Newsletter – 28th
June 2021
Ancestry takes over Forces War Records
Outdoor weddings legalised
in England & Wales
Scotland 1921 Census
release delayed
The Genealogist adds transcribed
Scotland censuses
Celebrate Canada Day
with your 'lost cousins' FREE
Do you have friends
or relatives in Canada?
Australians can save
25% on Ancestry DNA ENDS 4TH JULY
The professional
approach to research
Probability and
family history (part 4)
Just 2 days to save
on Who Do You Think You Are? ENDS 30TH JUNE
World War 2 veteran gets
medals on 100th birthday
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 17th June) 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!
Ancestry takes over Forces War Records
Some
years ago Ancestry acquired Fold3, which specialises
in military records; I've now discovered that last month they acquired Forces
War Records, another specialist site.
In
the past I've been reluctant to mention Forces War
Records in this newsletter because the unsolicited feedback I've had from users
has been quite mixed – hopefully under Ancestry's ownership the reactions will
be more positive.
Note:
Fold3 is not included in standard Ancestry subscriptions, so it seems unlikely
that Forces War Records will be.
Outdoor weddings legalised in England & Wales
From
July until April 2022 it will be legal for civil marriages to take place
outdoors in England & Wales, making it easier to hold ceremonies which are
COVID-safe – however this relaxation of the rules only applies to existing licensed
venues (and church weddings must still take place indoors).
Outdoor
weddings were proposed in a Law Commission consultation
paper published last September, and there is a chance that this change will
become permanent.
Scotland 1921 Census release delayed
At one time it was thought that Scotland's 1921
Census would be released in the second half of this year, but it has now been
revealed that the release has been delayed until the latter half of 2022 by the
pandemic.
I'm still expecting the England & Wales census to be released early in
2022. This article
on the Who Do You Think You Are? magazine website has some interesting facts about the 1921 Census.
The Genealogist adds transcribed Scotland censuses
For some years transcribed versions of the
1841-1901 Scotland censuses have been available at Ancestry and Findmypast –
now The Genealogist also offers the same Scotland censuses. I haven't yet had an opportunity to check whether they've re-transcribed
the censuses, but I suspect that the transcripts have been licensed from one of
the other providers.
Tip: if you’re adding
relatives from the 1881 Scotland Census to your My Ancestors page
I recommend you use the free LDS transcription at the ScotlandsPeople
site.
Celebrate Canada Day with your 'lost cousins' FREE
1st
July is a special date for Canadians - it marks the day in 1867 when the British
North America Act came into force, uniting three British colonies - the
Province of Canada (Ontario and Quebec), Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick - into
a single dominion called Canada. Originally known as Dominion Day, it was
renamed Canada Day in 1982.
Until
Sunday 4th July it’s going to be completely free to
connect with your 'lost cousins' through the 1881 Canada census – and since that
census is always free at FamilySearch this means that it won’t cost a penny or
a cent (whichever side of the Atlantic you're on).
Note:
initiating contact with someone new normally requires a LostCousins
subscription, although there are several periods each year when the site is
completely free – so nobody is ever forced to pay.
If
you haven't entered relatives from the Canadian census
before, here’s an example from one of my Canadian branches to show how easy it
is:
Here's what it looks like when you fill out the Add
Ancestor form at LostCousins:
It
really couldn’t be much more straightforward. As
usual, once you've entered the first person in the
household it’s even easier to add other members of the same household - because
most of the information is filled in for you, including the census references
and family name (which you can, of course, alter if somebody in the household
has a different surname).
Tip:
always follow the advice on the Add Ancestor form - and note that it changes when
you select a different census.
Before
I started researching my family tree I didn’t know
that I had any cousins in Canada – now I'm in touch with at least a dozen living
cousins, most of whom are also researching their tree.
Do you have friends or relatives in Canada?
Even
if you're Canadian you might not have any relatives
who were living in Canada in 1881 - but you probably know quite a few family
historians whose relatives were on that census.
How
about inviting them to take part in the LostCousins project to connect cousins around
the world who are researching the same ancestors? They don’t
need to have any ancestors from the British Isles - though if they do, there
will be additional opportunities for them to connect with 'lost cousins', and
they'll also find this newsletter that much more relevant.
Australians can save 25% on Ancestry DNA ENDS 4TH JULY
DNA has transformed the research of so many family
historians over the past few years – several of my oldest 'brick walls' have
come tumbling down since I tested with Ancestry in 2017, and I know that many other
LostCousins members have been similarly successful.
Recently there was an opportunity for researchers
in the UK & US to save on Ancestry DNA – now it is the turn of researchers
in Australia and New Zealand. Until Sunday 4th July the price is reduced from
$129 to $96, not quite the lowest ever, but close to it (prices are quoted in
Australian dollars and include taxes but not shipping).
You
don't, of course, have to restrict yourself to just
one test. Whilst there's no point you taking more than
one test yourself (unless you previously tested with a different provider), if
you can persuade some of your cousins to test, especially the cousins who share
your most frustrating 'brick walls', it'll make an enormous difference.
Although for data protection reasons everyone who tests with Ancestry needs
their own account, your cousins can appoint you as Manager if they don't want to get involved.
Tip:
when you order DNA tests from Ancestry they won't ask
who's going to be testing, so you might want to do what I do and buy a couple
of spares – not only will you benefit from the sale price, you'll also save on
shipping. It's not just about saving money – it means that when I persuade a
cousin to test I can pop a kit in the post to them the
same day.
Please
use the link below to support LostCousins (it’s best
if you log-out from Ancestry before clicking the link):
Ancestry
DNA (Australia and New Zealand only) - $96 plus shipping ENDS 4TH JULY
The professional approach to research
For me one of the delights of family history is being
able to rediscover facts about our ancestors that have been lost over the generations, or supplanted by plausible half-truths. We're not always helped by our ability to make connections
between unrelated facts and the same was true for our forebears – it's the
source of so many family stories that are provably false.
Sometimes we rely too much on information pieced
together by family historians from earlier generations, forgetting that research
was so much more difficult in those days that they are more likely to have made mistakes than
a competent modern researcher. I suspect there are few pre-Internet family
trees that would stand up to detailed scrutiny, a suspicion that is frequently
reinforced by reading articles in learned journals which highlight errors in
historic genealogies.
I recently came across an article entitled Tracing Early American Settlers: Mewboorn
and Mewborn Origins in The Journal of Genealogy and Family History, which is published by the Register of Qualified Genealogists (RQG)
and is (like this newsletter) free to read
online. Written by Ian G Macdonald, who is a former chair of the RQG as
well as a tutor for the University of Strathclyde’s online postgraduate genealogy
courses, it is like a breath of fresh air. This sentence on page 2 sets the
scene:
"By setting aside
myth, legend, wishful thinking and romantic longing for noble origins, a clearer
and more plausible story can be allowed to emerge that is just as remarkable in
its own way."
I'm not going to go into any more detail because watching the story unfold
is a joy – even if it does run to 70 pages including references. But there are
two more highlights that I'd like to draw your attention to; on page 1 the
author writes:
" A strength of
this paper is that it shows what can be achieved today in American genealogy by
using online sources only. The study has been carried out from the UK."
That will, I hope, encourage all those who live
thousands of miles from the archives that house the records of their own
ancestors – distance need not be an obstacle, and it certainly shouldn’t be used as an excuse. My final quote comes from
the penultimate page:
"Wherever possible
that descent is based on documentary sources, though in some areas of uncertainty
hypotheses are developed based on probabilities where links are not clear. A technique
for assessing patterns based on age and sex across the set of early Federal censuses
between 1790 and 1840 has been developed and supports some of the hypotheses."
Where there are gaps in the evidence – and there
almost always are – we can often reduce the level of uncertainty by being
creative in our approach.
Take a look at the article when you have a moment – it could inspire you to find
new ways of dealing with old problems!
Probability and family history (part 4)
We all take probability into account during our research,
although we may not necessarily realise this at the time – for example, everyone
knows that it's usually much easier to trace ancestors
with rare surnames than those with very common names, but we might not think of
this in terms of the probability that a given entry is the one we're looking
for.
Probability is one of many tools at our disposal,
and as with any tool we need to know when to use it, and how to use it. Typically we want to get from "this baptism/marriage is
probably the right one" to "it’s overwhelmingly likely that this is
the correct baptism/marriage", and the way we usually do this is to gather
more evidence.
However we mustn't confine our search to evidence that would support our
hypothesis – we must also look for evidence that, if it exists, makes it less
likely to be correct. The hidden benefit of this approach is that if, after an
exhaustive search, we can’t find any evidence that
contradicts the hypothesis it greatly increases the chance that it's correct.
It's important to be particularly careful when our hypothesis assumes some
sort of error or omission. For example, we've all seen
baptism register entries where the mother's name appears to have been recorded incorrectly, but it would be rash to assume that
this is the case without further investigation.
Understanding the context is also important: for
example, it's much more likely that a baptism has been
omitted from the register during the decade when stamp duty was charged on entries.
Similarly, if someone is described in the register as John Smith junior, we can
reasonably assume that John Smith senior was still
alive and living in the same parish. Perhaps less obviously, if there is some
other distinguishing feature – the father's occupation, or the name of the
hamlet where the family lived – this may also suggest the existence of another person
with the same name (provided that particular vicar didn’t
routinely include that information in the register).
If you want to learn more about probability and
genealogy there was an excellent article by LostCousins member John D Reid in
the spring 2016 issue of Anglo-Celtic Roots, the Quarterly Chronicle of the British Isles Family History Society
of Greater Ottawa – you'll find it here.
Some of you will have had the pleasure of listening to John's presentations at Genealogy in the Sunshine – back in the days when family historians could meet face-to-face rather than over Zoom.
Note: there's another article in the same issue which is well
worth reading – 'Family Frauds: Researchers Should Beware of Perpetuating
Falsehoods from the Past'.
The following article was published in the Ipswich Journal of 3rd January
1761:
Image
© THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Used by kind permission of Findmyast.
I
can understand why the newspaper wanted to publish the story of Peter Flower
and his 38 children (which had previously appeared in the Norwich Mercury),
but what a shame they didn't check it out properly!
Findmypast
have Norfolk parish registers, but a search reveals only 24 baptisms where
Peter Flower or Flowers was named as the father. However all but one were in the same parish of St John Sepulchre, and there were
three wives, so at least that part of the story is true.
The
biggest discrepancy is in the number of children borne by his first wife, so I
suspect somebody mistakenly included some or all of
the 14 children that his father, also Peter, baptised between 1687 and 1707 – ironically
the first of those being the Peter mentioned in the article.
To
be fair, I don't suppose journalists back then had the
same resources available to them for fact-checking. By contrast, in the 21st
century you'd expect a national newspaper like The
Guardian to get their facts right –
however I made the mistake of trusting them when I wrote about Wyman family
marriages in the last issue, a mistake that I corrected soon after publication (thanks
to the intervention of a LostCousins member who knew the truth).
Just 2 days to save on Who Do You Think You Are?
ENDS 30TH JUNE
All
good things must come to an end, including the exclusive offer I arranged with Who
Do You Think You Are? magazine. Until Wednesday readers in the UK can get 6
issues for just £9.99, less than the price of two issues from the newsagents –
just click this link and you'll not only
be grabbing yourself a bargain, you'll be supporting LostCousins.
The
offer for overseas readers also ends on 30th June – there are big discounts on
13 issue subscriptions, but the price varies according to where you live,
so I'll leave it to you
follow the link above and check what the deal would be in your home country.
World War 2 veteran gets medals on 100th birthday
My
father received his service medals through the post in the mid-1950s – I suspect
it was only the prompting of my mother that led him to send off for them.
Earlier this month another Essex veteran, an ex-Royal Navy signaller, received
her WW2 medals on her 100th birthday – you can read the story here.
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 2021 Peter Calver
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