Newsletter
- 27th June 2017
The first English
parish registers online
Save on 12 month World subscriptions to
Findmypast ENDS SUNDAY
Surreal: Dali to be exhumed for DNA tests
Could a computer research your family tree?
Secret sisters discovered by WDYTYA? researchers
Terrorist at gun factory in 1901 Census?
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The first English parish
registers online
It's certainly not the biggest dataset at Ancestry, but
it is the newest in their United Kingdom collection: Medway,
Kent, England, Methodist Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1798-1932 contains
an estimated 15,000 records from Methodist chapels and churches, mainly in Gillingham
and Chatham, but also in Rochester, Strood, and Lower Rainham.
These obviously weren't the first English
parish registers to go online, but they're held by Medway Archives, who through
their CityArk
website were the first to make digitised images of parish register pages
available online - long before Ancestry and Findmypast got in on the act. And
they were free! Checking back through old editions of this newsletter I see
that I first reported this breakthrough in August 2005, and it wasn't until
June 2009 that I was able to report
that Essex Record Office were embarking on a similar venture. Neither
collection was transcribed and indexed, and that remains the case today,
although there are partial indexes at other sites, including FreeREG.
Note:
I understand that it was the same person who was responsible for both online
collections - he moved from Kent to Essex. Sadly, although the Medway collection
continues to be free, Essex started charging - the current cost of an Annual
Subscription is £85, which makes Ancestry and Findmypast seem rather cheap by
comparison!
Ancestry were the first of the big
websites to put parish registers online with their first instalment from the London
Metropolitan Archives, as I reported in October 2009 - it's amazing to
think that 8 years ago neither Ancestry nor Findmypast had any images of parish
registers, yet now registers for half of England and most of Wales are online.
This map from the Findmypast site shows - in orange - the parts of the country
for which they have original parish register images which are exclusively
online at their site (they also have images for Norfolk and Lincolnshire, but these are
non-exclusive).
I haven't been able to track down an
equivalent map showing Ancestry's collection, but even looking at what one site
offers it's amazing to think how far we have come in the past 8 years. By the way,
if you're wondering why some parts of the country are coloured green, these are
areas for which Findmypast will be adding transcribed parish records, though
not - as I understand it - register images in 2017.
Save on 12
month World subscriptions to Findmypast ENDS SUNDAY
As I suspected might happen Findmypast
have followed up their offer of free access to their British & Irish
records with a subscription offer. You can save 10% on World subscriptions at
their UK, US, and Australian sites until midnight on Sunday 2nd July when you
follow the relevant link below:
If you don't live in one of those three
countries I'd recommend subscribing through the Australian site, as at current
exchange rates it works out slightly cheaper than the other two - and when you
have a World subscription you can access all the records at all
of the sites. The best of all possible Worlds, in other words.
Although it's short notice I've also decided
to give away a 12 month LostCousins subscription (worth up to £12.50) to members who take advantage of Findmypast's offer using
the links above - your subscription will be paid for by the commission we
receive, so please read the Terms and Conditions below carefully, to make sure
you qualify. Your subscription will run from the day you purchase your
Findmypast subscription - unless you already have a LostCousins subscription in
which case it will be extended. To claim your subscription forward to me the
email receipt that Findmypast will send you - but make a note of the precise
time of your purchase in case the receipt doesn't arrive (I cannot verify your
entitlement without the time and date).
Terms & conditions: your free 12 month
LostCousins subscription will be funded by the commission that Findmypast pay
us; if we don't receive any commission on your purchase you won't qualify. Look
for the words LostCousins on the browser command line when you arrive at the
Findmypast site after clicking the link - if you don't see those words then
Findmypast don't know that you've come from LostCousins, so contact me for
advice before making your purchase. Commission isn't usually paid
on renewals or purchases that Findmypast regard as renewals. You might qualify
if you upgrade, but there are no guarantees.
Surreal: Dali to be exhumed
for DNA tests
In 2015 I reported
that the body of motor racing legend Fangio was to be exhumed in connection
with paternity claims - now comes the news that a judge in Madrid has ordered
that Salvador Dali's body be exhumed so that DNA tests can be carried out. You
can read more about this story in an article on the BBC
news site, but what I'd really like to know is, given the chance, would you
have one of your ancestors exhumed for DNA tests, and if so, which one and why?
Could a computer research
your family tree?
According to an article in New Scientist earlier this month, experts
in the field of artificial intelligence reckon there's an even chance that by
2060 machines will be capable of outperforming humans in every task. Which, if
they're right, means that before long there will be no need for people to
research their own family tree.
The idea doesn't appeal to me in the slightest
- except on one respect. Wouldn't it be great if a computer could go through
all the online trees weeding out the obvious errors, like people marrying
before they are born?
Though I suppose the ultimate question
is whether a computer could write this newsletter..... but maybe it already is?
Secret sisters discovered
by WDYTYA? researchers
Actor Charles Dance, probably best known
for his role in Jewel in the Crown,
was amazed to discover that he had two half-sisters who were born almost half a
century before he was - the eldest in 1898. You can read more about the
discovery in this Daily Mail article.
Congratulations to everyone who entered our
Birthday Competition, which celebrated the 13th Anniversary of the founding of
LostCousins in May 2004. It wasn't a difficult competition - all you had to do
was add relatives to your My Ancestors
page - but it was wonderful to see the amazing number of cousins who connected
for the very first time as a result of your efforts.
In this respect
we were all winners - either we found new cousins ourselves, or we ended up
with a higher probability of finding cousins in the future. But only one person
could win the 1st Prize, an original Lottery Ticket from 1796 in remarkably
good condition:
The winner was Ian, who lives in the
West Midlands and has been a LostCousins member for just over 4 years. During
that time Ian has entered over 900 relatives from the 1881 Censuses, and he has
24 contacts listed on his My Cousins
page - although it was actually one of his 8 entries
from the USA 1940 census that won him the prize.
Over the next couple of days I'll be notifying the 12 runners-up, each of whom wins
a LostCousins subscription worth up to £12.50 - at a quick glance it appears
that 2 of the runners-up live in Australia, whilst the others are all in the UK,
so commiserations to our many members in the US, Canada, New Zealand, and
elsewhere.
In the last newsletter
I wrote about a man who married his aunt, questioning whether the marriage was
legal - as an expert quoted in a family history magazine had suggested. After
consulting Rebecca Probert's Marriage Law for Genealogists I was able to confirm that this
particular marriage was indeed illegal, but because it took place before 1835,
it was not automatically void.
A number of readers wrote in with examples from their own tree,
one of which - from Patricia - had me scratching my head:
"My maternal
grandparents, living in London, in 1914 wished to marry, but my grandmother was
underage, being 19. Her parents had presumably declined to give permission, or
hadn't been consulted at all. My
grandfather was 23. They sneaked off to a registry office and she declared her
age as 21, all other information being correct. Was their marriage legal? They
both returned to their respective parental homes, then 3 months later had a church
wedding."
Naturally I once again referred to Professor
Probert's excellent work, which told me that after the introduction of civil registration
in 1837 "a parent was able to forbid the grant of a superintendent
registrar's certificate and thereby prevent the marriage from going ahead. If
the marriage did go ahead despite this, it would be void."
But what if the father was unaware of
the marriage? If the bride looked 21 the registrar would have had no reason to
query it, and if the couple chose to marry in a different registration district
the father might not hear of the plans until too late. I contacted Professor
Probert at the University of Exeter for clarification - she confirmed that
"if the couple married in a different registration district to avoid [the
father] finding out, the marriage would still be valid. There's a case from
1917 (Plummer v Plummer) in which the underage wife married in a false name and
falsely declared that her father was dead, and the court still upheld it!"
A further reminder that we can't rely on
the information on certificates came from Kevin in Australia who reported that
there were discrepancies - of precisely 2 months in one case, and 5 months in
the other - between the birth dates given for two of his relatives in their
respect birth register and baptism register entries. In England & Wales
free registration of births only applies for the first 42 days after birth, but
since there was no requirement to produce the child or any other evidence when
registering the birth the registrar could only take the mother's
word for it (these days it would be more difficult to falsify the registration).
I had confirmation yesterday that the
GRO are still evaluating the PDF pilot and considering what the next steps
might be. Clearly the GRO won't want to keep family historians and other service
users in the dark any longer than they need to, but I wonder whether they'll
feel to need for further consultation before making a
decision?
Terrorist at gun factory in 1901 Census?
It's not really a
topic for triviality, but I couldn't help smiling when I saw that there was a G Hardist
working at the Royal Arsenal gun factory in Woolwich according to the 1901
Census for Plumstead, Kent:
© Crown Copyright Images reproduced by
courtesy of The National Archives, London, England and used by kind permission
of Findmypast
Of course, terrorism is nothing new - my
grandmother was working just around the corner from the site of the Sidney
Street siege in 1911, which involved Latvian revolutionaries.
This week I picked up a copy of a book
that I've heard a lot about, but have never actually read - The Seven Daughters of Eve by Professor
Bryan Sykes. I'm not expecting to be impressed, based on what has been said about
the book by people who know far more than I do about DNA, but it won't do any
harm to form my own opinion.
I've never bought mobile phone
insurance, but it comes as part of the package of benefits with my Nationwide FlexPlus account - which is just as well because I managed
to smash my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 this week in rather bizarre circumstances.
Though hopefully not so bizarre that the insurers won't believe me when I
submit my claim…. I'll let you know how I get on.
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 2017 Peter
Calver
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