Newsletter
- 30th July 2015
Access
to historical BMD registers: a Registrar's viewpoint
Sharing
certificates: more details
Save
with Findmypast's 20-20 offer EXCLUSIVE
Contacting
living relatives "out of the blue"
Hertfordshire
woman fights mother's will and wins
Does
Prince William really have Indian ancestry?
Understanding
DNA #4: how DNA is inherited
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
fortnightly. To access the previous newsletter (dated 22nd July) click here, for an index to articles from 2009-10
click here, for a list of articles from 2011
click here and for a list of articles from
2012-14 click here. Or do what I do, and use the customised
Google search below (it only searches these newsletters, so you won't get
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Whenever possible
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LostCousins site an exception (or else use a different browser, such as
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To go to the main LostCousins website click the
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Access to historical
BMD registers: a Registrar's viewpoint
This week I received an email from a
LostCousins member who is also a Registrar - I think you'll find the comments
quite thought-provoking:
"In respect of the access to historical GRO records - I
realise that you are keen to promote contributions to the consultation process
GRO are entering into. However this development is sadly coming at the worst
possible time for keen family historians (like myself)
after a very long wait. I am also a Registrar and I am at the sharp end of both
cost cutting and income generating in this Local Government operated service.
My opinion is that you are being very over optimistic in what could be provided, I think members are having their hopes raised too
high with your comments in the newsletter. The economy may be improving in the
private sector but it certainly is in for further large cuts in the public
sector."
How can we reconcile what we want with
what the country can afford? Should the service be contracted out to the
private sector? Or should the government be prepared to invest up-front on the
basis that taxpayers will get a good return on their investment? We can't
expect our hobby to be subsidised by other taxpayers, so how much would you be
prepared to spend each year on
digital copies of register entries if the price was right: £20, £50, £100?
If you're a member of the LostCousins
Forum please contribute to the informal consultation
that we're running. If you're not, please check your My Summary page to see whether there is an invitation waiting - the
LostCousins Forum is completely free, but it's strictly invitation only.
Sharing certificates:
more details
I've received a lot of enquiries about
the LostCousins features that make it easier to share birth, marriage, and
death certificates that I decided to run over the details again.
When you enter a relative on your My Ancestors page, you have the option
of specifying which certificates you hold, by ticking the relevant box in the
optional part of the Add an Ancestor
form:
You can update an entry at any time by clicking the person's name, so if
you later acquire another certificate you can add it (you can also make other
changes, such as adding a maiden name that you've just discovered, or a baptism
date). When you're matched with another member they'll be able to see which
certificates you hold for the
relatives that you've both entered - it's an added incentive for them to
correspond with you. Similarly, you'll be able to see which certificates they hold.
The other feature, which we call 'dead certs' relates to certificates that
were purchased by mistake - it's all too easy to buy the wrong certificate, as
I know to my cost (quite a large cost, in fact). Of course, these certificates
probably won't be any more use to your cousins than they are to you - but
there's a good chance that there's anther LostCousins member who would be absolutely
delighted.
I wrote
about 'dead certs' earlier this month, but I didn't include a screenshot - so
I'm going to put that right now:
As you can see, 'Dead cert' is one of the categories in the 'Relationship or
connection' dropdown menu. Familial relationships such as 'Blood relative' and
'Direct ancestor' are at the top, because they're the ones we use the most;
other categories are shown lower down the list - 'Dead cert' is right at the
bottom.
Note: please avoid using the
'Unknown' category - it is being phased out. There is almost always a more
helpful description - often this will be 'Possible relative'.
If you have any certificates that you've
bought by mistake, see whether you can identify that person on one of the
censuses we use, ideally the 1881 Census. If you can, enter them on your my Ancestors
page, choose 'Dead cert' from the dropdown menu, and indicate which certificate
it is (in the optional part of the form).
Sometimes you won't be able to find the
person on any of the censuses we use - this is most commonly the case with a
child who died as an infant. If you are able to identify one or more of the
child's parents you can enter them, again using the 'Dead cert' category, but
in this case do not tick any of the certificate boxes. This will signal
to any other members you're matched with that whilst you hold a certificate, it
isn't for the person named.
Note:
although the General Register Office allows certificates for England &
Wales to be copying shared freely, it isn't clear whether the General Register
Office for Scotland allows copying. However there is nothing to stop you sharing
the information on a certificate, so long as you transcribe it yourself.
Save with Findmypast's
20-20 offer EXCLUSIVE
Findmypast.co.uk's Britain subscription is £20 cheaper than their main
rival's Premium subscription, but for the first 20 days of August you can save an
extra 20% (or £20) because of the exclusive offer I've negotiated.
This brings the cost down to a mere
£79.60 - less than the cost of a 12 month subscription to the British Newspaper
Archive, even though all the British newspapers in the archive are included in
your Findmypast subscription (as well as over a billion other records)!
Of course, no two family history sites
have the same record collections, although there are overlaps when it comes to
the most basic records, such as censuses and the GRO indexes. The key parish
register collections at Findmypast cover Devon, Shropshire, most of
Staffordshire, much of Kent, much of Yorkshire, Hertfordshire, Cheshire,
Westminster, and most of Wales. Other important record collections include the
most complete collection of WW1 service records, pre-1914 Army pension records,
school registers from many parts of the country, and the UK Electoral Roll from
2002-2014 (importantly it includes the last year before the opt-out was
introduced).
Tip:
I've discovered that the offer is ALREADY live - you don't have to wait for
August.
Similarly, Findmypast.co.uk's
World subscription is usually £50 cheaper than the competition, but during the
offer period you can save an extra £25, bringing the price down to just £103.60!
Note:
these offers are for new subscribers. If you've been a Findmypast subscriber in
the past you may qualify - it doesn't do any harm to try - but I can't
guarantee it.
I've also negotiated similar savings at
other Findmypast sites around the world. Whilst each site offers a 'Local'
subscription which covers local records, the 'World' subscriptions are
identical (no doubt some canny readers will find that they can save even more
by taking advantage of fluctuations in exchange rates!).
You can only take advantage of these
offers and support LostCousins by using one of the links below to go to
the special page on the appropriate Findmypast site:
If the links don't work for you please disable your
the adblocking extension in your browser before trying again.
Should you not make your purchase
immediately, please click the link again when you do - otherwise LostCousins
won't benefit. If you want to share this offer with friends or relatives,
that's fine with me, but please do it by sending them a link to this
newsletter, and not a link to the offer page.
Claim a FREE
LostCousins subscription!
When you take up Findmypast's generous
offer using one of the links above you'll also be supporting LostCousins - so
as one good turn deserves another, I'm going to give you a FREE LostCousins
subscription worth up to £12.50! When you take out a new World subscription
under the offer you'll qualify for a 12 month LostCousins subscription; when
you take out a new Local (eg Britain) subscription you'll
qualify for a 6 month LostCousins subscription.
Tip: if you already have a LostCousins
subscription you can still benefit - I'll extend the expiry date.
All you need to do is forward a copy of
the email receipt you receive from Findmypast showing the date and time (your
LostCousins subscription will run from that date, so it's best to get your
claim in as soon as possible), and quoting your LostCousins membership number,
which is shown on your My Summary page. You can forward it to
any of the LostCousins email addresses, including the one I wrote from when I
told you about this newsletter.
If you want to benefit from a joint
subscription, covering two LostCousins accounts, you must link them together
before forwarding the receipt; to find out how to link the accounts just log-in
and go to the Subscribe page (it takes 2 minutes and
only needs to be done once).
Terms and conditions: your Findmypast subscription purchase cannot
be combined with any other offer; you must click the link for the Findmypast
site where you buy your subscription (and you must do it before buying
the subscription), otherwise the purchase won't benefit LostCousins and you
won't qualify for your free LostCousins subscription. Upgrades, downgrades, and
renewals do not qualify for this offer.
The 1939 Register is the closest thing
to a national census that has survived for the period between 1921 and 1951
(since the 1931 England & Wales census was lost in a fire, and there was no
census in 1941).
No precise release date has been
announced, but I received an email from the National Archives last Saturday
which states:
The good news is that even if it is
delayed into the first half of next year, it will still be included in the subscription
of anyone who buys a Britain or World subscription during the period of the
offer I've negotiated.
The bad news is that personal information
relating to living people will be redacted - this could mean that you're only
able to see data for those born before 1915, though I hope that won't be the
case. You may recall that when the 1911 Census was released early it was only
the final column, relating to disabilities, that was redacted - one thing you
can be certain of is that Findmypast will aim to negotiate the best possible
agreement with the Information Commissioner.
The British
Newspaper Archive is increasing the cost of its Monthly subscription from
£9.95 to £12.95 with effect from 5th August, however
the cost of an Annual subscription remains at £79.95
A number of members have also been
surprised by the cost of renewal of their Ancestry.co.uk subscription - this
increased at the beginning of the year from £107.40 to £119.99 for a Premium
subscription, and from £155.40 to £179.99 for a World subscription. These
increases were primarily prompted by the VAT changes that came into effect across
the European Union on 1st January 2015, but changing exchange rates may also
have been a factor.
Ancestry.co.uk have
also changed their policy on VAT so that subscribers outside the EU pay the
same price - this brings them into line with Findmypast.
As a result of these changes it's no
longer cheaper for people in the US or Canada to buy a World subscription at
the UK site, and if you qualify for the introductory first year rate at the
Australian site it's the cheapest of the lot (at current exchange rates).
Whichever site is most appropriate to your needs you can support LostCousins by
using the relevant link when you buy a new subscription online:
Note:
LostCousins subscriptions have NEVER increased (although we were also affected to
an extent by the VAT changes at the beginning of the year).
Contacting living
relatives "out of the blue"
At LostCousins we know that anyone we're
matched is researching their family history and will be glad to hear from us -
but what if we track distant cousins down using the electoral roll, or the
phone book?
Personally I've always had a positive
experience because if I write I include a stamped addressed envelope,
and if I telephone I always start by apologising for calling out of the blue.
Either way I aim to provide information from the other person's family tree,
usually the names of their parents, in order to assure them that I'm who I say
I am - and I try to avoid asking questions, other than to confirm that I've
found the right person.
But some interventions won't be welcome,
as a member reminded me in an email this week:
"I have been researching my family for over 20 years,
starting as far back as I could get, with the overall aim of finding living
relatives that were previously unknown to me.
"I pursued my great great uncle's
family to the USA over years then suddenly arrived at a living relative by
marriage of my gg uncle's descendants via Ancestry. She sent me a newspaper
article about my living relatives that made me realise that to try and talk to
them might be a gross intrusion.
"I have realised that it is one thing looking at the
misdemeanours of a long-dead ancestor, and quite another when that person is
alive and still in the middle of their troubles. So I think that I must leave
the present day family alone."
I didn't know what was in the newspaper
article, so I chose to respond in general terms - perhaps some of you might be
faced with a similar situation in the future:
"Whilst the dead have no rights to privacy, our living
relatives are entitled to keep themselves to themselves. When we find a black
sheep amongst our ancestors, or discover that one of them met a particularly
grizzly end it adds colour to our research, but when this happens to a living
relative it's a tragedy.
"However the fact that our relatives are going through a
hard time doesn't necessarily mean that we should ignore them - perhaps what
they really need is our support?"
What do you think? And how might you
feel if you were the one going through a difficult time (as I know some members
are)?
Last weekend I was in Derbyshire at a
reunion with a dozen friends I know from the 1960s and 70s (plus a few partners).
As it happens, a couple of them are
LostCousins members but that wasn't the common bond - we all used to live in
the same part of Essex (or east London as it is now). We chose to meet in the
Peak District because it was reasonably central (we are now scattered all over
Britain), but as it happened a few of us had been there half a century ago, for
our Duke of Edinburgh's Award expedition - a quite memorable experience because
the weather was so awful that we had no dry clothing after the first day.
Some friends I hadn't seen since our
last reunion, in 2000 - and for me the best thing was being reminded of my
youth: we may all be in our 60s, but when we were back together we were young
again!
Do you find that you stay in closer
contact with your friends than you do with your cousins? One of the best
features of the LostCousins site is the way it allows you to keep track of your
cousins, even the ones you didn't find through the site. On your My Cousins page click 'Connect to a
member you already know' to link to someone who's already a member, but isn't
already listed there; on your My
Referrals page use 'Refer a Relative' to invite a cousin who isn't already
a member to join.
Tip:
when you invite a known relative to join LostCousins you can help them get
started by indicating which of the relatives on your My Ancestors page they
share - when they first log-in after registering they'll all be copied across.
Hertfordshire woman fights
mother's will and wins
There was an interesting news story
this week about a woman who was disinherited by her mother in her 2002 will because
she eloped with her boyfriend in 1978, but managed to persuade the Court of
Appeal to award her one-third of the estate, worth £164,000. The animal charities
which would have received the whole amount will now get just two-thirds (less,
presumably, some hefty legal bills).
On the one hand, it seems right that people
should be able to bequeath their own wealth as they wish - on the other, it's
hard to avoid the notion that the mother was simply being spiteful, especially
since her daughter married the boyfriend, and they're still together (they also
have 5 children). One also has to consider what the girl's father might have
wanted to happen - he died in an accident when she was just 2 months old.
What do you think?
Yesterday I was one of the first to
install Windows 10 following the official release (some intrepid souls have
been running pre-release versions, but I can't take those sorts of risks). At
this stage I've only activated it on my laptop, which has a touch screen and was
already running Windows 8.1 - I'm going to wait a while before installing it on
my desktop, which currently has Windows 7.
Although the version of Kaspersky
Internet Security I was running wasn't compatible with Windows 10, I was
able to update it free of charge (I should have done this before installing
Windows 10, but didn't discover this until later). Don't rely on the free
protection that comes with Windows - it may be better than before, but it's
unlikely to be good enough.
Does Prince
William really have Indian ancestry?
I first reported this news
story two years ago, but as we've been focusing on DNA testing in the
newsletter recently I thought it might be helpful to run over the facts again.
In 2013 DNA samples provided by two 3rd
cousins of Princess Diana's mother, Frances Shand Kydd, were tested - demonstrating that their mtDNA was typical of someone who originated from South
Asia. It's rare that testing mtDNA can provide
genealogically useful information, but in this case there was a family story
suggesting that Eliza Kevorkian (known as Kewark),
housekeeper and mistress to Theodore Forbes - an ancestor who was involved with
the East India Company - was of Indian/Armenian heritage. Their daughter Katherine
Scott Forbes, born in 1812, would have inherited her mtDNA
- as would her descendants in the direct female line.
Note:
although mothers pass their mtDNA to their sons as
well as their daughters, only the daughters can pass it on to their offspring.
Since Frances Shand
Kydd and both her cousins were descendants in the
direct female line of Katherine Scott Forbes she must have carried the same mtDNA, and passed it on to her children, including Princess
Diana - who in turn would have passed it to her own children, Prince William
and Prince Harry. Being male William and Harry can't pass the mtDNA to their own children - Prince George and Princess
Charlotte inherited their DNA from their mother.
However it wasn't only the mtDNA of the two cousins that was tested - their autosomal
DNA was also tested, suggesting that they had each inherited atDNA from an ancestor who lived in South Asia. But the
amounts were small - between 0.3% and 0.8%.
In case you're wonder why the percentages were so different, I'll remind you
how autosomal DNA is passed on in the next article - but suffice it to say that
it's quite possible that Frances Shand Kydd didn't inherit ANY autosomal DNA from Eliza
Kevorkian's Indian ancestors, quite likely that Princess Diana didn't inherit
any, and even more likely that Prince William didn't. In other words despite
have Indian and Armenian ancestry our future monarchs may have nothing but
Greek, German, English and other Western European DNA - not that it would
matter to most people either way!
Understanding DNA #4: how
DNA is inherited
In previous
articles I've explained how important it is to get away from the
conventional view that Y-DNA tests are for our father's side of the family, and
mtDNA tests are for our mother's side. The arrival of
autosomal DNA testing in 2009 transformed the world of genetic genealogy by
providing a way to mine the information in our genome as a whole, offering the
potential of matches with cousins from any of our family lines.
The famous double helix comprises two
strands of DNA, one inherited from the individual's father, and one from their
mother - and what they'll pass on to their children is a mixture of the two. I'm
not going to attempt to explain the process of meiosis in detail (I didn't even
get as far as O level Biology), but the important thing you need to know is
that whilst the process is essentially random it involves chunks of DNA which are
usually millions of bases in length, rather than individual bases.
One way to visualise what happens is to
imagine driving down a two-lane road and occasionally crossing from one side to
the other. Every now and again you'll come to a roundabout (which in this
analogy represents the end of one chromosome and the beginning of the next). If
one lane is painted blue (representing your father's DNA) and one red (your
mother's DNA), the path you took would be made of up blocks of red and blue.
Every part of the road would be represented, but the colour would vary along its
length.
Similarly you would pass on to your
children just half of the DNA that you received from your parents - but there
will probably be more, perhaps significantly more, from one parent than the other.
Whilst we get exactly half of our autosomal DNA from each of our own parents,
the amount we inherit from each grandparent won't be precisely a quarter, and
it's possible - though unlikely - that we've inherited none at all from one
grandparent. The more generations we go back the more likely it is that you will
have inherited no DNA at all from some of our ancestors from that generation.
However, even though I may have
inherited no DNA at all from a particular ancestor, one of my siblings may have
done - and it's quite likely that some of my cousins will have done, and the
more of my cousins who test the more I'm likely to discover about my ancestors.
There will be more about DNA in my next
newsletter.....
Tip:
if you want to know how meiosis really works, these short lectures
from the Khan Academy are not too difficult to follow, although because they're
not written for family historians people like us they don't focus on the bits
that are of most interest to us.
There was barely an empty chair in the
Stock Village Hall last Thursday for my presentation - thanks to the
LostCousins members who came along at short notice having read my last
newsletter - and judging by the kind comments I've had since it must have gone
pretty well.
I certainly impressed one of the
listeners - a couple of days before the meeting he'd commented that he didn't
know why he was coming since he already knew all his cousins. That was like a
red rag to a bull, and at the last minute I decided to create an entirely new
presentation based around his
maternal ancestors - since on further enquiry it had turned out that he'd done
almost all of his research on his father's side.
Starting with nothing but his name I
managed to identify his parents, and maternal grandparents - and found his
grandmother aged 5 with her family on the 1881 Census. I demonstrated how quick and easy it was to enter additional members of a
household, then clicked the Search
button - and wonder of wonders, there was a match with a cousin in Australia!
Sadly I can't guarantee that every new
member of LostCousins will make a match with the very first household they
enter, but there's a better than 50% chance of making an immediate match when
you spend just half an hour entering relatives from the 1881 Census.
The most impressive slide in my
presentation was all down to you, the readers of this newsletter:
This is just a small selection of the
emails I received after the last newsletter - I can only hope that this issue
is as well-received!
At last weekend's reunion there was a
book on the table in the lounge that I'd never heard of before, The
Adopted Prisoner, by Leslie William Law. A true story from World War 2,
it's not the sort of thing I'd normally read - but then it isn't an ordinary story.
I hope to review it in the next newsletter, although I've got a couple of family
history books that I also have to finish.
This is where any last minute updates
and corrections will be highlighted - if you think you've spotted an error
(sadly I'm not infallible), reload the newsletter (press F5) then check here before writing to me, in case
someone else has beaten you to it......
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2015 Peter Calver
Please
do not copy any part of this newsletter without permission. However, you MAY
link to this newsletter or email a link to your friends and relatives without
asking for permission in advance - though why not invite them to join
LostCousins instead, since standard membership, which includes this newsletter,
is FREE?