Newsletter - 28th September 2018
Ancestry.com.au free access weekend ENDS MONDAY
Findmypast add more Welsh
parish registers
How to bang your head against a 'brick wall'
The American who bought London Bridge
Would you check your child's DNA if it was free?
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Ancestry.com.au
free access weekend ENDS
MONDAY
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Findmypast add more Welsh
parish registers
Today Findmypast
added over 900,000 new entries to their amazing collection of Welsh parish registers
- there are more details here.
If you have Welsh ancestry
and have tested your DNA with Ancestry I'd like to
invite you to participate in the project I'm running over on the LostCousins Forum. If you’re already a member you'll see a
link to the project displayed when you log-in - but if you’re not a member yet
check your My Summary page to see whether
you qualify.
I've received many emails
from members who have found errors or unusual entries in parish registers, but
I was particularly interested in those from Llanferres
in Denbighshire which LostCousins member Barry mentioned
on the Society of Genealogist's mailing list earlier this month:
....the Rector wrote in 1791 in the register "The Baptisms and Burials
not having been entered by my predecessor since the year 1785, I have inserted
them from a Memorandum which I procured from the Parish Clerk". How much
of that was guesswork? Or, "Mr Tamerlane [Rector] lost ye year 1751 and
part of ye year 1752" and "The Account of baptisms and Burials during
the years of 1811 and 1812 was mislaid through the carelessness of the then
Parish Clerk". Best of all "There have been no entries in the parish
register for the past three months because the vicar has been drunk"! If
all that could go wrong in just one parish it seems reasonable to presume that
there was a good chance of similar errors elsewhere.
Image
© Welsh Archive Services / Gwasanaethau Archifau Cymru; used by kind permission of Findmypast
How to bang
your head against a 'brick wall'
Solving genealogical puzzles
has a lot in common with doing crosswords - you stare at the clues until you go
glassy-eyed, then someone comes along, looks over your shoulder and says "Isn't 6 across such-and-such?". It's
certainly true that involving someone else often helps, even if only by forcing
us to re-examine the evidence.
But if we're going to knock
down the 'brick walls' in our family trees on our own we have to understand our
own biases, and compensate for them. One of mine is to
delay ordering a certificate on the basis that it will be doubly-disappointing
if it turns out to be the wrong person, and that even if it is the right person
it won’t provide any useful information. These are valid fears - but they don’t
justify my failure to take a course of action that might, just might, provide
the key piece of evidence that enables the other pieces of the jigsaw to fall
into place.
Considering that a PDF copy
of a birth or death register entry costs no more than a couple of cappuccinos
it doesn’t make sense to dilly-dally in the hope that "something will turn
up", as Mr Micawber liked to say. And that's the price for England &
Wales - copies of historic register entries for Scotland are even cheaper, and
many Irish entries are completely free (so there's definitely
no excuse). True, the statistics show that some of us are a bit worse
off than we were (or thought we were) in 2008, but at £6 the cost of a PDF is
less than the cost of a certificate in 2008 (it was £7 then).
And then there are the researchers
who won't make use of DNA because they think of it as "cheating" or -
perhaps more likely - because they're worried it might prove that their
research is wrong. Ask yourself this simple question - do you want to know the
truth or not? It all reminds me of the days when family historians were divided
into those who used computers and those who didn't......
Banks seem to be continually
pruning their branch network; but when I received a letter tellimg me that the Hatch
End branch of Natwest was closing it wasn't a big
blow - I hadn't darkened their doors for a quarter of a century. In truth banks
don’t need as many branches as they used to - indeed, some manage perfectly
well without any branches at all.
But genealogy is very
different from banking - family trees do need branches, and the more
branches of your tree you research the more successful you'll be. Even if you
have no interest in communicating with your 'lost cousins' (in which case
you joined the wrong website!), the clues that fall into your lap
when you research branches are many and various - from the names of witnesses
to marriages, to the contents of wills, to the choice of names for children and
grandchildren.
So don’t close off your branches - research them for at
least two generations, because you never know what you'll discover. Of course,
in the process of tracking your branches and twigs you'll find many more
relatives in the 1881 Census who you can enter on your My Ancestors page, so there's a good chance of a bonus, the
discovery of some 'lost cousins'. Of course, you can also use DNA to find
distant cousins, but it’s not only much more expensive, it’s much more
time-consuming - especially if you haven't already researched the branches of
your own tree.
Last week the Office for
National Statistics revealed
the most popular baby names of 2017 in England & Wales, which were Oliver
and Olivia. Oliver has been the most popular name for boy babies since 2013,
but Olivia has only been at the top since 2016 (the previous winner was
Amelia). Once again my own name doesn't make the top
100 - Peter is way down the list at 183. What about your name? If you follow
the link you can check it out.
Of course, as family
historians know to their cost, most names can be spelled in several different
ways so, whereas Muhammad was only 10th on this year's list, had all 14
spellings been counted as one it would have topped the chart. Interestingly
Mohammed, which you might think is a recent addition to the pantheon of English
forenames, was already in the top 100 back in 1924. (For comparison, Jesus
wasn't in the top 100 in either year - just 4 boys were given this name in
2017, making it 3996th on the list.)
The top 5 boys' names in 1924
were all traditional - John, William, George, James, and Thomas. But Ronald and
Kenneth at 6 and 7 in the list are names you're unlikely to find in your tree before
1850. The top 5 girls' names in that year were Margaret, Mary, Joan, Joyce, and
Dorothy - only Dorothy made it into the top 250 in 2017.
Talking of names, I read this
week that the BBC are threatening to sue a dance teacher in Essex because she
calls her business for larger people 'Strictly Curved', which they feel is too
close to the name of the BBC series 'Strictly Come Dancing' (there an article
about it on the BBC News site - you'll find it here). But,
thinking about it, didn’t 'Strictly Come Dancing' take the 'Strictly' part of
its name from the film 'Strictly Ballroom'? That's certainly what I thought
when the series launched in May 2004 (which by happy coincidence was the same
month that LostCousins started), and Wikipedia seems
to agree - so it certainly makes me wonder who is ripping off whom.
When I've written recently
about the trials and tribulations of finding the final resting places of our
ancestors I've focused on locations in Britain, so I thought you might be
interested to see another point of view. Allow me to hand you over to LostCousins member Christine:
"My husband is Polish and in a recent trip to
Poland we thought that it would be a great opportunity to visit family graves
with the hope of finding more information about his ancestors. We decided we
would start with his grandfather. We knew where he was buried so we thought it
was just a case of finding the graveyard…. but it wasn’t so simple.
"The family for
generations had lived in a country town in Poland, and the old church had a
graveyard where the family had been buried. The church in Poland charges rent
for gravesites on a 20-year basis. The area where my husband’s ancestors lived,
which was once a country town, was now full of houses, as the towns slowly
encroach into the countryside. The rent on the graveyard went up. So, as is
common in Poland, the family moved the remains…using vodka or methylated spirts
to appease the dead and for sterilisation. And then the graveyard where the
remains were moved to; also upped the rent and the remains were moved again…
The result is that in some cases its exceeding hard to find your ancestors
graves. For a corpse to be moved several times is not uncommon. If the rent
isn’t paid with a certain time the remains are disposed of along with many
beautiful headstones. (attached photo example)
"So
we knew where his grandfather was buried and we knew his grave was moved to on
the first occasion, but we couldn’t locate the final resting place... it is
ironic that after he died he probably travelled to more locations than in his
lifetime!"
Note: in the background of
this photograph of a Polish cemetery, taken by Christine, you might just be
able to see I the background that the beautiful old gravestones have gone, and
been replaced with modern ones.
But it’s not just in Poland
that remains have been relocated after burial - the October 2017 issue of Significance magazine has an interesting
article about the fate of the remains of William Playfair (1759-1823), a
political economist who invented many of the types of graph that we're familiar
with today, including the line graph, bar chart, and pie chart. Playfair died at
St George's Hospital at Hyde Park Corner, and was buried at the Bayswater burial
ground of St George, Hanover Square in a 1st Class plot - but he may not have
remained there very long because, according to an 1853 article in The Lancet, it was common for the
contents of graves to be surreptitiously relocated to a cheaper area so that
the better plots could be resold. And that's assuming that body snatchers
hadn't already stolen the corpse and sold it to a medical school.....
But whether
or not Playfair's remains were relocated in the 19th century, by the
time of the Great War the now-closed burial ground became part of the War
Effort - the remaining headstones were stacked at the edges, and the land was
used to grow vegetables; it continued to be used as allotments until after
World War 2. Then, in 1964, an Act of Parliament was passed which allowed the
valuable site to be redeveloped, and thousands of human remains were exhumed
and cremated - though nobody knows whose remains they were, or how many still remain under the redeveloped site.
When I was researching the
previous article I came across a website that I hadn’t
seen before - entitled London Remembers
it is a project to document all of the memorials in London (there are already
over 5000 in the database, including many that are no longer in existence). If
you have connections to London it’s well worth a look - you'll find the site here.
The
American who bought London Bridge
I'm old enough to remember
London Bridge being sold to a buyer in the US, but this article on the BBC website offers a
fascinating insight into an unusual story.
This wonderful story on the BBC website describes how a
child, adopted in Vietnam by an American couple, eventually managed to track
down his parents decades later. And for once DNA didn’t play a part in the process.....
Would you
check your child's DNA if it was free?
Having written several
articles about inherited diseases I was interested to see how parents would
react if they were offered free DNA check-ups for their children - and the
answer was quite surprising. You can find out all about it here
- would you make the same decision, I wonder?
Not everyone agrees when I
recommend the Ancestry DNA test - I get occasional emails pointing out that
Ancestry don’t offer all the features that are available at some of the other
sites, and that some of the simplifications they make could be misleading.
All this is correct - but for
99% of the readers of this newsletter it's also irrelevant. Most people don’t want
to become DNA experts, they simply want to take advantage of the opportunity DNA
testing offers to knock down 'brick walls' in their family tree, and this is clearly
something that Ancestry have recognised.
Having previously tested with
Family Tree DNA, and used GEDmatch extensively, I initially
found Ancestry very limiting - until I realised that the differences could work
to my advantage, if only I adopted a different strategy. For me this was like a
vision on the road to Damascus - it soon became apparent that most of the time
I'd spent analysing my DNA matches at other sites was wasted, and that even for
someone like me, who had spent many years learning about DNA, Ancestry's simple
approach made better use of my time and energy. I had finally managed to knock
down 'brick walls' that had been blocking my way for 15 years - it was an
amazing experience!
That’s why I sat down and wrote
a Masterclass
article explaining how anyone could, by following the same strategy, make the
most of their own Ancestry DNA matches, simultaneously saving time and avoiding
frustration. There's nothing sensational in the Masterclass - it’s just good commonsense - but experience has shown that if someone is
struggling with their DNA results, it's almost always because they haven’t been
following my advice to keeps things simple. A little knowledge can indeed be a
dangerous thing!
Tip: the only way you can compare your DNA
against the DNA of the more than 10 million people who have previously tested
at Ancestry is to test with Ancestry yourself. If you want to find more
matches, or if you simply want to fish in a different pond, you can transfer
your raw data to several other sites - but it’s a one-way process, Ancestry do not
accept transfers of data from other providers.
The latest Jayne Sinclair genealogical mystery from
the pen of MJ Lee is out today! It takes the form of a novella, rather than a
full novel, but having read my review copy over the course of 2 days last week
I can assure you that it's no less enjoyable.
As usual the author has
carefully researched the period in which the historical events take place, so
whilst the characters and dialogue are imagined, the backdrop is realistic -
right down to the little brass boxes that Princess Mary, the daughter of King
George V, organised for the troops who were serving overseas during Christmas
1914 (you can read about them here).
Of course, there's also a
modern storyline, one that also takes place at Christmas, and the threads of
the storyline are neatly twisted together, until on Christmas Day the final pieces
fall into place - though there's an unexpected twist at the end that leaves us
looking forward to the next instalment in this series.
Unlike the novels that
preceded it, this novella is only available in Kindle format - but remember,
you don’t need a Kindle to read it! You can download a free Kindle app
for your computer, your tablet, or your smartphone - it's also worth mentioning
that, although I own a Kindle, I actually read this
book on my smartphone, because it was the most convenient option given what
else was going on at the time.
Whilst you don’t need to have
read the previous books in the series, they've all been reviewed favourably in
this newsletter, and you can currently get a 'box set' of the first three Jayne
Sinclair novels in Kindle format for just £5.99 (you'll find my original
reviews here,
here,
and here).
As usual you can support LostCousins by using the
links below (whether you buy books or anything else from Amazon):
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca
I'm always tempted by the books
on offer from The
Book People, particularly the lavishly illustrated hardbacks. This week I
ordered 100
Best Railway Stations by Simon Jenkins, partly as an early Christmas
present for my wife, but you can be sure I'll be looking over her shoulder, and
Dominion
by Peter Ackroyd, which I am aiming to read while watching Jeremy Paxman's TV
series about the British Empire. Also in my parcel was Hidden
Histories (subtitled 'a Spotter's Guide to the British Landscape') so
that I no longer feel quite so ignorant when I'm travelling through the English
countryside, and Great
Letters, a selection of more than 300 letters from The Times (sadly none of my own letters made the cut!).
If you're very quick you can
pay even less than I did by using the discount code SAVE5 (provided you spend £30 or more), but even at the price I
paid the books are a bargain - and with Christmas coming up you might well spot
some Christmas presents amongst the many other titles on offer. The Book People
also sell through Amazon, but there you'll have to pay delivery on top - when
you buy direct you can get free delivery (within the UK) by spending £25 or
more.
A couple of members who
purchased the video doorbell I recommended
recently pointed out that you don’t have to rely on your smartphone to tell you
when there's someone at the door - you can get a plug-in chime that connects wirelessly
to the doorbell. Since it was only £6.99 I bought one, despite the mixed
reviews, and I've been very pleased - if you haven’t already discovered this
handy device you'll find it here.
The latest Which? magazine
has a glowing review of a new 55in 4k TV from Panasonic - but at £2499 it's much
more than I'd ever pay for a TV (indeed, I can remember when you could buy a
house for that price, and a proper house too, not a tiny box). But over on the Argos
website they have a 65in 4k TV from HiSense for just
£699, which seems to be an updated model of the one I've got (and which cost me
slightly more). Of course, it isn't going to be as good as the Panasonic, but
as most of the customers who reviewed it on the Argos site gave it 5 stars, it can’t
be that bad.
Talking of Which?,
there's currently a drive to attract new subscribers. I can thoroughly
recommend the magazine and website, having been a reader for over half a
century, and a subscriber for most of that time - there's not much I buy
without first checking what Which? has to say. When we were planning our new
kitchen a couple of years ago I was on the site almost every day - our
fridge/freezer, dishwashers, induction hob, ovens, and microwaves were all
Which? recommendations, and they've all lived up to their promise. If you follow
this link
you can see what subscription options are available, and should you decide to subscribe
you can cancel at any time - there is no commitment. (Note: you'll also be
supporting LostCousins if you subscribe after clicking
my link.)
The Book People have a new
discount code GOLDEN20 valid Thursday 4th and Friday 5th only which gives 20% off all orders (see What am I reading?
for links and the books I ordered).
Peter Calver
Founder,
LostCousins
© Copyright 2018
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
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instead, since standard membership (which includes the newsletter), is FREE?