Newsletter – 30th
January 2023
Final opportunity to save 30% at
Findmypast.co.uk SAVE UP TO £54
Donor-conceived
children in the UK gain rights
Last chance to win
prizes in my FREE competition ENDS MIDNIGHT TUESDAY
Not sure if you’ve
entered the competition? Here’s how to check
Is it OK to knit when
you’re on Zoom?
Carolina in my mind:
the Scottish lyrics that weren’t written by Burns
The King’s Bed –
picked up for a song
What will happen to your
prized possessions?
Researcher makes
unexpected discovery
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 20th 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!
Final opportunity to save 30% at Findmypast.co.uk SAVE UP TO
£54
Until
midnight (London time) on Tuesday 31st January you can save a
generous 30% on Plus and Pro subscriptions at Findmypast.co.uk (but not other
Findmypast sites). Although the offer only applies to subscriptions purchased
at the UK site, it doesn’t matter where you live – indeed many subscribers
around the world choose the UK site for one reason or another.
Premium
subscriptions are excluded from the offer – on the other hand, once you have
purchased a Pro subscription you may be able to upgrade to Premium (but
it’s not something I’m able to test myself as I already have a Premium
subscription).
Plus subscriptions include all of Findmypast’s records
for Britain and Ireland with the exception of the 1921 Census; Pro
subscriptions include records from other parts of the world, as well as the
British Newspaper Archive.
This
offer isn’t exclusive to LostCousins – you may even receive an email from
Findmypast themselves. But you’ll only be supporting LostCousins when you
subscribe using the link below (remember, it’s only because of the commission
we receive from the big genealogy sites that LostCousins subscriptions have
remained at £10 for the past 18 years – for comparison the basic State Pension
in the UK almost doubled between April 2005 and April 2023).
Findmypast.co.uk
– SAVE 30% on PRO and PLUS subscriptions ENDS 31ST JANUARY
Tip:
the discount applies only to your first payment, so it’s worth raiding the
piggy bank and going for a 12 month subscription if
you possibly can. For example, even under the offer a quarterly Plus
subscription would have cost you £99.87 after 9 months, whereas if you shell
out now you could have 12 months for £90.99! In addition, with a 12 month subscription you also qualify for Loyalty Discount
– currently 15% – if you choose to renew at the end of the year.
Donor-conceived children in the UK gain rights
On
1st April 2005, when LostCousins was less than a year old, the law
in the UK changed: donations for fertility treatment could no longer be made
anonymously.
Starting
two years ago, donor-conceived children who reached the age of 16 were able to
request the following information about the donor:
- physical description (height,
weight, eye and hair colour) if provided
- year and country of their birth
- ethnicity
- whether they had any children,
how many and their gender
- their marital status
- their medical history
The
first 187 children donor-conceived after 1st April 2005 will reach
the age of 18 towards the end of this year, and will be entitled to discover:
- the donor’s name, date of birth
and last known address
Of
course, many donor-conceived children have already discovered the identity of
the donor using DNA, just as many adoptees have done – but some have found out
in other ways, as the website of the Human Fertilisation & Embryology
Authority explains.
Some donors have chosen to give up their anonymity, though by November it was only
260 out of nearly 18,000.
But
not all donor-conceived children are aware of the circumstances of their
conception, as this article by genetic genealogy expert Debbie Kennett explains.
And for the family historians of the future the outlook is more complex – identifying
one’s own biological parent using DNA is relatively straightforward,
but identifying the biological parent(s) of an ancestor is more complicated,
especially if there are no other clues.
Years
ago, when I used to go to occasional meetings in London at which a sandwich lunch
was provided, I’d make a beeline for the Coronation Chicken sandwiches – not only
were they visually-distinctive, they were reliably tasty.
I
thought of Coronation Chicken this weekend when I read that families whose
ancestors had a role in previous Coronations were being considered for the same
roles at the Coronation of King Charles III (you can find out more here
– applications by Friday, please). There was an example in the Daily Telegraph
which described how the family of Francis Dymoke has
been involved in every Coronation since 1066 – you’ll find the article here
(I suspect it will be behind a pay-wall, but if you Google the distinctive name
you’ll find other similar articles).
So what inspired me to think of Coronation Chicken? I’d
just received my weekly supermarket delivery, and – joy of joys – it included the
large eggs that I had ordered (in recent weeks large eggs have been as scarce
as hens’ teeth). It got me wondering whether any of those eggs were descended
from the chickens who had contributed to Coronation Chicken 70 years ago? Probably
not, considering that the meat from laying hens is tougher – on the other hand
rationing was still in force, so who knows what compromises might have been
made.
But
even if there was a connection, how could we know? I doubt that egg producers
keep records of which hen laid which egg – like human
foundlings their parentage is surrounded in mystery. And whereas family historians
can use DNA testing to overcome gaps in the records, this only works when there
are sufficient surviving records (or memories) to which the genetic clues can
be linked.
Note:
the dish served at the Coronation Luncheon was officially entitled ‘Poulet
Reine Elizabeth’, and the question as to which came first, the chicken or the egg
doesn’t apply since there were no eggs on the handwritten menu (which you can see
here
– or even buy if you’ve just won the lottery!).
Last chance to win prizes in my FREE competition
ENDS MIDNIGHT TUESDAY
Tuesday
31st January is a very special day – it’ll be 30 years to the day
since I met my wife. But it’s also a special day for you – it’s your last
opportunity to enter my annual competition!
All
you need to have done is add some direct ancestors or blood relatives to your My
Ancestors page between the start of the competition (7th
December) and midnight, London time, on the closing date.
Not sure if you’ve entered the competition? Here’s how to
check
Did
you know that you can sort the entries on your My Ancestors page in 4 different
ways simply by choosing the appropriate option at the top of the page? For
example, if you choose Date of entry your most recent entries will be
shown first.
To
see the date (and time) of each entry click Show
more detail, which will open up a
new browser tab with more information for each entry – not just the date the
entry was made, but also your relative’s maiden name (if applicable) and their
baptism date (if entered).
Tip: this more
detailed display is ideal if you want to copy the information on your My
Ancestors page to a spreadsheet for further analysis.
On
Monday 20th February Mark Bayley from The Genealogist will be giving
an exclusive Zoom presentation entitled Mapping Your Ancestors – it begins
at 9am (London time) which should allow members in Australia and New Zealand to
attend. During the talk he’ll be featuring map-based record collections and tools
available for researching your British roots.
And
on Saturday 4th February I’ll be repeating the talk What DNA can really
do for family historians, this time starting at 10am (London time). If you
are invited to attend you will have the opportunity to submit a question in
advance, by entering it in the Comments section on the My
Prizes page, but I’ll also be inviting questions on the day.
If
you are interested in either of these talks please
update your My Prizes page accordingly – and remember that you must have
entered the competition to have a chance of winning either of these
opportunities (or any of the other prizes on offer).
Here’s a reminder of all the prizes which are still
up for grabs:
The
TOP PRIZE this year has been generously donated by Findmypast – it’s a 12 month PREMIUM SUBSCRIPTION offering virtually unlimited
access to ALL of Findmypast’s billions of historical records from around the
world (including the 1921 England & Wales census), modern electoral
registers for the UK, and hundreds of millions of newspaper articles.
There
are lots more prizes to be won, including:
STAR
PRIZE – 12 MONTH DIAMOND SUBSCRIPTION TO THE GENEALOGIST
With the TOP SUBSCRIPTION
you'll have access to millions of records including Tithe Maps and records from the 1910 Land Valuation
(Lloyd George Domesday) that aren't available online
at any other site. You'll also have access to Map Explorer - come along to Mark Ayley's talk
next month to find out more!
STAR
PRIZE – ONE TO ONE ‘BRICK WALLS’ SESSION WITH DR JANET FEW
Janet
Few is an experienced and qualified family, social, and community historian who
has spoken at many 
national and
international genealogical events. She is also a well-known author, several of
whose books have been reviewed in this very newsletter, including Putting
Your Ancestors in Their Place. A founder member of the Society for One-Place
Studies, and a former Chair and Vice-Chair of the organisation, she is
currently Chair of Devon Family History Society.
Whether
you win this prize or not you’ll find it worthwhile reading Janet’s excellent
advice on what to do before you ask for help – you’ll find it here.
STAR
PRIZE – WILL TRANSCRIPTION BY DAVE ANNAL
Wills are a wonderful
source of information, but few family historians have mastered both the
handwriting and the abbreviations.
I’m
delighted that professional genealogist Dave Annal, former Principal Family
History Specialist at The National Archives, and author of numerous books has
offered to transcribe up to 4 pages from 1 or 2 wills submitted by the
prize-winner (provided they are written in English rather than Latin).
Dave
Annal’s blog is a great source of tips, and if you haven’t read his June 2021
post Walls Come Tumbling Down I would thoroughly recommend it – you’ll
find the article here.
STAR
PRIZE – A CHANCE TO REACH OUT TO 70,000 FAMILY HISTORIANS
More
family historians read this newsletter than any other independent genealogy
publication, so just
imagine what might
happen if you were able to reach out to the readership!
Whether
you have an ancestor who disappeared off the face of the earth, someone you
can’t identify in a photograph, or any other family history-related mystery, if
you’re the prize-winner I’ll give you up to a page in the newsletter to explain
the problem and appeal for help solving it.
To
have a chance of winning any of these wonderful prizes, all you need to do is
enter my competition by adding relatives to your My Ancestors page, and indicate which prizes you are most interested in
on your My Prizes page. Forgotten how to log-in to your LostCousins
account? No problem, just click here and
enter your email address (as shown in the text of the email you received
telling you about this newsletter).
STAR
PRIZE – ANCESTRY DNA TEST (UK only)
There
can’t be many people reading this who haven’t tested their DNA, but what about
your cousins? One of the best ways to knock down a ‘brick wall’ using DNA is to
persuade a cousin who shares the same ‘brick wall’ to test. They don’t need to
be interested in family history – though they will need a free Ancestry account
in order to register their test (they can then assign
the management of the test to you, as many of my own cousins have done).
I have a spare
Ancestry DNA kit which I will post either to the winner or the person they
nominate – but it must be a UK address, as this is a UK kit. As with all of the other prizes, you can only win if you enter the
competition (by adding to your My Ancestors page) and indicating your
interest in your My Prizes page.
STAR
PRIZE – ANCESTRY DNA TEST (US only)
LostCousins
member Terri has generously donated this prize, which currently sells for $119
(it’s the version with traits). It can be posted to the winner or the person
they nominate but it must be a US address.
Thanks
again to Terri for making this test available – what a wonderful gesture!
Other
prizes include opportunities to attend exclusive Zoom presentations, with limited
audiences so that everyone who wants to can ask a question (if you are on the
guest list you will also have the opportunity to
submit a question in advance, if you prefer).
SOURCING
WOMEN ANCESTORS with ELSE CHURCHILL – THE GENEALOGIST AT THE SOCIETY OF
GENEALOGISTS
The
Society of Genealogists (SoG) was founded in 1911, so
to be the genealogist at the Society is arguably the most 
prestigious position imaginable!
Else
Churchill is not only extremely knowledgeable, she is
a wonderful communicator – she spoke at
both of the Genealogy in the Sunshine conferences that I organised in
Portugal (in 2014 and 2015), and I was delighted when she accepted my
invitation to speak to LostCousins members via Zoom. DATE TO BE ARRANGED
MARRIAGE
LAW with PROFESSOR REBECCA PROBERT
The leading expert on
English marriage law and customs over the centuries, Professor Probert is the
author of numerous books – both academic textbooks and easily understood guides
for family historians like you and me.
Her
best known book is the ground-breaking Marriage Law for Genealogists
which debunked many of the myths that have seduced previous generations of
family historians – you can read my review here.
Professor
Probert will give a Zoom presentation followed by a Q&A session, but there
will also be the opportunity to submit questions in advance by entering them in
the comments section of your My Prizes page. The presentation will
commence at 10am (London time) on Saturday 11th February – put the
date in your diary now in case you’re one of the lucky ones!
WENDY
PERCIVAL – interview with the author of the Esme Quentin mysteries
What
I like most about genealogical mysteries is the continuity from one book in a
series to the next – I 
feel that with each
book I get to know a little bit more about the lead character. I can’t say that
I’ve ever identified with Esme Quentin, the hero of Wendy Percival’s highly-popular books, but she’s certainly a convincing
amalgam of some of the researchers I’ve come across since founding LostCousins
back in 2004.
I’ll
be interviewing Wendy Percival via Zoom, asking questions that have intrigued
me – and hopefully some that have intrigued you. If you are fortunate enough to
be in the audience you’ll also have a chance to ask
questions – but please don’t expect Wendy to reveal very much about book 5 in
the series, you’ll have to wait until it is released!
The
interview will commence at 7pm (London time) on Monday 6th February.
I’m aiming to send out the invitations no later than Friday.
Is
it OK to knit when you’re on Zoom?
I
was amused to read in this BBC article that a councillor
has been criticised for knitting during a Zoom meeting – because my sister-in-law
is almost always knitting when we have a family Zoom.
I
couldn’t see anyone knitting when I gave a DNA talk on Wednesday, but on the
other hand I could only see two-thirds of the attendees – the other third either
didn’t have a camera, or had it turned off. For all I know they could have been
knitting, eating, or yawning – well, hopefully not yawning (though since some had
got up at 5am to hear me it would have been perfectly understandable).
Even
now, three years into the pandemic, there is a significant minority of family
historians who have yet to make use of Zoom or other similar tools (such as Skype,
Facetime, or Microsoft Teams), even though they’re both free and freely used by
people of all ages. I did once consider having a Zoom event for first-timers, but I’m not sure that anyone would show up!
From
my point of view, as a speaker, being able to deliver a presentation remotely
is wonderful – I’ve given many more talks in many more places than I could ever
have done before. For example, even though I previously limited my talks to
Essex, my home county, I typically spent twice as long travelling to and from
the venue as I did speaking and answering questions. Now
I can talk to people all over the world without leaving my study!
Carolina in my mind: the Scottish lyrics that weren’t
written by Burns
I’d
never heard of Lady Carolina Nairne until I read this
article,
published on Burns Night. How can someone so talented have been forgotten?
The King’s Bed – picked up for a song
Traditionally
the sovereign sleeps at the Palace of Westminster – conveniently close to Westminster
Abbey – on the night before the Coronation, although the last monarch to do so
was George IV in 1821.
The
State Bed was damaged by fire – possibly when the House of Parliament burned
down in 1834, and a new bed was constructed in 1859. 6 feet long and 12 feet
high it was an impressive piece of furniture (though it wouldn’t be long enough
for me!), but it wasn’t used by Edward VII in 1902, nor by any of his
successors. Queen Elizabeth II would have fitted into it comfortably (she was 5
ft 4in at her tallest), but she didn’t have the option because at some point in
the 1940s it disappeared.
It
wasn’t until 1979 that an expert from the Victoria & Albert Museum started asking
about the whereabouts of the bed, and it wasn’t until the 1990s that the Northamptonshire
family who had purchased the bed – in pieces – for £100 in an auction in the
mid-1960s realised that what an important piece of furniture it was. You can
read more about this fascinating story in this BBC article.
What will happen to your prized
possessions?
For
me, the story in the previous article was a reminder that when we’re no longer
around to answer questions our descendants and/or beneficiaries may have no
idea what certain possessions meant to us – whether they are family heirlooms,
or simply acquired along the way.
Sadly
many family heirlooms end up being sold at auction – I know that, like me, some
of you have acquired photograph albums and other items with the intention of
reconnecting them with the families that once owned them (and you may remember me
telling
how I succeeded in reuniting an 1838 sampler with descendants of the family).
However my first acquisition of this nature was rather different – it was an
archive of family correspondence, many hundreds of letters sent to a Victorian
lady in the 1840s and 1850s, some before her marriage (to a wealthy Member of
Parliament) and some afterwards.
That
acquisition, in December 1993, meant that my future wife and I spent our first
Christmas together looking inside envelopes at letters that had been unseen for
150 years. I cannot understand how the family – which still owns the stately
home where that Victorian lady lived – could have parted with them, but perhaps
the fact that she died and her husband not only remarried but changed his name
to incorporate his wife’s surname might have had something to do with it.
What
will you do to ensure that your prized possessions will means as much to
your beneficiaries as they do to you? Much of our family history research can
be replicated by someone with the time and the skills, but most physical items
are irreplaceable.
Tip:
although our research could be replicated, consider how much better it would be
if you could pass your research on to someone who – even if they had not plans
to continue it – would recognise its importance to you, and safeguard it for
the benefit of future generations? At LostCousins you can enter the email address
of your ‘beneficiary’ on your My Details page – indeed, ours was the first website
to offer this option, which some much better-known sites have belatedly copied.
Researcher makes unexpected discovery
One
of best things about researching our family history is the way that it teaches
us to be sceptical about stories, whether we hear them from family members or
read them in the newspapers, and cultivates research
skills that we can use in most areas of our lives.
A
real bonus is when we discover something unexpected in a genealogical database:
for example, searching the British Newspaper Archive recently I came across a
1970 advertisement in a local paper offering a house for rent at the princely
sum of 20 guineas a week. Nothing unusual about that, you might think – prior
to decimalisation things were often priced in guineas (these days it’s only racehorses)
– but this particular house happens to be where my wife and I now live, so for
us it’s a clue to our house history.
We
knew who owned the house from the deeds, but this is the first evidence that it
was let out during the 1970s. Particularly fascinating are the details of the
accommodation – each room is listed, so whilst there is no floor plan it’s
possible to relate it to what can we can see now.
We
did know that it had been rented out in the 1950s – not long after moving in I
put a postcard in the window of our local post office seeking old computers (collecting
them is a hobby of mine), and one of the respondents told me that he lived here
for a few years after he married. He even had a photograph which showed the house
in the background, though as all that was visible was a brick wall (don’t we
love those!) it could have been almost anywhere.
That
was a really unexpected discovery – but then most
discoveries are unexpected. Rather like Alexander Fleming’s discovery of
penicillin, I was looking for something completely different.
Tip:
you can access the 63 million pages in the British
Newspaper Archive either at the BNA site, or via Findmypast (a Pro or Premium
subscription is required). As it happens I made my discovery at Findmypast, but
I use the dedicated site for repeated searches as it allows me to restrict the
results to articles added to the database since my last search.
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 2023 Peter Calver
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