Newsletter - 24th January 2019
Australia Day offer from Findmypast ENDS MONDAY
Last chance to enter my New Year Competition ENDS THURSDAY
New version of Family Tree Analyzer impresses
FamilySearch microfilms at the Society of Genealogists
The Genealogist adds criminal records from the
National Archives
Understanding ethnicity estimates
Were these twins - born in 1897 - identical?
Did you enjoy your free short story?
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous newsletter (dated 12th January)
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!
Australia
Day offer from Findmypast ENDS
MONDAY
If you live in Australia or
New Zealand, but don’t have a current subscription to Findmypast I've got some
good news - until midnight on Monday 28th January you can save 50% on any 1
month subscription to Findmypast.com.au when you follow this link
(please note that Terms and Conditions apply, and that your subscription will
renew at the standard price unless you deselect the auto-renewal option).
Last
chance to enter my New Year Competition ENDS THURSDAY 31ST
There has been an incredible
response to this year's competition - not surprising, perhaps, given the
incredible array of prizes on offer!
This year's most valuable
prize is a 12 month Pro or Ultimate subscription to the Findmypast site of your
choice (worth up to £156), offering unlimited access to over 8 billion records
and news articles, including the 1939 Register for England & Wales and the
largest collection of British parish records anywhere online.
(generously donated by Findmypast, Britain's leading family
history company)
With a Pro subscription (known as an Ultimate
subscription at Findmypast.com) you can access any of Findmypast's historic
records and newspaper articles, as well as their modern (2002-18) UK Electoral
Register - and you can do this at any of Findmypast's four sites around the globe.
In 2018 Findmypast started selling DNA tests for the
first time - powered by Living DNA, this autosomal test offers the highest
resolution analysis of your English ancestry (normal price £79)
(donated by Findmypast)
Also on offer is a 12 month subscription to the
British Newspaper Archive, the worlds largest online
collection of newspaper from the British Isles - by my calculations there are
over 360 million articles in this collection, which continues to grow.
(donated by British
Newspaper Archive)
ONE copy of Family Historian v6 (kindly donated by
Simon Orde, the designer and lead programmer of Family Historian)
Check out Family Historian now with a free 30-day
trial - just follow this link.
The winner of this prize will receive an activation code to turn the trial copy
into a fully-functioning version of this amazing program.
FIVE
autographed paperback copies of Hiding
the Past, the first novel in The Forensic Genealogist series from Nathan
Dylan Goodwin.
If you're lucky enough to win one of these books signed
by the author I'd suggest you don’t read it - instead download
the Kindle version and keep the paperback somewhere safe, because one day it
might be rather valuable!
FIVE 12 month subscriptions to LostCousins
If you already have a subscription
I'll extend it by 12 months
HOW TO ENTER - HOW TO WIN
The great thing about this
competition is that to win, you only have to do what should
come naturally to any LostCousins member, search for your 'lost cousins'. For
those of you who've yet to begin searching for cousins, this is a very good
time to put your excuses to one side and make a start, even if you can only
spare 15 minutes - that's all it took for a previous winner of my annual
competition!
Every direct ancestor or blood relative you enter on
your My Ancestors page between 21st
December 2018 and midnight (London time) on Thursday 31st January 2019 represents
an entry in the competition, and for each one you enter from the 1881 Census
you'll get a bonus entry.
Tip: a 'direct ancestor' is someone from whom you are
descended, such as a great-great grandparent - most people just call them
ancestors; a 'blood relative' is a cousin, ie someone
who shares your ancestry. And remember, ALL of your
living cousins are descended from the branches of your tree - so the more branches
you track through to the 1881 Census and enter, the greater your chance of
winning one of the top prizes
Shortly after the competition
closes I'll start picking relatives at random from all
those entered during the period of the competition, and the lucky members who
entered those relatives will be able to choose a prize from the list below (the
first person out of the hat gets to choose first, the second person has next
choice, and so on). No individual member can win more than one prize, but if
you have more than one account (eg the second account
is for your spouse) you could win two prizes.
Note: prize winners who do not respond within 24 hours
will be allocated the best prize available (my decision is final).
Even if you don't win one of
these prizes there's a far greater reward at stake, and it's one that everyone
can win - you could find a 'lost cousin'. Every single relative you enter is a
potential link to another researcher who shares your ancestry - and whenever you
click the Search button the
LostCousins computer will compare every single entry you've made against the
millions of entries made by other members!
Tip: unlike some websites, which update their
databases at intervals, the LostCousins database is updated instantly - there
is no waiting, whether you're entering a new relative or updating an existing
entry.
This year your chances of finding a new cousin are
better than ever before - for example, when you enter a relative from the 1881
England & Wales census there's 1 chance in 15 of an immediate match!
If you're new to LostCousins, or have forgotten how easy it is to enter
relatives, see the Getting Started Guide on the Help & Advice page. If it takes
you more than a minute or two to enter a household from the 1881 Census (and you’re
not mentally or physically disabled) please ask for my advice - there must be
some misunderstanding.
Tip: although there's the option to enter lots of extra
information about your relatives on the second part of the Add Ancestor form,
it won't be used in the matching process. The only information I always enter,
when I know it, is the maiden name of a married woman - this is automatically added
to the Index of Maiden Names, so might help my cousins find the census entry.
New
version of Family Tree Analyzer impresses
Over at the LostCousins Forum
we've been discussing the new version of Family Tree Analyzer, which - if you
have the correct information in your family tree - could largely automate the
process of adding relatives to your My
Ancestors page at the LostCousins site.
Family Tree Analyzer is a
free utility with all sorts of useful features, including some that are
designed specifically to aid LostCousins members. I'll announce in the newsletter
when this new version is ready for download, but in the meantime forum users are
welcome to try it out.
Note: the LostCousins forum is completely free, but it’s
currently only open to LostCousins members who have achieved a Match Potential
of 1 or more (this is a fairly modest target - mine is
over 10 and some elite members have a Match Potential that's over 30). To check
your Match Potential log-in at LostCousins
and go to the My Summary page - if you have already been invited to join the
forum you will find a link and a coupon code.
FamilySearch
microfilms at the Society of Genealogists
The Society of Genealogists
library now holds the microfilm collection of London Family History Centre -
including tens or hundreds of millions of parish
register entries. But how can you find out whether a specific parish is
included?
One you've logged in at
FamilySearch (it’s free to register) choose the Catalog option from the Search menu. On the search form type the
name of the parish under Place, then
click the radio button against Family
History Center. This will display a dropdown
menu, scroll down until you get to Society
of Genealogists and select it; finally click the Search button.
If the registers are held at
the SoG you'll find the details listed when you click
the Church records entry. I might
just be lucky, but all of the English parish registers
I looked for, from 4 different counties, are available at the SoG (according to the Catalog).
Tip: the collection of FamilySearch microfilms is just
part of the massive holdings in the SoG library. You don’t
need to be an SoG member to use the library but there
is a fee for non-members and you'll also be required to provide identification
(find out more here).
The
Genealogist adds criminal records from the National Archives
This week The Genealogist
added nearly 700,000 records from HO/8 at the National Archives covering the
period 1821-76 (they now have over 1.3 million records for the period 1801-76).
The Prison Registers give details
of ancestors who were imprisoned in a number of convict
prisons from Broadmoor to the Warrior Convict Hulk - they reveal the names of
prisoners, offences the prisoner had been convicted for, the date of their
trial and where they were tried. (There are different criminal records from the
National Archives available at Findmypast
and others at Ancestry.)
The Genealogist are
continuing to add colour maps to their collection of Tithe records - just before
Christmas they added maps for Rutland and Huntingdonshire - and another resource
you won’t find at other sites is the 1910 Land Valuation (sometimes called the
Lloyd George Domesday Book). Warning: almost all of
the new records they've released recently require a Diamond subscription - the
only exception I spotted was an addition to their collection of Worcestershire
parish register transcripts. If you follow this link
to the News Archive you'll be able to see what records they've added this year,
last year, or in any previous year.
Tip: you can save £20 on a Diamond subscription when
you follow this link.
You'll also get a free subscription to the online magazine 'Discover Your
Ancestors', worth £24.99
A recent study found that
even if you're not a user of social media sites such as Facebook, it’s still possible
to predict your activities with 95% accuracy by studying the profiles and posts
of 8 or 9 close contacts who are users. You can read more about the study in
this article
published in the Daily Telegraph on
Monday (you may need to register for a free account).
I suspect that I'd be in the
5% because even my friends and relatives don't have a clue what I'm doing most
of the time - but we can’t all be in that 5%, and those of you who have
children and grandchildren are, I suspect, more likely to have an Internet
presence, either in person or by proxy.
An article
in Tuesday's Guardian followed up on
the topic by warning social media users not to post photographs of other people
without their permission. I'd go further - if a relative or friend has chosen
not to have a presence on social media, perhaps you shouldn't mention them at
all? Would you want the local burglar to know when you’re on holiday simply because
your daughter is looking after your dog, and couldn’t resist posting a picture of
the pooch on Facebook?
Mind you, no matter how
careful you are to protect the privacy of others, there will always be someone
who claims you’re not doing enough!
For example, someone
complained in a genealogy forum recently about a provision in the LostCousins Privacy Policy
which allows me to tell a member the name of their own cousin if that cousin fails
to respond to my emails within 21 days. At first sight you might think that
this is somewhat draconian.... until you remember that at many other sites (not
just social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, but also genealogy
sites like Genes Reunited) the name would be known from the very start, without
any waiting period, and with no opportunity to say "Sorry, I don’t want that
person to know who I am".
In practice there are only a
handful of names revealed in this way each year - partly because LostCousins
members are very good at updating their My
Details page when their email address changes, but also because I go to
great lengths to track people down if they forget to tell me about their new address.
I'd like to think that it's the personal touch that makes LostCousins so
different!
But perhaps the best indication
that the LostCousins way is the right way, is the fact that no member has ever had cause to complain about one of the
cousins they've successfully connected with - and that's since the site opened
in 2004. The only gripes are about the few cousins who, for one reason or
another, don't respond at all - which is why they get so much of my attention
(there's a parable
in the Bible on a similar theme).
Note: many thanks to the member who pointed out the forum
discussion mentioned above - if anyone else ever notices negative comments about
LostCousins on forums or social media, please let me know, because innocent misunderstandings
can have unintended consequences. And I'd be glad to hear about positive
comments too - we all need a psychological boost from time to time!
One of the great things about
this series is that every story is
different:
"Having
been sent to a Church of England Mother and Baby Home in Hampstead during 1964
I met around 30 other young women aged between 16 and 30. There were only three
of us who intended to keep our babies, all the rest were having, or being
pressured to have. their babies adopted - usually six weeks after birth.
"The
home was run by a Matron who made all the arrangements for us to attend
ante-natal classes and hospital check-ups at the maternity hospital on the
Heath, took payments out of our maternity allowances, made the shopping lists,
menus and work rotas for us to do all the cooking, cleaning and caring for the
babies once born. Those who were C of E were expected to attend the parish
church on Sundays, and the Vicar came to 'talk' to us on Wednesday afternoons: otherwise
our afternoons were free for a couple of hours to have friends visit or go out,
with permission usually granted if anyone wished to stay out longer.
"My
Mother moved whilst I was at the Mother & Baby Home because she didn't want
the neighbours to know, and I had to promise (with my fingers crossed behind my
back) not to tell any of my friends or older relatives. Only my Auntie knew, it
was she who had persuaded my mother not to insist I had an abortion.
"I
didn't meet anyone at the Home who was glad to have their baby adopted so they
could get on with their life and forget about it. They were all upset when
their turn came to say goodbye to their baby and anxious that the adoptive
parents would be kind and give them a good life. Many included particular items to be passed on when they were older packed
amongst the baby's clothes and toys. One
girl had insisted upon having her baby baptized before he left her with the
hope his name would be retained by the adoptive parents.
"About
ten years ago I received a package from an old college friend - it contained a
book in which was described the character's time in the Hampstead Home, my
friend having remembered visiting me there and describing all the floor
scrubbing I'd had to do. She'd seen the book in a charity shop so bought it
with me in mind. I remember the author saying we should write a book about our
experience there, but it never occurred to me that she'd actually
do it!
"I
stayed in contact with two girls after I'd left the Home. One, who was 16 years
old, I'd also shared a hospital ward with for ten days. She'd met a boy in a
coffee bar she had frequented on her way back from ante-natal classes and he
visited every day bringing us whatever we wanted in the way of chocolates and
cigarettes, magazines, etc. which had made our stay there comfortable and less
boring. She'd had to give up her baby and when she visited me and my baby she said it was very upsetting to see me with the baby
I'd been able to keep and I didn't hear from her again.
"The
other was a West Indian girl who took her baby to live with its father and his
large family. The father of my child and I were invited to tea, but we ate
separately with her serving us and all the family in another room which we
found rather disturbing - and I didn't hear from her again either.
"My
parents had divorced in 1950 when my mother took me to London after a particularly
bad attack from my very possessive and controlling father; there was a court
hearing giving him access to me with a chaperone. When I was eight in 1953 he introduced a woman to me as his new wife who I was
to call Auntie. He explained that he'd met her whilst she was working in a
bakery shop, and he'd chosen her because she was plain and wouldn't attract the
attention of anyone else.
"Auntie
was kind and over time I also met her mother and brother who were also nice but
not very well off. When it was my birthday and at Christmas
they would present me with a box of assorted small presents that they had saved
or made during the intervening time, rather like receiving a Christmas
stocking, which was nice as my father did not believe in giving presents for a
particular occasion. I had to see him every weekend until I was 16.
"My
father never kept a job for long, using his diabetes as the reason for not
working, although he had rented a cafe for Auntie to run with her bakery
experience. He believed that if everyone ate raw grain no one would get cancer
and pushed his ideas (mixed up with religion) from the cafe. After my 16th birthday they moved to
Bournemouth where they continued having a cafe and peddling his raw grain, so I
didn't see them very often, just when I happened to be on the South Coast and would
ring the cafe. I once decided to just turn up at the cafe to find it was closed
for lunch! Auntie was not at their flat and a neighbour told me he'd been
forced to work in a car park but didn't know which one
so I'd had to drive round Bournemouth to find him. He was a really
odd and unpredictable father and often verbally unkind to Auntie in
front of me.
"In
1990 it was his 80th birthday so I sent a card and suggested I visit; his reply
was that he was in hospital having his insulin rebalanced, had reached his goal
of 80 and would be taking an overdose of insulin rather than inflict his ills
on my Auntie. I contacted my son who was holidaying nearby, but before I could
persuade him to take time out to go see him, Auntie rang to say my father had
died of a massive heart attack just before she was due to collect him from
hospital.
"Within
a couple of months Auntie gave up their rented flat plus the café and moved
into a sheltered housing flat. One time when I visited her with my daughter she spilled the beans about my father often being
violent towards her and restricting her movements, that she'd had no social
life beyond the café - he had even forbidden her going to Church. She said that my mother did the right thing
in taking me away from him, that I would have had a terrible childhood and she
wished she'd spoken to my mother before she'd married him to hear her reasons
for leaving him. My father had not told
her of his diabetes before their marriage
"She
spent nearly twenty happy years in the flat, although having to use a
wheelchair and slowly losing her sight, which meant she had to give up watching
tennis on the TV, knitting, and painting. She celebrated her 100th birthday
there, but not
long afterwards she found she could no longer move her legs at all, and was
transferred to a Council care home, where her hearing also deteriorated so she
was no longer able to telephone me. My letters had to be read to her and her replies written by other people. She died soon
after her 104th birthday last September and her old neighbour rang to tell me.
Then came the surprise......
"She
said Auntie's daughter had been present at her death. I said she didn't have a
daughter, just me as her step-daughter. The neighbour then said she thought I
knew, that she'd had an illegitimate daughter who she'd given up for adoption
in 1949, and who had found her when she was 102 and been visiting her frequently
since!
"I
was stunned and amazed - I had another step-sister. Why hadn't I been
told? Did my father know about her? (It
would have been another thing for him to be nasty about.)
"The
neighbour was rather vague about the details of Auntie's daughter,
but gave me enough to find her birth entry and the possible surname she
is now using. It took me some time to discover she had spelt the name
incorrectly and that it was her married name, not adopted name. Further
research over Christmas has brought up that she is now a widow and living in a
retirement complex of three blocks of apartments which should be enough for me
to be able to write to her, see if she wishes to be friends and for me to send her
my Auntie's earlier history and family photos I'd been given when my father
died, including a couple of Auntie's mother.
"I
just wish I'd been told about this daughter years ago, and that they could have
been reunited earlier whilst my Auntie still had her sight and could have seen
her daughter."
What a story! And it's still
not over - I do hope that the two of them become friends.
Not many people understand DNA, but everyone knows
about jigsaws. So in this article I'm going to explain
DNA testing using jigsaws!
Suppose your parents each owned two jigsaws which they
had had since childhood - they inherited one from each of their parents (though
sadly they can’t remember which was which). At a
glance all four of the pictures appear quite similar, but on close inspection
it is obvious that there are lots of small differences. One day they each decide
to make a new jigsaw by combining their two puzzles in such a way that the pieces
still fit together - and they give the two jigsaws to you.
Now imagine that this process has been going on for many
generations - in other words, the jigsaws your parents owned had come from
their parents, who had inherited jigsaws from their parents, and so on. This
means that in your two jigsaws you’d have pieces from each of your 4
grandparents, each of your 8 great-grandparents, each of your 16 great-great
grandparents etc etc. (In fact
you might at first imagine that you've got at least one piece from every
ancestor - until you realise that you don’t have to go back very many
generations before the number of ancestors far exceeds the number of pieces in
the puzzles.)
Nevertheless there's a lot of information about your
ancestry encoded into the jigsaws, and you're fascinated by the idea of tracing
your ancestors..... if only you knew which ancestor each
piece of the puzzle came from. But you don’t - the pieces aren’t labelled in
any way, and there are no copies of the original jigsaws in existence. All you have to go on is your own jigsaws.
But then you have a brainwave - why not compare your jigsaws
with the jigsaws belonging to your cousins? After all, if one of your cousins
has exactly the same piece in precisely the same place,
there's a good chance that you both inherited that piece from one of the ancestors
that you share (and if there are several pieces in a row that all match then it’s
even more likely). So you do this for all the cousins
who are prepared to show you their jigsaws.
Then you have another brainwave - you realise that you've
got many more cousins than the few dozen that you're in contact with, but you don’t
know who they are. So you join a website that offers
to connect people who share the same jigsaw pieces, and now you've got
thousands of cousins - the only problem is, almost all of them are so distantly
related that you can’t figure out what the connection is.
Fortunately you have yet
another brainwave at this point - you realise that you can use the information you
gleaned from your known cousins to figure out how you’re connected to the
unknown cousins (or at least, some of them). If one of the pieces in the jigsaw
of cousin X, one of your unknown cousins, is a piece that you share with cousin
A, one of the cousins you already know, it's a reasonable assumption that
cousin X is connected to you via the ancestors that you share with cousin A -
and that might be the vital clue that enables you to figure out your precise
connection to cousin X, turning them from an unknown cousin to a known cousin.
You can make these three-way connections even when
there isn't a single piece of the jigsaw that you all share. If a piece of your
jigsaw matches unknown cousin Y, and a different piece of cousin Y's jigsaw
matches known cousin B, there's a fair chance that you all share a common
ancestor. It could just be chance - after all, two jigsaws might well have blue
sky in the same place - but the more pieces that match the less likely it is to
be a coincidence. Since you already know how you’re related to cousin B, you
might now be able to figure out how you’re both related to cousin Y.
During this process you're converting unknown cousin
to known cousins, and this gives you further opportunities. For example, unknown
cousin Z may not match with any of the cousins you knew at the beginning, but
they might match with cousin X or cousin Y.
The closer your known cousins the more pieces you’re likely
to share with them, and similarly the more pieces you share with an unknown
cousin, the closer the relationship is likely to be - though once you get
beyond 3rd cousin the amount shared will be so low that distinguishing between
(say) a 5th cousin and a 10th cousin in this way is impossible.
What are the key lessons to be learned from this jigsaw
analogy?
- Unless you can compare your matches
with those of the cousins you already know it's going to be very difficult,
and possibly impossible, to figure out how you’re connected to the cousins
you don't know
- Converting 'unknown' cousins
into 'known' cousins makes the process easier
- Some of your 'unknown' cousins
will be so distantly-related that you'll never figure out what the connection
is
Understanding ethnicity estimates
Ethnicity estimates derived from DNA tests have come
in for a lot of criticism over the years, not least from me - on at least three occasions over the past
two years I've described them in this newsletter as being 'for entertainment
only', and in June 2016 I wrote an article provocatively entitled Don't expect meaningful DNA results in which I wrote:
I've uploaded my brother's results to FamilyTreeDNA - they reckon he's 40% Scandinavian, 40% British Isles (including Ireland) and 20% Southern Europe; but they tell me that I'm 59% Western & Central Europe, and 41% Scandinavia. We have the same parents, so how can our ancestry be so different - of course, the answer is that it can't!
The truth is, DNA tests are pretty poor at telling us about our origins hundreds or thousands of years ago. One of the reasons for this is the simple fact that we haven't inherited any DNA at all from most of our ancestors!
Nevertheless, some tests continue to be marketed in
such a way that purchasers might assume that the ethnicity estimates will tell
them all they need to know about their ancestry, without any sustained effort
or analysis - and certainly without the need for the hard slog of conventional,
records-based research. Readers of this newsletter aren't going to make a
mistake like that, but since 400 times as many tests have been sold as there
are readers, I suspect that the advertising and marketing of the companies dominates
the purchasing decision.
Not surprisingly this mismatch between expectation and
results draws attention from the mainstream media. For example, a Canadian TV
documentary recently reported how 5 DNA testing companies produced widely
differing ethnicity estimates for a pair of identical twins, but perhaps most
surprising - at least to the reporter - were the differences between the twins
(even from the same company).
Although identical twins begin with identical DNA, errors
(or mutations) are introduced during replication, and so there will always be
small differences (see this article for more information). There will also be differences
in DNA results because of errors or omissions - even though DNA tests may be
over 99.9% accurate, that 0.1% can make a big difference to ethnicity estimates.
If you test with Ancestry, as I have, you'll see that
they give a range. For example, I'm shown as 10% Ireland, Wales, and Scotland -
but when I look more closely it shows that behind the headline figure of 10% is
a range of 0% to 12%, and since I've to find any ancestors at all from those
three countries I'm inclined to think that I'm at the lower end of the range. Of
course, if you believed the headline number - because it fitted with what you
knew, thought you knew, or wanted to believe about your ancestry - you might
not have looked any further.
How are ethnicity estimates arrived at? Well, just as
you or I might guess that someone was Spanish, French, or Scandinavian based on
the colour of their hair, their skin tone, or other facial features, DNA
testing companies look at the pieces of your DNA jigsaw and try to determine which
country or region they're most representative of, comparing them against a selection
of jigsaws from around the world. The problem with this approach is that migration
isn’t something that began with railways, steamships, and the aeroplane -
people have been migrating since the birth of the human race,
so the DNA of a modern day population of a country or region might not be very
representative of its historic population.
There's a 3-page article in the February issue of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine which
deals with the inherent uncertainties in ethnicity estimates in far more detail,
but take it from me, the real reason you
should test your DNA is to find cousins who can help you break down your 'brick
walls'.
Note: if you
live in the UK you can currently get a trial subscription to WDYTYA? Magazine for
just £5 (for 5 issues) when you follow this link - but it won’t start until the next issue.
Were these twins - born in 1897 - identical?
It's incredible what we can discover about our
ancestors, whether through records-based research, by searching historic newspapers,
or from DNA testing. Everyone reading this newsletter will have done the first
two, but even those of us who have tested our DNA are still getting to grips
with it - so I suspect all of you will find this real-life example intriguing.
Earlier this month I received an email from a
LostCousins member who had encountered something rather interesting when
analysing how her DNA matched that of her cousins. Here's what Linda wrote
(I've changed all the names to protect the identities of those involved):
Can I ask for your opinion on a DNA matter please? This screenshot is the list of close DNA matches for my 2nd cousin Eleanor.
Dave and Teri are our 2nd cousins too, Dave and Teri are 1st cousins, and Donald is Teri’s son. I’ve put the info on a family tree chart to make it easier to get your head around where we all fit.
Dave and Teri share nearly twice as much DNA with Eleanor as she does with me, and Dave has also said that the amount of DNA he shares with Teri (his 1st cousin) and the amount he shares with Eleanor (his 2nd cousin) are very similar.
Our grandfathers were all brothers, but Dave, Teri and Eleanor’s grandfathers were twins. Does the DNA show that their grandfathers were identical twins, do you think? Or are the variations seen within the range of difference that can naturally occur between 2nd cousins?
My feeling is that the DNA strongly suggests that William and Albert were identical twins, but I also know it’s unwise to assume anything in genealogy - so I’d value your thoughts on this.
I was glad to help Linda because
she had taken the time to think it through herself, then gather the relevant
information and send it to me - so even though it was approaching midnight I
replied almost immediately with my thoughts.
What would you make of this
puzzle? You don’t need to have tested your own DNA, or even understand how DNA
works, in order to figure it out - all the information you need is in the
coloured chart in my Masterclass (which you'll find here).
Just bear in mind that identical twins have virtually identical DNA, whereas non-identical
(or fraternal) twins are no more alike genetically than any two children who
share the same parents.
Don't write in to me with your
answer - there are no prizes - but do please take the time to think it through
carefully. As DNA puzzles go this is one of the simpler ones - because there's
so much information, and the family tree is already known - but it’s better to
start with an easy problem, otherwise more difficult problems will seem
insoluble!
Tip: all the information you need to make use of your
DNA results is in the Masterclass - I've distilled years of knowledge and experience
into a simple, easy to follow article, so that you don’t waste your time and your
money repeating the mistakes that I made in the early years. Bear in mind that
if I've left something out there's almost certainly a very good reason why!
With Valentine's Day
approaching there are bound to be some interesting offers, and I'll update this
article with any new offers that come in before the publication of the next
issue. In the meantime, here is what I know about at the time of writing:
Ancestry.com.au (Australia & New Zealand only) SAVE 25% (ends 28th January)
MyHeritage (UK) reduced from £75 to £59 (with free
shipping when you order 2 or more kits)
Please use the links above so
that LostCousins can benefit from your purchase - it won’t cost you a penny
more, but you'll be helping me to keep this newsletter independent.
Did you enjoy
your free short story?
I hope that you read the free
Morton Farrier short story in my Christmas Day newsletter - and enjoyed it as
much as I did. The link in the article
still works (but if you've started the process before and failed to complete
the download, you might need to start over again).
If you want to purchase any
of the books in the Forensic Genealogic series please use the links below so
that you can support LostCousins - it may only be a few pence, but as my mother
used to say, "Look after the pennies and the pounds look after
themselves."
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca
Nathan Dylan Goodwin, the talented
author who created Morton Farrier, mentioned to me last September that he was
reading the first book in Wendy Percival's Esme Quentin series
- and when I discovered that Wendy
is a LostCousins member I couldn’t resist downloading it to my Kindle.....
When freelance historical researcher Esme Quentin receives
a phone call from the local hospital to let her know that her sister has been
attacked and is in a coma, she puts aside her other projects and starts out on
a criss-cross trail of intrigue, revenge, and murder - one in which her sister Elizabeth
is a key character. Indeed, the whole story is about family ties of one sort or
another - featuring adoption, illegitimacy, inheritance, desertion and more.
What was the motive for the
attack - was it robbery? And was she actually attacked, or did she slip and fall? The evidence is
inconclusive and even Elizabeth's daughter, Gemma questions whether Esme is on
the right track.
I really enjoyed this book,
and I have to say that Esme Quentin is a very likeable character - so I doubt I'll
be able to resist for long the lure of the second and third books in the series
(which if the online reviews are anything to go by are even better!). I suspect
that before long I'll be adding Wendy Percival to my list of favourite
genealogy mystery authors.
As mentioned earlier I bought
the Kindle version, but it’s also available as a paperback (and if you’re very
lucky you might even be able to pick up a second-hand copy of the original hardback
at a bargain price).
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca The
Book Depository
First published in 1930, but recently reissued, Unknown Warriors is a collection of
letters written by Kate Luard, who was a nursing sister in France between
1914-18, having previously served during the Second Boer War. In 1917, at the
height of the Battle of Passchendaele, she was in charge of
a casualty clearing station with a staff of 40 nurses and almost 100 orderlies
- it was an immense responsibility, but one that she seems to have borne with
courage and resilience.
I first came across Kate
Luard in the Essex Record Office blog - her family came from Essex, and her
father was the vicar of Birch, near Colchester, for many years. You can read
extracts from her 1918 letters in this blog posting,
although personally I found the letters from the earlier years of the war more evocative
- the mud, the blood, the noise, the shortages. My first thought was that this
book would only appeal to those whose own relatives were nurses in the Great
War - but then I realised the real heroes of the story are the Tommies whose suffering Kate so eloquently and
sympathetically describes. There are some very moving passages, especially when
she writes about soldiers who were particularly badly injured.
I read the paperback, but it
is also available, at a lower price, as a Kindle book. Kate Luard was also the
anonymous author of Diary of a Nursing
Sister on the Western Front, which was published during the war.
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca The
Book Depository
Note: I can’t find Kate Luard's birth registration in
any of the online indexes - can you? Her full name was Katherine Evelyn Luard,
and she was born in 1872 - on 29th June, according to her Wikipedia entry and
the 1939 Register, in Aveley, Essex according to the 1911 Census).
When I sent you my newsletter
on 21st December I somehow managed to forget that it was the 40th anniversary
of one of the most important days in my life - one without which I probably
wouldn't be writing to you now.
21st December 1978 was the
day that I bought my first computer, a Commodore PET with a 9in black and white
screen, a cassette deck, and no disk drive, not even a floppy disk. And a massive
8k of memory - for comparison the phone in my pocket, several years old, has 20
million times as much memory, as well as being upwards of a million times
faster.
As I was writing this
newsletter I noticed that Martin Lewis, the consumer advice guru, had dropped
his legal action against Facebook, after they agreed to make significant changes
- his photo had been used in scam adverts on the site, ones that sound very
similar to those I encountered on the Radio
Times website in November (you can re-read my article here),
and also to those mentioned in this BBC article from last
week.
This article
from The Guardian explains the
changes the Facebook are making. And talking of Facebook, research carried out in Australia and reported
in New Scientist earlier this month
suggests that taking time away from Facebook reduces stress. So
if you’d been wondering why LostCousins doesn’t have a significant presence on
Facebook, now you know why!
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......
That's all for
now, but I'll be back soon - not only are there some wonderful true stories
that I simply couldn't fit into this issue, I'm still getting reports of
missing or duplicated blocks of entries in the GRO's birth and death indexes.
In the meantime,
how about adding a few extra entries to your My Ancestors page, increasing your chances of winning a prize in my
competition - and of finding some new cousins? 15 minutes could make a world of
difference, not just for you but for one of your cousins.
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?