Newsletter – 28th
September 2022
BREAKING NEWS: Flash sale at
Findmypast OFFER EXTENDED
My birthday gift – to
you! FREE COUSINS
When
is an ancestor not an ancestor?
Richard III – still causing
controversy
Why the Queen’s
coffin was hauled by the Royal Navy
Turning the clock
back – what happened when George V died
Where there’s no will….
problems at the probate website
Ancestry’s SideView is about to do what we really wanted all along
Will Tennent’s band
of Bastards
Wise words from the
late Hilary Mantel
Gardeners Corner: Variegations
on a Theme
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 16th September) 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!
BREAKING NEWS: Flash sale at Findmypast OFFER EXTENDED
I’ve
just heard that from today until Friday Monday you can save 20% on ANY new 12 month subscription to ANY of Findmypast’s worldwide sites.
All of the offers start and end at 10am London time,
but for your convenience I’ve given a local equivalent next to the links below.
If you’re in North America you’ll need to subscribe by
Thursday Sunday night (or else get up very early indeed on Friday) Monday.
Whilst
there are also discounts on shorter subscriptions the saving only applies to
the first payment, so to make a worthwhile saving you really need to go for the
12 month subscription. This will not only help to protect
you against inflation, shorter subscriptions don’t qualify
for Findmypast’s Loyalty Discount scheme (see the note at the end of this
article).
- With a PLUS subscription
you will have unlimited access to all of
Findmypast’s historical records from Britain and Ireland, including parish
registers, military records, migration records, censuses (excluding
1921, which is not included in any subscriptions at any site, but including
the 1939 Register), and much more.
- The top offering, a PRO or
ULTIMATE subscription, adds worldwide records and newspapers, including
the papers and magazines in the fast-growing British Newspaper Archive
(the biggest online collection of British newspapers in the world).
There
is also a Starter (or Essential) subscription but, as the name implies, it’s aimed
at beginners – most people reading this would find it too limited. All subscriptions
allow you to create an online family tree if you want (or upload an existing
tree in GEDCOM format, which is supported by all family tree programs).
I’m
often asked whether Findmypast is better than Ancestry – my answer is always
that if you can afford it, you should subscribe to both (because many key
records are only found at one site or the other), but if you can’t, choose the
site which you’ve never subscribed to before, or if you’ve tried both, the site
that has more of the parish registers for the counties which you’re currently
researching.
Bear
in mind that your counties of interest are likely to change and multiply as
your research progress: all of my ancestors were in
London at some point during the 19th century, but in almost every
case they had come from further afield. For example, my great-great-great
grandfather John Holmes was born in London, but his parents married in Devon,
and his father was stationed there with the Staffordshire militia. Similarly,
my great-grandfather Alfred Bea(u)mont was born in
London, but his father was born in Hertfordshire, and his maternal grandfather
came from Kent.
Findmypast currently has images of the parish registers for: Cheshire, Devon, Hertfordshire, most of
Kent, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Rutland, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Surrey, Warwickshire, much of
Yorkshire, and most of Wales.
Findmypast also has a vast collection of transcribed register entries, thanks
to the company’s close relationships with family history societies.
See my Masterclass Tracking down pre-1837 baptisms and marriages for a
comparison between the registers held by Ancestry and Findmypast (it’s over a
year old, but still pretty much up to date). These days parish register images
for a few counties are available at more than one site, but whilst the images
might be the same, the transcripts and indexes are likely to differ, so that’s
something else to take into consideration.
This offer isn't exclusive - you can only support LostCousins by using the relevant link below
(and try the link anyway, even if you've missed the deadline as there is often a grace period):
Findmypast.co.uk – SAVE 20% on 3 and 12 month subscriptions ENDS 10AM (London) MONDAY
Findmypast.com.au – SAVE 20% on 1 and 12 month subscriptions ENDS 7PM (Sydney) MONDAY
Findmypast.com – SAVE 20% on 1 and 12 month subscriptions ENDS 5AM (New York) MONDAY
Findmypast.ie – SAVE 20% on 1 and 12 month subscriptions ENDS 10AM (Dublin) MONDAY
Tip:
Findmypast currently offer members with 12 month
subscriptions 15% Loyalty Discount on automatic renewals – so other things
being equal you shouldn’t be faced with a swingeing increase in a year’s time.
And should circumstances change, you can always cancel before the renewal date –
it’s your option.
My birthday gift – to you! FREE
COUSINS
It’s
the time of year when my age goes up another notch – to 72 this time, but who’s
counting?
I
gave up having birthday parties long ago, and my wife knows better than to organise
a surprise party, but it gives me great pleasure to think of LostCousins
members making new connections – so I’ve decided that the LostCousins website
will be totally free until Monday 10th October. That gives you two
long weekends and the week in between to take advantage of this opportunity.
- For those of you who don’t currently
support the LostCousins project by paying a subscription it’s a chance to make contact with the other members who are researching
your ancestors. The more relatives you add to your My Ancestors
page, especially from the 1881 censuses, the more connections you’ll make.
During the free period you can invite anyone in the New
contacts section of your My Cousins page to connect – click Make
contact.
- Those of you who generously support
my work by subscribing will benefit from the greatly increased chance of
making connections during and after the free period. Experience has
shown that once a member makes their first connection
they usually add more relatives in order to make further connections.
Did
you know that you can find out how the other member is connected to you even
before you contact them? Click their name or initials on your My Cousins
page and you’ll be taken to the My Contact for that relationship. This
will show how each of the relatives you share are related to each of you – information
which is used to calculate whether you are cousins or, perhaps, only related by
marriage. It’s a good idea to check what the connection is before trying
to make contact, and it’s essential that you do so before corresponding with
someone.
Tip:
although some of the contacts you make will only be related to you by marriage,
it’s usually the case that you’ll both be cousins to the descendants of that
marriage – which means that you have a common interest in that branch.
When is an ancestor not an ancestor?
The
My Ancestors page is absolutely fundamental to
the LostCousins system, but despite the name given to the page, most of the
relatives you enter there won’t be direct ancestors of yours – the vast majority
will be cousins of your ancestors (which, of course, makes them cousins of yours).
So the answer to the riddle “When is an ancestor not
an ancestor” is “When it’s an entry on your My Ancestors page”.
You
might be one of the thousands of LostCousins members whose British ancestors all
emigrated long before the 1881 Census – which means you can’t enter any of your
direct ancestors. You might be surprised to learn that this makes very little
difference to your chances of finding ‘lost cousins’ – because most of your
living cousins are descended from relatives who stayed behind.
In
fact the most important people to enter on your My
Ancestors page aren’t your own ancestors, but your cousins’ ancestors. You
might think “I don’t know who my ‘lost cousins’ are, so how can I enter their
ancestors?”, but that’s looking at it from the wrong direction. Simply enter as
many as possible of the deceased cousins you can find in 1881, because it’s their
descendants who are your living cousins.
You
might be even more surprised to learn that entering the relatives from 1881 won’t
simply connect you to British cousins whose direct ancestors were recorded
on that census, but also to cousins around the world whose ancestors had migrated!
That’s because they’ll have done exactly the same as I’ve
asked you to do – enter their cousins from 1881.
A
brooch containing a lock of Admiral Horatio Nelson’s hair has recently been
sold at auction for more than twice the pre-sale estimate – see this article
at the BBC News website.
Could
Nelson’s DNA be extracted from the hair? In the past it was thought that only mitochondrial
DNA is found in rootless hair, but in recent years fragments of nuclear DNA have
been extracted from samples – so it’s just possible that some of Nelson’s DNA
might be recoverable (though the cost is likely to be prohibitive).
Richard III – still causing controversy
Due
to be released on 7th October, The Lost King is about the
discovery of the remains of King Richard III under a Leicester car park,
perhaps one of the most astonishing archaeological searches of all time.
Richard
has long been a controversial character – some believe he ordered the murder of
‘the Princes in the Tower’, others consider him no worse than his contemporaries.
However this film isn’t about Richard, but about the sequence
of events that led up to the discovery of a skeleton, and its identification as
that of the King whose character Shakespeare so comprehensively assassinated.
When
I read about the film in this BBC article I
could understand why Philippa Langley, the instigator of the search, had felt ignored
– thinking back 10 years I can’t recall ever being aware of her key role in the
discovery. Whilst some of the scenes in the film may have been invented for dramatic
effect, I get the feeling that academics whose feathers have been ruffled ‘doth
protest too much’ as Shakespeare memorably wrote.
Note:
there’s also a book, written by Philippa Langley and Michael Jones, which is available
now from Amazon – it was previously published as ‘The King’s Grave’.
Why the Queen’s coffin was hauled by the Royal Navy
I’m
sure that I wasn’t the only one who wondered why, with so many horses in
evidence, the carriage bearing Queen Elizabeth’s coffin was hauled by men and women of
the Royal Navy. It all goes back to Queen Victoria’s funeral, as this article
from the Coventry Evening Telegraph of 4th February 1901
explains:
Image
© THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. All rights reserved. Used by kind permission of
Findmypast
This
film footage of the
funeral (which my wife found online) doesn’t show the problem itself but you’ll
notice that the procession suddenly stops, then at 8 minutes and 14 seconds in you
see the gun carriage coming into view, hauled by sailors.
Note:
a letter to The Times in 1936 provided a slightly different version of the
story – you can read it here,
in the postscript at the bottom of the page.
Turning the clock back – what happened when George V died
When George V died he was succeeded by his eldest son, the Prince of
Wales, who chose the title Edward VIII.
Edward
didn’t achieve much during his short and unhappy reign, but the uncrowned King
did make one lasting change – after consulting Queen Mary, the widow of the
late King, he ordered that the clocks at Sandringham House be put back to
Greenwich Mean Time. The clock of the parish church was also adjusted.
You
can read more about this change and the reason why the clocks showed a
different time in the article on the right, taken from the Sleaford Gazette
of 24th January 1936.
Image
© Johnston Press plc. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. Used
by kind permission of Findmypast.
Interestingly,
when the Staffordshire Sentinel published a similar article a few days
earlier they referred to Queen Mary as the Queen Mother. This is the only time
I can recall seeing Queen Mary described in this way – Edward VIII was
unmarried, for reasons that we all know only too well, so there was no need to
distinguish Queen Mary from any consort. See also the article
entitled The King Father in the last issue of this newsletter.
As
has happened in 2022, there were articles in the newspapers of 1936 talking
about new coins that would bear the head of King Edward VIII – they, of course,
never appeared, though there were postage stamps issued.
Where there’s no will…. problems at the probate website
At
the beginning of February I wrote
that the Government’s probate website was back online, allowing the ordering of
post-1858 wills for England & Wales. However nearly 8 months later the site
still has many faults, making it difficult – and sometimes impossible – to order
wills, especially for those who do not have a subscription to Findmypast or
Ancestry.
During
this difficult period there has been an ongoing
discussion on the LostCousins Forum, and anyone who has written to me about
problems they were experiencing have been referred to the forum (you don’t need
to be a member of the forum to read most of the content, only to post messages of
your own). This week some of the contributors have, at my request, posted summaries
of the current position, based on their own experiences. If you plan to order
wills, or have had problems doing so, I’d thoroughly recommend that you read what
others have written.
Thank
you to all those who have contributed to that discussion.
Note:
if you have already qualified to join the forum there will be a link and a code
near the top of your My Summary page; if you haven’t yet qualified just add
more relatives to your My Ancestors page, ideally from the 1881 censuses (a Match
Rating of 1 or more is currently sufficient to earn you an invitation, though
the threshold may increase in future). Remember that it’s the relatives from the
branches of your tree who are most likely to connect you to your ‘lost cousins’,
so these are the relatives to enter – it doesn’t much matter where your own
ancestors were in 1881.
Most
family historians turn to DNA in order to knock down the
‘brick walls’ that are preventing them researching further back. You would
think, therefore, that this important goal would take priority when the results
come through, typically about a month after sending off the test.
However,
what most people actually do when they get
their DNA results is rather different. In their excitement they forget the
reason they took the test, and instead try to figure out how they’re connected
to the people they’ve been matched with, starting with the closest cousins near
the top of the list, and focusing on the people they don’t already know. All
good fun, but not what was supposed to happen!
So what should they do instead? Bearing in mind that the reason
for taking the test was to knock down your ‘brick walls’, surely it makes sense
to focus on the matches which are most likely to help achieve that goal? It’s
unlikely that those cousins will be near the top of the list – they’re more
likely to be somewhere in the middle, which means that if you work your way
down the list you’ll never get to them!
Since
you’ve got upwards of 10,000 matches you’re not going to find the cousins who
are most likely to help simply by picking people at random, or based on their Ancestry
user name – you need a well-thought out strategy, and that’s where my DNA
Masterclass wins hands down. The simple, but effective, strategies set out
there will pick out the matches which are most likely to help, enabling you to
get the most out of your test in the least possible time.
It’s
important to remember that to knock down 'brick walls' using DNA you don't need
to find a cousin who has already knocked down the same 'brick wall' – after all,
if there was such a person you wouldn't need to use DNA, you could just search
Ancestry trees. The power of DNA lies in the fact that it can substitute for
incomplete or missing records, prompt us to reassess incorrectly recorded
register entries (eg where
the vicar has entered the wrong name), or draw our attention to records that
would otherwise seem implausible because of the location or timing.
In
other words, DNA allows us to knock down 'brick walls' that are resilient to
other methods of investigation. For example, last year one of my oldest ‘brick
walls’ came tumbling down, not because one of my cousins had already figured
out who the parents of my great-great grandmother were, but because amongst my
DNA matches were two cousins who were descended from previously unknown siblings
of my ancestor. None of us knew of the others’ existence, none of us knew of
the other siblings – it was a perfect example of how DNA can work miracles,
provided you go about it the right way.
Note:
you can read the story of that particular discovery in two articles published
in the newsletter – you’ll find them here
and here.
Ancestry’s SideView
is about to do what we really wanted all along
When
I first heard about Ancestry’s SideView technology in
a presentation to industry insiders I was excited about the opportunity to
discover which side of my DNA tree matches were from – but the first
application was to ethnicity estimates, which for most of us are not the reason
we tested.
Yesterday
I learned, courtesy of LostCousins member Tim, that the next stage is imminent –
you can read all about it here.
Just about everything to do with DNA is based on statistical algorithms, so I’m
not expecting perfection – but this new feature should still save me a lot of
time.
Will Tennent’s band of Bastards
Last
week a fascinating article was published in the English Historical Review
– you can read it free online.
Subtitled Illegitimate Children, Parenthood and Siblinghood in Ireland,
c.1759–1832 it deals with William Tennent, a successful businessman who
fathered at least 13 illegitimate children, with multiple women, before his eventual
marriage in 1805.
He
does at least seem to have made some provision for the upkeep of the children,
though by all accounts it was never enough to meet the mothers’ needs. Things were
no doubt rather different for my own illegitimate ancestors…..
I
get to hear many fascinating tales, and these days many of them involve
discoveries made following a DNA test. I’m fortunate to be able to share with
you this story from LostCousins member Andy:
“Some years ago, I contacted a member on
Ancestry where it appeared we had a family connection; my great uncle, on my
maternal side, was the lady’s grandfather. Move forward a few years and the
lady asked if I would take an Ancestry DNA test as she had doubts as to her
biological father. I took the opportunity to expand any possible DNA matches to
both sides of my family so my daughter took the DNA test which confirmed the
lady's doubts.
“However, my daughter's result showed a match
at 508cMs to a family which I could not find any common surname or location so
contacted the member but they were unable to help with
establishing where the family link was.
“Fast forward to early last year when our
daughter had a 583cM match show up at Ancestry, but again I could not find any
obvious similar surnames. I contacted the match – I'll refer to her as 'M' –
who had a well-documented tree, and we exchanged a few details but neither of
us had any idea who the common ancestor could be. From the matches I had from
the Ancestry DNA test I had then recently taken with them I could exclude my
ancestors. Eventually and having been up a number of
blind alleys it seemed we could also exclude my wife's paternal line which left
her maternal line as the likely link. Looking at our daughter's other matches,
specifically that at 508cMs, there was also a close link with M.
“By a process of elimination looking through
records on M's tree I came up with her family, well to be precise a father,
mother and three sons, one of these sons being M's father, recorded in an
incoming passenger list. As the address for the family was in an area where my
wife lived as a child, I asked her did she know the location. Yes, said my
wife, in fact she knew the family! My wife's family and M's father's family
recorded on the passenger list were close friends and back in the 1950's the
families used to holiday together.
“To try and confirm the connection my wife
took a DNA test and whilst waiting for the results she contacted M's father. We
met - the first meeting my wife and M's father had, or even spoken, in over 55
years! Following my wife's DNA results which showed a 1229 cMs
match to M it was fairly evident as to the relationship with M's father. M's
father then took a DNA test which came back showing a match at 1562 cMs with my wife – they being half
siblings!
“So, my wife's biological father is not as
shown on her birth, marriage or official records. It
just goes to show that all the research carried out over many years supported
by official documentation is open to further scrutiny.”
I’m
very glad that Andy made that final point – so often family historians are
convinced that their tree must be correct, because they have the
documentation to prove it.
Wise words from the late Hilary Mantel
When
Hilary Mantel delivered the Reith Lectures in 2017 she
included the following words, which all family historians should take to heart:
Evidence is always partial. Facts are not
truth, though they are part of it — information is not knowledge. And history
is not the past — it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance
of the past. It’s the record of what’s left on the record.
It’s the plan of the positions taken, when we to stop the dance to note them down. It’s
what’s left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it — a few stones,
scraps of writing, scraps of cloth. It is no more “the past” than a birth
certificate is a birth, or a script is a performance, or a map is a journey.
It is the multiplication of the evidence of
fallible and biased witnesses, combined with incomplete accounts of actions not
fully understood by the people who performed them. It’s no more than the best
we can do, and often it falls short of that.
Gardeners Corner: Variegations on a Theme
If
you would like to know how to make the best use of variegated shrubs in your
garden please follow this link to
my wife’s latest article.
Recipes
that require the use of lemon peel usually specify that the lemons should be unwaxed
– after all, nobody wants to eat wax or chemicals. But whilst my wife grows
lemons (yes, here in England!) there aren’t nearly enough to meet all of our needs, so I have to buy in further supplies. However in my supermarket (Tesco) the only lemons described
as unwaxed cost £1.80 for 3, whereas their standard lemons cost half that, just
30p each.
Removing
the wax using hot water isn’t difficult – the wax floats to the top. Except
that it didn’t when I tried it out with a pack of Suntrail
Farms lemons – Tesco’s budget brand, and my usual choice because a net of 4 small
lemons costs just 50p. I soon figured out why: they don’t use wax or any other
additives on the budget lemons, which makes them a real bargain buy!
I
mentioned recently that you can save energy by only boiling the amount of water
you need, and that one easy way to get it precisely right is to fill the mugs
or cups you’re going to be using with cold water, then tip it into your kettle.
But what should you do if you boil too much water? Perhaps surprisingly, the
best thing you can do is add cold water to the kettle. How much you add will
depend on how much water you will need to boil next time, but
adding the cold water immediately will reduce the rate at which heat is lost to
the surroundings.
This
week I made another batch of Shepherd’s Bullace jam – more than enough to see us
through to next year. Now the only question is what to do with our surplus
tomatoes, do I turn them into jam or chutney?
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......
I’ll be back next month, a year older, but not necessarily any
wiser. See you again soon!
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2022 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?
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