Newsletter – 29th March 2025
Previously ‘unknown’ army records go online
Why you shouldn’t be scared of Zoom
Do you have ancestors from Cheshire or London?
Scottish BMD registers at FamilySearch
Changes of name in the 1940s and early 1950s
Last chance to save on Ancestry DNA ENDS SUNDAY
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue (dated 14th March) 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):
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I don’t normally spread rumours, but I’ve heard that the cost of post-1858 wills for England & Wales will be increasing significantly, possibly from early April (which is only days away).
Frankly the current cost of just £1.50 is a bargain – it was £5 or £6 at the beginning of the century, and increased to £10 in 2014, before suddenly dropping by 85% in 2019 when the will-ordering website was relaunched. Bearing in mind that wills often mention people who aren’t close family members, and some who aren’t family members at all, it’s well worth putting in your orders NOW, while the cost remains affordable.
Note: ever since the official wills website launched it has been shown as a new service which is in beta testing.
Previously ‘unknown’ army records go online
This week more than a million records went online at The Genealogist which provide insight into some of my relatives’ lives, including my Irish great-great-great-great grandfather Bryan Byrne, and yet I’d previously not known of their existence (the records, that is, not the relatives).
I‘m certainly not an expert on military records but I suspect I’m not the only one to be pleasantly surprised by this unexpected release. Apparently, when British forces captured enemy property or territory, the spoils (or their monetary value) were pooled and allocated to the officers and men as "prize" rewards. These newly-published records describe their allocation, whether to the soldiers themselves or a relative.
For example, this page shows that my ancestor (recorded as ‘Bryan Byrn’) wasn’t paid the sum of £3 8s 2½d owing to him in 1809 following his participation in the Battle of Copenhagen. It might not sound like a lot of money, but if you add on interest at 5% compound for 216 years it works out at nearly £130,000! But sadly my chance of claiming that money, let alone the interest, are practically nil – and in any case, there are numerous other descendants I’d have to share it with.
Copyright © Genealogy Supplies (Jersey) Limited 2025; record held by The National Archives
This is just one of several records relating to Bryan Byrne, and from the transcriptions I can plot his promotion from Private to Corporal, and eventually to Sergeant. I’ve also found records for some of my Butwell relatives from Oxfordshire, including John and Joshua, the younger brothers of my great-great-great grandmother Ruth Butwell.
TheGenealogist might not be one of the two big genealogy sites, but the focus on records that no other site has makes it an intriguing option. I’m still working my way through the Lloyd George ‘Domesday’ Records for Essex which I wrote about in the last issue!
Tip: there’s a discounted subscription offer to celebrate this release – you can save up to £120 (and support LostCousins into the bargain) when you follow this link. And if you want to know more about what TheGenealogist offers, why not watch the recording of Mark Bayley’s February talk, which you’ll find on the Peter’s Tips page of the LostCousins site?
Why you shouldn’t be scared of Zoom
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve corresponded with several LostCousins members who have never used Zoom! It sounds amazing considering the way that family history societies embraced Zoom during the pandemic (as did many families, especially during lockdowns), but fear of the unknown is a potent force.
Here are some of the most common misconceptions:
- I’m not technical so I can’t use Zoom WRONG
- I don’t have the Zoom software, and wouldn’t know where to get it or how to install it WRONG
- I can’t use Zoom because I don’t have a camera WRONG
- I’m not sure if my computer has a microphone, so I can’t use Zoom WRONG
- I’m hard of hearing so I wouldn’t know what was being said WRONG
- I don’t want people watching me or hearing what I’m saying WRONG
Watching a Zoom presentation is much like watching TV. In fact, given how complicated watching TV has become, it might even be easier.
You DON’T need a camera or a microphone but even if you have one (or both) you can switch them off. People don’t come to Zoom talks to watch you, they come to watch the presenter and any slides or videos that the presenter shares with the audience.
If you’re using a computer you DON’T need any software – you can watch a Zoom presentation in your browser. If you use a phone or tablet you do need the Zoom app, but it’s free. There is also a Zoom app for your computer if you want to use it – and again, it’s free. You don’t need to be technical – the software installs automatically.
Hard of hearing? You can switch on sub-titles: it’s real-time captioning, so won’t always be word perfect, but it’s remarkably good. And most speakers use slides to reinforce the key points of their presentation, so you’re not going to miss anything important.
Still not sure if you can handle it? Click here to join a Zoom test meeting – and don’t worry, there won’t be anyone else there.
Do you have ancestors from Cheshire or London?
On Thursday 17th April the Family History Society of Cheshire will be giving a presentation to LostCousins members, then on Monday 28th April it will be the turn of London Westminster & Middlesex Family History Society (follow this link to see the area of coverage).
Both of these FREE Zoom presentations start at 10am London time, which is 7pm in Sydney, 9pm in Auckland. The presentations will be recorded, so you needn’t miss out just because the timing isn’t convenient, but you still need to put your name down.
To indicate your interest please go to the My Events page at the LostCousins site (this new page has replaced the My Prizes page which we used for the recent competition). You’ll have an opportunity to ask a question in advance, which is particularly important if you can’t make the live presentation – note that concise general questions are more likely to be answered.
Finally, a reminder that there 4 other FREE presentations from family history societies in April, so if you have ancestors from Hertfordshire, Suffolk, or West Yorkshire see the article in the last issue and book your place through the My Events page.
Note: if you are Friend of LostCousins you should have received advance notification of all of these presentations, as well as an invitation to book in for a DNA talk on Monday 14th April which, because of high demand, is restricted to Friends.
I have more ancestors from Suffolk than any other county, so I was looking forward to the parish registers going online at Ancestry early in 2025. Much as I enjoy going to record offices it isn’t a good use of my time – so I tend to focus on the ancestors from counties whose registers are already online.
Unfortunately there has been a slight delay in the indexing process, and it’s likely to be several more months before Ancestry finally launch their new collection. Still, good things are worth waiting for, and in the meantime there is a Zoom presentation from Suffolk Family History Society on 7th April – see your My Events page for more information (you’ll need to log into your LostCousins account first). Who knows – they may have some good news for us!
Most errors in parish registers aren’t obvious – indeed, some may never be identified. But now and again there’s an error so glaring that you wonder how it can have been missed at the time – take, for example this entry from the marriage register of St Mary, Tollesbury in Essex which appears to record the marriage of Benjamin Bright to Mary Bright:
All rights reserved. Used by kind permission of Essex Record Office (D/P 283/1/7)
I looked at this entry from 1812 because there was a mysterious Benjamin Bright who had witnessed the marriage of my great-great-great grandfather Ebenezer Bright at Maldon, 9 miles away, earlier the same month – and I wanted to know how he fitted in. However, as soon as looked at the signatures I knew that this entry wasn’t going to help – the groom clearly signed as Benjamin Spooner, not Benjamin Bright.
If you’re wondering how Benjamin Spooner and three witnesses could all have missed this obvious error I’ll let you into a secret – sometimes the participants signed a blank register entry and the details were added later. Highly irregular, perhaps, but it happened.
Noter: the banns registers for this period haven’t survived, either for Tollesbury or Wickham Bishops, but there are some baptisms at Wickham Bishops to a Benjamin Spooner and his wife Mary, which provide additional evidence of the groom’s identity.
Everyone knows that after the law changed in England in 1907 it was completely legal for a widower to marry his deceased wife’s sister – or was it?
It turns out that there was an exception: though the civil law governing marriage had changed, clergymen in the Church of England were still subject to sanction under canon law.
The newspaper article on the right, taken from the Cambridge Daily News dated 17th July 1939, describes how the Provost of Birmingham had to wait 27 years to marry his late wife’s sister.
[Image © Reach PLC. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD]
In 1944 the policy of the Church of England changed, but until then it would have been up to the Bishop under whose jurisdiction the clergyman fell to decide whether a marriage could be permitted – hence the reference in the article to the Bishop of Birmingham’s announcement.
Although this must be a rare and unusual case it’s still a reminder that we should ‘read the small print’, and not rely on the headlines. Many thanks to Tricia for allowing me to share it with you.
A man who paid maintenance for 16 years in respect of twins born to his partner has won a court battle to stop the payments – after a judge found his name was put on their birth certificates by mistake.
The ruling was made in the Family Court in London despite the mother’s objection that her children would have no legal father. The twins were conceived through IVF, but whilst the couple were married at the time of the birth, they were not married at the time of conception (although they were in a relationship).
Scottish BMD registers at FamilySearch
A long time ago FamilySearch filmed the civil birth, marriage, and death registers for Scotland for the period 1855 (when civil registration began) until 1875, and for 1881 and 1891. Of course, you can access the same register entries at the ScotlandsPeople site – but you’d have to pay – or at the Scotland’s People Centre in Edinburgh (where there’s a daily charge of £15).
There is a catch – unless you’re a member of the LDS Church you would have to go to a FamilySearch Centre or an affiliated library to view the actual register entries. But you can view the transcriptions at the FamilySearch website wherever you are in the world.
Changes of name in the 1940s and early 1950s
Recently I’ve seen two marriage certificates from the early 1950s where the bride had changed her name by Deed Poll. At first there was a bit of head-scratching on my part, since in England you can change your name without any formalities whatsoever – just so long as you’re not doing it in order to defraud or deceive. What was different about these marriages?
Until recently people used to ‘look down their noses’ at unmarried couples, so many pretended to be married by using the same surname – usually the man’s surname. But from 1939 to 1953 (or thereabouts) it was compulsory to carry an identity card, and if the name on the card didn’t match it would undermine the illusion. It wasn’t just about identity cards – we still had rationing, so the name on the ration book also mattered.
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These days banks and many other businesses insist that we prove our identity by entering a code sent to our phone. It’s a simple way to protect them and us against fraud, but it can be extremely inconvenient if the mobile signal is too weak (or non-existent). My wife and I ran into this problem when we holidayed in Shropshire in 2023, because the cottage where we were staying was in a valley, and to get a mobile signal of any kind at all required walking several hundred metres uphill. Not much use if the code’s only valid for 5 minutes (and it’s raining).
Thankfully there was a solution: WiFi calling. This is a little-publicised feature (supported by most phones and most mobile phone networks in most countries) which makes use of a nearby Internet connection to make and receive calls and texts. On my Android phone the setting is under Connections; on my wife’s Apple phone it’s under Mobile Service.
When you’re at home it’ll be your home WiFi that your phone uses, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the calls are free – you’ll be charged at the same rate as for a normal call over the mobile phone network.
Tip: if you’ve looked into WiFi calling in the past and found that it wasn’t supported by your network, check again. GiffGaff, the main provider I use only recently added this service, so when we holidayed in 2023 I installed a second SIM card (from another provider) in my phone. This year we’re going back to Shropshire again, but this time I won’t need the extra SIM.
Like many people around the world I like to play Wordle, and last year I signed up for a digital subscription to the New York Times with a first-year cost of £20 – amongst other things this gave me access to Wordle Bot which analyses my guesses and suggests how I could have done better (which is very useful when I’m next in the same situation). I was expecting the cost for the second year to be considerably higher, so I set a reminder on my phone to check the renewal price around a week before my subscription ran out, with a view to cancelling.
However, I was pleasantly surprised to see this summary in my account:
£20 every year – I really didn’t expect that. It would have been churlish to cancel in the circumstances.
But guess what – when the charge came through on my credit card a week later it was for £50, not £20. So I logged into my New York Times account again – would you believe it, it still showed the cost of my subscription as £20 every year. Someone had made a big mistake, and it certainly wasn’t me!
It may have been pretty clear cut, but it took me almost half an hour on the phone – including escalating the case to a manager – to get the New York Times to accept that they had made a mistake. Apparently if I’d waited for 2 days after they had taken the money my account would have been updated to show the higher price. What a crazy system!
On this occasion my persistence paid off, but some big companies still get away with sloppy practices. If you’re certain that you’re in the right, keep going until you get to speak to someone who has the authority to put things right.
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Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2025 Peter Calver
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