Newsletter – 22nd
August 2024
Cheshire Archives closed until 2026
ScotlandsPeople closing for 2 days
Somerset will & probate index online
Well Donn! How David overcame a name change
Soldier, PoW – an amazing journal of the Great
War
Save on Ancestry DNA in Australia
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 10th August) 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!
Cheshire Archives closed until 2026
I
recently reported that Suffolk Archives will be closed until 2025 – now I’ve
discovered that Cheshire Archives has closed until 2026 (however staff will be
answering emails and undertaking searches where possible).
Fortunately
many of the records that family historians use most frequently are already
online – there are parish registers at Findmypast and Catholic registers
at Ancestry.
And
there’s some good news for researchers with Cheshire ancestors – Ancestry are currently scanning the parish registers in colour, and
when they go online you’ll not only have better quality images to work with,
they’ll also cover more parishes and more years.
The
Family History Society of Cheshire has two research centres which will remain
open – see the FHSC website for more
information.
ScotlandsPeople closing for 2 days
The
ScotlandsPeople website will
be closed on Sunday 1st September and Monday 2nd
September, reopening at midday on Wednesday 3rd September.
There
will be a new logo, and a ‘refreshed website’ that will be ‘simpler and quicker’
to use. It sounds like a prequel to a price increase, but perhaps that’s just
me being cynical. For the record, credits currently cost £7.50 for 30 (25p
each), and historic birth, marriage, and death entries cost 6 credits – effectively
half the price of the English equivalent.
Somerset will & probate index online
This
month Ancestry have added an index to wills and probates held by the South West
Heritage Trust at Somerset
Heritage Centre in Norton Fitzwarren, near
Taunton.
Somerset,
England, Wills and Probate Index, 1300-2001
The
good news is that you don’t necessarily need an Ancestry subscription to search
the index because you’ll also find it amongst the indexes on the South West Heritage Trust website.
Tip:
the advantage of including records and indexes in the Ancestry collection is
that they’re more likely to be found – perhaps through a hint – and it’s also
easier to add them to your Ancestry tree.
Well Donn! How David overcame a name change
I’m
fortunate to read many stories sent in by members, but I’m not always able to
share them with readers. I’m delighted that David has permitted me to share his
story with you because there’s a lot that we can learn from his experience….
Dear
Peter, I have always enjoyed reading your newsletter, which is so informative
and interesting. I have often seen you mention your DNA
Masterclass, but I never quite got round to reading it until recently. I am so glad I did, as
it allowed me to break down a huge ‘brick wall’ that has been troubling me for
over 30 years. I thought I'd share my success story brought about by your
advice.
I started researching
my wife's family tree even before we were married more than 30 years ago. As
you know, research was a lot more difficult in those days, but it was pretty straightforward to expand the tree back several
generations. However, I got stuck on one man, my wife's great-grandfather
William Donn.
This
was especially unfortunate as he was an interesting character: he had served
with the Rifle Brigade both in the Boer War and WW1. He was taken prisoner in
France in August 1914 at the Battle
of Le Cateau then held as a POW in real hardship until the end of the war.
He left fascinating written accounts of his time in both wars.
Afterwards
he served as a groom and coachman for wealthy families in England and Ireland.
From reading his own words, I felt I knew him and really wanted to learn more
about his history, but was to be sadly disappointed. I
obtained his marriage and death certificates, which indicated he would have
been born in 1877 and that his father was Thomas Donn, licensed victualler:
I
knew that William lived in Portsmouth and died in Surrey, I could find no
record of his birth anywhere, nor could I find him on the 1891 or 1881
censuses, so I had no clue where he came from other than family stories. My
mother-in-law (his granddaughter) thought he came from Yorkshire and was in the
choir at York Minster as a boy; a cousin mentioned Cambridgeshire. Someone else
said he ran away to join the army and was disowned by his family.
I
had to wait until 2002 for the 1901 census to be released, but annoyingly, I
could not find him there either. I assumed this was because his diary showed he
was in South Africa for the 2nd Boer War from June 1901, though the census took
place in March of that year. I could trace no Army service record for him,
though I did find his medal index card – but there was no helpful information
there.
©
Copyright image used by kind permission of Ancestry
In
2007 I wrote to the Red Cross in Geneva, to see if they had his Prisoner of War
record. This is what came back:
This
was a very different year of birth, and the date and place of capture also
differed (a letter attached to his WW1 journal tells us that he was captured on
26th August 1914). I think he deliberately gave false information to
the Germans – April Fools’ Day for his birthday and (Battle of) Hastings as his
place of birth. I waited expectantly for the 1911 census to be released in 2011
and was pleased to see that the family rumour that he came from Yorkshire was
confirmed:
©
Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London,
England and used by kind permission of Findmypast
Frustratingly,
there was no town recorded, so it didn't help much, and it looked as if he was
born a year or two earlier than his marriage certificate implied. But I could
still find no William Donn born in Yorkshire. Then in 2014, I finally found him
on the 1901 census – in Ireland, at Portobello Barracks in Dublin. The Rifle
Brigade were stationed there in 1901 and he was listed
as a 22 year old groom from England – which implied that he was born in 1878 or
1879.
Then
in 2022, I was able to access the 1921 census. At last, I had a town of birth,
Hull in Yorkshire. But there was no William Donn born there around the right
time nor did he appear in any earlier census records living in Hull. I also
came across another Red Cross Record, which had the right date of capture but
said he was born in Cambridge – and gave a different date of birth. However, I
still couldn't find him using this information:
Image
© International Committee of the Red Cross; used by kind permission of
Findmypast
By
now it was clear that he must have changed his name before joining the army;
perhaps he did run away from home, and didn't
want to be found by his family. It now seemed that the only way to solve the
mystery was through DNA, so my wife tested through Ancestry, but although the
results were interesting, they did not yield any obvious answers.
I
thought it would be helpful to get other family members tested and preferably a
generation back. My mother-in-law had died by then, but I was able to persuade
her sister Eileen and my father-in-law to take the Ancestry test. This had the
immediate benefit of being able to identify and rule out DNA matches on my
wife's paternal side (Ancestry had not yet introduced SideView
for Matches), and also provided a closer DNA
relationship to William through his granddaughter. Again
the DNA results were interesting, but I still could not really make sense of
the hundreds of DNA matches. I looked at them hoping to see some obvious
connection to William, but got nowhere for two years.
Recently
I had a bit of spare time and thought, “I really must look at Peter's DNA
Masterclass”. Now I understood what I needed to do, and
started following the advice. Using Eileen's DNA test, I methodically grouped
matches into maternal and paternal sides, linking them to ancestors, either by
looking through public family trees or seeing if a common ancestor was
suggested. William was her paternal grandfather, so on the paternal side, I
found which matches were linked to her paternal grandmother's family and which
were not. This then left several groups of matches which were unaccounted for, but might well be connected through William Donn (or
whoever he was).
For
these people that I couldn't link to an ancestor, I looked at the shared
matches, and grouped these people together. I ended up with two distinct linked
groups of DNA matches on the paternal side whose connection to each other's
trees could not yet be accounted for. I now needed to work out what the
connection was.
Many
of these DNA matches had no public tree attached. A few had large public trees and some had very small trees with perhaps 16 to 20
people, so at first it was hard to identify a connection. I decided to take the
information in the small trees and build the tree out, which is a fairly quick process in Ancestry thanks to hints – and I was
soon able to go back several generations. Now that I had larger trees to work
with, I was able to look for names that would connect the trees together – and
I found that two DNA matches both had ancestors called Christopher Hebb and
Mary Stephenson.
I
then realised that several of the other trees in this group also connected
through Christopher Hebb, so now I turned my attention to the other group.
Eventually I found the connection between the second group – it was someone
called John Onn (an unusual surname). I now had two distinct groups which were
linked to my wife through her mysterious great-grandfather: the Hebb family
from Yorkshire and the Onn family from Lincolnshire.
I
looked at where the ancestors in the DNA matched trees came from: most of the
Onn connections were from the area around Peterborough, in the counties of
Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. The Hebb connections were
from south Yorkshire, near Hull. This made more sense of the records I had
found previously, which variously stated that William was from
Cambridge(shire), Yorkshire and Hull. A glance at a map of England reminded me
that Lincolnshire and Hull sit on opposite sides of the Humber estuary;
Peterborough is in Cambridgeshire, close to the border with Lincolnshire – the
locations were not far apart in the railway age.
I
now needed to find a marriage that somehow linked the Hebb and Onn families –
and the obvious starting point was to look for Hebb-Onn marriages. It turned
out that there has only been one such marriage since civil registration began
in 1837: Thomas Onn married Margaret Jane Hebb in 1866 at Crowland,
Lincolnshire:
Image © Lincolnshire Archives; used by kind
permission of Findmypast
This
finally provided the connection between the two DNA groups. The 1871 census
shows that Margaret Jane Hebb was born in Frogingham,
Yorkshire, which is clearly an error for North Frodingham, in the Driffield
registration district:
The
birth register entry confirms that her parents were Christopher Hebb and Mary
Stephenson, the couple I had identified when I started analysing the first
group of DNA matches. I then found that in 1873 Thomas and Jane Onn had a son named
William, born in Thorney, Cambridgeshire:
Could
William ONN possibly be the boy who would join the army as William DONN? He was
born a couple of years earlier than expected, but then the family seems to have
been fairly imprecise about ages – his mother claimed
to be 24 at the time of her marriage, though she was actually 26. Then I
remembered that the Red Cross POW record stated that William Donn was born on 3rd
December 1876 – surely not a coincidence?
I
could now see that all the evidence – DNA, anecdotal, records and geography –
fitted together. William Donn was indeed born William Onn. Having finally
solved the mystery I was now able to take this line of the family tree back a
further 200 years. Thank you so much, Peter, for helping me to achieve this –
perhaps telling my story will convince others to make better use of your DNA
Masterclass!
Soldier, PoW – an amazing journal of the Great War
One of the reasons
that David was so keen to track down his wife’s great-grandfather was the
wonderful legacy he left behind: two journals describing his experiences as a
soldier in the Boer War, and in the Great War.
Having
long ago read Winston Churchill’s account of his Boer War experiences I started
reading William Donn’s journal of the Great War, which had been typed by a
relative, and found it absolutely riveting.
I’m
glad to say that David has allowed me to share it with LostCousins members –
you’ll find it on the Peters Tips page of the LostCousins site.
Since
you’ll have to log-in to read it, why not take a moment to check your My
Ancestors page? I know from experience that many members enter a handful of
ancestors when they first join LostCousins, but often forget to go back and add
members of the extended family. This is a problem, because ALL
of our living cousins are descended from collateral lines – so entering
our ancestors’ siblings and cousins from 1881 is key to connecting with cousins
in 2024 (and beyond).
Tip:
connecting with ‘lost cousins’ is particularly valuable if you have taken a DNA
test, or are considering doing so – the majority of
LostCousins have already tested, so you can not only benefit from their past
research, and collaborate on future discoveries, you can gain insights from
their DNA matches. 4th and 5th cousins are particularly
useful!
Tank warfare began in
the Great War – British Mark 1 tanks went into action on the Somme in September
1916, though it was the Mark IV which really made its mark at the Battle of
Cambrai in November 1917, when 400 tanks captured 8,000 enemy troops and 100 artillery
guns.
The
surviving Mark 1 on the right is in the Tank
Museum at Bovington, Dorset in the south of England – they have an enormous
collection, including Little Willie, the prototype which inspired the
Mark 1. The picture was taken by an enthusiast who has photographed dozens of
tanks for his website).
One
tank they don’t have in their collection is the Sturmpanzerwagen
A7V – the first German tank, which debuted in March 1918. Only a small number
were produced and the only surviving A7V, nicknamed Mephisto, is in the
Queensland Museum in Brisbane, Australia (the museum has a podcast about the
tank which you’ll find here).
It
was this tank which inspired me to research WW1 tanks for the newsletter – it
caught my eye because the final series of Vienna Blood, set in 1909, and
which aired in the UK this month, featured both an arch-villain named Mephisto
and an inventor who was trying to persuade the Austrian army that his invention
– a tank by another name – would transform warfare.
A
lot of people, including some experienced family historians, believe that
taking a DNA test will magically provide them with the answers they’re looking
for. Dream on!
Whilst
a DNA test will provide answers, they won’t necessarily be the answers you’re
looking for. And there’s nothing magic about it – to make use of DNA you have to work just as hard as when you’re researching
records.
As
David found (see main article), to make the most of DNA you need to go about it
logically – and the framework set out in the DNA
Masterclass guides you through the process. You could describe it as the
missing manual!
Tip:
Ancestry will do much of the work for you, provided you give them a chance –
and that’s one of the reasons it’s so important to follow the advice in the
Masterclass.
Save on Ancestry DNA in Australia
Sunday
1st September is Father’s Day in Australia and New Zealand, which
gives Ancestry an excuse to discount their DNA tests – although I’m sure you
don’t need me to tell you that Ancestry DNA works just as well for ladies as it
does for gentlemen.
The
offer has already begun, and ends around midnight (local time), on Sunday 1st
September. As usual, a reminder that you don’t need to decide who is going to
test before you place your order – in fact, you can do what I do and buy an
extra test at the sale price to keep in a drawer until an unexpected
opportunity arises.
Please
click the banner below so that you can support LostCousins when you make your
purchase (if you can’t see the banner please use this link).
My
family always had dogs when I was growing up – but they were never pedigree chums,
they were mongrels, rather like most of us. For some time now Ancestry have
been offering DNA tests for dogs:
With Know Your Pet DNA, you can learn more
about your dog's breed mix, traits, and matches – all in a single test kit
brought to you by the DNA experts at Ancestry
What
do they mean by ‘matches’ – is it a dating service for dogs? Apparently not –
in fact, it’s just like the DNA tests that Ancestry offer
for dog’s best friends:
When we process your dog's DNA, we'll compare
it to other dogs in our extensive doggy database. If we find any close genetic
matches, we'll let you know - and you can explore your dog's extended family.
Ancestry
are currently discounting their doggie DNA tests – apparently
National Dog Day is just around the corner. Do let me know what you find
out about your dog!
Recently
the artist Banksy revealed 9 animal-themed artworks in the London area – it
made headlines around the world since his art can sell for millions at auction.
But as a genealogist I’m more curious about the identity of this reclusive
figure – it’s just the sort of challenge that I enjoy, and I know that many of
you do too.
Sadly
I don’t have any of Banksy’s DNA to test, but this BBC News article
entitled Who is Banksy? Everything we know
about the anonymous artist seems like a good start – and perhaps you’d like
to share any insights you have on the LostCousins
Forum rather than writing to me?
Tip:
if you’ve qualified to join the LostCousins Forum you’ll find a link and a code
on your My Summary page. If you haven’t yet qualified it’s very likely that you
haven’t added as many relatives as you could (and should) to your My Ancestors
page. Remember, if your cousins can’t find you, how can they collaborate with
you?
My wife recently celebrated a special
birthday, so we decided to celebrate by going to Buckingham Palace,
where the East Wing opened to the
public for the first time this summer. We’d never been inside the palace before
– like most Londoners I thought of it as something that only tourists do – but
we can certainly recommend it as a once in a lifetime experience.
For
me it had a special significance because on the walls of the East Wing I came
across this 1785 painting of the three youngest daughters of King George III.
You
may recall that in April I wrote
about a rather special birthday present I’d bought for myself from Oxfam, the
charity – amongst the handful of papers from the 1840s and 1850s there was a
letter from someone who signed as ‘Mary’, but seemed to have royal connections.
It wasn’t difficult for an experienced family historian to figure out that the
sender was Princess Mary, the last surviving child of King George III.
In
April the only online image I could find of Princess Mary was an 1856
photograph of her with Queen Victoria, the future King Edward VII, and Princess
Alice – you can see it here.
By then Princess Mary was 80 years old – she died the following year – but I
hoped that I might one day find a younger portrait, though I never expected to
find it at Buckingham Palace.
As
you can see it’s a striking picture: 9 year-old
Princess Mary is on the left holding a tambourine. What a contrast with the
1856 photograph!
I
was wondering how I could include the photograph in this newsletter without
breaching copyright when I discovered that it had been used for the cover of a 2012
book by Flora Fraser, daughter of Sir Hugh Fraser and Lady Antonia Fraser (née
Pakenham), daughter of the Earl of Longford. I knew Hugh Fraser in the early
1970s, as he was a director of the small merchant bank that I was working for
at the time; one of the beauties of her day, Lady Antonia was still a striking
figure when I met her for the first, and probably only, time at an Oldie lunch about 5 years ago (she will be 92 on Tuesday).
I
haven’t yet read the book, but there is a second-hand hardback copy in good
condition on its way from Amazon – a
bargain for £3.50 (including shipping)!
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.com.au
Photography
isn’t allowed inside Buckingham Palace, but once you’re outside in the grounds
you can snap away. I took the photo below as we were on the way out:
On
Wednesday Ethel
Caterham celebrated her 115th birthday. Born Ethel May Collins
on 21st August 1909 she is the last surviving subject of King Edward
VII and, since Tuesday, the oldest person in Europe.
She
is also the only living person to be recorded on the 1911 Census:
©
Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London,
England and used by kind permission of Findmypast
Earlier
this year I wrote
about John Tinniswood who had been declared the oldest man in the world by
Guinness World Records. However it turned out that
there was an even older man – though as he has now passed away John Tinniswood,
who will be 112 on Monday (God willing), has regained the crown.
On
a similar topic, the latest issue of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine
has a photo of Harriet Betts, née Epsley, who was
born on 14th July 1797 and died on 28th February 1900,
thus living in three centuries. She wasn’t unique – as I reported
in 2017, the 1901 Census shows 46 people who were aged 102 or more, though – as
I commented then – it’s likely that on
closer inspection some of ages will prove to have been exaggerated (or mistranscribed).
Here
in the UK we have to live to at least 100 to have a
chance of seeing ourselves in the census – what a ridiculous situation! I can
understand why we aren’t allowed to see other peoples’ entries, but our own?
My
wife has kindly contributed a short article with her latest thoughts:
This
is a Bank Holiday weekend in the UK, and the weather forecast is looking characteristically
wet and windy. While not an ideal time to do much in the garden, some of that
time could be usefully spent picking up bargain shrubs and perennials that can
be planted in autumn once the ground has had a good soaking.
While
many gardeners regard the spring as peak planting time, it can be better to
plant trees, shrubs and perennials during the autumn while the ground is still wet
and warm. Although most will become dormant, their root systems will benefit
from settling in prior to the ground becoming a lot colder. Like the sea, the
ground cools gradually before winter – and can take ages to warm up again in
spring.
Gardening Express has a good
selection of hydrangeas, Japanese acers and other plants that respond well to
autumn planting once the rain subsides.
For
more certainty about delivery and a vast choice of plants and pot sizes, head
to Crocus
for a 20% discount across the board (this weekend only). Perfect for that specimen
tree or shrub you’ve always wanted!
Similarly,
now is the time to grab some winter veg plants if you haven’t grown them from
seed over the summer – which can be tricky given hot weather, holidays and fair weather pests. Time also to order tulips for spring
colour. Sarah
Raven is renowned for her beautiful tulip combinations, and the winter veg
plugs are also excellent quality and very reliable if potted on for a few weeks
before planting out. You can currently save 30% on tulips but do check out the
other offers on the site.
Finally,
remember not to plant out during high winds, which can dry out tender roots and
make for a very messy experience. Keep your new plants sheltered and moist
until you can enjoy calmer gardening conditions. And do keep your new plants
watered – even the most drought resistant need a couple of years’ regular
watering to help develop the long roots needed to survive hot spells.
Note:
please use the links in the article rather than going to the websites using
Google – Peter tells me that LostCousins should benefit.
What
a strange summer it has been in the east of England – much of the time it has
either been too hot, too cold, too wet, or too windy!
At
least nothing – so far – has prevented me from harvesting a bumper crop of
plums from the orchard, and as the blackberries in the hedgerows seem to be more
numerous than ever I’m fast running out of space in
the freezer. As regular readers will know, I don’t make jellies, I make jams –
but until I have some apples I can’t do much with the
blackberries.
We
had a bit of a disaster at the beginning of the month: our Bosch dishwasher
developed a fault, and having researched the cost of repairs, I decided that – taking into account the fact that the existing machine is 8
years old - it was probably time to get a new one (as usual I chose a Which?
magazine Best Buy).
However,
I opted not to pay an extra £30 for the old machine to be taken away since I
had a feeling that some of the parts might come in useful, and this turned out
to be a very wise decision since the bottom basket on the new machine isn’t as
configurable as the old one. I’m sure it’s something I could have got used to
in time, but when you’ve spent 8 years stacking the dishwasher in a certain
way, why change if you don’t have to? Swapping the baskets took less than a
minute and I now have a hybrid machine with all the advantages of both models.
And
yes, in case you were wondering, the new one can be controlled by an
app!
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 2024 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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