Newsletter - 13th
April 2020
Lockdown extended - Easter competition extended
BREAKING NEWS
Isle of Man to allow online birth and death
registration
LAST CHANCE: save 20% on Findmypast
subscriptions ENDS TUESDAY???
How to make the most of Findmypast - even if you don’t
have a subscription!
LAST CHANCE: connect to your 'lost cousins' ENDS WEDNESDAY
Ancestry offer free access to UK & Ireland
records ENDS TODAY
Check what online resources your library offers
Review: Ten Steps to a One-Place Study
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 7th April) click here; to find
earlier articles use the customised Google search between this paragraph and
the next (it searches ALL of the newsletters since February 2009, so you don't
need to keep copies):
To go to the main
LostCousins website click the logo at the top of this newsletter. If you're not
already a member, do join - it's FREE, and you'll get an email to alert you
whenever there's a new edition of this newsletter available!
Britain
has a tradition of coming together when times are tough, and this article
by Julia Hobsbawn on CNN explains how concern for our
Prime Minster's health has overcome political differences.
Lockdown extended - Easter competition extended BREAKING
NEWS
As
I was finalising this newsletter I took time out to watch the Downing Street
Press Conference, which confirmed for the first time that the lockdown that has
already been in effect across the UK for 3 weeks will not be lifted when it is reviewed
later this week.
Although
this is no great surprise to me, as I've been following the statistics and reading
the research papers as they have been published, I know there will be a few who
were hopeful that there would be some relaxation.
In
the circumstances I've decided to extend the Easter Egg Competition until at
least the end of April. Most of the 100 prizes on offer have yet to be won,
including the top prize of $1000 (or £1000 or €1000) - so there is every reason
to enter more relatives from 1881 so that you can connect with more of your
'lost cousins'.
Talking
of statistics, whilst many LostCousins members have entered hundreds or even
thousands of relatives from 1881, there are others who aren’t pulling their
weight. I calculated this week that if every reader of this newsletter living
in the UK who has entered fewer than 100 relatives from 1881 were to bring
their total up to 100, there would be over 150,000 'lost cousins' found - which
is more than have been found in the entire 16 year history of LostCousins.
Or,
to put it another way, if you all pull together it would take each of you less than
one hour to achieve more than I have achieved in 16 years. And that's without
the contribution of our many members outside the UK, who may not have direct ancestors
on the 1881 Census, but would in most cases be able to find numerous cousins.
This
is a good opportunity to remind you that because ALL of your living cousins are
descended from the branches of your tree, it's by starting as early as you can,
then tracing your branches through to 1881, that you're going to maximise the
number of 'lost cousins' you find (and give yourself the best chance of winning
one of the prizes in the competition).
Isle
of Man to allow online birth and death registration
A
week ago I suggested that register offices should
allow births and deaths to be registered online, and coincidentally the Isle of
Man government has passed an emergency order to implement exactly this! You can
find out more here.
Meanwhile
in England it has been revealed that currently only 7% of GP appointments are
now face to face - the others take place over the telephone or using online
video-conferencing. You can read more in this BBC article.
That's
two professions dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century - I wonder
who will be next?
I'm
often asked how I can run LostCousins single-handedly, but still find the time
to respond to every email from a member - even though there are now over 68,000
members on the mailing list for this newsletter.
There
are three key factors that make this possible: one is the simple design of the
LostCousins website, with relevant advice shown on each of the main pages; this
means that members don't have to remember what to do - the information is right
there in front of them (you may need to click a Help icon to see it).
The
second is the Frequently Asked Questions page, which incorporates answers to all
the questions I was asked in the early years (when the membership was much
smaller). These days there are very few queries that arise which haven’t been asked
before, so when a member writes to me I'm usually able
to point them in the direction of the relevant FAQ.
And
the third factor? It's you - in my experience LostCousins members are smarter
and more courteous than the average Internet user (I guess that it’s hard to be
a successful family historian if you don’t have those qualities). Consequently most members are able to figure things out
without ever troubling me, which is greatly appreciated.
But
please DO get in touch when you need to. I feel really bad
on the rare occasions when I get an email from a member who has spent hours trying
to figure something out, whether at LostCousins or one of the sites that
members use as a source of census information. Do please look at the FAQs page first,
but if you're still struggling after 15 minutes, send me an email.
Tip:
when you write to me please use a descriptive title for the email - I judge
which emails need urgent attention by looking at the titles.
LAST CHANCE: save 20% on Findmypast subscriptions ENDS
TUESDAY???
Although supposed to
end at midnight on Tuesday 14th April, the offer was still live on Wednesday morning, so get in quick
if you want to take advantage of Findmypast's
Easter offer of a 20% discount on 12 month subscriptions at their UK site AND
secure yourself a free LostCousins subscription when you use my link
to purchase a Plus or Pro subscription and ensure that your purchase will be
tracked (by following the advice here).
The
good news is that so far EVERYONE who has followed the advice has qualified for
a free LostCousins subscription!
Tip:
you do NOT need to register with Findmypast, even if you previously registered
at a different Findmypast site. So don’t fill in the
form headed Let’s
get you signed up unless you've never used Findmypast before; instead look
to the bottom right of the form for Already signed up? and click the Log-in
icon just below.
How
to make the most of Findmypast - even if you don’t have a subscription!
I'm
always amazed to discover experienced family historians who have never used
Findmypast, not least because you can sign-up for a 14-day free trial (though
sadly, but understandably, only once).
Searching
at Findmypast is ALWAYS FREE (though you will need to register if you haven't
done so previously), and quite a lot of information is revealed by the search
results - it isn’t obscured as it might be at some other sites.
But
the results you get depend on how you search. You'll usually get more information
if you search an individual record set - for example, if I search for my
grandfather in the 1911 Census choosing either Search all records, or Census,
land and surveys from the Search menu, this is what I get:
But
if instead I choose the A-Z of record sets, then pick the 1911 Census
from the list, I get birthplace information as well:
Crikey
- this additional detail could be vital, especially if the person you’re looking
for has a common surname - and all from a FREE search!
Here's
another example - this time I'm looking for great-grandfather's baptism. If I
choose Birth, marriage, death and parish from the Search menu I
get this when I search:
OK,
not bad for a free search, but if go through the A-Z of record sets,
then pick Suffolk Baptism Index 1538-1911 from the list I also find out
what the forenames of his parents were:
And
remember, this is still a FREE search! But even if you do have a subscription there
will be the same difference - that's why I almost always search individual
record sets at Findmypast, and why you’d do well to follow my advice. After
all, why make things difficult for yourself?
The
table below has links that will take you straight to some of the most popular record
sets at Findmypast:
|
1881 British census (FREE transcription) |
|
1939
Register (England & Wales) |
*
these parish register links will take you to the baptisms for the county - look
under Useful Links and Resources for marriages, burials etc
LAST CHANCE: connect to your 'lost cousins' ENDS WEDNESDAY
Normally you'd need to be a LostCousins
subscriber to initiate contact with a new cousin, but until midnight on
Wednesday 15th April there are no restrictions. Even better, it won’t matter if
your cousin doesn't respond until after the free period has ended - it’s only
the initial invitation that requires a subscription.
Tip: if you’re an Ancestry user like me you'll
be familiar with the problem of other members not responding, no matter how
many reminders you send - for all you know your messages might be disappearing
into a 'block hole'. But at LostCousins you've got someone who will follow up
if a cousin doesn’t respond after 14 days - I'll do everything within my power
to connect cousins.
Even if you haven't
entered any new relatives for yonks, it’s still worth logging-in to your
LostCousins account, going to the My Ancestors page and clicking the Search
button - based on past experience I know that there are thousands of matches waiting
to be discovered.
And even if you don’t get
any new matches when you click the Search button, go to your My
Cousins page and check whether there's anyone in the New Contacts
section. There are thousands of new matches waiting to be explored - and now's
the perfect time to do it.
Ancestry offer free access to UK & Ireland records ENDS TODAY
Until
11.59pm on Monday 13th April Ancestry are offering free access to billions of
UK & Ireland records at their UK site - please use this link
so they'll know you're a reader of my newsletter.
Apologies
for the late notice, but I've had other things on my mind - like getting up at
5.30am to get to my local convenience store in order to buy milk and other essentials
while the shop was (relatively) empty. Still no eggs, however - it’s over 3
weeks since I last saw an egg. In the old days (ie
pre coronavirus) we used to have eggs for breakfast most days; they're pretty useful for cooking too.
But
the main reason I couldn’t tell you before is because my broadband has been
playing up since Thursday, and on Friday it disappeared altogether, before
returning - intermittently - over the weekend. So this
newsletter might not even reach you before the Ancestry offer closes, I'm
afraid.
Check what online resources your library offers
Last
month I mentioned that as a result of the pandemic many libraries are offering home
access to resources (sometimes including Ancestry and/or Findmypast) that would
normally be available only whilst on the library premises, and using one of
their computers.
I
said at the time that I do not intend to publicise what's available (there
are so many different library services in the UK and around the world, all with
different offerings) - so please don’t write to tell me what your
library offers. For those of you who don’t already know what's available
locally, it'll only take you a few minutes to check - you could be pleasantly
surprised!
Libraries
are a key source of online information - I have only physically visited my
local library once in 20 years, but I have accessed their online resources, including
newspapers, magazines, and reference works, on dozens of occasions. Let's face
it - if you’re not going to make use of what they offer at a time like this,
when are you going to do it?
Over
the past month I've compared what we're going through now to what our ancestors - and
some older LostCousins members - went through. The privations of World War 2 and
rationing have been a particular focus, and this week the BBC picked up the same
thread in an article entitled
Under Siege: The Kitchen Front, which not only looks at rationing and
recipes, but also invites readers to send in their own memories.
For
me it was an introduction to two characters who my father often talked about,
but who I'd never knowingly heard before: Gert and Daisy. I wonder what
memories the article will bring back for you?
An unusual birth certificate
Michele
was surprised to see that though her husband's grandfather ended up fathering
12 children, he was described on his birth certificate as a girl! We can't know
how the error was made in 1873, but in the GRO's new online indexes he appears
as Male, so it’s possible that when the register entries were copied for onward
transmission to the GRO the error was corrected (perhaps unconsciously).
There
were two separate stories this weekend that feature siblings who have reconnected
- this article
was in The Guardian on Saturday, this article was on the BBC News website
on Friday.
Jeremy Seabrook looks
at orphans through the ages in this masterly work which, while focusing
primarily on Britain, includes stories from other countries - including several
modern tales from the Third World, which force us to face up to the fact that
the issues have not been consigned to the past, they live on.
As
most of you will be aware, whilst the term orphan is nowadays generally used
for a child who has lost both parents, it wasn't always so. Indeed
some of the examples the author considers involve children who were deprived of
their parents by officialdom or do-gooders who thought they knew best. Frequently
they were lied to. The Home Children sent to outposts of the Empire often had a
mother, and sometimes two parents, who wanted them back - but some were told
their parents were dead. Jeremy Seabrook estimates that up to 80% of the
'orphans' in 19th century orphan institutions had at least one parent living.
Dickens
wrote about many orphans, but as Jeremy Seabrook points out, most of the
orphans in Dickens' stories (and indeed those of other authors) eventually turn
out to be the offspring of respectable parents. But for most 19th century
orphans (or, indeed, those in earlier centuries) there was no happy ending -
infants who ended up in the workhouse or other institutions generally died.
There
are many tragic stories in this book, but the real tragedy is that the problem
has still not been solved - and perhaps it never can be? Orphans isn’t so
much about our ancestors, but about the children who never had a chance to become
our ancestors - thoroughly recommended for anyone who cares about what happens
to children who don’t have two loving parents.
This
book was published in 2018 so I was able to get a second-hand copy of the
hardback in as new condition for under £10 including delivery (there is a
Kindle version but it’s expensive).
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.com.au
Review:
Ten Steps to a One-Place Study
Three years ago I reviewed Janet Few's
excellent Putting Your Ancestors in their Place, a guide to One-Place Studies,
so I wasted no time in reading her latest publication, Ten Steps to a
One-Place Study.
It's
a practical guide to designing and carrying out your study and, because it's just
36 pages, it's easy to follow. One-Place Studies offer a great way to combine
local and family history, and you can define your 'place' in any way you like -
it could be a street or a village, but the author has other interesting suggestions,
some of which I hadn't previously considered. There are several other things to
decide, but the last on her list is perhaps the most important: "What
place am I most interested in?"
Many
of the records that Janet Few suggests as sources are ones that as a family historian you'll already be familiar with - censuses, parish
records etc. But there are many others which we don’t routinely use in family
history - though perhaps we should, and I suspect that many family historians
who run a One-Place Study find that they end up learning more about their own
family, even if they didn't live in the place they're researching.
An
essential purchase of you’re considering starting a One-Place Study - or if you
simply want to know more about what it would entail. It's available as either
slim paperback, or as a Kindle book.
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.com.au
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......
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2020 Peter Calver
Please do NOT copy or republish any part of this newsletter
without permission - which is only granted in the most exceptional
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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?