Newsletter – 29th July
2020
Good news - Ancestry changes delayed
Has your family been affected by COVID-19?
Is your maiden name the one you were given at
birth? Née
MASTERCLASS: finding birth certificates
CHALLENGE: can you break down this 'brick wall'?
Wills witnessed by video link to be legal
Society of Genealogists library re-opens on Tuesday
Important advice for libraries and family
history societies
The history of brands and companies
Pawn tickets provide clues to life a century ago
The gift that doesn't
keep on giving
The dying teenager who wanted world peace
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 23rd July) 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!
Good news - Ancestry changes delayed
I
discovered today that Ancestry are now quoting 'late August' as the changeover date
for their new DNA matching, which will – amongst other changes – exclude segments
of below 8cM, and this eliminate matches where only 6cM or 7cM is shared.
It's an opportunity for Ancestry users to investigate
and/or save their smallest matches by adding notes, sending messages, or adding
them to a group. Of course, a significant proportion will be spurious matches
(which is one of the reasons Ancestry plans to remove them), and there will be
many that don't have tress, or have very small trees that are of little
practical use.
The
best way to save the matches that might make a difference is to follow the two
key strategies outlined in my DNA
Masterclass, then add a note to those matches that might be of future
interest..
Has your family been affected by COVID-19?
I'm
glad to say that, to the best of my knowledge, none of my extended family have been
infected by the novel coronavirus, but it would be too much to hope that all of
the 68,000 readers of this newsletter could say the same.
Nevertheless,
we know that family historians are less likely to suffer from dementia – I wonder
whether the same might be true of coronavirus? I'd
like to think that we're more thoughtful, and hence more likely to take
precautions than the average member of the population – but is that just wishful
thinking?
Note:
I read this week that bald men are more likely to be hospitalised – thank goodness
I don’t take after my father in that respect.
Is your maiden name the one you were given at birth? Née
We
tend to use the terms 'maiden name' and 'birth name' interchangeably, but there
is a subtle difference – someone's maiden name is the name they were using
immediately prior to their first marriage, which isn’t necessary the one they
were given at birth.
One
reason for the confusion may be the way that the French word 'née' (literally
'born') is sometimes used as a synonym for 'maiden name'. Of course, most of
the time people do use the same name between birth and marriage, which is
perhaps why we can be lulled into a false sense of security – and why we're
sometimes unable to find an ancestor's birth registration. You may recall that
in the last newsletter I wrote about my relative who is recorded as Florence
Bright Harris in the birth indexes, but as Florence Bright in the marriage
indexes, her parents having married 3 years after her birth.
As
I've had a number of emails recently from members unable to find their own
relatives' birth registrations I thought it would be a good idea to update my
Masterclass on finding birth certificates…..
MASTERCLASS: finding birth certificates
Note:
this Masterclass focuses primarily on England & Wales but many of the principles
can be applied in other countries
It's
very frustrating when we can't find an ancestor's birth certificate - but often
the 'brick wall' only exists in our imagination. Let's
look at some of the key reasons why a certificate can't be found....
·
The forename you know your ancestor by may not be the one on the
birth certificate
Sometimes
the name(s) given at the time of baptism would differ from the name(s) given to
the registrar of births; sometimes a middle name was preferred, perhaps to
avoid confusion with another family member, often the father. Many of our
ancestors, especially females, were known by pet names: Betty, Molly, Polly, Peggy,
Fanny, Lottie, and Nell are some of the most common.
And sometimes a birth was registered without a name – not every entry in the
birth indexes that appears merely as 'Male' or 'Female' relates to a child who
died shortly after birth (though sadly many do). Although it was possible to
amend a birth register entry to reflect a change of name at baptism, most
people seem not to have bothered – which is why almost all birth certificates
have a diagonal line drawn through the box in column 10.
There can be all sorts of reasons why a different forename is used - one of my
ancestors appears on some censuses as 'Ebenezer' and on others as 'John' (which
I imagine was the name he was generally known by). In another family the
children (and there were lots of them) were all known by their middle names.
Sometimes our ancestors' memories played tricks - my great uncle was registered as plain 'Fred',
but in the 1911 Census his own father gave his name as Frederick.
·
Middle names come and go
At
the beginning of the 19th century it was rare to have a middle name, but by the
beginning of the 20th century it was unusual not to have one. Some people
invented middle names, some people dropped middle names they didn't like, and
sometimes people simply forgot what was on the birth certificate.
A relative of mine named Emerson Read, gave his son the name Emerson Cornwall
Read, presumably in homage to Emerson Cornwall, a local dignatory
– and in later records (as well as many family trees) the father retrospectively
acquired the middle name Cornwall.
·
A middle name that looks like a surname is often a useful clue
If the mother of an illegitimate child wanted the father's surname to be shown
on the child's birth certificate the only way to do this was to name the child
after the father. However that doesn't mean that everyone who has a surname as
their middle name was illegitimate – often it was a way of remembering a family
surname.
My grandfather was Harry John Buxton Calver – his mother's maiden name was
Buxton; however I don’t have any other Buxton ancestors, because my
great-grandmother was the illegitimate child of a widow.
·
The surname on the certificate may not be the one you expect
If
the parents weren't married at the time of the birth then usually (but not
always) the birth will be indexed under the mother's surname (which might or
might not be the name she acquired at birth); the main exception is where the
mother was using the father's surname and failed to disclose to the registrar
that they weren't married. In the early days of civil registration some illegitimate
births were indexed under the surnames of both parents (the examples I've seen
are from the 1840s), but this anomaly was corrected when the GRO recompiled the
indexes in the 21st century. In modern times many births are indexed under more
than one surname.
Tip: comparing the entry (or entries) in the quarterly birth indexes against
the corresponding entry in the latest GRO indexes can be instructive.
Surname spellings were not fixed in the 19th century, and some continued to
change in the 20th century (the spelling of my grandmother's surname changed between
her birth in 1894 and her marriage in 1915). Many surnames of foreign origin
changed around the time of the First World War - even the Royal Family changed
their name.
Note: don't confuse multiple index entries with multiple registrations – the
fact that an event appears more than once in an index doesn’t mean that it is
recorded more than once in the register.
·
You're looking for the wrong
father
Often
the best clue you have to the identity of your ancestor's father is the
information on his or her marriage certificate. Unfortunately
marriage certificates are often incorrect - the father's name and/or occupation
may well be wrong. This is particularly likely if your ancestor never knew his
or her father, whether as a result of early death or
illegitimacy. Not many people admit to being illegitimate on their wedding day
- and in Victorian Britain illegitimacy was frowned upon, so single mothers
often made up stories to tell their children (as well as the neighbours).
If the groom's name is the same as the name given for his father you should be
especially wary - when you're struggling to find a birth it is a strong hint that
the father isn’t who the marriage register says he is. However it might only be
the surname that's wrong - illegitimate sons were often named after their putative
father.
Whether or not the birth was legitimate young children often took the name
of the man their mother later married, so always bear in mind the possibility
that the father whose name is shown on the marriage certificate is actually a
step-father.
·
You may be looking in the wrong place
A
child's birthplace is likely to be shown correctly when he or she is living at
home (few mothers are going to forget where they were when they gave birth!),
but could well be incorrect after leaving home. Many people simply didn't know
where they were born, and assumed it was the place where they remembered
growing up.
The most accurate birthplace is the one given by the father or (especially)
the mother of the person whose birth you're trying to track down; the least
accurate is likely to be the one in the first census after they leave home. Enumerators
also made mistakes, and sometimes added extra information - for example, my great-great
grandmother was born in Lee, Kent but the 1851 Census shows her as born in Leith,
Scotland. Clearly the enumerator could have misheard 'Lee' as 'Leith', but he wouldn't have mistaken 'Kent' for 'Scotland'. Another common
error made by enumerators was to switch the birthplaces of the head of
household and his wife.
·
You may be looking in the wrong period
Ages
on censuses are often wrong, as are the ages shown on marriage certificates -
especially if there is an age gap between the parties, or one or both is below
the age of majority (21 until 1970). Sometimes people didn't know how old they
were, or knew which year they were born but bungled the subtraction; ages on
death certificates can be little more than guesses, or may be based on an
incorrect age shown on the deceased's marriage certificate. Remember too that
births could be registered up to 42 days afterwards without penalty, so many
will be recorded in the following quarter - and they could be registered up to
365 days afterwards on payment of a fine.
In my experience, where the marriage certificate shows 'of full age' it's
often an indication that in reality at least one of them was under 21 (it was
only very recently that vicars were given the power to require evidence of age
and identity). Where there was a big difference between the actual ages of the
parties the ages were often adjusted to make the gap appear smaller.
·
The birth was not registered at all
This
is the least likely situation, but it did happen occasionally - most often in
the first few years of registration, though it wasn't
until 1875 that there was a penalty for failing to register a birth. To be
certain that a birth wasn't registered you would need
to have almost as much information as would be shown on a birth certificate –
so for practical purposes it's a possibility you can safely ignore.
It is possible that a birth was registered, but that the registrar did not
forward the information to the General Register Office; there are local indexes
available for some areas (check the county Resources page at the LostCousins
Forum)..
·
The GRO indexes are wrong
This
is also quite rare, but did happen occasionally -
despite the checks that were carried out. Fortunately
the indexes that the GRO made available on their website in November 2016 were
compiled from scratch, so most indexing errors will have been eliminated
(although inevitably some new ones were introduced). Tens of thousands of
entries are known to be missing from the new indexes.
Tip: check both old and new indexes – both are available free online.
·
The GRO indexes have been mistranscribed
Transcription
errors can prevent you finding the entry you’re
looking for - so don’t confine your searching to a single website (none of them
is perfect). Bear in mind that the indexes at Ancestry for the period up to
1915 were provided by FreeBMD, so you’re likely to
get the same results from both sites, although FreeBMD
will have included some corrections that aren't reflected in the Ancestry
database. Similarly the indexes at FamilySearch were
provided by Findmypast.
How
can you overcome these problems? First and foremost
keep an open mind - be prepared to accept that any or all of the information
you already have may be wrong. This is particularly likely if you have been
unable to find your relative at home with their parents on any of the censuses.
If
you know who your ancestor's siblings were, can you find them in the birth
indexes? If not, then consider the possibility that the parents were unmarried.
Obtain
all the information that you can from censuses, certificates, baptism entries and
other sources (such as Army records). The GRO's new birth indexes show the mother's
maiden name from the start of civil registration - the contemporary indexes
only include this information from July 1911 onwards. And don’t
assume that the same information will be shown in the baptism register as in
the birth register - if the birth was registered before the baptism the forenames
could be different. (As I mentioned earlier, whilst it was possible to update
the birth entry following the baptism this rarely happened.)
Make
use of free searches - the GRO's online index of historic births is completely
free, though the search options are very limited, with
very poor fuzzy-matching. Furthermore, although maiden names are included from
1837 onwards you can’t search on maiden name only. Findmypast
offers much better search options, and you probably won’t
need a subscription because a free search provides a lot of information. Although
maiden names currently aren't recorded for every birth between 1837-1911, the fact
that you can search by maiden name alone is incredibly useful.
The
less information you can find, the more likely it is that the little you already
have is incorrect or misleading in some way. For example, if you can't find your ancestor on ANY censuses prior to his or her
marriage, you can be pretty certain that the information on the marriage
certificate and later censuses is wrong in some material way.
Don't
assume that just because something appears in an official document, it must be
right. Around half of the 19th century marriage certificates I've
seen include at least one error, and as many as half of all census entries are also
wrong in some respect (I'm not talking about transcription errors, by the way). Army records are particularly unreliable -
one of my relatives added 2 years to his age when he joined the British Army in
1880, and knocked 7 years off when he signed up for
the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1914.
Some people really were named Tom, Dick, or Harry
but over-eager record-keepers might assume that they were actually
Thomas, Richard and Henry. My grandfather was Harry, but according to
his army records he was Henry (just as well he had two other forenames - which
were recorded correctly - otherwise I might never have found him).
Consider
how and why the information you have might be wrong by working your way through
the list above - then come up with a strategy to deal with each possibility.
Sometimes it's as easy as looking up the index entry for a sibling to find out
the mother's maiden name; often discovering when the parents married is a vital
clue (but don't believe what it says on the 1911 Census - the years of marriage
shown may have been adjusted for the sake of propriety).
If
you can't find your ancestor on any census with his or her parents then you
should be particularly suspicious of the information you have - it's very
likely that some element is wrong, and it is quite conceivable that it is ALL
wrong. Tempting as it is to hold on to clues when you have so few of them,
sometimes you can only succeed by letting go, and starting from scratch.
Make
use of local BMD indexes where they exist (UKBMD links to most local indexes), and don't
forget to look for your ancestor's baptism - sometimes we forget that parents
continued to have their children baptised after Civil Registration began.
Consider the possibility that one or both of the parents
died when your ancestor was young - perhaps there will be evidence in workhouse
records. Have you looked for wills?
Could
the witnesses to your ancestor's marriage be relatives? When my great-great-great grandfather Joseph
Harrison married, one of the witnesses was a Sarah Salter - who I later discovered
(after many years of fruitless searching) was his mother. Her maiden name
wasn't Salter, by the way - nor was it Harrison - and
it was only because the Salter name stuck in my mind that I managed to knock
down the 'brick wall'. Another marriage witness with a surname I didn't
recognise proved invaluable when I was struggling with my Smith line - he
turned up as a lodger in the census, helping me to prove that I was looking at
the same family on two successive censuses, even though the names and ages of the children didn't
tally, and the father had morphed from a carpenter to a rag merchant.
Remember
that you're probably not the only one researching this
particular ancestor - and one of your cousins may already have the answers
you're seeking. So make sure that you have entered ALL
your relatives from 1881 on your My Ancestors page, as this is the
census that is most likely to link you to your 'lost cousins'.
Even
when you find the birth certificate the information might not be correct; for
example, if the child is the youngest in a large family consider the
possibility that the mother shown on the certificate was actually the child's
grandmother (see this article
for an example). When a birth was registered by one parent the name of the
other parent could only be recorded in the register if the parents were married
(or claimed to be married); as a result some births registered by the mother
named the wrong father, and (more rarely) some births registered by the father
named the wrong mother. You can see another example of a birth certificate
which names the wrong mother here.
Finally,
do you really, really need that birth certificate? Birth certificates are a
luxury that – with few exceptions - is only available for births after the
introduction of civil registration in England & Wales in 1837 (it was 1855
in Scotland, 1864 in Ireland), so you’re going to have to do most of your
research without them.
CHALLENGE: can you break
down this 'brick wall'?
There's
nothing quite like breaking down a 'brick wall' to provide us with the
inspiration and enthusiasm to knock down some more. Marilyn in Australia wrote
to me many years ago with a simple question about birth certificates, but one
thing led to another, and a couple of hours later Marilyn's 'brick wall' came
tumbling down!
How would you like to test your skill and judgment by tackling the
same 'brick wall'? All you have to do is find the GRO
index entry for the birth of Marilyn's grandfather, starting with the same
information that she gave me.
"I am having difficulty locating BMD records for my Long
family in London about 1850-1920 - my grandfather, born in 1896, came to Sydney
in 1920. I have obtained likely looking [birth] certificates from the GRO only
to find it is the wrong person.
"My grandfather was Frederick Leonard Long, born possibly on
31 Oct 1896 (or between Aug 1896 and Aug 1897). His parents were George, a
builder (born Kensington), and Emily (born Notting Hill); I'm
trying to find her maiden name.
"My grandfather's [Australian] death certificate says he was
born at Ealing and it says that on the 1901 census too.
"My grandfather's siblings were George Solomon, Elizabeth,
Lillian, John, and Rose. The family may have been Jewish. On my grandfather's
death certificate it has his father's name as Emmanuel
(but it shows George on John's death certificate) and John's death certificate
also has his forenames as John Levi. In the 1911 census Rose is Rose Annie but
I may have found her 1896 birth as Rose Edie.
"It was only in the 1901 Census that I found the whole
family... I can only find Lillian and Rose in 1911 - I can't
find either parent or the other children. It is very frustrating!"
You can solve this mystery using nothing but free websites such as
FreeBMD.
Knocking down 'brick walls' is fun and rewarding - even when it's someone else's tree - because the experience you gain will
lead to even greater achievements in the future! This challenge previously
featured in this newsletter in 2012 and 2018, but since thousands of readers wouldn’t have been members then I thought it was worth
reprinting. There are no prizes for the correct answer - and you'll
know when you've found it, so there's no need to write in.
Tip: solving other peoples' problems is much easier than solving
your own, but it isn’t because your 'brick walls' are
higher and more impenetrable – it’s because it's harder to be objective when you’re
researching your own family.
Sometimes there are people on the fringes of our family tree who
seem to be insignificant and uninteresting – until we look closer. This blog article tells
the story of one of them.
Wills witnessed by video link to be legal
This
week the Ministry of Justice announced that wills made in England & Wales
between January 2020 and January 2022 will be legally valid where the signing
of the will by the testator was witnessed over a video link (which would
[presumably include Skype, Zoom, Facetime etc). There is more information in this
article on the BBC News
website.
Society
of Genealogists library re-opens on Tuesday
From
next week the Society of Genealogists library will be opening to members only
on Tuesdays and one Saturday per month – you'll find more details here.
Although
the library is opening only for members, there's an extensive programme of online
talks that are open to all, and a few of them are free. If you haven’t used Zoom before it’s a chance to discover how easy
it is.
Note:
there are some interesting talks here on
the BALH website – you can view the slides and notes even if you’re not a
member.
Important advice for libraries and family history
societies
How
worried should we be about the risk that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19
could be transmitted through books and magazines? The REALM
project is primarily intended to support museums and libraries, but the
findings might also help family history societies to decide when and how to re-open
their libraries.
Last
week the project published results of testing that investigated how long the SARS-CoV-2
virus remained detectable on a range of paper and card items. You'll find a brief
summary of the results here,
but a detailed test report (in PDF format) here.
Further
testing is under way, and more results should be available in early August.
The history of brands and companies
It's funny what we remember from our youth – and what
we forget. The Lets
Look Again website has a wealth of information on products and the firms
that made them – fascinating!
Pawn
tickets provide clues to life a century ago
Findmypast
have released an unusual collection of transcribed records – a recently discovered
cache of pawnbroker tickets from Coventry for the years 1915-1923. Some readers
will undoubtedly find their relatives in the records – but even you have no
family connections with the area you'll find it
fascinating to look through the records. Follow this link
to find out more.
The
gift that doesn't
keep on giving
I
like giving money to good causes – it gives me pleasure. They don’t have to be charities for me to get that nice warm
feeling – there are some organisations that deserve to be supported, because
what they're doing is important, because it's helping society. But it wouldn't
be nearly as pleasurable if money disappeared from my bank account every year
without me having the option to change my mind..
I
don’t expect everyone to feel the same way, but I know that very many do - and
that's why, when a LostCousins member chooses to support my project to connect
cousins who are researching the same ancestors, there's no commitment to keep
paying. Yes, you'll get a reminder just before the
year is up, but if you ignore it no money will be taken from your credit card
or bank account. It's very different from the way that
most other sites work.
All
of which means that when a LostCousins member does decide to continue their support,
it's a conscious decision – and hopefully they get the
same warm feeling they did the first time!
I'll be 70 in a couple of months (COVID-willing),
so it was heartening to read about the lady who is retiring from running a Gloucestershire
bakery at the age of 100! You can read her amazing story in this Guardian
article.
The dying teenager who wanted world peace
When
Jeff was given two years to live he had some ambitious plans – you can read his heart-warming story in this BBC article.
I
noticed today that the World Health Organisation has picked up on something
else that I've been saying for months – they've warned
that it’s reckless behaviour by young people that has been causing the recent
spikes in infection in many European countries (it wouldn’t surprise me if the
same is true in other countries around the world). Though to be fair to the youngsters,
we oldies would probably be just as reckless if we'd
had as much to drink….
I've managed to pick several pounds of
blackberries from the hedgerows this week, and although our apples aren't nearly
ready to harvest, there are sufficient windfalls to allow me to make oodles of
stewed blackberry and apple – delicious for breakfast, served with 0% fat Greek-style
natural yoghurt. It's healthy too - although I add a very small amount of
sugar, I rely mostly on stevia for sweetening
(it's hundreds of times sweeter than sugar). The big question now is whether
the very unripe damson windfalls can be frozen, then used to make damson gin –
I guess I may just have to experiment.
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......
Last July we had record temperatures in Britain – this year we
might just make 30 degrees on Friday 31st. Nevertheless
our summers are still much warmer than I remember from my childhood – sometimes
it was so cold on the beach that I didn’t want to come out of the sea. Happy
days!
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
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?