Newsletter - 8th June 2019
More Irish BMD
registers online FREE
British Newspaper Archive hits 32 million pages
Success story: unravelling a tangled web
Closest-known relative of Native Americans found in
Siberia
Was the world's oldest woman an impostor?
Recycled gravemarkers found
in wall
Review: My
Ancestor was a Leather Worker
Review: The
Legitimacy of Bastards
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue (dated 24th May) 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 -
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of this newsletter available!
More Irish
BMD registers online FREE
For decades family historians
with Irish ancestry lamented the lack of records available online, but whilst
nothing can bring back the 19th century censuses that were destroyed, there are
millions of BMD register entries and parish register entries that you can view completely
free of charge (if you go to the right website).
Birth registers for 1917 and
1918, marriage registers for 1864-1869, and death registers for 1967 and 1968
have now been added to the collection at the free Irish Genealogy website. The
collection now includes the following:
Births 1864 to 1918
Marriages 1864 to 1943
Deaths 1878 to 1968
Note: although other sites may charge to search their
indexes of these records, it might be worth it if they offer enhanced search
features (this has certainly been the case in the past).
A lot of my time is spent answering
questions from LostCousins members, and whilst I'm very happy to do this, I
can't respond immediately to every email - so it's very much in your interests
to check whether the answer you're looking for is on the website.
For example, the FAQs page has answers
to dozens of the most frequently asked questions - and given that LostCousins
has now been in operation for 15 years it would be surprising if any member
came up with a question that hadn't been asked before.
But there is also information
to guide you on the pages that are used most frequently - for example, on the My Ancestors page there's loads of
information that explains how to use the page, what
the various symbols mean, and so on. However it isn't displayed
permanently - you have to click a link near the top right of the page:
If you're wondering why such
useful information isn’t shown all the time, it’s because it would fill the
whole screen, so you'd have to scroll down to see the relatives you've listed.
On the My Cousins page there's a smaller amount of information, so it’s shown
by default - though you can hide it if you want. It's just as useful, though -
especially if you've just had your first match and are wondering how the system
works.
But the most important advice
of all is shown on the Add Ancestor
(and Edit Ancestor) forms. To emphasise
how crucial it is, it begins with the word IMPORTANT (in capitals), so in
theory you can't ignore it, but in practice some people do. Not only might this
lead to confusion and wasted time, it will also mean that matches with cousins
are missed.
Note: the Add Ancestor form
changes according to the census you are using - and so does the advice. But
there's one thing that applies across all censuses - you must never enter
information that wasn't included in the census
British Newspaper
Archive hits 32 million pages
There are now over 32 million
pages from historic newspapers at the British
Newspaper Archive (also available through Findmypast
if you have the right subscription).
Parish registers, BMD
certificates, and censuses only reveal the barebones of our ancestors' lives,
but newspapers, especially local newspapers can help to paint a picture. For
example, I found this cutting from 1872 which mentions my great-grandparents,
John Calver & Emily Buxton:
Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY
BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED; used by permission of Findmypast
Shopkeeper? I didn’t know
that my ancestor was a shopkeeper in the 1870s - as far as I knew he didn’t have
a greengrocery shop until turn of the century, by which time the family had moved
to East Ham, in east London.
Less than a year after this article
appeared the family had moved from Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk to Acton in west
London (their son Ernest Albert was born there on 13th March 1873). I can’t help
wondering whether this move was in some way prompted by their experience?
Success
story: unravelling a tangled web
Few, if any, of our ancestors
would have supposed that one day their descendants would be researching them -
if they had, they might have left rather more in the way of clues, and rather
less in the way of 'red herrings'. Nick's great-grandmother seems to have gone
out of her way to make it difficult for anyone
to track her down.....
"Nobody
in the family knew my great-grandmother by any name other than Eileen Russell,
and that's how she appears in the 1911 census with 3 children.
©
Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London,
England and used by permission of Findmypast
"Between
then and her death in 1958 her timeline could be pretty
accurately mapped, including a marriage in 1911 and another in 1920. But
there was nothing prior to that.
©
Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London,
England and used by permission of Findmypast
"The
only birth information to go on was her birthdate of 24th January 1877 (shown
in the 1939 Register, above - she had married Charles Stanley Mott in 1920) and
her birthplace of Kildare, Ireland (taken from the 1911 Census). However, the birth
and baptism records for Kildare returned nothing that fitted.
"Searches
for her father Frances Henry Russell or William Henry Russell, or her mother
Helen Violet Margaret Russell née Russell (depending which marriage certificate
you trusted), also yielded nothing. This was a 'brick wall'.......
"A
minor breakthrough came after locating a Daily Mail article from 1910. She’d
apparently married in 1902 as Violet Patricia Nevill
(widow) and had a baby in 1908 (my grandfather) using the name Eileen Russell
to register him. The fact that her husband had been stationed in India for several
years, so couldn't have fathered the child, constituted more than adequate
grounds for divorce, hence the interest in publishing an article about it in
the newspaper!
"However,
more research involving Russells & Nevills produced a blank. Was she really a widow in 1902 or
had she reinvented herself? I’d seen this scenario somewhere before - probably
in one of Peter's newsletter articles.
"Anyway,
a common denominator on the 3 marriage certificates (besides her being
eternally 28, and all of her husbands having military
connections) was that her father had held various ranks in the Royal Horse
Artillery. So eventually I hired a researcher to track him down - but six
months later the researcher threw in the towel! 'Eileen Russell' had done an
exceptionally good job of covering her tracks. However there's one type of
record that doesn't lie - and so a DNA test it had to be.....
"As
soon as I received the results from Ancestry I noticed
that my 3rd strongest match (a 3rd cousin) had no one in his tree in common
with mine. He did, however, have a line of Russells
originating in Ireland, which I followed down to the Prewer/Russell
family and their youngest daughter Ethel Frances Prewer
(born 1877). Although it was the wrong name she looked
a good candidate because no online trees had any data on her beyond a marriage
in 1895. Furthermore, her extended family had been living in or around the
Woolwich Barracks since the censuses began (all connected with the Royal
Artillery).
"To
cut a long story short, her birth certificate from the GRO confirmed 24th January
1877 as her date of birth - though she was born in Eastbourne, not Kildare.
Then I found her first husband in the 1901 census (in prison for theft) and
discovered a daughter born at the army base in Curragh Camp - so there, at last,
was the Kildare connection.
"She
was clearly my GGM and had reinvented herself after the disgrace brought upon
her family. All confirmed within 2 weeks of getting my DNA results!
"The
next hurdle is to identify the father of my grandfather - it was this affair
that led to Eileen/Ethel’s divorce in 1910. She took that secret to the grave, but
my fingers are firmly crossed!"
For Nick taking a DNA test
was a last resort - and that's exactly how it should be. DNA isn’t a substitute
for conventional, records-based, research and anyone who thinks that it is will
be wasting their time as well as their money.
Sunday June 16th is Father's
Day in Britain - so some of the major providers
of DNA tests are offering discounts (some of which extend beyond Britain).
Almost all
of the discounted tests are autosomal tests, which can be taken by anyone,
male or female (though it usually makes sense to test the earliest
generations). The exceptions are the Y-DNA tests sold by Family Tree DNA -
these can only be taken by males.
Ancestry.co.uk
(UK only) - £59 plus shipping until midnight on Wednesday 12th June
Ancestry.com.au
(Australia & New Zealand) - $89 plus shipping until Monday 10th June
Family
Tree DNA (worldwide) - Family Finder $59 plus shipping until Monday 17th
June
Family
Tree DNA (worldwide) - Y-DNA from $129 plus shipping until Monday 17th June
Finally, there's an
opportunity to save £10 on a Doggie DNA test from Wisdom Panel (part of
Pedigree Petfoods) - follow this link
and use the code FathersDay2019
Closest-known
relative of Native Americans found in Siberia
The ancestors of indigenous
Americans including Native Americans and Canada's First Nations people came
from Siberia tens of thousands of years ago across a land bridge that connected
Siberia and Alaska when sea levels were lower than they are today, just as the
island of Britain was once connected to mainland Europe.
Whole genome analysis of the
remains of a woman who lived in north-eastern Siberia about 10,000 years ago show
that she shares two-thirds of DNA with living Native Americans - this makes her
their closest known relative (though not necessarily their ancestor, as implied
by the headline of the article
in Science magazine).
Was the world's
oldest woman an impostor?
Everyone knows that Jeanne
Louise Calment was the world's longest living human being when she died in 1997
at the age of 122 years and 164 days - but could everyone be wrong?
Recently published research
casts doubt on the claim, suggesting that when the real Jeanne Calment died her
family pretended that it was her daughter Yvonne who had died, and that Yvonne
took Jeanne's place - part of an elaborate charade to avoid crippling death
taxes.
You can read more about the
controversy in the New Scientist article.
Right now I'm open-minded, but perhaps one day DNA
will provide definitive proof?
Recycled
gravemarkers found in wall
This article
from Australia reports an extreme case of recycling!
The Royal Mint stopped minting
farthings in 1956, and at the end of 1960 any remaining coins in circulation
ceased to be legal tender. As a boy I used to buy sweets which were 8 for a penny,
or 2 for a farthing - notably Fruit Salads and Black Jacks (the latter had
packaging that would now be regarded as un-PC - you can see an example here).
There was recently a consultation
to consider whether to withdraw 1p and 2p coins, which are now worth less (in real
terms) than the farthing was when it was withdrawn. This BBC article has an interesting
chart showing the value (in modern currency) of different coins at the times
they were in circulation.
Review: My Ancestor was a Leather Worker
It might not be the 'worst job in history', but the
process of tanning hides, transforming them into leather was certainly one of the smelliest. And yet
tanneries were often found in or close to the centre of towns and cities!
My great-great-great-great
grandfather Johann Jacob Kuehner lived in Long Lane,
Bermondsey - a stone's throw from the site of Tower Bridge. Tower Bridge was
yet to be built, but the reputation of Bermondsey as a source of leather was already
well-established - indeed in the 1790s, when my ancestor was working there,
around half of all the finished leather in Britain had originated in Bermondsey,
and many of the tanneries which processed it were situated on Long Lane.
A lot of leather workers in
Bermondsey were immigrants, often from Belgium or Holland (though my ancestor
came from Germany) - this suggests that they were either better qualified than
the locals or prepared to do jobs that the locals didn’t want to do.
When I started reading this
book, one of the 'My Ancestors was a.....' series from the Society of
Genealogists it hadn't crossed my mind that there were other leather workers in
my family tree, but then I came to the part which described the work of
bookbinders - and I remembered that two of my ancestor's great-grandsons worked
as bookbinders. It could have been a coincidence - they were born long after
their great-grandfather died - but who knows?
Leather was a key raw
material, not just for cordwainers and bookbinders, but also for glovemakers,
hatmakers, harness-makers, and saddle-makers. Other uses included the
manufacture of sports equipment such as footballs and cricket balls, as well as
bellows, musical instruments, purses and wallets, sporrans, drive belts, and
much more besides.
The book includes information
on relevant guilds and lists a number of firms involved in the leather trade, but is also dotted with interesting snippets. For
example, everyone knows of Charles Booth, whose investigations into poverty in
London were ground-breaking, but did you also know that he and his brother ran
a successful business which dealt in skins and leather?
There are over 250 pages in
this book, which goes to show what a diverse industry it was. If, like me, you have
ancestors who worked with leather it’s well worth picking up a copy - but don’t
pay through the nose (the published price is £9.99, or about US$13, but when I
looked just now some sellers were asking high prices). There's also a Kindle
version, which could work out a lot cheaper if it's available where you live.
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca
Review: The Legitimacy of Bastards
If you're one of the fortunate few who have managed to
prove your descent from a 'gateway ancestor', someone whose status or historical
significance means that their ancestry is well-documented, your family tree very
probably extends to mediaeval times (or even earlier), and in this case it's likely
that one of more of your mediaeval ancestors was born outside marriage.
Prior to the introduction of
parish registers in 1538, and the 1601 Poor Law which put the responsibility for
supporting the poor on the ratepayers of each parish, there was little cause
for the legitimacy of the children of the poor to be recorded. But the
situation was very different for the rich aristocrats, because the inheritance
of wealth and titles was often determined by the legitimacy - or illegitimacy of
the intended heirs.
As someone who has yet to
discover a 'gateway ancestor' I didn’t expect to find this book particularly
useful or interesting, but - as so often happens - my expectations were confounded.
I learned about the different ways in which illegitimate children could be
legitimated, and the ways in which rich men could manipulate the inheritance
laws to achieve their goals. Terms that previously had seemed obscure and
irrelevant, such as entail, escheat, and enfeoffment are put into context using
examples from the period.
The differences between canon
law and common law led to complications, but also provided opportunities to
manipulate the system - for example, until 1215 marriages between couples
related in the seventh degree (ie 6th cousins) or
closer were forbidden by the church, which meant that many honestly contracted
marriages were technically illegal.
Some disputes dragged on for
decades and across generations. A wealthy landowner with no surviving legitimate
sons might prefer his illegitimate son to inherit, rather than his legitimate daughters
- but there were all sorts of pitfalls.
There are ample examples, and
nearly 60 pages at the back of the book are devoted to an annex of the Dramatis Personae to aid the reader in
keeping track of the hundreds of individuals referred to - some of which appear
in different chapters and in different contexts. I doubt there can be many
gateway ancestors who are not related to one or more of them.
I read the hardback (£25),
but it’s also available in Kindle format (£14.40). However
if you can pick up the hardback at a good discount - there were copies available
for under £17 (including UK shipping) when I checked - it's probably the best
option. Using the links below will enable you to support LostCousins (even if
you end up buying something completely different!).
Please note that the book won’t
be officially available in North America until July/August, but you may be able
to order it now from Wordery (and their competitive
prices, which include worldwide delivery, can be displayed in most major currencies).
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Wordery
Reading genealogical mystery novels is one of the most
pleasant parts of my job, and when the novel comes from the pen of MJ Lee it's a particular
treat, because he weaves into his storylines carefully-researched historical
events, which often prompt me to carry out research of my own.
In The Sinclair Betrayal the eponymous hero is at last investigating
her own family history, a journey that takes Jayne back to the dark days of the
Second World War, and the bravery of the men and women in the Special
Operations Executive, who risked their lives in countries occupied by the
Axis powers.
However the biggest shock for Jayne comes right at the start,
when she discovers that her father is still alive - but rotting in prison.
He's not there for fraud or
bank robbery, but for a cold-blooded murder, the shooting of a civil servant in
his own home and for no apparent reason. You can imagine the impact this
discovery has on Jayne, a former police officer!
I very much enjoyed the book,
and as you'll see from the next article it inspired me to do some sleuthing of
my own. Currently it’s only available as a Kindle book - but remember that you don’t
need a Kindle to read it, because there are free Kindle apps for most computers,
tablets, and smartphones.
And whilst you don’t need to
have read the other books in the series to enjoy this one, you'll find it more
rewarding if you read them in sequence (if you follow the links below you can
click on the author's name to see a list of other titles):
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca
As so often happens MJ Lee's novel
inspired me to do some research of my own. I started by Googling my old boss,
Basil Irwin, who was the Managing Director of the bank I worked for after
leaving university in 1972. I knew that he had won the Military Cross while
serving with the SOE - though I didn’t discover that until well after leaving
the bank in 1974.
It was Basil who was responsible
for my very first visit to Stansted Mountfitchet, the
Essex village where LostCousins is based. The two of us were due to visit a
company together - probably in the autumn of 1972 - and it made sense for me to
travel up by train to Stansted and for the two of us to continue to our
appointment by car. It was quite an experience - he picked me up from the station
in his Rolls Royce, the first and (to the best of my recollection) only time
I've had the privilege of travelling in a 'Roller'.
A quarter of a century later,
when my wife and I moved to Stansted, I discovered that Basil was still living
in the same house - and so we met up on several occasions to discuss 'old times',
usually over lunch at a local hostelry. Sadly I was on
holiday abroad when he died in 2000 - I learned afterwards that in his will
he'd set aside £5000 to pay for the champagne at his wake!
Although I knew that Basil
had won the MC I never once asked him about his wartime experiences, but I was
very fortunate - Google managed to find almost 3 hours of recorded interviews that
Basil gave in 1987 in the Oral History collection of the Imperial War Museum, and I could listen to
them online!
In the same collection there
are many other recordings relating to the SOE, including a short lecture from
1998 which explains the origins of the Special Operations Executive. One of the
names mentioned in this lecture was that of Major General Sir Stewart Menzies,
who was the head of MI6 from 1939 until his retirement in 1952. That was
another connection to Stansted because Lady Menzies, his widow, lived in the
house where LostCousins is now based for about 20 years from the late 1950s
onwards, both before and after her husband's death. (Apparently
they had a most unusual marriage - living on opposite sides of London and meeting
up once a week in the city.)
I was so fascinated by the
first lecture that I decided to listen to the one that followed it - given by
the military historian Michael Foot, who had himself been in the SOE. He said
that one of his erstwhile colleagues had passed away just 2 days earlier, and
when he mentioned the name you could have knocked me down with a feather - it
was Robin Brook, who had been the Chairman of the bank where I worked.
The final coincidence was
when I looked at a chronological list of the heads of MI6 - Stewart Menzies's immediate
predecessor was Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, and he was succeeded by Major General
Sir John Sinclair. When you read The
Sinclair Betrayal you'll discover that Jayne Sinclair's paternal grandfather
was called..... John Sinclair!
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......
Peter Calver
Founder,
LostCousins
© Copyright 2019
Peter Calver
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