Newsletter – 19th
July 2022
Woman forced to adopt her own child finally gets
justice
New changes to marriage legislation proposed
Major update to railway accident site
Review: Researching Local History
The LostCousins
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This
article
on the Money Saving Expert website offers valuable advice on how we can all
make life after death a little easier. That is to say, how
we can make life easier for those left behind when we’re no longer around to
help.
I
don’t use social media any more than I have to – for me it’s a tool that comes
in useful now and again, but goes back in the toolbox
once I’ve done what needed doing, and I know that many reading this newsletter feel
the same. But it’s also clear from the large number of people who belong to
genealogy groups on Facebook (for example), that a sizeable minority of family
historians are more intensive users of social media.
According
to the MSE article some large providers now make specific provision for
accounts to be passed on, but others haven’t, and this could lead to problems for
some. Of course, one small site that was way ahead of the game (again!) is LostCousins
– we’ve allowed members to specify a beneficiary for a least 15 years, and quite
probably since we began on 2004, though I’d have to
dig through the archives to be certain.
Note:
enter your beneficiary’s email address in the box on your My Details page – it’s
about half-way down the page. The person you choose need not be actively
interested in continuing your research – what matters most is that it’s someone
you trust to preserve what you have achieved for the benefit of future
generations.
Woman forced to adopt her own child finally gets justice
There
has been a lot in the press recently about mothers who were forced to give up their
children for adoption in the days when giving birth outside marriage was not
only stigmatised, but often presented insuperable practical problems. But with
advances in technology and changes in attitudes more complex issues arise, as
in the case of Sarah Osborne, who was prevented from being named as the parent
of her child by a registrar in 2014 – see this BBC News article
for more details.
Perhaps
one day there will be a legal judgement that supports the rights of mothers to
be shown under their maiden name when their child marries? See these articles
from May if you need a reminder about the ‘Looking Glass’ situation created by careless
drafting of the new rules and regulations that were supposed to legislate for
equality.
New changes to marriage legislation proposed
When
I read Professor Probert’s latest work on marriage law, Tying the Knot I
was struck by how many times legislation was passed in the 19th
century to modify, clarify, or rectify marriage-related issues. But it seems
that in the 21st century we’re heading the same way, with yet more proposals
from the Law Commission announced today. You can download the full report here
(it’s a PDF file) or for a quick summary see this Guardian article.
Major update to railway accident site
For
20 years I had an office a stone’s throw from Harrow & Wealdstone station, the
site – in 1952 – of the worst peacetime railway disaster in the UK. On 8th
October it will be the 70th anniversary of this terrible accident,
which involved three trains – two of them express trains travelling at high speed,
one of which had passed several warning and danger signals. The accident prompted
the introduction of an Automatic Warning System to provide audible and visual alerts
in the driver’s cab.
This week the Railway
Work, Life & Death project will be releasing a new dataset, featuring
details of around 16,000 British and Irish railway workers. The project looks
at accidents to railway staff before 1939, transcribing and summarising details
from official accident investigations.
Together
with the existing data, the database will cover around 21,000 individuals, all transcribed
by the project's excellent volunteers. The information recorded includes who was
involved in an accident, what they were doing, where,
when and why – and it's all available free, from the project website.
The
project is a joint initiative of the University of Portsmouth, the National Railway
Museum and the Modern Records Centre at the University
of Warwick, working with The National Archives.
Eventually
there will be over 70,000 records in the database but it’s likely to be some
years before the project is complete.
Note:
in a typical year there are (excluding suicides) around 40 fatalities on railways
in the UK, fewer than 3% of the number of deaths on the roads – travelling by
rail is exceptionally safe (in normal times).
All of my ancestral lines pass through London – though
they may have originated in Devon, Bristol, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Hertfordshire,
Surrey, Kent, Essex, Suffolk, Ireland, Belgium, Germany and goodness knows
where else, at some point they or their descendants turned up in London. Consequently I spent many happy days researching at the
London Metropolitan Archives before Ancestry put the parish registers and some
of the other London records online around a decade ago.
On
Tuesday evenings from 6th September to 8th November the
Society of Genealogists will be running a course entitled Lost in London
which will be open to genealogists around the world (though the timing might be
awkward if you live in Australia or New Zealand). It’s not cheap, at £200 (£160
for members of the SoG), but if you’re struggling to
find your London ancestors this virtual course could be worth its weight in Bitcoin.
And even if you’ve found their baptisms, marriages, and burials you could discover
more about their lives from resources that are less familiar.
You
can learn more about what the course will cover here,
and you’ll see that if you’re new to Zoom the SoG
will arrange a free taster session if you contact them.
Note:
the course I’m waiting for is the one that will help me discover the origins of
my ancestors who seem to have arrived in London from Outer Space.
Although
few of us can trace any of our ancestral lines before 1538, when parish
registers were introduced in England, or the late medieval period when most ordinary
people acquired surnames, I find it fascinating to learn about the origins of the human race and the connections between homo sapiens
and other hominids, including Neanderthals and Denisovans.
Until
fairly recently almost all the evidence came from the
discovery of bones and other tangible relics, including tools and cave
paintings, but once it became possible to extract and sequence ancient DNA
scientists were able to learn much more about our ancestors – including when
and whether they inter-bred with other hominids.
One
of the leading researchers in the field is the Professor David Reich, who is
featured in a recent article in
Harvard Magazine which talks about his work and his discoveries – it’s well
worth reading if, like me, you want to understand a little more about your distant
ancestral origins.
Note:
many DNA testing companies will tell you about your ancestral origins but often
their analyses are based on just one or two of your millions of ancestral
lines. I’d much rather know about the origins of ancient Europeans generally, than
focus on such a small sub-section of my ancestry – because we’re all related
many times over, once you get back far enough we all
share the same ancestors.
Another
recently published paper links a skull found in China and dating back 14,000
years to an ancient population that migrated to North America from east Asia –
this article
from New Scientist has more information.
This article by a
LostCousins member demonstrates how long-held family secrets can come to light as a result of DNA testing.
“Like other Lost
Cousins members I’ve been researching my family tree
for a long time, and only recently decided to add a DNA test to the mix. It
wasn’t going to do any harm and might in the long run aid my research.
“But it didn’t at
first. For one thing my father’s county of origin was missing from the trees of
my matches, and confusingly I didn’t match with his cousin. My siblings weren’t
interested (they would be later), so I invented spurious reasons for the
results – ‘I don’t have a Y-chromosome’, and ‘not enough individuals have
tested in that county’.
“Matches appeared in
my inbox, but I couldn’t place them in my tree until lockdown 2021 when an unknown
1st cousin popped up. It took a while for realisation to dawn: suffice it to
say that I was broadsided by my emotions, and my inability to find out whose
daughter I was. How could I have been so naïve when I first got my results -
what sort of researcher was I? To make matters worse the mysterious 1st cousin
withdrew any assistance as they didn’t want to upset their own cousins, so I
was left to my own devices (and a husband who was steadily being driven mad by
my constant questioning).
“Eventually I was
able to find the family I belonged to, and identify
one of the males as my father. Forty-eight hours later the ‘unknown’ matches
fell into place, as did a 6th cousin with 185cMs who I’d been puzzling over (most
6th cousins don’t share any DNA at all). It turned out that rather like
Peter (in this recent newsletter article) my cousin and I share both a great-great grandfather on
our fathers’ side and a 5G grandfather on my mother’s side.
“My journey was
serendipitous. I'd chosen the right male as my father, my 1st cousin resumed
contact, introducing me to four more siblings and an aunt, and finally an older
cousin on my mother’s side confirmed my story – she’d kept it secret for 70
years!”
Many thanks to the
member who must remain anonymous for contributing that very frank account of their
DNA journey. It can be traumatic making discoveries like these but, on the
other hand, how much worse it would be if we didn’t find out and spent our whole
lives researching the ‘wrong’ ancestors?
Review: Researching Local History
I’ve previously read
and reviewed several books by Stuart Raymond, including Tracing
Your Non-Conformist Ancestors, Tracing
Your Church of England Ancestors, and (most recently) Tracing Your
Poor Ancestors that I had high hopes for his latest book. Though primarily aimed at
local historians, there’s such an enormous overlap between their interests and
ours that I felt it was well worth reading – and so it turned out.
One
unexpected bonus was the large number of references to past articles from The
Amateur Historian, later The Local Historian, because currently
all of the back issues are available free online at the website of the British
Association for Local History (you’ll find them here).
As
family historians we tend to focus on baptism, marriage, and burial registers –
but there is so much more in the parish chest (metaphorically speaking, since the
author reminds us that the Parochial
Registers and Records Measure 1978 required most records over 100 years old
to be deposited in record offices).
Knowing
when and where our ancestors were baptised, married, and buried might be crucially
important to family historians, but it represents such a small part of their
life story – and in many cases there is a lot more that we could discover if
only we expanded our search to include sources such as muster rolls, manorial
records, and tithe maps. And they’re just a few of the many sources you can
read about it in this book.
And
the further we get back the less adequate parish registers are for our needs:
before 1813 baptism registers usually don’t give the father’s occupation, and may not even mention the mother; burial
registers usually don’t give the age at death and may not even name the deceased,
simply record ‘a child of’…, or ‘wife of…’. Before 1754 there are no marriage
witnesses to provide clues, and we can’t be certain that widows and widowers
will be identified. It’s at times like these that the clues we glean from other
records can be vital to our research, especially when there are several
families in the area with the same surname. Tax records and other less familiar
sources may well fill the gap – provided we know of their existence, and that’s
where this book will help.
There
are so many useful links in this book that I’m looking for a
smartphone app that will save me typing the URLs which, in some cases, fill two
lines. Otherwise my only criticism is the failure to link to the web page that
I created to provide easy access to the Protestation
Returns in the Parliamentary Archives (it’s a great timesaver, as many of
you already know).
If
you have ancestors from England or Wales this book is well worth reading for
the different perspective it provides, as well as the links to key articles in
back issues of The Local Historian
– a valuable resource in itself. Out now in the UK,
and due for release shortly in other territories. Please use the links below if
you can as you’ll be supporting LostCousins at no additional cost to yourself!
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.com.au
Almost
exactly a month ago I highlighted
the upward trend in COVID infections in the UK, and reminded readers that most
people have little or no immunity against the latest variants.
The
numbers have continued to rise, despite the good weather, so much so that in one
week alone around 1 in 50 of the population of England contracted the virus,
including several friends and relatives of mine who had successfully escaped
infection during the first 2½ years of the pandemic. The one chink of light at
the end of the tunnel is the promise of further booster doses for over-50s in
the autumn, but in the meantime I’m going to continue
being cautious.
As
much of Europe swelters and record temperatures are recorded in England my wife
has come up with some tips that might help in the garden…..
Gardening
is a great test of adaptability, and not only of the plants that can to some
extent cope with short term extremes. Thriving is all about adaptation - but
even if we make our gardens more heat or drought-tolerant, there is still the
vital question of watering. Here are some tips gleaned from recent sources,
with apologies to our Southern Hemisphere, Western American and European
cousins who have already experienced far worse devastation than a few
shrivelled shrubs!
- Check that the water is cool
enough for plants. Sounds silly, but hosepipes and buckets of water left
in the sun can contain very hot water which will instantly kill your
plants. Use the hairdresser's ‘wrist test’.
- All newly planted vegetation will
die if not regularly watered. It takes a season or two to establish a
deeper/broader root system to cope with drought. Many plants only become ‘drought
tolerant’ when they become better established. This also applies to
bedding plants where the root stem never becomes sufficiently established
to cope with drought.
- It is better to water long, deep and less frequently than a light daily sprinkling.
It takes quite a bit of water to reach deep roots - but most plants will
not need a top-up every day.
- Mildew is a fungus that can
destroy the leaves that give the plants energy (roses and cucurbits -
cucumbers, courgettes/zucchini are obvious examples). Mildew can be
avoided by watering plants at the roots, which is less wasteful anyway.
- When prioritising the use of
water, I focus first on the fruit and veg, and on containers. Container
plants are entirely dependent on what you put into the container, and a
hot container can become an oven.
- I avoid watering plants prone to
slug and snail attack in the evenings, when the
culprits are most active. A deep morning watering has worked much better
and led to higher yields this year.
- Large, thick containers
(lightweight resin blends are helpful for bad backs) containing a
mini-garden of ‘thriller, spiller and filler’ plants are better
hot-weather growing environments for container plants; they dry out less
frequently and provide more shade. If you can mulch with straw, wood chips
etc this conserves moisture – but do keep the mulch away from the plant
stems to avoid rot.
- Regular container watering depletes
nutrients, which can be compensated for with liquid seaweed feed. Some
(mainly acid-loving) plants will develop chlorosis through prolonged use
of domestic chlorinated water. If rainwater isn't available, use tap water
that has stood for a day or so – but do check its temperature first!
- Drought tolerant and heat
tolerant are not the same thing. Some plants can cope with less root
moisture yet may struggle in too much sunlight. Similarly, waterlogging
can kill a plant even in a sunny location or during drought if the soil
doesn't drain well... more water is not necessarily better! Alternatively,
many tropical plants – for example, cannas – need plenty of water and
higher temperatures, but less direct sun because their native environment
is rainforest.
Understanding
these differences can be crucial to plant survival and the investment of money,
time and energy in your garden. Japanese Acers are excellent
examples of the need to pay separate attention to moisture levels, drainage,
and sunlight. All require an ideally loamy and slightly acidic growing medium
which can hold a steady level of moisture with adequate drainage (waterlogging
can easily kill them). But they need different levels of sunlight - more for
red leaved varieties, midway for green-leaved specimens, and much less for
variegated. But too much direct sunlight can scorch the leaves, leaving any
variety struggling to survive.
If
the plants struggle in the heat, at least you and I can seek shelter. And
perhaps this is another benefit of container gardening – the ability to shift
location according to season. I remember visiting Seville on a blistering day about
15 years ago, when I fainted in the heat and it was a struggle
to find somewhere cool. Eventually we came across the Jardin Americano which
has a gigantic slatted wooden structure where shade-loving trees and plants can
flourish out of the Iberian heat. Perhaps a sail shade somewhere in the garden
would serve a similar purpose?
Here
is a great article
on gardening with climate change, written by one of the professional team at
the Cambridge Botanical Gardens. Well worth a read!
Offers
I am loathe to
recommend too many purchases during a drought. That said, there are some
terrific bargains and delivery is quicker thanks to lower sales volumes (the beautiful
acer on the right would normally be well outside my price range). The sites
below are always worth a regular check for discounted items – I use them all:
Note:
Peter asked me to mention that you’ll be supporting LostCousins if you make a
purchase using any of those links.
There’s
been a lot of debate recently about ethics in politics recently, with much of
the criticism coming from people whose own ethics might reasonably be called
into question (stones and glass houses come to mind). But on a lighter note I recently discovered this site
which offers a series of increasingly testing versions of the classic ‘trolley
problem’, which most of us have encountered at some time or another.
This
morning I read
about a boy who was sent home from school for wearing shorts on the very day
when temperatures in the UK reached the highest level on record – and earlier
this month it was reported
that cinemas are banning teenagers wearing suits. Thankfully at my age nobody
seems to care what I wear – apart from my wife, of course!
Whereas
our ancestors would probably have spent most of their lives amongst a fairly
small group of family, friends, and colleagues – only rarely crossing paths
with people from different social circles – I imagine that most of us today can
think of people we’ve met who went on to great things, leaving us behind in
their wake. For example, at the age of 13 I played table tennis against the future
editor of The Times, probably the most famous newspaper in the world –
but little did I know where he was headed. Indeed, at that age I didn’t even
know where I was headed. On the other hand, the amount of spin he put on the ball
might have hinted at a career in the media (or politics)!
At
the start of this year there were two serving Prime Ministers who I had met and
spoken to long before they reached those exalted heights – but the chances are
that by the autumn there will be none. I can’t say that I identified either of
them as having the potential to reach such a high office – indeed, one of them of
wasn’t even involved in politics when I met them. You can probably guess who
one of those future Prime Ministers was, but can you name the other one? Please
don’t write to me, instead post your guesses on the LostCousins Forum in the Comments
on the latest newsletter area.
I
used to watch a lot of cricket in the 1960s, mostly
following Essex County Cricket Club. In those days county cricket was still
played at Valentines Park in Ilford (within walking distance of my home), at
Brentwood (where I went to school), and at two venues in Southend (where my
cousin lived). When limited overs cricket was introduced it was so much more
exciting that I longed for batsmen to be more aggressive in first class
matches, especially test matches – and half a century later my wish finally came
true last month, when Ben Stokes took over as England’s test captain and
Brendon McCullum became head coach – in a three match test series against New
Zealand the team scored an average of 4.54 runs per over, around twice what
they’d managed previously.
But
I’m afraid that I don’t have time to watch cricket these days – when you’re a
family historian time is at a premium, which is why it’s so important for us to
collaborate with our ‘lost cousins’!
Finally,
a suggestion for anyone in the UK with an unlocked smartphone who’s worried
about the planned
strike by telecom engineers – order a free GiffGaff
SIM now using this link, and if
your landline or broadband goes down you can activate it within minutes.
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......
Right now it’s 39C in the shade here in
Stansted, the highest temperature ever recorded, and it’s only 2.40pm, so it could
get even hotter. Fortunately it’s a comfortable 24.5C in the house – so it’s a
great opportunity to stay indoors and work on my family tree.
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2022 Peter Calver
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