Newsletter – 28th
January 2021
Last chance to win a prize in my New Year
Competition ENDS SUNDAY
ScotlandsPeople
reveal additional BMD registers
Certificates and wills still arriving surprisingly
quickly
Descendant of illiterate Sussex couple becomes US
President
Honour thy father AND thy mother
Ethnicity estimates exposed by identical twins
DNA test identifies victim after 37 years
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 13th January) 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!
Last chance to win a prize in my New Year
Competition ENDS SUNDAY
31st
January is a very special day for me – it’s the anniversary
of the day I first met my wife. But it could be a special day for you too, because
it’s the last day of the New Year Competition, and your
last opportunity to win one of the fabulous prizes on offer.
Here's a reminder of what YOU could win, and all
for a few minutes of your time!
12 month PRO subscription to
Findmypast (worth £159.99)
Virtually
unlimited access to over 8 billion historical records from around the world,
modern electoral registers for the UK, and more than 300 million newspaper
articles. Generously donated by Findmypast.
12 month Diamond subscription
to The Genealogist (worth £139.95)
Unlimited
access to a wide range of records including non-conformist records, exclusive
tithe records and tithe maps, and a growing collection of 'Lloyd George'
Domesday records and maps which you won't find at any
other site. Generously donated by The Genealogist.
Ancestry
DNA kit -UK version (worth £79)
The best genealogical
DNA test that money can buy – a chance to knock down 'brick walls' and confirm
that your past
research is spot-on! Donated by me.
12 month unlimited subscription
to British Newspaper Archive (worth £79.95)
Over
40 million pages from historic British and Irish newspapers, with hundreds of
thousands more pages added every month. Optimised search features including the
ability to search for articles added after a particular date, so that you don't have to repeatedly trawl through articles you've
previously read or discarded. Generously donated by Findmypast.
A
professional, hand-drawn A5 portrait of one of your
ancestors (worth £60)
See Alex Halliday's website for more details of the services
she offers – for example, if you win you might choose to upgrade your portrait
with a frame hand-crafted by her husband Michael in his workshop. Generously
donated by the artist.
12 month subscription to Who
Do You Think You Are? Magazine (worth at least £60)
A
wealth of news, knowledge, and information from the world of genealogy – plus
some inside stories from the TV series.
Family
Historian v7 (just out!)
Simon
Orde, the programmer of this Great British program has generously offered to
donate a digital copy to the lucky winner. But you don’t
have to wait for the result of the competition to find out what amazing
features the program offers – you can download a free trial version here.
Three
autographed copies of The Asylum-Hiding the Past
Nathan
Dylan Goodwin will dedicate these copies to the three lucky winners – two great
stories in a single paperback, Hiding
the Past introduced us to Morton Farrier, The Asylum is a prequel to
that first novel.
Autographed
copies of The Marriage Certificate and The Death Certificate
Stephen
Molyneux will sign copies of the paperbacks for the lucky winner. His debut
genealogical mystery novel, The Marriage
Certificate, is one of my all-time favourites, and The
Death Certificate is a worthy follow-up.
Autographed
copies of Ten Steps to a One-Place Study and Sins as Red as Scarlet:
a Devon Town in Turmoil
Author
Janet Few will autograph copies of these popular books for the winner.
We've never had such a wonderful range of prizes
before – I've said it before, but I'm going to say it again, I'm really grateful
to all those who have donated prizes!
To
have a chance of winning one of these prizes simply do what should come naturally
to any serious family historian – add more entries to your My Ancestors page. The more relatives you add the better
your chance of winning, and remember – relatives from the
1881 Census count double. To maximise your chances of finding 'lost cousins' –
and winning prizes – follow the advice in this article.
Tip: even if you don't win one of the prizes, you'll have an excellent chance
of finding a 'lost cousin' or two – and that's the best prize of all, because you'll
be sharing it with a fellow family historian.
ScotlandsPeople reveal additional BMD registers
Each
January ScotlandsPeople make available an extra year's worth of
online birth, marriage, and death registers: this year they're adding births from
1920, marriages from 1945, and deaths from 1970.
Certificates and wills still arriving surprisingly quickly
If you have to order
birth, marriage, or death certificates, rather than downloading digital copies you'll
be pleased to know both ScotlandsPeople and the GRO
in England & Wales are providing a much faster turnaround than you might be
led to expect by the warnings displayed on their respective websites.
I understand that wills are still being delivered
promptly in most cases.
Descendant of illiterate Sussex couple becomes US President
On Wednesday 20th January, millions around the world
watched the inauguration of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr as the 46th President of
the United States – however very few would have known where his paternal
ancestors came from. Much has been said and written about Joe Biden's Irish and
Catholic heritage, but his English ancestry has either been ignored or
misrepresented.
There are 271
trees at Ancestry which show that President Biden is descended from John Biden
and Anne Beaumont of Huntingdonshire, England – every one of them wrong, as this
excellent research
by Megan Smolenyak demonstrates. There is just one
tree, published by English family historian Martin Haskell, which shows correctly
that William (not William Henry) was born in Sussex.
On 8th March 1789 - less than 9 months after the US
Constitution came into effect - William, the son of James Biden and Ann Silverlock, was baptised in the 14th century church of St
John the Baptist, Westbourne, Sussex.
Image used by kind permission of West Sussex Record
Office; All Rights Reserved
If anyone had told James and Ann that 232 years
later their great-great-great-great grandson would become the most powerful man
in the world, I doubt they would have believed it – they were unable to sign
their own names when they married in 1785:
Image used by kind permission of West Sussex Record
Office; All Rights Reserved
Indeed, as you can see, even the witnesses were
illiterate – it's hardly surprising that the spelling
of the surname varies between Biden and Byden (when their son James was baptised in 1800 the surname
was once again recorded as Byden). Marriage by
licence was generally less common than marriage by banns, since it cost more,
but as the next three couples who married at Westbourne that summer also chose
to marry by licence there may have been some practical reason why it was
preferred at that time. The first child of James and Ann was not baptised until
18 months after the marriage, so there is no evidence that it was a 'shotgun
wedding'.
Is the birthdate of 20th December 1787 consistent
with a baptism in March 1789? One factor to consider is that from 1783-1794 Stamp
Duty was levied on parish register entries, which undoubtedly deterred some parents
from baptising their children promptly. But it’s equally
likely that his age was exaggerated by a year at the time of his death on 24th
November 1849 – he was, after all, just a few weeks from his next birthday –
and that this led to his year of birth being wrongly calculated.
In fact, if you go to FamilySearch
and look at the Mortality Schedule produced in 1850 (at the time of that year's
US Census) you'll see that his age at death in November 1849 is given there as
60, which tallies perfectly with a birthdate of 20th December 1788.
I began this investigation after reading this
Findmypast blog article
(no subscription is needed); there have also been articles in Sussex newspapers
and elsewhere, mostly drawing on the same research. Martin Haskell, creator of
the only Ancestry tree which shows the correct baptism for William Biden, is descended
from James Byden, baptised at Westbourne on 27th July
1800 – you can see the baptism here,
at FamilySearch.
I wonder how many LostCousins members are descended
from James Biden and Ann Silverlock? Do make sure
that your My Ancestors page is up to date – who knows, you might even be matched with POTUS!
Honour thy father AND thy mother
There
was time when family historians only traced their male lines – in the days before
the Internet it was often the only practical option. Even today it's harder to trace the lineages of our female ancestors
because it usually requires finding two entries rather than one: first their
marriage (to discover their maiden name), and second their baptism.
But
when it comes to our 19th century ancestors there's really no excuse, because
we can usually find out
the
maiden names of our female ancestors by looking at the birth registrations of children
born after July 1837 (in England & Wales). Indeed, now the GRO birth indexes
include the maiden name of the mother we don’t even
have to order the certificate (or a PDF copy of the register entry).
And
yet the My Ancestors page of a typical LostCousins member is still biased
towards the lines of their male ancestors – that surely isn’t right? Our female
ancestors risked their lives every time they gave birth – don’t they deserve
better treatment from their descendants?
The
vaccine roll-out in the UK is proceeding apace, and by the time you read this
around 15% of the adult population will have received at least one dose – and
this morning I was invited to book an appointment for my first jab (in just
over a week's time).
Hopefully the production problems experienced by the
two major manufacturers will soon be resolved – if we're able to continue
vaccinating the UK population at the rate of 10 million doses per month, by the
end of June or soon afterwards, everyone over 50, all care workers, all
healthcare workers, and everyone over 16 with underlying health conditions will
have had (or been offered) two vaccine doses. Up to now these groups have
accounted for 99% of all COVID-related deaths in the UK, so we could a see significant
relaxation of restrictions in July, with some changes taking place sooner, once
a large proportion of the vulnerable population have had their first dose.
I'm
optimistic that by July I'll be defrosting the large turkey I’d originally earmarked
for Christmas, and inviting family members to come and
share it!
Anyone
who is familiar with the 'trolley problem', an ethical conundrum that has appeared
in many forms, will have smiled wryly at the fuss caused by the advice of UK scientists
to extend the period between vaccine doses to 12 weeks, so that more people can
be protected at a time of high infection and vaccine shortages.
I
thought their decision was absolutely right, and I
read today that the Chief Executive of AstraZeneca, the major supplier of COVID-19
vaccine to the UK, agrees.
It
will be interesting to see whether Germany is proved right in the decision not
to utilise the AstraZeneca vaccine for over-65s, despite the shortfall in supply of other vaccines.
Note:
did you see this article
about a couple of newly-weds (aged 86 and 96) who had their jabs this week and
advised others to get theirs?
This
tale sent in by Mike is a warning of what can happen when we don’t
vaccinate ourselves and our loved ones:
"No
vaccination by the Dowse family in India led to a tragedy. Alfred Sydney Dowse
was a Medical Orderly in the Army stationed in India. He met and married an
Anglo-Indian in 1926. They had six children and in January 1941 disaster
struck. His wife and six children contracted smallpox: in a period of 4 days he lost his wife and four children to this
dreadful disease. Two children recovered and he returned home to live with his
niece (who had just been widowed when HMS Hood blew up and sunk on 24 May 1941).
We shall never know why the family did not receive a smallpox vaccination, but fortunately
the disease is now eradicated together with that other terrible disease, polio.
Just don't know why there is any resistance to the COVID vaccination."
I
assume that whoever sent a 'parcel bomb' to the vaccine factory in Wales this
week is a vaccine-denier. What a twisted mind they must have!
Hopefully
by next Tuesday you'll have entered all the relatives you
possibly can on your My Ancestors page (and checked them against the
census – remember, you can’t win a prize with an entry that doesn't follow the
rules). So you'll be ready to do another good turn –
this time helping people who aren’t related to you.
This
year's Transcription Tuesday, organised by Who Do You Think You Are?
magazine, will be supporting four important projects – you can find out all
about them, and how you can take part, here.
There
is no William Wednesday, and there never was. So what
explains these search results from the 1837-1915 England & Wales marriage
indexes at Ancestry?
You
probably know that FreeBMD provided Ancestry with their
transcription of the GRO indexes for the period 1837-1915, but what you might
not be aware of is that subsequent corrections to the FreeBMD
database have not been uploaded to Ancestry.
If
you carry out the same search at FreeBMD you get
these results:
You’re probably not surprised to see that Martha
Greenaway's forename is now spelled correctly, but how has William Wednesday
morphed into William Monday?
Brian,
the eagle-eyed LostCousins member who spotted this anomaly also provided the
solution: in the printed indexes there are three people with the surname Monday
who married in that quarter: Francis, John, and William. Francis was correctly
transcribed as Francis Monday, but John became John Tuesday, whilst William was
transformed into William Wednesday. As Brian said, such are the perils of using
spreadsheets!
Tip:
I frequently receive emails from members who are having difficulty logging into
their LostCousins account – in most cases this is the result of their browser
remembering a previously incorrect password and continually inserting it. I
suspect that similar problems occur at many sites – the only difference is that
at LostCousins we have an audit trail that allows me to diagnose problems when
they occur. If you ever encounter a problem like this simply delete the
password that your browser has thoughtfully inserted, and
enter the correct one.
Ethnicity estimates exposed by identical twins
I've written many times that ethnicity estimates
are for amusement only, but this example from a LostCousins member which
compares his estimates with those for his identical twin brother really takes
the biscuit:
You'll know from my recent article that even
identical twins don't have precisely the same DNA, but the major factor is that
consumer DNA tests are not 100% accurate; even small errors can confound the complex
statistical process by which ethnicity estimates are made.
Matching
of genetic cousins is a much simpler process, and one that is less likely to be
affected by a small number of misreads. That said, whilst Ancestry identified
them as twins and they had a similar list of close matches, the amounts of shared
DNA often varied – though because the amounts of DNA shared by cousins vary
considerably it's unlikely that the variations would
affect the analysis.
See
the chart in my DNA
Masterclass to get a sense of just how much shared DNA can vary – not because
of errors in the testing process, but because the inheritance of autosomal DNA
is essentially random.
Tip:
a number of members have mentioned that they found
this example
of DNA inheritance helpful.
DNA test identifies victim after 37 years
Most of the publicity around the police use of DNA databases has
related to the apprehension of murderers and rapists, but there's
another very important role: identifying victims. This article
from the Seattle Times describes how the remains of 14 year-old Wendy
Stephens were finally identified after 37 years, thanks to the GEDmatch
database.
The
Chester Creek Murders
is the first book in a new series from Nathan Dylan Goodwin, best-known up to
now for the 'Forensic genealogist' mysteries featuring Morton Farrier. It has
been sitting on my Kindle for over a week while I've
been dealing with a backlog of emails which went into my spam folder when my
usually reliable spam filter went awry (I suspect that the frequent occurrence of
the word 'virus' may have triggered this).
So
far I've enjoyed what I've read, but it's early days;
nevertheless, if you don’t want to wait for my review, please use the links
below so that you can support LostCousins:
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.com.au
I
always have a good breakfast, typically fresh or home-cooked fruit with 0% fat Greek-style
natural yoghurt, followed by an egg. There are only so many ways you can cook
an egg, so this week I invented an American-style combination: scrambled egg
served on half a buttered and toasted cinnamon & raisin bagel, topped with
a spoonful of home-made plum jam. Absolutely delicious, and well worth trying!
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......
I'll be back soon – in the
meantime do PLEASE take part in the LostCousins project to link cousins around the
world who share the same ancestors. Just a few minutes of your time could
change somebody else's life!
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2021 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? To
link to a specific article right-click on the article name in the contents list
at the top of the newsletter.