Newsletter - 2nd February 2018
Free access
to UK censuses & BMD records ENDS THURSDAY
How to research your family tree - a Beginner's Guide
MASTERCLASS:
finding birth certificates
Mother's
names to be on marriage certificates?
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous newsletter (dated 27th January)
click here; to find earlier articles use the
customised Google search below (it searches ALL of the newsletters since
February 2009, so you don't need to keep copies):
Whenever
possible links are included to the websites or articles mentioned in the newsletter
(they are highlighted in blue or purple and underlined, so you can't miss
them). If one of the links doesn't work this normally indicates that you're
using adblocking software - you need to make the LostCousins site an exception
(or else use a different browser, such as Chrome).
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!
Free access to UK
censuses & BMD records ENDS
THURSDAY
Until Thursday 8th February
all UK & Ireland censuses and civil BMD records will be free at Findmypast.co.uk and Findmypast.ie
- it’s not only great opportunity for you to add twigs to the branches of your
family tree, it’s also a chance for beginners to get started on this wonderful
hobby of ours.
To find out more follow this link. Also free are 3000 records relating to
suffragettes (and they'll continue to be free until International Women's Day
on 8th March).
Tip: although the article on the Findmypast
site talks about searching for female ancestors, you can search anyone,
irrespective of their gender or their relationship to you,
If you tell friends and
relatives about this offer please ask them to use the
link in this newsletter - you'll be helping to support LostCousins
- and direct them to the Beginners Guide
(see the next article).
One key resource that isn't
included in the offer is the 1939 Register - but don't despair, you can learn
quite a bit from a free search.
How to
research your family tree - a Beginner's Guide
On Tuesday I was chatting
with a friend in our village when he asked me whether I might be able to find
out something about his great-grandfather.
Well, I don't need to be
asked twice - and after just half an hour's online research I'd not only found
out who his great-grandfather was, what he did for a living, and who he
married, but taken the line two generations further back, all the way to my
friend's great-great-great grandfather, who was born in 1797.
My friend was amazed and
delighted, though it as far I was concerned it could have worked out better: since
my friend's father was a butcher and his grandfather was
a baker, I was rather hoping his great-grandfather was going to turn out to be
candlestick-maker - what a great anecdote that would have made!
Researching a family tree
really can be that easy - provided you know what to do and have access to the
key online resources. As you'll have read in the previous article, Findmypast are providing the records, so it only remains
for me to direct you to the Beginner's Guide on the Help & Advice
page at the LostCousins site - it’s called Research your British ancestors - the SMART
way!
One of the first things we
learn as family historians is that names are fickle things - in England one can
change one's name from Montague to Capulet without any legal formalities,
although for practical reasons many people of substance execute a deed poll
(which is a generic term for a deed which has no counter-party - by contrast a
contract always involves at least two parties).
I can remember that when I visited
the Family Records Centre in Islington in days of yore they had on the wall a framed
copy of the deed executed by Reginald Kenneth Dwight when he changed his name
to somewhat more melodious Elton John.
When a couple marry it’s usual for one of them, usually the bride, to change
their name - though it has been fashionable for a number of years to adopt a
double-barrelled surname, But it's still quite rare for a man to take his wife's
name on marriage, which is why this story made it onto the
BBC news website.
But it’s not a completely new
phenomenon: when my late 2nd (and 3rd) cousin Howard Horace Lemmon married in
1951 he took his wife's name, something that for many years prevented me finding
the births of their children. Some people who don’t like their surname adopt
their mother's maiden name. but that may not have been something that Howard seriously
considered (his mother was a Duck).
MASTERCLASS: finding
birth certificates
It's very frustrating when you 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. 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.
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.
· 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.
For example, one of my relatives was registered as Fred, but in 1911 his father
- my great-grandfather - gave his name as Frederick.
· 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 recorded under the mother's maiden
name (the exception is where the mother was using the father's surname and
failed to disclose to the registrar that they weren't married).
Also bear in mind the possibility that
the surname you know your ancestor by was his stepfather's name - this could
apply whether or not the child was born outside marriage.
· 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).
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 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.
· 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 consent (21). 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 they were under
21!
· 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.
· 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 many indexing errors will have been eliminated.
· 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 are
perfect).
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.
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.
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 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 included 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.
Middle names that could also be surnames often indicate
illegitimacy - it was usually the only way to get the father's name on the
birth certificate. Unusual middle names can provide clues - I remember
helping one member find an ancestor whose birth was under a completely
different surname by taking advantage of the fact that his middle name was
Ptolemy!
Make use of local BMD indexes (start at UKBMD),
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 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'.
Finally remember that 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. 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.
Note:
you can see an example of a birth certificate which names the wrong mother here.
Mother's names to be on marriage certificates?
It's some years since David Cameron, the then Prime Minister,
promised to put mothers' names on marriage certificates in England & Wales
(they’ve always been on Scottish certificates), but it finally seems as if the
legislation might make it through parliament - see this news article.
Whilst this move towards equality is a good move - fathers have, I
suspect, always felt annoyed at being thrust into the limelight whilst their
co-parents have been able to skulk in the shadows - what the article doesn't
point out is that the change will probably lead to the end of church marriage
registers as we know them, since it’s cheaper to switch to a computerised
system than replace thousands of registers. It could also mean that instead of
getting an official certificate on the day, couples who choose to marry in church
will have to wait for a computer-generated certificate to arrive in the post
(no doubt arriving while they're on their honeymoon).
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 a few 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, but since thousands
of reader 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,
In the last
issue I gave an example of a proposed marriage where the father of the
bride interrupted proceedings at the 3rd reading of the banns, and forbade the
marriage "she being a minor".
I subsequently received some
more interesting examples, including this one from the parish of St Michael, Rocester in Staffordshire:
© Image copyright
Staffordshire County Council used by permission of Findmypast
I don't know why the marriage
was forbidden, but perhaps one of them was still married to somebody else?
Whatever the reason, it clearly didn’t stop them in their endeavour, because 6
months later they married 16 miles away in Stoke (note that on this occasion
they were shown as widower and widow - which may or may not have been the
case):
© Image copyright
Staffordshire County Council used by permission of Findmypast
There's something remarkable
about the next entry I'd like to show you, taken from the marriage register for
St Botolph, Boston, Lincolnshire:
© Image copyright Lincolnshire
Archives used by permission of Findmypast
Although this marriage didn’t
take place, because the parties were "within the prohibited degrees",
you wouldn't know that from looking at the General Register Office marriage
index, where this non-event is indexed as if it had actually
taken place!
Note: I've mischievously ordered the 'marriage'
certificate, just to see what happens…..
Pam, who sent in this example
- which she spotted while transcribing the register - believes that Ann Nash
may have been the stepmother of Joseph Nash. If so, the marriage would have
been illegal until the Marriage (Prohibited Degrees of Relationship) Act 1986
came into force, even though there was no blood relationship.
Finally an example from the parish of St Mary Major, Exeter,
Devon where the groom was under age:
© Image courtesy of South West
Heritage Trust and Parochial Church Council; used by permission of Findmypast
A couple of months later the
couple successfully married in Old Cleeve, Somerset where one of the witnesses
was Robert Darch - as some of the Darch
boys attended the same school in Tiverton as Philip Hill, it is likely that one
of Philip's old school friends helped to engineer the successful elopement.
Philip was just 17 when he married - he would have had to wait until he was 21
to marry without the consent of his father.
Although 'fake news' might
sometimes appear to be a convenient epithet for inconvenient facts, there's no
doubt that over the past two years this phenomenon has done a lot more than
simply qualify for an entry in the dictionary.
This blog article on
the BBC News charts the history of 'fake news' from its origins in a small
Eastern European town - and you might be surprised to learn which of the
candidates for US President was the first to use the term.
One of the distinctive
attributes of 'fake news' is the way that it pulls the reader in with teaser
headlines - though these have been around for longer than my lifetime, and turn
up in all sorts of august publications, including research papers and even this
newsletter (albeit in a somewhat 'tongue-in-cheek' manner).
But the defining attribute of
modern-day 'fake news' is the way it exploits social media, so that stories can
literally go around the world in minutes as gullible readers share them with a
click of the mouse or a flick of the finger - although perhaps 'gullible' is
the wrong word, since many of those who are involved in spreading these viral
infections don't seem to care whether the stories are true or not.
In the past couple of the
weeks both Facebook and the British Government have announced plans to tackle
'fake news' (you can read about them here and here). I think I know
which is most likely to be effective, but I do find it interesting that they've
both chosen to get on top of this problem at the same time.
In the next article I'm going
to once again tackle the issue of 'fake news' in the world of genealogy,
because I believe there is an interesting parallel…..
Note: if you want to know more about the business of
'fake news' works see my recent book review.
This week I received an email
from a LostCousins member who had found an online
tree in which one of the individuals had, supposedly, been baptised 6 years
before he was born and married 5 times, in the space of a decade, 3 times to
the same woman, and to 2 different women on the same date. As if that wasn't
sufficient to confuse anyone, he supposedly went on to have 12 children by different
wives, 2 of whom were baptised on the same day in different parishes!
At least in that case it
should have been obvious to anyone with half a brain that there was something
inherently wrong (as was the case with the tree I wrote
about before Christmas - it’s still incorrect, by the way). But often it isn’t
obvious - the information may be wrong, but it's plausible.
One of the things I've
noticed about online trees is that incorrect information rarely appears in just
one tree, it sees to spread just as virally as 'fake news'. Perhaps it's
because, just as nature abhors a vacuum, family historians can't abide to have
a gap in their tree?
Actually,
there's more to it than that.
'Fake ancestry' is also persistent, because once someone has entered a name on
their tree they're not going to erase it just because they come across another
tree where there's an empty space. For example, suppose that there's a baptism
that at first sight could be the
right one, but which is discarded by a diligent family historian after further
research - perhaps because an examination of the burial register shows that the
child died as an infant.
Nobody, but nobody, is going
to delete their incorrect entry as a result of seeing
the empty space in my tree. Only if I were to see their public tree, notice
their error, then take the time to write to them to explain where they had gone
wrong would there be any chance of them putting it right - and even then, I
wouldn't bank on them taking any notice!
There's an example in my tree
of an illegitimate son born around 1825 who took his mother's surname; nothing
unusual about that, of course, but in this case the son married twice, and on
each occasion gave his father's name (which he said
was the same as his own) and occupation. His baptism can’t be found - at least,
not under the surname he was known by - so everyone descended from that son who
had a public online tree showed the name of his father, but not the name of his
mother.
Eventually I did manage to
persuade all 12 of the descendants who had public Ancestry trees that they'd
got it wrong, but only by putting together a two page
document which set out all the evidence. His father is still unknown - I have a
theory, but unless one of the male descendants takes a Y-DNA test we'll
probably never know the answer.
The family tree program that
I use might be outdated and inadequate in many ways (I've been using it since
2002), but it allows me to highlight possible connections in red so that I
don't forget that confirmation is required (of course, these days that
confirmation is most likely to come from DNA evidence). But online trees don’t
usually have that capability - it’s all or nothing - so if I were to make my
tree public I'd first have to delete all the 'possible' entries, to avoid
misleading others.
There will always be people
who delude themselves - that's human nature. But it should be possible to make
it more difficult for them to delude others.
Perhaps one answer would be
for sites like Ancestry to offer some form of rating system for public trees? At the moment you can post a comment about a particular
entry, but unless someone looks at the same entry and realises that a
comment has been posted and reads the comment and takes it on
board they might well take the contents of the tree at face value.
Personally I won't post a public tree at Ancestry because any
subscriber will be able to see it, take the information and misuse it. I
wouldn't mind having a public tree if it was only visible to my 11,000 DNA
matches (rather than all 2.7 million subscribers), but that isn't an option
Ancestry currently offer (they should).
To their credit Ancestry do
at least take privacy seriously - there are other websites (ones you won’t find
recommended in this newsletter, naturally) which take insufficient precautions
to protect living people. And never make the mistake of assuming
that if a site is free you've got nothing to lose: remember the saying
"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product
being sold".
I've just purchased a one-off
12 month Premium subscription to Ordnance Survey maps.
Although you can get basic maps free of charge the Premium subscription offers
all sorts of extra features, so I couldn't resist the 30% discount offered, which
brought the price down from £25.99 to £18.19 (less than the cost of a recurring
subscription). It works on all my devices, and I can download maps to my
smartphone that I can use offline.
If you want to take up this
offer, which runs until 6th February, please follow this link
and enter the discount code WALK30
at the Checkout. The promotion is being run in connection with the ITV
programme Britain's Favourite Walks.
The price of Bitcoin is half
what it was on 11th December when I first warned readers to beware the
unexpected side-effects of a crash. Given the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies
it could well go up again or fall further - quite frankly it’s a gamble, and I
don’t believe in gambling (apart from a regular flutter on the National
Lottery) - but it's a good time to make sure that you aren't unnecessarily
exposed to risk.
For example, if you've just
sold a property don’t hold all the money in one bank as the Financial Services
Compensation Scheme only covers the first £85,000 with any one banking group
(£170,000 for joint accounts). Since 2001 the FSCS has paid out over £26
billion in compensation to over 4.5 million people, which sounds like a good
thing until you realise that they were only being compensated for the losses
that they had suffered. You can find out more about the FSCS and what is (and
isn't) covered by the scheme here.
Note: there is now a scheme which covers
larger sums for a short period but it wouldn't cover all property sales; you can
read up on it
here.
Finally you may recall me mentioning in the last issue that 31st
January would be the 25th anniversary of the day I met my wife. I hope you were
impressed by the way I planned ahead - timing our first
meeting so that when the 25th anniversary arrived it would be marked not only
by a 'super moon', and a 'blue moon', but also by a lunar eclipse.
Valentine's Day will be our
15th wedding anniversary - but I have no super moons planned, nor any eclipses.
Nor will I be taking up the offer by
Greggs, the baker, of a 4 course meal for two - featuring sausage rolls and prosecco
- for just £15. Call me an old softie if you like, but I'm planning something
just a little more romantic….
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
again in a week's time: hopefully you'll have made good use of the free access
to the censuses, and added loads and loads of entries
to your My Ancestors page, because
finding 'lost cousins' is what it’s all about!
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
permission - though why not invite other family historians to join LostCousins
instead, since standard membership (which includes the newsletter), is FREE?