least 6 to 10cM
most companies won't report a match at all - and because the chart only
includes matches which were actually detected, it bumps
up the average quite considerably.
Very interesting, you might
think - but what does it actually mean in practice?
What it tells us is that neither you, nor I, nor any of the DNA companies can
reliably predict how closely we are related to our more distant cousins. So don’t rely on the testing company's estimate of how
closely you’re related to a cousin, look at the chart and figure out what's
possible, then consider what's likely (this means, for example, taking into
account your age and that of your cousin).
Even if your DNA match is
with a 5th cousin, someone who shares your great-great-great-great
grandparents, it probably won’t be obvious how the two of you are related. I
don't know about you, but I certainly can't say who all of
my 4G grandparents were - indeed, I don't even know for sure who all my 3G
grandparents were. I've got several 'brick walls' in the last 6 generations (though
fewer than before I tested my DNA) - and most researchers, including my DNA
cousins, are probably in the same situation. Go back another generation and there
are even more gaps - and it just gets worse from then on.
In practice most of the
ancestors that link us to our DNA cousins are on the other side of a 'brick
wall' - and this could be a 'brick wall' in your own tree, in your cousin's
tree, or both trees. What a fascinating challenge!
The reward
At this stage it's important
to remind ourselves why we took a DNA
test! If you're a regular reader of this newsletter it's very likely that the
primary reason you tested was the same as mine - to knock down 'brick walls'
that conventional research couldn't breach. If our 'brick walls' have resisted
our efforts for years (or even decades), the opportunity to knock them down
using DNA is well worth grasping, even though it will mean that we have to adopt a new and unfamiliar strategy, and utilise
somewhat different techniques.
But unless you follow the
advice in this Masterclass you’re likely to get in to
a muddle. There are dozens of DNA bloggers and experts out there who promote
techniques and apps that are wonderful in theory, but in practice are more likely
to befuddle you and waste your time - in short, you could end up wishing you
hadn't taken the test! Just because something is free and produces pretty
pictures doesn’t make it useful.
Before you get your results
Make sure that you've done
all the conventional, records-based, research you possibly can. Remember, DNA
testing isn't a substitute for records-based research - you need to do both to
have a reasonable chance of success. Each builds on
the other - if you only do one you're almost certainly going to fail.
Complete your My Ancestors page, ensuring that you
have entered ALL of the cousins (no matter how distant)
that you can find on the 1881 Census. Yes, it might take you an hour or two, but
skipping this important step could cost your tens or even hundreds of hours
when you come to analyse your DNA matches.
Tip: start in 1841 and trace each of your branches (sometimes
referred to as collateral lines) through to 1881.
Take a look at your My Cousins
page and see which of your cousins have already tested, then contact them and
find out who they tested with. If they tested with a different company, ask if
they have uploaded their results to GEDmatch, and if so, what their kit number
is. Shared matches are the easiest way to figure out how you’re related to DNA
cousins, so knowing which cousins have already tested is crucially important.
How to process your DNA matches
I'm going to assume for the
purpose of this article that you tested with Ancestry - but don't stop reading
if you tested elsewhere because I'll be covering techniques you can use, though
not as effectively, at Family Tree DNA and GEDmatch.
At Ancestry you'll typically
have over 20000 matches with genetic cousins, and of those all but about 1%
will be with 'distant' cousins, ie where the estimated
relationship is 5th cousin or more distant. So you
might think that the best strategy might be to focus on the 1% on the basis
that if you can't make head or tail of those matches, your chance of resolving
the more distant matches is negligible. Wrong, totally wrong - that approach
will lead to frustration, disappointment, and disillusionment!
Here's how to get the best
results and avoid all that wasted time and frustration:
Strategy 1: search by surname
My experience has shown that
a much better approach is to search the trees of your matches by surname, in
the hope of identifying cousins who have the same surname in their tree as one
of your 'brick wall' ancestors. Here's how to go about it:
- First create a list of ALL your ancestral surnames including any
genuine variant spellings (ie ignoring mistranscriptions)
- How long ago did your DNA results come through? If it's less than
3 days I would suggest waiting before going any further - otherwise you
might have to do everything twice (it seems to take a few days for
Ancestry to reconstruct their databases)
- Ready to go? Log-in to your Ancestry account and click DNA to go
to your DNA home page, and click the green button labelled 'View All DNA
Matches':
- On the next page you'll see a button labelled 'Search'; click it
- Now you have the option of searching by surname or birth location
- or a combination of the two
Tip: unless the surname is a very common one indeed I don't enter a birth location - and even when I do enter a birthplace, I usually only enter the country; note that any birthplace you enter must be selected from the suggestions that Ancestry propose.
Enter the surname of one of your 'brick wall' ancestors and click SEARCH. This filters out the matches who haven't provided any family tree as well as those who have got a tree, but where nobody in the tree has the relevant surname.
You can’t use wildcards and I wouldn’t suggest checking the 'include similar surnames box' either (as in my experience the results are erratic). Instead carry out a separate search for each of the main variants.
Tip: this search will examine the trees that ALL of your matches have linked to their DNA results, whether they are public or private - that's what makes it such a powerful tool.
- The next step is to look at the remaining matches - sometimes
there won't be any at all, sometimes there will be a handful. To examine a
match click the user's name.
- If the other person has a public tree then, even if your own tree
is private, Ancestry will automatically identify the surnames of direct
ancestors which appear in both trees.
- Most of the time there won't be an obvious connection between you
and the other member, but that doesn't mean that you should give up -
there are still two more things you can try.
- first, click Shared Matches: much of the time there won't be any shared matches, since Ancestry ignore distant matches, but now and again you'll be lucky - and when you are, it's worth following up, even if the other person doesn't have an online tree
- second, look at the map to see which birth locations are shared
- If you're able to identify a potential link send a message to your
cousin telling them what you have managed to figure out - they may have
additional information that isn't on their tree. You'll also need to
contact your cousin if their tree is private (or if you don’t have an
Ancestry subscription).
- But if you're unable to figure out how you and this particular cousin might be related, first make a note
of this fact (click the Add note
link), then move on to the next person in the list.
- When there are no more matches with cousins who share this
particular ancestral surname move on to the next surname, remembering that
whilst we tend to focus our attentions on a small number of particularly
frustrating 'brick walls', every
ancestral line in our tree terminates with a 'brick wall'.
- When you have worked through ALL of your 'brick wall' surnames
it's time to move on to the next strategy…..
Strategy 2: search by birthplace
As you will have discovered
when working through your list of surnames, most of the time the surname of the
ancestors you share with a DNA cousin doesn't appear in both trees - indeed,
it's quite possible that the surname of your common ancestor doesn't appear in
either tree!
The problem is, when your
female ancestors married they generally took their
husband's surname. This makes it more difficult to research female ancestors
whose children were born before the commencement of civil registration, since
baptism registers don't usually give the mother's maiden surname - usually the
only solution is to find the marriage. By contrast you can continue researching
your male ancestors even if you can't their marriage.
Of course, this problem
doesn't simply affect you and your research - it affects your cousins too; most
researchers' trees become increasingly sparse with each generation. If you've
only identified 10% of your 256 6G grandparents and your cousins have only
identified 10% of theirs, the odds of finding out how you're related to a 7th
cousin simply by comparing the names in your trees are pretty remote (a little
more than 1% in this example, not great odds).
Another way to figure out how
you are related to your DNA cousins is to look for geographical overlaps - and here's
how to go about it:
- Search for cousins whose ancestors were born in the same villages,
towns, or counties as your ancestors - note that your search term must be
selected from one of the options that Ancestry display as you type
Ancestry's focus on the US means that Essex, England isn't shown until you type a little more, ie:
It's important to include the comma - simply typing 'Essex England' doesn't work.
Tip: abbreviations such as 'Gt' for 'Great' usually don't work (though there are some exceptions); also, entering the name of the parish church only works when it is part of the name of the village, eg Fornham St Martin
- When you find a DNA cousin who has ancestors from the same area
the next step is to evaluate how likely it is that finding the connection
could knock down one of your 'brick walls. For example, if your cousin's
most recent ancestors from that location were born in the 1600s, but your most
distant ancestors from the same location weren't born until the 1800s, the
chances of being able to knock down your 'brick wall' are minimal, since
there are many generations separating you. On the other hand, if you both
have 'brick walls' around the same time, there's a chance that going back
just one generation would knock down both 'brick walls'.
- Once you've worked through all the places that your ancestors came
from, it's once again time to move on to the next strategy……
Strategy 3: look for overlaps with the
more unusual components of your ethnicity
Most readers of this newsletter
have mostly British, Irish, or western European ancestry. But some of you will
have Jewish ancestors, or ancestors from outside Europe, and whilst ethnicity
estimates can be quite misleading, they do provide another way of analysing
your matches.
Here's what Ancestry show for
one of my DNA cousins:
If Ancestry had detected a
Jewish component of my own ethnicity this would be one of the matches I'd be looking at very closely.
Strategy 4: look for the 'elephant in
the room'
Because we all have 'brick walls'
in our trees there are parts of our ancestry that are a closed book - yet there
will inevitably be clues amongst our matches, if only we look for them. For example,
if - like me - you don't know of any Irish ancestors, but have lots of matches
with cousins who do, you might begin to wonder whether one of your 'brick
walls' is concealing a connection to Ireland. I can't provide you with a
step-by-step guide - it's all about awareness (Louis Pasteur said that
"chance favours the prepared mind").
But beware of the common
situation in which you share the same DNA segment with lots of other people (if
you tested with Ancestry you won't necessarily know about this unless you upload
your results to GEDmatch and use the Chromosome Browser, though if you have a
cluster of matches, none of which seems to connect with your tree, it's a
pretty good indicator). This suggests that the people you’re matched with come
from an endogamous population, one in which people generally marry within the
same community - in this case you would probably do well to ignore the matches
altogether as any connection is likely to be a long way back.
More tips
.
- You could search the trees of your matches for surnames which are
not those of your ancestors, but appear in collateral lines - this may
identify cousins who have not researched back as far as you have, so
haven't encountered the surnames of the ancestors you share.
- ThruLines at Ancestry use other users' family trees to hypothesise
connections to your DNA cousins - they do not use DNA to prove the
connections. But even if the trees are inaccurate there's still a chance you'll discover something useful, so don’t dismiss
them altogether.
- If your DNA test isn't proviing as successful as you hoped you would be, it's
likely to be because you've missed out a key step (for example, most of
the people who contact me for advice have forgotten to complete their My
Ancestors page)
Stranger Than
Fiction: Part 3 of 'The Life and Times of Eliza Fairchild'
We all have characters in our
family tree who on closer inspection turn out to have led fascinating lives,
but the story of Eliza Fairchild - a relative of LostCousins member Tony Martin
- is exceptional. The first instalment featured in this newsletter way back in
2011 (see The
real Eliza Doolittle), and the following year it won Tony 1st prize in
a competition run by the Federation of Family History Societies. Let me hand
you over to Tony.....
"I
concluded my second article on The
Improbable Life And Times of Eliza Fairchild with the thought that it
would be interesting to see what further research would reveal and my certainly
that she would not disappoint us. Parts 1 and 2 recounted how Eliza, a barmaid
from Southampton, married the brother of the 5th Baronet Sheffield; was the
probable inspiration for Shaw’s Eliza Doolittle and how she sued the Marquis
Townshend for breach of promise. My
latest findings have been even more remarkable.
"On
14th June 1901 Evelyn Diana Sheffield was initiated into the Hermetic Order of
The Golden Dawn at its Isis-Urania Temple in London. According to Wikipedia The
Golden Dawn was an organisation devoted to the study and practice of the
occult, metaphysics and paranormal activities during the late 19th and early
20th centuries. Many present day concepts of ritual and magic that are at the
centre of contemporary traditions such as Wicca and Thelema were inspired by
the Golden Dawn. It sounds weird and wacky but its membership
included many contemporary celebrities such as the actress Florence Farr, the
Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne, the Irish poet William Butler Yeates, Welsh author Arthur Machin and the notorious Aleister Crowley. It is not known if Evelyn’s membership
continued after the acrimonious break-up of Golden Dawn in 1903. The extent of
her involvement is also unknown but at least it gives some background to her
being accused of being a clairvoyant by the defence in her breach of promise
case in 1905 against the Marquis Townshend.
"In
the second article I also gave a brief outline of Evelyn’s involvement in the Tallerman Sheffield patent for the hot air treatment of disease. In it I stated that Evelyn’s contribution was
unknown. However recent research in the British
Newspaper Archives has been very informative about Evelyn’s contribution and
her troubled relationship with Mr Tallerman.
"Her
companion Lewis Garden died in 1892 but it seems he had already provided her
with property in Mettingham, Suffolk and financial
independence to enable her to follow other interests. She had a particular
interest in medical treatments and had the idea that the use of hot dry
air could be therapeutic for a range of ailments. In January 1893 she learnt that
an engineer, Mr Thomas Henry Rees, had taken out a patent for a hot vapour
treatment device. On May 15th 1893 Mr Rees contacted
Evelyn by letter stating “I am sure we could unite our interests to great
mutual advantage”. On May 29th Mr Rees
wrote again enclosing specifications 'with rough sketches of your bath'. Evelyn
financed the development of the hot dry air prototype equipment and even acted
as a guinea pig in the proving trials.
"At
the time Evelyn was living at the Langham Hotel, which is where she met Mr Tallerman. He became interested in the hot air treatment,
sensing a good business opportunity, particularly after hearing that Sir Alfred
Garrod, an eminent doctor, had seen the development work and given his
encouragement. Mr Tallerman wanted to become involved
and being a wily operator insisted on a third share of the patent in return for
his business expertise. Subsequently he inveigled Mr Rees into giving up his
share of the patent for a derisory sum. He then pressurised Evelyn to sell her
share of the patent and the business by limiting the profitability of the
company by extensive use of free treatment centres and withdrawing thousands in
personal expenses. The idea was to wind up the joint company with Evelyn and
set up anew with him as sole patent owner in control of a far larger Tallerman treatment company. Evelyn refused to give up her
share of the patent or her financial interest, which left an impasse; but she
was progressively side-lined and air-brushed out of the 'Tallerman'
Dry Air Treatment and the company.
"It
was unjust that Evelyn was denied recognition for her role in developing a
serious medical treatment which was extensively used throughout the world and
reviewed in The Lancet (still a leading medical journal in the UK). That
this was keenly felt as evidenced by the letters she wrote to the press in 1900
attacking Mr Tallerman for his underhand tactics. As
a poignant postscript Evelyn’s entry in the 1939 Register gives her occupation
as 'Inventor of medical dry air baths and electric pads' - the Sheffield Hot
Air Treatment was obviously an achievement she felt very proud of.
"Happily her achievements have been recognised by the Women’s Engineering Society, which now regards
her as a very early pioneer. In the centennial year of this prestigious society
Evelyn is due to be acclaimed as “Engineer of the week” on her birthday (7th September).
She will also have her biography added to their 'Magnificent Women' site. Celebration
of this remarkable woman is long overdue."
©
Copyright Tony Martin
Eliza Sheffield (nee
Fairchild) was clearly a remarkable woman as well as a talented engineer,
though unlike Ada Lovelace she wasn't considered for the reverse of the new £50
note. Her long life overlapped with that of another remarkable and talented
woman, the folk singer Peggy Seeger, though I doubt that when she wrote the
feminist song I'm Gonna Be
an Engineer she had Eliza (or even Ada) in mind. I had the pleasure of
hearing and meeting Peggy in 1971 or 1972, when I was at university, and I've
been to see her on several more occasions since then (most recently in 2017).
At some of the earlier concerts she was accompanied by her husband, the late singer/songwriter
Ewan McColl, whose most famous composition (The First Time Ever I Saw Your
Face) was written for Peggy. Many of you will be familiar with the Roberta
Flack version, which reached No.1 in both the US and Canada, though only made
it to No.14 in the UK; hearing Ewan McColl sing the song a capella was extremely moving.
For some of you the reference
in Tony's story to the Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn will be the first you've
heard of this crackpot organisation, but coincidentally I also read about them
in the book reviewed below.....
Review: Tracing
Your Freemason, Friendly Society & Trade Union Ancestors
Daniel Weinbren's new book
covers what, at first sight, seems to be a rather mixed bag - but there is
underlying logic. The connection between freemasonry, friendly societies, and trade
unions is that they're all organisations which sought to improve the lot of
their own members.
However, there are some
important distinctions between them. Friendly societies were an important support
for workers who, in the days before National Insurance, would have had no way
of supporting themselves and their families if they were unable to work as a
result of illness, accident, or unemployment - there were no losers, except
when one of these mutual bodies ran out of funds as a result of miscalculation,
embezzlement, or some upheaval which affected a large number of members.
The other two types of
organisation had both good and bad sides: they could produce losers - whether
they were the employees passed over for promotion because they weren't masons, members
of other unions, or workers who were unable to carry out certain tasks because
of protectionism. For many years most of them were closed to women - some still
are. Others were restricted according to ethnicity or religion.
Many of our ancestors will
have belonged to one or more of these organisations during their lifetimes: membership
of a friendly society would have been the only way for many to ensure that children
who died had a proper burial; trade unions helped to stop the exploitation of
workers by unscrupulous employers; in some careers becoming a freemason was
often the only way to 'get on'. The book provides excellent guidance on where
to look for the records that have survived, as well as many interesting examples
- and whilst I feel the author has misinterpreted the meaning of the parable of
The Good Samaritan, this doesn't affect the value of the book to family
historians.
I read the paperback version but it is also available in Kindle format. If you
decide to buy the book please use the links below so
that you can support LostCousins with your purchase - it won't cost you any
more:
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Wordery
1000th anniversary
of St Benet's Abbey
The sparse remains of St Benet's
Abbey lie alongside the River Bure, in Norfolk - and each year an open air
service is held which is led by the Bishop of Norwich, who also holds the
position of Abbot of St Benet's. This year, as in previous years, the Bishop arrived
by river then he and his procession picked their way through the undergrowth, as
you can see from my photos below. My wife and I attend the annual service when
we can; last Sunday's service was a particularly special occasion, because it marked
1000 years since King Cnut donated the land on which the abbey was built.
One sentence from the Bishop's
sermon really struck home, because I'd just finished reading the book reviewed
above, about organisations whose primary role was to help their members. Referring
to the remains of the abbey the Bishop said "It’s
a place that reflects better than many the spirit of Jesus Christ who sought
out the lost, who welcomed the sinner, and urged us not to limit our generosity
and affections merely to our friends."
Goodness knows, we could do
with more of that in the world right now!
You can learn a lot from the discussions
on the LostCousins Forum - for example, one member discovered this unusual
entry in the registers of the municipal cemetery in Blackburn, Lancashire
(which can be found online at the DeceasedOnline website, which has the largest online collection
of burial and cremation registers: :
Why would someone's amputated
leg be buried? I suspect it’s to do with the integrity of the corpse - for
example, some religions used to forbid organ donations. However, it's not
certain that James Marsden was reunited with his leg when he died the following
year - his body was buried in a different plot, and there's no
readily-available evidence that his missing leg was exhumed.
After the passing of the Anatomy
Act in 1832 unclaimed bodies of those who died in the workhouse could be sold
for dissection, at least until 1844 - another reason to belong to a friendly
society, perhaps?
Hard to believe, but this
week was the 50th anniversary of the famous Abbey Road photoshoot for the cover
of the Beatles album - fans from all over the world came to recreate the image.
Some years ago, when the pedestrian crossing was accorded Grade 2 listing by
English Heritage, I read that it had changed position since 1969 - so I decided
to find out whether or not this was the case. I didn't,
however, have to go to London - I discovered the answer in this excellent blog article.
The article about offers
on DNA tests has been updated to make it clear that you DON'T need to be an Ancestry
subscriber to make use of an Ancestry DNA test.
Peter Calver
Founder,
LostCousins
© Copyright 2019
Peter Calver
Please do NOT copy or
republish any part of this newsletter without permission - which is only
granted in the most exceptional circumstances. However,
you MAY link to this newsletter or any article in it without asking for
permission - though why not invite other family historians to join LostCousins
instead, since standard membership (which includes the newsletter), is FREE?