Newsletter – 27th April 2025
Online presentations reach thousands
Over half a million Suffolk records go online NEW
Birmingham non-conformist records at Ancestry NEW
Free access to the 1939 Register ENDS 9TH MAY
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue (dated 16th April) 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!
Online presentations reach thousands
This month’s series of online presentations comes to a close on Monday 28th April, when London Westminster & Middlesex Family History Society explain what they are able to offer members, near and far: the session begins at 10am – you can register to watch live, or view the recording on your My Events page. Already more than 2,000 LostCousins members have benefited from these free talks, most of whom have watched the recordings – which are all available through the My Events page.
Six of the eight talks have been from family history societies, all of whom have been delighted by the turnout. I was particularly pleased to read these comments from one of the societies taking part:
“First of all, on behalf of us all at our Society can I thank you for giving family history societies the opportunity to present to everyone at Lost Cousins. The promotional value of being able to talk to those who are already committed family historians has been invaluable and something we just cannot replicate on this scale. So many of the ways we are able to approach people is limited to talking to small groups, for example local history groups, church groups and the U3A…. [but] this has been unbelievable, we never imagined the response we have received.”
There will be more presentations from family history societies later in the year – if you’re involved in running one of the larger societies, I do hope you’ll consider taking part in the next round. There is no charge for societies presenting or for the LostCousins members attending – it’s a remarkable opportunity, as the quote above makes clear!
On Monday we were fortunate to have a sneak preview of the Secrets and Lies conference to be held in Peterborough this September. Six of the conference speakers took part in the session, serving up tasty morsels from their presentations – however, I’m not going to tell you what they had to say, because you can hear it from their own lips when you follow the link on your My Events page!
Although the Early Bird booking prices are available until the end of May I’d encourage you to book as early as you can – there are only 133 rooms in the hotel, of which just 56 have twin beds, and by my reckoning there are 15 speakers, 2 sponsoring organisations, and several representatives of the Halsted Trust (the charity running the conference) ahead of you in the queue. It might look expensive for a weekend away but all meals are included (including a banquet with an after-dinner speaker), and you get to rub shoulders with celebrities from the world of genealogy!
Tip: if you have a partner who isn’t particularly interested in the talks, tell them about the indoor pool, the sauna, the gym – and all the sight-seeing opportunities.
Talking of secrets and lies, errors on censuses can be frustrating – but they also be revealing, especially when it comes to the 1911 Census which introduced new questions relating to children. Take this example, sent in by LostCousins member Mike:
© Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London, England. Used by kind permission of Findmypast
Although William Brett and Angelina Cady (née Gould) might well have been together for the 22 years since the death of her mariner husband Edward Cady in 1889, there is no evidence that they ever married. That’s not particularly unusual, even for Victorian times: much more surprising is the revelation that Angelina had borne a child, since no child ever appeared with her on a census, nor was there any evidence of a birth being registered.
However, now that Mike had a name for the child, he was able to find her burial at Melcombe Regis in January 1880:
© Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of Dorset History Centre. Used by kind permission of Ancestry
The child’s age at death is given in the burial register as 4 years and 8 months, which matches the age shown on the census schedule. But was she really born in France, as the census indicated? It turns out that she was, and Mike was able to obtain this copy of her birth registration:
It’s only because that census error, followed by Mike’s diligent research that poor Clara Louise Cady can be remembered as the 150th anniversary of her birth approaches.
Talking of
anniversaries, Thursday 1st May is the 21st Birthday of LostCousins. And no,
there isn’t going to be a party, though if there was, I’d have to hire the
Olympic Stadium to fit everybody in!
Back in 2004 most family history societies had separate computer groups for members who were ahead of the curve – and the Society of Genealogists had a separate journal titled Computers in Genealogy, and whilst I can’t find the journal online I did find this page on the GENUKI website. Headed Computers in Genealogy - Sept. 1995 it is probably from Issue 8 of the journal, as Peter Christian, editor from 1996-2001 (and author of The Genealogist’s Internet) refers to it as an article in the previous issue when writing in Volume 5, Issue 9, in March 1996. (The latter article is reproduced here on Peter Christian’s own website.)
This quote is a reminder of how relatively small the Internet was in 1995:
The World Wide Web is a service, indeed a phenomenon, on the Internet that we believe is of very significant potential to genealogists. The staggering growth rate of the "network of networks" called the Internet (currently estimated to be doubling in size every year, and to link five million computers in 90 countries) is now both dwarfed and fuelled by that of the World Wide Web (WWW) service that runs on it.
To be reminded that in 1995 there were just 5 million computers in the whole world connected to the Internet is quite sobering – it shows how dramatically things have changed. 30 years on there are more than 5 million doorbells connected to the Internet, and that’s just in the UK, whilst the number of people who use the Internet is said to exceed 5 BILLION worldwide. I began using the Internet as a Compuserve subscriber in the early 1990s, but even though I was running a computer software company we didn’t get our own website until 1996 – it didn’t seem that important.
The last issue of Computers in Genealogy was published in 2005 – and featured an article about LostCousins. Hopefully the only connection between those two things is that computers were becoming mainstream in the world of genealogy: these days nobody would dream of doing genealogy without a computer, a smartphone, or a tablet.
I missed out on celebrating my own 21st Birthday for two reasons: one was because I was frantically finishing the dissertation for my bachelor’s degree (Investment Analysis: A Critical Appraisal, since you ask). The other was the change in the age of majority in the UK, effective from the 1st January 1970 – it meant that when I was 18 the age of majority was 21, but when I was 21 it was 18. Such is life….
Finally, I thought I’d show you a photo of what I looked like back in 2004, when LostCousins launched – brown hair and no wrinkles. Earlier this month I had to submit a photo in order to get a new passport – well, I’m not going to show you that one!
When I saw this article on the BBC News site yesterday I knew instantly that I had to share it with you…..
About 5 years ago a Lancashire man bought an RAF uniform in a charity shop – and in one of the pockets he discovered a love letter in an envelope postmarked 17th December 1945, a few months after the end of World War 2. Addressed to Aircraftman Second Class Just C. it’s signed by ‘Jean’, who doesn’t give her surname – but does give her address, as 43 Herschell Street, Preston.
© Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London, England. Used by kind permission of Findmypast
In the 1939 Register there are three people living at 43 Herschell Street, Edmund Alderson and his wife Mabel (née Hamer) and a third person whose entry is closed, indicating that they were born after 1924. Searching the birth indexes at Findmypast I could only find one child born to that couple, Beryl Enid Alderson in 1928 – which doesn’t help to identify Jean.
It was much easier to find a likely candidate for ‘C Just’ – it isn’t a particularly common surname and there is a Charles Richard Just whose birth was registered in Preston in 1925, so would probably have been called up in the last years of the war:
I couldn’t find him in the 1939 Register, but I could find his parents:
© Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London, England. Used by kind permission of Findmypast
It’s probably Charles whose record is closed: George and Lena only had one son and one daughter. It wasn’t difficult to find Charles’ death register entry:
But what you really want to know is whether he married Jean – and I’m afraid the only marriage I can find is in 1958, to a lady named Lucy Tattersall. What happened to Jean – and can anyone identify her? A good first step would be to establish who was living at 43 Herschell Street in or around 1945 – but electoral records for that period aren’t going to be available online, so maybe someone living in the area can help?
Note: my father was rather fond of a girl when he went off to war in 1940 – but by the time he came home in 1946 she’d married a Canadian soldier, and gone back with him to Canada. Still, if she hadn’t found someone else my parents would never have married….
London Transport – or, as it now officially known, Transport for London – has an extensive archive, part of which can be accessed online. For example, I’ve been glancing through staff magazines from 1922 (you’ll find them here) which include a wide range of information relating to, or of interest to employees: for example, there is an article about the L.G.O.C. Employees Horticultural and Fanciers Society 5th Annual Show, exam results (including photographs of some of the employees), and numerous reports of the activities of sports clubs.
Note: L.G.O.C. stands for London General Omnibus Company, which was the main bus company in the London area from 1855 (when the buses were horse-drawn) until 1933.
Amongst the images I found this picture of an uncut sheet of tram tickets – price 1½d each, or just over 0.6p in today’s money. Nowadays a bus ride in London costs £1.75, an increase of 280 times! This photo of ‘tube’ tickets got me wondering what a Workman’s Ticket was, and this quest took me to the London Transport Museum website, where I found this 1901 example which came with an explanation. In fact, if you’re looking for examples of tickets the museum website has an extensive collection.
In 1927 the Ministry of Labour complied A Dictionary of Occupational Terms Based on the Classification of Occupations used in the Census of Population, 1921, which was published by His Majesty’s Stationery Office. You’ll find a very handy electronic version here on Peter Christian’s website.
Often the same words were used to describe very different jobs. For example, in the 1841 Census Edward Cady (who I wrote about earlier in this newsletter) was described as a waterman, but as he was shown as a mariner when he married in 1858 we can reasonably deduce that he wasn’t the sort of waterman who worked in a mine or at a paper mill. But it’s worth bearing mind the possible alternative meanings – someone described as hair dresser in 1921 would have been in a very different job to a hairdresser but it won’t always be obvious which meaning is intended.
Over half a million Suffolk records go online NEW
Later this year Ancestry should be launching their Suffolk collection, and putting the parish registers online – but in the meantime Findmypast have added over half a million transcripts of baptisms and marriages to their own collection of Suffolk records.
Most of my Suffolk ‘brick walls’ are too far back to be helped by this new addition (and, in any case, I’ve already bought the CD ROMs from the Suffolk Family History Society), but they might help you:
Tip: you only have until 30th April to watch the Suffolk FHS presentation and take advantage of the generous joining offer – you’ll find a link to the recording on your My Events page.
Earlier this month Ancestry added indexed transcriptions of hospital registers from the Great War, including a record of my grandfather’s admission in January 1918 with, if my interpretation of the abbreviation is correct, pneumonia. The images are not hosted on Ancestry – you’ll need a subscription to one of their subsidiary sites, Fold3 or Forces War Records. Alternatively you’ll find a similar collection, including images, at Findmypast.
UK, WWI Hospital Registers, 1915-1919
Birmingham non-conformist records at Ancestry NEW
This week Ancestry added 137,890 non-conformist records from Birmingham including baptisms up to 1925, marriages up to 1950, and burials up to 1950 (the dates shown on the Ancestry website are wrong). The collection contains records from Baptist, Independent, Unitarian, Wesleyan, and Presbyterian churches.
Birmingham, England, Non-Conformist Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1825-2007
Free access to the 1939 Register ENDS 9TH MAY
The free access offer at Findmypast continues until 9th May, the day after VE-Day. It’s a great opportunity to find precise birth dates for your relatives without forking out for a birth certificate – even if the year shown is wrong, the day and month are almost always correct.
See Inside the 1939 Register for my exclusive guide to this amazing resource – it’s SO much more than a census!
Several Friends have recently written to ask where they can find my DNA Masterclass, so I thought it would be a good idea to remind Friends that there are links to ALL of the Masterclasses (as well as some of the Special Edition newsletters) on the Friends Only page. As a Friend you also have access to the recording of my DNA presentation earlier this month – the link is on your My Events page.
If you’re not a Friend you can still find the DNA Masterclass – and any of my other newsletter articles – using a search. Scroll up to the top of any newsletter and just under the table of contents you’ll see a Google search box: it searches all of the newsletters for the past 16 years. Type in Masterclass DNA and sort the results by Relevance (which is usually the default).
When I do this the top two results are the two most recent editions of the Masterclass – choose the newer one, which in this case is second in the list.
You can use a similar approach to finding other Masterclasses: try typing Masterclass baptisms or Masterclass brick walls
Most Masterclasses are updated every 2 or 3 years, though the DNA Masterclass tends to be updated more often, usually to reflect changes in the layout of the Ancestry site. If you’re looking for other articles you may need to be more creative, just as you would with any other Google search: if your first attempt doesn’t work, try using different words, and if you’re not from the UK remember that we rarely refer to ‘vital records’, and our preferred abbreviation is ‘BMD’, not ‘BDM’.
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 2025 Peter Calver
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