Newsletter
- 27th January 2017
Ancestry
DNA passes 3 million tests
British
Newspaper Archive launches 'In Pictures'
GRO's
Phase 1 trial attracts orders for 42,000 PDFs
Would
you pay £45 for a PDF copy of a GRO register entry?
Our
early Christmas present from the GRO
What
records does the GRO keep?
'Disclosure
of death registration' scheme closed to genealogists
You've
still got time to win my competition! ENDS TUESDAY
The
British family that spans 6 generations
OBE medal
found at waste depot
Ancestry
launch UK & Ireland blog
Save
on Ancestry DNA in Australia ENDS SUNDAY
Victoria
Petty Sessions records at Findmypast
The LostCousins newsletter is usually
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Ancestry DNA passes 3
million tests
This month Ancestry.com
announced that the number of DNA tests they had sold had passed the 3 million
mark, with 1.4 million sold in the 4th quarter of 2016 alone (compared to 1
million in the WHOLE of 2015). Apparently over half a million tests were sold
on one day alone - Black Friday!
Some gloomy researchers might feel that
Black Friday is an appropriate description given the way that DNA testing seems
to be taking over from conventional research in the public mind, but for those
of us who have already tested the opportunity to match with so many potential
cousins is an intriguing prospect.
However, I suspect that in the early
days we could run into problems - I'm sure that some of those who have tested
see it as a short-cut, a substitute for the challenge and intellectual
stimulation that more traditional methods provide. There will, I'm sure, be
many whose knowledge of their family tree is so rudimentary that they're going
to be heavily reliant on others for answers.
But hasn't it always been like this?
When Who Do You Think You Are? first
screened in the UK (fortuitously it was just a few months after the LostCousins
site opened) there were hundreds of thousands of Britons who wanted to know
more, but didn't have the necessary research skills. We helped our cousins
then, and have continued to do so ever since - let's help them now!
Note:
although I personally tested with Family Tree DNA, I paid for my brother to
test with Ancestry DNA.
If you decide to test with Ancestry DNA
you can support LostCousins using the following links:
British Newspaper
Archive launches 'In Pictures'
The new 'In Pictures' feature at the
British Newspaper Archive makes it easier to search for photographs - for
example, I found a 1948 picture of my grandfather's 1st cousin. 'In Pictures'
is at the beta stage, but I didn't encounter any problems during my testing.
To find out more see this blog article.
BNA have also added more than a million
articles from Irish newspapers - you can also search these newspapers if you have a Findmypast Ireland or World subscription.
There are now over 18 million pages from historic British and Irish newspapers
in the collection, comprising over 200 million articles.
Note:
Findmypast's contract with the British Library requires them to digitise 40
million pages over 10 years, so there's clearly plenty more to come!
GRO's Phase 1 trial
attracts orders for 42,000 PDFs
According to a report in the February
issue of Who Do You Think You Are?
magazine there were 42,000 PDFs ordered during the three week trial in
November, about 2,000 per day.
I don't know what conclusions the GRO
have come to, but a key surprise for them was the fact that the number of paper
certificates ordered was unaffected (and that's probably why the turnaround
time for PDFs gradually became extended). I suspect that the release of the
enhanced birth and death indexes a few days before the trial was a contributory
factor, and the fact that the trial was known to be limited will also have
spurred some researchers to place more orders during the period than they might
otherwise have done.
It's possible that the GRO will decide
to run another trial before committing to a permanent service. The November
trial wasn't publicised by the GRO, and whilst many keen researchers will have
found out about it from this newsletter, or from Facebook, there will be many
who only found out after the trial had ended.
Would you pay £45 for a
PDF copy of a GRO register entry?
Phase 2 of the GRO's trial involves same
day email delivery of PDFs - an attractive prospect, perhaps, but I suspect few
family historians will be prepared to pay the premium price of £45.
In reality this service is intended
primarily for lawyers and heir hunters who need to see the results quickly,
often so that they can place further orders once they know what the first
certificate says. At the current time their only option is the priority
service, which offers next day despatch of a certificate by 1st Class post for
£23.40, or by Special Delivery for an extra £6.45.
It might be different for a professional
genealogist but, inquisitive as I am, I can't think of any circumstances in
which I would pay £45. What about you - could you conceive of a situation in
which you would pay such a high price?
Our early Christmas
present from the GRO
Although the PDF trial attracted a lot
of attention, the best innovation was the release of the GRO's enhanced birth
and death indexes - because they provide researchers who have English or Welsh
ancestry with an enormous amount of information that doesn't cost a penny!
Here are some of the many ways these
indexes can be used - have you tried them all?
Tip:
fewer than 10% of your living relatives have a surname that is one of your
ancestral surnames - by tracing the marriages of your female relatives with the
help of the enhanced birth indexes you'll greatly expand your tree, and your
chances of finding 'lost cousins'.
What records does the
GRO keep?
From time to time the Passport Office
(of which the General Register Officer is a part) publishes a report listing
the records help by the GRO - it's not just births, marriages, and deaths in
England & Wales.
For example, the latest report tells us
that the GRO holds records of births and deaths on British-registered
hovercraft from 1972 onwards, and - more usefully - of all children given into
the care of the Foundling Hospital between 1853-1948. You'll find the complete
list here,
but please note that just because records are kept doesn't mean that they are
available for inspection.
'Disclosure of death
registration' scheme closed to genealogists
Since 2008 the GRO and its equivalents
in Scotland and Northern Ireland have made available weekly lists of deaths
that have been registered in their respective jurisdictions under the DDRI
(disclosure of death registration information) scheme. But unfortunately for
genealogists this information isn't available to everyone:
"Organisations wishing to apply for a
weekly supply of UK death registration data must be able to demonstrate that
they will only use the information in the prevention, detection, investigation
or prosecution of offences. In addition, they will need to meet the required
security standards."
There is a charge of £14,250 per quarter
to each of the approved organisations; the latest
report I could find lists the subscribers as:
CallCredit Limited
Capita Employee Benefits Limited
CIFAS
Equifax Plc
Experian Limited
Faraday Tracing Bureau Limited
GB Group Plc
Mortality Manifest Limited
Prudential Distribution Limited
Synectics Solutions Limited
Tracesmart Limited trading as LexisNexis
In the USA the Social Security Death
Index lists most, but not all, deaths - there are over 94 million records for
the period 1935-2014 that you can search at Ancestry
(most are for the period from 1962 onwards). You can also search the SSDI at Findmypast and FamilySearch.
There was a move to remove the SSDI from
the public domain, but in the end a compromise was reached - in future records
will only be made public after 3 years.
You've still got
time to win my competition! ENDS TUESDAY
It has been great to see so many of you
taking part in this year's competition, particularly since it has already
resulted in a sharp rise in the number of matches being made between cousins
(which, of course, is the aim).
For example, Rob wrote this week to tell
me that:
"Just
before Christmas I made contact with a wonderful new cousin Helen born in New Zealand
now living in Australia. On the 1st January I found another, then today I found
a further FOUR."
To enter the competition you only have
to do what should come naturally to any family historian - search for your
'lost cousins'. Will you be as successful as Bob? You won’t know if you don't
try.
Every direct ancestor or blood relative
you enter on your My Ancestors page before
midnight (London time) on Tuesday 31st January 2017 represents an entry in the
competition, and for each one you enter from the 1881 Census you'll get a bonus
entry.
Tip:
a 'direct ancestor' is someone from whom you are descended, such as a
great-great grandparent - most people just call them ancestors; a 'blood
relative' is a cousin, ie someone who shares your
ancestry.
Shortly after the competition closes
I'll start picking relatives at random from all those entered during the period
of the competition, and the lucky members who entered those relatives will be
able to choose a prize from the list below (the first person out of the hat
gets to choose first, the second person has next choice, and so on). Obviously
I can't wait for ever for the winners to make up their minds, so if I don't get
a response to my email within 24 hours I may decide for you!
Here's what YOU can win:
This year's most valuable prize is a 12 month World subscription to
Findmypast, offering unlimited access to over 8 billion records and news
articles, including the 1939 Register for England & Wales (worth £155.95)
(generously donated by Findmypast, Britain's leading family
history company)
With a World
subscription you can access any of Findmypast's historic records and newspaper
articles, as well as their modern (2002-14) UK Electoral Register - and you can
do this at any of Findmypast's four sites around the globe.
Living DNA's
autosomal test offers the highest resolution analysis of your British ancestry
(worth £120)
(kindly
donated by Living DNA, Britain's most innovative DNA company)
Also on
offer is a 12 month Britain subscription to Findmypast, offering unlimited
access to over 8 billion records and news articles, including the 1939 Register
for England & Wales (worth £119.95)
(donated by Findmypast, this year's leading sponsor)
ONE copy of
Family Historian v6 (kindly donated by Simon Orde,
the designer and lead programmer of Family Historian)
If the winner
lives outside the UK the prize will be a downloaded copy; winners in the UK can
choose between a downloaded copy and a boxed copy (they function identically).
Check out Family Historian now with a free 30-day trial - just follow this link.
You can also
win 900 Findmypast credits (worth £54.95), sufficient to unlock 15 households
from the 1939 Register (although you can also use them to access other
records).
TEN 12 month
subscriptions to LostCousins worth up to £12.50 each
If you
already have a subscription I'll extend it by 12 months
Even if you don't win one of these
prizes there's a far greater reward at stake, and it's one that everyone can
win - you could find a 'lost cousin'. Every single relative you enter is a
potential link to another researcher who shares your ancestry - and whenever
you click the Search button the
LostCousins computer will compare every single entry you've made against the
millions of entries made by other members!
Tip:
unlike some websites, which update their databases at intervals, the
LostCousins database is updated instantly - there is no waiting, whether you're
entering a new relative or updating an existing entry.
This
year your chances are better than ever before - for example, when you enter a household
from the 1881 England & Wales census there's 1 chance in 17 of an immediate
match!
If you're new to LostCousins, or have
forgotten how easy it is to enter relatives, see the Getting Started Guide on
the Help & Advice page.
When war broke out the writer Nina Bawden (née Mabey) was living in Goodmayes,
Ilford where I grew up - her experiences as an evacuee were the inspiration for
Carrie's War, a novel written for
children which has twice been adapted for television. Like my mother she was
evacuated with her school to Suffolk, and some of her memories from that time are
recalled in Virginia Nicholson's Millions Like Us,
which chronicles women's lives during WW2 (I'll be reviewing it in a future
newsletter, but I can tell you now that I'm finding it very interesting).
When the children came back to Ilford
from Suffolk my mother left school and got a job - my grandmother didn't want
her to be sent away again - but Nina went with the rest of her school to Wales,
and that's the setting for her novel. 1940 now seems like a lifetime ago (and
it is) but when Nina Bawden's book was published in
1973 the war was still fresh in many people's minds - the popularity of TV
series like Dad's Army
and the ITV series Manhunt,
both favourites of mine, was testimony to this.
In the February issue of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine Guy
Baxter from the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading writes about their
unique collection of memoirs from the time of evacuation. One of the 600 items
in the collection is reproduced in the magazine - a 1941 letter from Barbara Stagles, who was evacuated from Bristol to Rockwell Green
in Somerset with her sister Betty.
This blog posting
from the Essex Record Office has photos of evacuees at a tea party in 1944 - if
you have connections with the county it's well subscribing.
Note:
many of the children who were evacuated can be seen in the 1939 Register (although
Nina Mabey isn't one of them).
I was too young to remember the floods
of 31st January 1953, but I do remember visiting Peter Pan's Playground (now
Adventure Island) at Southend-on-Sea a few years later and seeing the mark
indicating how high the water had come.
Earlier this month resorts on the east
coast of England were once again under threat from the sea - both my brother
and my brother-in-law live in Essex towns from which people were evacuated,
though fortunately neither was directly affected.
But 31st January also has positive
memories for me - it was the day in 1993 when I first met my wife.
Note:
if, like me, you were a visitor to Southend in the 50s and 60s this YouTube video of Peter Pan's
Playground might bring back some happy memories.
The British family
that spans 6 generations
BBC News recently reported a family in Yorkshire
which claimed to be the only British family spanning 6 generations - you can
read the story here.
However, with the birth of baby Harvey
on Monday another
family, this time in Grimsby, also joined this select group.
Looking though my tree the most I could
find was 5 generations - my great-great-great grandmother Jane Till, who was
born in 1819, lived until 1907, by which time her daughter Emma, my great-great
grandmother, was herself a great-grandmother. (Emma would also have achieved the
same feat had she lived three years longer.)
Do you have any examples in your tree where
6 generations of a family were alive at the same time?
OBE medal found at waste
depot
My wife spotted this story
about a discarded OBE in the Guardian;
last year a Victoria Cross dated 1854 was found in the River Thames - you can
read about it here,
on the Museum of London website.
Ancestry launch UK
& Ireland blog
Ancestry have set-up a separate blog for
customers whose research interests are primarily in the UK and Ireland - you'll
find it here.
Although the blog has only just launched
Ancestry have thoughtfully added past articles from their main blog which are
of particular relevance - well worth a look!
Save on Ancestry DNA
in Australia ENDS SUNDAY
Yesterday was Australia Day, so until
Sunday 29th January you can avoid paying shipping charges when you order a test
from Ancestry DNA.
Victoria Petty Sessions
records at Findmypast
To celebrate Australia Day Findmypast
have released more than 3 million Petty Sessions records for the state of
Victoria: the collection includes transcripts and scanned colour images of
original registers.
The Petty Sessions dealt with the type
of matters that would now be presented at a Magistrates Court; the records
cover the period 1854 to 1985 - you can search the records here.
Note:
the collection is not complete - the records cover 74 courts, although there
were as many as 235 operating in 1880.
Every now and again I click on one of
the fake news items that appear on websites like Facebook and Mail Online just
to see what the latest scam is. Usually they're fairly benign - all they're
trying to do is attract you to a different site in the hope that you'll click
on some of their adverts. But this morning I found a real humdinger:
Not only did I get that on the screen, there
was a computer-generated voice repeating the warning - and telling me that if I
closed the browser window the problem couldn't be fixed. For me it was an
interesting experience - I generally only read about these sorts of things
happening to other people - but I can imagine that some people who are less
IT-savvy might fall for the scam.
Note:
I did, of course, close the browser tab - problem solved. Not that there was a
problem in the first placed, of course!
The fake news item was typical - it
featured a celebrity and hinted that there was some important news that I
didn't know (in this case that they had died). Richard Branson is frequently used
(or rather, misused) in these scams, but on this particular occasion it was a
well-known actor.
I should point out that fake news is
never identified as such - you have to be a born sceptic, like me, to spot it
reliably. These days even reputable news outlets can be fooled into publishing
fake news, particularly if it fits their particular political biases. One of
the most insidious features of fake news is that - because it isn't reported on
reputable sites like the BBC News site, or CNN - people think that they're the
first to hear about it, and want to share it with others through social media.
Fake news, like rumours, can spread like wildfire.
Whilst the scam I encountered might seem
more dangerous than any fake news story, I'd rather have someone hijack my
wallet than my mind - the hyperinflation that hit Germany in the 1920s may have
been bad, but what came afterwards was worse, much much
worse.
Written by criminal lawyer Barrie
Roberts, Bad Penny Blues is the third book in
the Chris Tyroll series. It's certainly not the best
piece of genealogy-related fiction that I've ever read, but it did hold my
attention, and I definitely enjoyed the ride. At the centre of the story is one
of the last convicts to be transported to Australia in 1865, but all that's
known at the beginning of the book is his initials.
Because it was published in 2000 there
are second-hand hardback copies available from as little as 1p (excluding
shipping), but I bought the Kindle version - which was only released in August
last year. You can support LostCousins by ordering using the links below:
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Abebooks
Following my review of File Under Fidelity I was contacted by
members in Ireland and New Zealand who were unable to purchase the books (which
are only available in Kindle format). When I contacted Geraldine Wall, the
author, she told me that she had not intended to prohibit sales in those
territories and she was able to make changes to the settings that enabled both
members to order the books. So it's worth contacting me if you have difficulty
purchasing any other Kindle books I have recommended!
The Christmas and New Year period is a
time when we tend to indulge ourselves, so I hope you don't mind me indulging you
with some culinary treats….
Early in the new year I found myself
faced with a conundrum. I'd started to make Baked Apples, one of my favourite
deserts - and also an occasional breakfast treat - when I suddenly realised
that I didn't have any dried fruit in the cupboard. Normally I'd stuff the
apples with sultanas and raisins, then add soft dark brown sugar and a little
water - but now I had to use some ingenuity.
Looking around I spotted an orange.
Without peeling it I sliced it into 6 pieces, one for each apple, and stuffed
the pieces into the cored apples - a great start, perhaps, but I reckoned it
needed something extra to balance the citrus, some nuts, perhaps?
Then I remembered there was the remains
of a bottle of almond liqueur in the cupboard. I added the brown sugar, then
trickled the liqueur over the apples - although it wasn't strong I didn't want
to add too much liquid, since the juice would come up out of the orange
segments once I put the dish in the oven.
Don't ask me what the oven temperature
was or how long I cooked the apples for - I didn't make a note at the time, so
I'd have to make it up. But when it came out of the oven my new concoction
looked and smelled delicious - and as for the taste…. Mmmm!
As a finishing touch I added a scoop (or two) of caramel ice cream in each bowl,
but I'm sure it would have been almost as good with plain vanilla - the
combination of flavours and textures was amazing!
A week or so earlier I'd popped into my
local Tesco store to see if there were any Christmas left-overs at bargain
prices, but found there was very little that appealed. However, I'd timed my
visit so that it coincided with the final markdowns of the day, and there were
loads of blueberries in 150g packs. At £2 a time I wouldn't have even considered
buying them - but at 20p each they were a bargain.
The 28 packs I bought made 7 or 8lbs of
blueberry jam (with orange and lemon peel and juice to offset the sweetness),
and almost filled a 2 litre Kilner jar with stewed
blueberries for breakfast (delicious with low fat natural yoghurt).
If you can figure when your local
supermarkets make their final reductions you too could pick up some bargains!
I should have confirmed that the Leicestershire
parish records which I predicted in the last newsletter are now online. Also Ancestry
have made available parish registers for Jersey - mostly in French, of course:
Jersey, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1540-1812
Jersey, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813-1915
Jersey, Church of England Marriages, 1754-1940
Jersey, Church of England Deaths and Burials, 1813-1940
Until the next time,
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2017 Peter Calver
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