Newsletter – 21st
February 2023
Save 30% at the British Newspaper Archive ENDS 28TH FEBRUARY
Kensington & Chelsea records online NEW
Half-price 1921 Census ENDS 28TH FEBRUARY
Knocking down ‘brick walls’ using DNA
Success story: when coincidence and diligence
collide
Mapping Your Ancestors OFFER
Not such good news from the MoD?
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 14th February) 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!
Save 30% at the British Newspaper Archive ENDS 28TH
FEBRUARY
Until
the end of this month you can save 30% on any new subscription to the biggest
online collection of British newspapers and magazines in the world. There are over
63 million pages within this enormous collection with (by my estimate) well
over half a billion articles, and literally billions of names.
The
primary focus is on local and provincial newspapers, so your ancestors don’t
need to have been famous – or infamous – to qualify for a mention. Local
newspapers specialise in ‘human interest’ stories, covering accidents, weddings,
school sports days, examination results, amateur dramatics, and a wide range of
sporting events – indeed, the more local people they could mention, the more copies
of the newspaper they were likely to sell. All too often our research into relatives
from earlier generations is limited to their interactions with officialdom – certificates,
censuses, electoral registers etc – but these only tell a small part of the
story.
The
British Newspaper Archive is a sister site to Findmypast, and if you have a Pro,
Ultimate, or Premium subscription to Findmypast you’ll already have access to
the newspapers and magazines in the archive – however you’ll find that searching
at the dedicated newspaper site is more powerful and more effective.
Frequent
users of historic newspapers will really appreciate the more flexible searching
options – for example you can restrict your searches to pages added to the
archive after a certain date, so that you don't keep ploughing through the same
list of results. This allows you to focus on what's new, which is important
because the archive is growing rapidly – by my calculation pages are being
added at the rate of 10 million a year!
Another
very useful search option is the ability to exclude words or phrases from your
search – this is a good way to cut down the unwanted search results you would
get if your ancestors happened to have the same name as a well-known person. For
example, my own name is hardly a common one, but were I to search without any
exclusions the few results that refer to me would be swamped by those relating
to the late racehorse trainer.
This
offer isn’t exclusive to LostCousins members, but you will only be supporting
LostCousins when you use the link below:
BRITISH
NEWSPAPER ARCHIVE – SAVE 30% ENDS TUESDAY 28TH
Please
bear in mind that the reduction only applies to the initial payment (and
shorter subscriptions are, in any case, much more expensive per month), so it’s
best to get a 12 month subscription if you can.
I’ve
written
in the past about the tragedy of headstones being destroyed without relatives being
notified, let alone consulted, but I was nevertheless shocked to read an
article in the Friends of Nunhead Cemetery newsletter which reported the destruction
of headstones in the graveyard of Emmanuel Church in Forest Gate, close to
where my ancestors lived in the early 20th century, and just a mile
from where my mother was born. The editor of the newsletter has kindly allowed me
to reproduce the article below (it has been reformatted to fit, but the wording
is unchanged).
Desecration
still happens
These
appalling photographs were taken recently at Emmanuel Church in Forest Gate,
East London. The churchyard falls 
within a conservation
area and the church is listed Grade Il, yet Newham council not only allowed the
desecration to happen, they actually donated E20,000
towards the cost. The beautiful churchyard was widely regarded as being one of
the prettiest in East London. When confronted by a local resident the vicar
said the gravestones 'made the church look abandoned' and that 'children can
run into them'.
When
attempting to crowd fund (later abandoned through lack of support) an on-line comment records the vicar as
dismissing the churchyard merely as 'a place littered with old graves'. When
confronted the vicar told the local resident that the graves would be laid flat
so that the inscriptions could be preserved, but in fact the gravestones were
smashed up, and one hundred and forty years of local and family history went
into skips for land-fill. Newham Council planners
thought it quite in order not to invite public comments, 
deferring the decision
to the Church of England authorities. That such sanctioned vandalism is still
taking place is shocking, and the like of which we all thought ended decades
ago. Only one third of the churchyard now remains, the rest being what can best
be described as a sterile vanity project. We should condemn all
of this destruction, and if this information is passed on to friends and
other networks it can only help draw attention to this terrible action and hope
we shall never see the likes again.
NB.
Emmanuel Church, Forest Gate, is a Church of England church. It was built in
the Decorated Gothic variant of the neo-Gothic style in 1852 to designs by Sir
George Gilbert Scott and a new parish was formed for it from parts of the
parishes of All Saints Church, West Ham and St Mary Magdalene's Church, East
Ham. A north aisle was added in 1890. It was bomb damaged during the Blitz and
later repaired. It was listed Grade Il in 1984.
Another
controversial article
came to my notice this week – it is the story of an artist who takes rubbings
of the memorial inscriptions of famous people, then turns them into art.
One
of the most famous epitaphs is “I told you I was ill” on the gravestone of the comedian Spike Milligan – I’d
thought it quite original, until I read (in the article linked to in the
previous paragraph) that similar words appear on a 1979 memorial.
There
are limitations on what can be said in a memorial inscription, but there can also
be disputes within a family – as this article
(which also involves Spike Milligan) reveals.
Earlier
this month it was reported
that the ashes of a girl of 12 who died 46 years ago were discovered in a Liverpool
park – an appeal has been launched to find her relatives.
Kensington & Chelsea records online NEW
My
great-great-great grandmother Sarah Jane Read was, according to more than one
census, born in Chelsea – though when she married George Wells in London (by
licence) in 1807 her parish was shown as Bildeston,
Suffolk and all of their children were born in
Suffolk. Later, after the family moved to London, one of their sons married an
Elizabeth Ann Read from Suffolk, who coincidentally (or not) had a sister named
Sarah Jane. Curiouser and curiouser!
When
I heard that Ancestry
had added hundreds of thousands of parish and Poor Law records
from the London Borough of Kensington & Chelsea my first thought was to
search for a Sarah Jane Read born around the right time (1787). My heart leapt
when I came across a Sarah Reed who was baptised on 16th March 1787,
but my hopes were dashed when I discovered her burial 6 months later.
Tip:
the year of Sarah Reed’s baptism has been incorrectly transcribed as 1789, so
someone who relies on transcripts wouldn’t have linked it to the burial in September
1787. It may be inconvenient or expensive to look at register images but, believe
me, it’s better than the alternative!
Whilst
I didn’t make a breakthrough in my research, you may well be more fortunate –
the links below will take you to the new record sets:
Kensington
and Chelsea, Church of England Parish Chest Records, 1597-1950
Kensington
and Chelsea, London, England, Poor Law Records, 1695-1921
Note:
I have considered the possibility that there is a place in Suffolk with a name
that sounds like ‘Chelsea’, but I’ve yet to find any likely candidates after searching Chelsworth and Charles Tye (both
of which are close to Bildeston). Any other
suggestions?
Half-price 1921 Census ENDS 28TH FEBRUARY
Unless
you have a Premium subscription to Findmypast the only way to access the 1921 England
& Wales census online is to pay for each household schedule or transcript
that you view. Until the end of February you can access the records for
half-price if you follow the relevant link below:
Knocking down ‘brick walls’ using DNA
Whilst
finding someone with the same 'brick wall' ancestors in their tree sometimes
enables the 'brick wall' to be knocked down, it's not the most common route to
success when you take an Ancestry DNA test – not least because you didn't need
to wait until you took a DNA test to find them, you could have found them by
searching Ancestry trees.
More
often 'brick walls' are knocked down by finding DNA matches who share ancestors
on the other side of the 'brick wall'. For example, it might be someone
descended from one of your ‘brick wall’ ancestor’s siblings, or from one of
their uncles or aunts.
Of
course, your immediate reaction is likely to be: "If I don't know who my
ancestor's parents were, how can I possibly know who their siblings were, let
alone their uncles and aunts?". And that’s when I would remind you about
the ‘scientific method’, the way that most discoveries are made in other
fields. Whilst some are serendipitous, like Alexander Fleming’s discovery of
penicillin, or Spencer Silver’s discovery of the adhesive that is (literally) behind
Post-It notes, most are the result of forming plausible
hypotheses which can be tested against the evidence.
The
circumstances of every case are different. Sometimes there will be candidate
families - but in other cases the only option might be to search the trees of
your DNA matches for genetic cousins who have an ancestor with right surname,
or who have an ancestor from the same village. It's no coincidence that those
are the two key strategies in my DNA
Masterclass.
Success story: when coincidence and diligence collide
I’d
already written the preceding article when an email arrived from Chris, whose investigations
into an intriguing connection were first reported
last September. Yesterday she emailed me to say that after much research into
that connection she’d managed to knock down a ‘brick wall’ that has been blocking
her path for decades.
Here’s
what Chris told me, under the heading “Eureka!!!!!! A 30 year
old brick wall tumbled courtesy of DNA testing”.
“As
you will be aware, I often extend the trees of some of my DNA matches in order to try and find a common ancestor and information
to enable me to extend my own tree. Well this week
that practice has paid off MASSIVELY as I have finally located my 4x great
grandparents, 5 x great grandparents and possibly my 6 x great grandparents and
confirmed the origins of my 3x gt grandmother who
sadly died shortly before the 1841 census. I knew that Hannah Edwards nee
Heritage was aged 40 when she died in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire in 1841.....but her ancestry has been a mystery to me ever since,
as she didn’t appear to have been born in Cheltenham, or even Gloucestershire.
“Hannah’s
marriage in Charlton Kings in 1827 was witnessed by John Heritage, possibly her
brother whose marriage Hannah witnessed in nearby Cheltenham in 1820. Both
Hannah and John had children baptised at the Ebenezer Wesleyan Chapel in
Cheltenham on the same day in 1828 and again in 1831, so it seemed more than
likely they were related and it seemed likely that
Mary Heritage who was buried at the same chapel in 1829 age 64, was possibly
her mother. John was alive in 1841 and
the census revealed that he was ‘not born in Gloucestershire’, but sadly he
emigrated to Australia before the 1851 census. Relentless research finally
located John’s wife’s obituary in Adelaide, South Australia, which stated that
John was from Oxfordshire, but if the family were travelling stonemasons as I
suspected, there was no certainty that Hannah was baptised in Oxfordshire, or
indeed baptised at all, but it was a starting point.
“As
John was a stonemason, I took an interest in another stonemason in
Gloucestershire, James Heritage, whom I felt could also be related since he too
lived in Cheltenham at one point. He had married in Gloucestershire and his
wife was resident in Oxfordshire in 1851 with their son, stating that she was
a ‘deserted wife’...... and it appeared
that James had vanished completely.
“Eventually
I located possible births for Hannah, John and James
in the village of Shortwood, Oxfordshire, which all
matched roughly with their census or death ages, all born to James Heritage and
Mary. IF these were Hannah’s brothers (and I had no way of knowing for
certain), then these were the most plausible parents. I suspected Hannah’s mother might be called
Mary, but there were too many variables to advance further. I wasn’t even
certain that any of my guesswork thus far was correct anyway and there were
countless other possible parents..... and
siblings..........
“A strange and very unexpected chain of events then led to a
major breakthrough. Whilst showing my future daughter in law’s mother Donna
how to use Ancestry DNA, we were amazed to discover that we shared DNA at
5th-8th cousin level, especially since my future daughter in law is French and
her mother half Ukranian!!! After perusing the
section of Donna’s tree which originated in England, I anticipated that our
connection might be in Oxfordshire, where she had proven ancestors at Ascot
under Wychwood, close to Shortwood where I thought it
possible that Hannah Heritage might have been baptised. Both being keen to
investigate this seemingly unlikely match, she allowed me access to her DNA and
is consequently listed amongst the DNA tests I manage, meaning I can manually
check for matches in common which are less than 20cM and would not normally be
available.
“As
our DNA match was only 8cM, the lowest that Ancestry report, I was not
expecting to find any matches in common, but lo and behold a match appeared
with someone who shared DNA with me, Donna, and my first cousin AND had an
online tree. No names on the tree were familiar to me, but the new match shared
DNA with another person who also shared my DNA. This person also had an online
tree which revealed that William JAQUES born c1808-11 in the Gloucestershire-Oxfordshire
border area was the only name common to both trees.... so
there was every chance that he was going to be our link.
“Full
of enthusiasm, I began to extend the trees of the 2 new DNA contacts’ to see
what transpired. It has taken me the best part of a week, wrestling with a
multitude of alternative spellings/mistranscriptions
for Jacques/Jaques/Jakes over a
number of different websites and counties, but suddenly a marriage for
James Heritage and Mary Jakes appeared at Cornwell in Oxfordshire in 1790. Right time, right area, right names. Eureka!
(And Mary signed her name as JAQUES despite the priest writing ‘JAKES’.)
© Image provided
by Oxfordshire
Family History Society and Oxfordshire History Centre. All Rights Reserved.
Used by kind permission of Ancestry
“William
Jaques born c1809-11 in Stow on the Wold, the common ancestor shared by the 2 new DNA matches
was the son of William Jaques who was born c1774 in nearby Broadwell to John and
Hannah Jaques. Amongst John and Hannah’s 9 children
was a Mary Jaques b1765 in Broadwell, which fitted
perfectly with Mary Heritage’s burial in 1829 aged 64, the woman whom I had
long suspected might be Hannah Heritage’s mother and therefore my 4G
grandmother. Mary Heritage nee Jaques was therefore
the sister of William Jaques b1774 and daughter of
John Jaques and Hannah Rose, the ancestors I share in common with the 2 new DNA cousins. (Incidentally, I
trawled through the scanned registers to find this information, rather than
rely on index searches.)
“As
a result of pursuing William Jaques’ ancestry, I now
have two new documented DNA cousins, confirmation of both my 3G grandmother and
my 4G grandparents, and I have also located my 5G grandparents and very
possibly my 6G grandparents as well! Without DNA, this breakthrough would never
have happened, and indeed wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been a manager of Donna’s
DNA. Hannah Heritage could have been born literally anywhere and my extensive
paper research had yielded no more than educated guesses. However, with the
support of my 2 new DNA matches and their connection with my son’s future mother in law (and my curiosity!!) I am certain that I have
finally located my ancestors. It just took about 25 years longer than I
anticipated!!
“My
next task is to see if I can locate the common ancestors which I share with Donna.
Our children have no worries about the forthcoming marriage though, as my son
is adopted!! (and our relationship is very distant!)
“Needless to say, I haven’t yet dealt with any of the
photos I intended to scan and put into an album. This is far more interesting
and productive!! I still can’t believe I have finally broken down this
longstanding brick wall and wonder where this discovery will lead next.
“You
are probably bored to tears by now, (sorry about that), but it shows that DNA
research really does work – and you were the person who persuaded me that DNA
was something I should invest in, so thank you so much for that. It also
underlines the value of searching original registers, wills, obituaries etc, as
without the finer details of marriage witnesses and obituaries, I would not
have progressed this far.
“Finding
Hannah’s father James Heritage’s ancestry will take a bit longer, I suspect, as
I am guessing he was probably a stonemason and travelled wherever there were
big building projects.........but thankfully Hannah Jaques’
family hadn’t moved far.
“Thank
you again for your part in this, persuading me of the value of DNA testing.”
Thank
YOU, Chris for sharing your story and inspiring the rest of us to keep plugging
away. When we test our DNA the answers to many of our mysteries are hidden
amongst our thousands of matches – the challenge is to find the needles in the
haystack (and that’s what the strategies in the DNA
Masterclass are designed to help with).
Incidentally,
the fact that these ‘brick walls’ came down like dominoes wasn’t because Chris
knew Donna – it was because they agreed to collaborate. My biggest ‘brick wall’
came down because I collaborated with a genetic cousin in Australia who I had
only recently found – the important thing was that we shared a common goal.
Tip:
the 1790 marriage of James Heritage and Mary Jaques isn’t
found in the Oxfordshire,
England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1930 record set at
Ancestry, as might be expected, but in the Oxfordshire,
England, Church of England Baptism, Marriages, and Burials, 1538-1812
record set. The switch to pre-printed marriage registers took place in 1754,
but pre-printed baptism and burial registers only came into general use in 1813
– this can lead to differences in the way that marriage records for the period
1754-1812 are classified.
Many people who take a DNA test aren’t
actively researching their family tree, and even those who are might not have
the time to make the most of their DNA matches.
Fortunately
it’s very easy for one Ancestry user to share their DNA results with another
(note that the procedure has changed slightly since last September when I previously
published this advice):
- First
log into your Ancestry account, click DNA in the main menu, and
choose Your DNA Results Summary from the dropdown list
- In
the top right, just under your username, you’ll see an icon with the word Settings
and a cog symbol; click it
- Scroll
down the Settings page until you get to Visibility and sharing
- Click
DNA test sharing
- Click
Invite
- Type
in the Ancestry username (ideally), or the email address of the person you
wish to share your DNA results with (note that the username isn’t usually the
name you see in your list of DNA matches, for example the user name of someone shown as John Smith might be
jsmith4793)
- Choose
Viewer, Collaborator, or Manager – which one is
appropriate depends on how involved each person will be
- Click
Invite
Collaborator is generally the
best option – it allows both parties to add notes and contact matches. Note
that only Manager gives the person you invite access to your raw DNA results
– this option is most appropriate when the person who tested wants no direct
involvement, since any messages from DNA matches will go to the appointed
manager.
By all means send a link to this article to any of your
relatives who want to share their DNA results with you – this will be particularly
advantageous for them if you have an Ancestry subscription and/or experience of
working with DNA, and they don’t.
Tip:
you can link to any article in any newsletter by going to the contents list at
the top, right-clicking on the title of the article, then choosing ‘Copy link’
(or the equivalent in your browser). Then just paste the link into an email or
text message.
The
final presentation for entrants in this winter’s competition featured Mark
Bayley from The Genealogist speaking about ‘Mapping Your Ancestors’, focusing
particularly on the powerful Map Explorer feature – which makes use of tithe
maps, censuses, and the 1910 Lloyd George ‘Domesday’ survey to help you
identify where your ancestors lived.
If
you weren’t fortunate enough to be invited, or were unable to attend, you’ll be
interested to know that there is a short (20 minute) video online which
demonstrates Map Explorer – you’ll find it here.
Mark
has also arranged a special offer for LostCousins members – you can get a £40 ‘lifetime’
discount on an annual Diamond subscription, reducing the cost to £99.95 a year.
In
the first year you’ll also get a Digital Research Pack worth over £64:
12 month Subscription to Discover Your Ancestors
online magazine (worth £24.99)
TreeView 2 Discount Voucher (worth
£10.00)
Discover
Your Ancestors' Occupations by Laura Berry (digital edition - worth £9.95)
Researching
and Locating Your Ancestors by Celia Heritage (digital edition - worth £9.95)
Regional
Research Guidebook
by Andrew Chapman (digital edition - worth £9.95)
Discover
Your Ancestors Periodical Compendium 2021 (digital edition - worth £9.95)
By
my calculation that’s a saving of over £100 in the first year; the ‘lifetime’
discount of £40 applies so long as you subscribe continuously.
To
take advantage of the offer please follow this link.
There’s
a legal principle, “fruit of the poisonous tree”, that evidence gained
illegally cannot be used in court – though before any lawyers pick up their mouse
to comment, I should mention that it’s not applied as consistently in England
as it is in the United States.
The
phrase sprang to mind when I watched episode
6 of Setting the Record Straight –
Dave Annal’s wonderful series of short videos focusing on the many ways in which unsuspecting family historians can
be led astray.
We’re all used to errors in online trees, but the
video shows the early 19th century source of an error that has
proliferated into nearly 20,000 Ancestry trees (and goodness knows how many
more at other sites). There’s a tendency to assume that researchers in earlier
centuries were more likely to be correct, presumably because:
(a)
They were closer in time to the events they were researching;
and
(b)
If they had made a mistake, surely someone would
have noticed by now?
Well, somebody did notice – but it was nearly two
centuries later, and the harm is already done because:
(c)
It’s likely that, like a virus, the false information
will continue to spread; and
(d)
Although Dave Annal has demonstrated that it’s the wrong
baptism, he hasn’t (so far as I know) identified the correct baptism
It’s one thing to persuade someone to replace the wrong
parents with the right ones, but convincing someone to replace the wrong parents
with question marks is an even greater challenge. Just as nature abhors a vacuum,
some family historians would rather perpetuate a falsehood. Even if you don’t have
time to watch all of the episodes in the series, do
watch episode 6 (it’s only 7 minutes long, but the lesson will remain with you
for the rest of your life).
I was fortunate when I discovered an error on one
of the branches of my own tree – though Francis Adam Keehner
married twice and gave the same name for his father on each occasion, I managed
to convince most of my cousins that the father named didn’t exist and that
Francis Adam was actually the illegitimate child of Catherine Keehner, one of my great-great-great grandmother’s younger sisters.
Indeed, as neither of the brothers had any children, all of
the living Keehners descend from Catherine – so are
not really Keehners at all.
©
Images copyright London Metropolitan Archives; All Rights Reserved. Used by
kind permission of Ancestry.
On this occasion it was a case of losing a
father but gaining a mother. Perhaps some day one of
my male Keehner cousins will take a Y-DNA test and
get some clues to the surname of the father – it’s not a matter of great
importance to me, but it would be interesting to find out whether this baptism
at St George in the East is the right one:
© Image
copyright London Metropolitan Archives; All Rights Reserved. Used by kind
permission of Ancestry.
It’s
the ONLY baptism of a ‘Francis Adam’ in the London Metropolitan Archives collection
between 1820 and 1830 – it’s around the right time (he was shown as 25 in the 1851 Census, and 63
when he died in 1888), it's in the right parish, and the mother’s name is ‘Catherine’. It could be
a coincidence, but it’s certainly worth following up.
Not
such good news from the MoD?
In
the last issue I suggested
that after 1st April the MoD would no longer be charging for copies
of the military service records that they hold. This was certainly the interpretation
of those who drew my attention to the change in procedure.
However it has since been pointed out that the information
on the official site could be interpreted differently – that the initial search
will be free, but if records are found there will then be a charge. I have
asked the MoD for clarification but have not yet had a response.
I
will report back when I know more……
Good
news and bad news this week – I did eventually receive a £30 refund from Asda,
which was more than I asked for 12 weeks ago, but doesn’t
come close to compensating for the time I spent on the phone. And talking of
phones, I’m still waiting for my fibre connection to start working, though it’s
now 9 weeks and one day since the intended activation date.
On
the bright side I’ve been told that will be fixed before the end of the month –
let’s hope that this time they’re right.
Note:
talking of delays, this news article
about a letter posted in 1916 which took over a century to arrive is quite
unbelievable!
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 2023 Peter Calver
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