Newsletter - 24th May 2019
LostCousins is free this weekend FREE
Are you researching your other half's tree?
Death registered twice in different counties
Stonehenge sample rediscovered after 60 years
Review: Suffragettes
- Images of the National Archives
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue (dated 17th May) 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):
Whenever
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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!
This week Ancestry announced
that the number of completed autosomal DNA tests now exceeds 15 million, an
amazing number considering that there are only around 3 million Ancestry subscribers
worldwide. If there's anyone who still doubts that DNA testing is now part of
mainstream genealogical research this should finally convince them!
LostCousins
is free this weekend FREE
It's always free to complete
your My Ancestors page and search for
living cousins, but generally you need to buy a subscription if you want to
initiate contact with someone new.
But nobody ever has to pay, because there are several periods each year when
the LostCousins site is completely free - and this weekend (which is a Bank
Holiday weekend in the UK) is one of those occasions. In fact, since some members
will be away for the weekend, or sunning themselves in the garden I'm going to
extend the free period until midnight on Tuesday 28th May.
Now is the time to add the
rest of your relatives from 1881 - note that roughly one-fifth of the relatives
on your tree would have been alive in 1881, so if you've got an average-sized
tree of 1000-1500 people you could have 200-300 relatives to enter, each of
them a potential connection to one of your 'lost cousins'.
Note: although nobody needs to buy a subscription,
if nobody did the site would have to close down,
taking this newsletter with it - so many thanks to all of those who are
supporting my work. At just £10 (about US$13) for a full 12 months it’s one of
the cheapest subscriptions around - not surprising, as it hasn't gone up since
it was introduced in 2005!
Are you
researching your other half's tree?
It's natural to want to research
your partner's tree, especially if you have children. But because of the unique
features of LostCousins you can't enter someone else's relatives on your own My Ancestors page - it simply wouldn’t work
properly.
The good news is that if you’re
the one researching both trees you don't need to involve your other half in the
detail - you can use the same email address for both accounts (just so long as
the passwords are different), so that you involve your partner when there's
something exciting to tell them!
Don’t worry if you've already
entered some of your spouse's relatives on your own account - in a matter of
minutes you can put everything right simply by following the advice below:
(1) First copy your partner's
relatives to a NEW account in their name using the Refer a Relative feature on the My
Referrals page - this is unlikely to take more than 5 or 10 minutes. You'll
have an opportunity to change the relationships shown from 'Marriage' to
'Direct ancestor' or 'Blood relative' when you create the referral. (Don't open
the new account until you have the referral code.)
(2) Log-in to your partner's
account, go to their My Ancestors page, confirm that the relatives have been copied across,
and click the Search button (if you have already been matched with one of
your partner's relatives this will establish the match on the correct account).
Log-out from the account.
(3) Log-in to your own
account and delete your partner's relatives one by one from your own account -
again it'll only take about 5 minutes. DON'T DELETE THEM UNLESS YOU'VE CONFIRMED
THAT THEY HAVE ALREADY BEEN COPIED TO THE NEW ACCOUNT!
(4) Finally, contact me so
that I can tidy things up.
I was recently invited to
take part in a survey in connection with online completion of the 2021 Census -
you'll find it here.
Note: it took me a little more than the 10 minutes
suggested, but that's because I wanted my answers to be as useful as possible.
In March I brought you Bob's inspirational story,
under the headline Never give up!
Searching for an unknown father.
In that first article Bob
mentioned that he was expecting to meet with his new-found half-sister, Barbara,
and following the meeting he sent me this photograph of them together - I think
there's a definite resemblance, don't you?
Bob also wrote:
"We
both just felt that being together was the most natural thing in the world.
Both my half-nieces refer to me as Uncle Bob and, along with photos and stories
of my father, gave me a USB memory stick of him recounting (EDITED!) bits of
his life. In a way. hearing the voice of someone so close and yet unknown, I
couldn't have found a friendlier family and am researching THEIR/MY family in
Canada. I plan to add members from the 1881 Canadian Census to LostCousins.
"Thanks
for your help and encouragement (plus PATIENCE!) over the years.
"PS
How lucky I was to have 2 cousins take the Ancestry DNA test at the same
time
in Canada & England."
Bob's final comment is a
reminder that when we test our DNA we're not just doing
it for ourselves and the relatives we already know, we're also doing it for the
relatives we've yet to discover. It's the same when you add entries to your My Ancestors page at the LostCousins
site - if you limit yourself to the lines where you need help, ignoring the potential needs of the 'lost cousins'
who share your other lines, it can easily come across as selfish behaviour.
Ancestry now have over 15
million DNA profiles in their database - and there are more than 3.5 million
relatives recorded in the census who have been entered by LostCousins members.
Both systems work better as more people take part, so if you're one of those
whose contribution to the LostCousins project so far is zero or minimal, how
about putting that right - not for my sake (I'm just the 'piggy-in-the-middle'),
but the sake of your own cousins?
Just an hour of your time
could change someone's life, just as Bob's life was changed by his unknown cousins
taking DNA tests. Of course, there is one key difference between testing your
DNA and completing your My Ancestors
page - one of them doesn’t cost a penny!
Another success
story
Roger realised that using DNA
he could not only verify his previous, records-based, research - he could also
knock down some of his 'brick walls'. Here, in his own words, is how he managed
to overcome one of them:
"In the last year I have had not
one, but two, matches of my DNA that enabled me to choose my correct ancestor
(there are many others that confirm my research - 22 out of my 32
3xgt-grandparents). One goes back to the Tall family from Devon from around
1750, which is a long way, but it seems to make sense! I have also been able to
help one lady find her birth grandmother born 1889.
"Here is the other main story which
I have shortened because many hours were spent looking at many records:
"Elizabeth
Hall was born in Broad Oak, Gloucestershire in about 1800 according to the 1851
census of East Dean - she had married John Williams and their youngest son was
Amos Williams, my ancestor - but I couldn’t find an Elizabeth Hall born
anywhere near Broad Oak. I wondered if she was related to the Hall families
from nearby, and perhaps her christening record was missing – but nothing added
up.
"Her
first child was Samuel Hall Williams christened at Mitcheldean
in 24 March 1817. He was christened again at Drybrook
on 2 July. Thankfully the parish records for the Forest of Dean are available
on the Forest of Dean website (it's free, but you need to register). Elizabeth
married John Williams nearby at Walford, Herefordshire on 16 December 1816 and
a witness was Samuel Hall. Was this her older brother?
"There
was a Samuel Hall in East Dean in 1820, living only 1 mile from Elizabeth, and
he was born at Llangarron, Herefordshire according to
the censuses from 1851 to 1871. He married Hannah Morgan. My Elizabeth had two Morgan boys (twins) age
17 living with her in 1851. Was this another connection of this Samuel to
Elizabeth? I began searching for a Broad Oak in Herefordshire and there is a
hamlet of this name 4 miles from Llangarron. Was the
1851 census wrong when it said Elizabeth was born in Broad Oak, Gloucestershire?
"Then
I found that a Betty Hall was christened at Llangarron
on 4 January 1801. I was never sure that I had the right Elizabeth Hall until a
DNA match showed up in Yorkshire recently. The ancestor of my new cousin from
Yorkshire was William Hall a coal miner who moved from Bilson, East Dean to
Staffordshire and then to Yorkshire. Research of his marriages showed his
father was Samuel Hall. The only Samuel Hall in Bilson was from Llangarron. So the DNA match (18 cM) comes from the parents of Samuel Hall (1794-1874) of Llangarron and Betty Hall (1800-1852) of Llangarron.
"Thanks
to the DNA match I am fairly sure my Elizabeth (Betty) Hall came from nearby
Herefordshire and not Gloucestershire, and I can now go back another
generation."
Roger's story not only demonstrates
how DNA can solve a puzzle, it’s also an excellent example of how enumerators can
tie us in knots by adding information that wasn't on the household schedule. It
seems pretty clear that in this case it was the enumerator who added the county
(Gloucestershire) to Elizabeth Hall's birthplace in the 1851 Census - indeed
it's a very similar error to the one made in the same year by another
enumerator in a different part of the country, who wrote that my ancestor was
born in Leith, Scotland when in reality she came from Lee, Kent.
Note: as a 20 year-old student I was an enumerator in the
1971 Census, so when I criticise enumerators I'm including
myself - goodness knows what mistakes of mine will be revealed in 53 years' time!
Death
registered twice in different counties
I've come across instances of
deaths which appear twice in the GRO indexes, but in those cases the references
have always led to the same register entry. So I was particularly
interested in this example sent in by LostCousins member Dave, of a death
registered twice - once in Essex and once in Kent:
Perhaps Dave's unfortunate
great-great-great grandfather fell off the ship on one side of the River
Thames, but was found washed up on the other side? Since the post
mortem was carried out the Deputy Coroner for Kent, I imagine that the
body was discovered on the southern shore.
When sailors are lost at sea
their bodies may never turn up - or might not be correctly identified when they
do. A death certificate can only be issued when there is a body - hence the
problems faced by the heirs of Lord Lucan, which required a change in the law (see
my article
from 2015).
Stonehenge
sample rediscovered after 60 years
I'm sure we all have unusual
things in our attics, sheds, and garages, but the discovery of a piece of
Stonehenge must rank amongst the most unusual finds - see this BBC article for
full details.
Review: Suffragettes - Images of the National
Archives
Before I was sent this book for review
I didn’t think there was much more I could learn about 'Votes for Women', but seeing
the photographs of letters, official documents, and suffragettes themselves
changed my mind.
I suppose it’s like going to
a record office and touching the register page that your ancestors'
signed - suddenly it comes to life. Or like the scene from Pleasantville (one of my
favourite modern movies) when everything changes from colour to black and white
(and, eventually, back again).
There are barely 100 pages in
this book, but it is extremely well put together, with just the right amount of
text to put the images into context. I learned a lot about the women who
changed the face of British politics for ever.
If you can pick it up at a
discounted price it's well worth adding to your library, especially if you have
a particular interest in the fight for universal suffrage
in the UK. But I don’t think it would work as well on Kindle, though there is
an electronic version available.
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Wordery
Having once again mentioned
DNA testing for dogs in the last newsletter I got an email another member who
had found the results incredibly useful:
"...we've DNA tested as many of our dogs as possible
because my husband and I typically adopt senior dogs. Aside from the fun of
finding their breeds, it's great to know they don't have medically significant
genes.
"Our
current dogs are 100% Beagle in one case, and in the other, 25% American Bulldog,
25% Shar Pei and 12.5% each of Chow Chow, Boxer,
Beagle, and mixed.
"While
it didn't help our insurance rates, it was a great help to our veterinary
behaviourist and veterinarian as our dog had several issues unique to her
breeds. My previous mix with behavioural issues also greatly benefited from
finding his breeds via DNA."
I believe the discount code
in my original article
is still valid - certainly worth a try.
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......
That's all for
now - got to make the most of the sunshine before it disappears! But in my
spare moments I'll be catching up on my reading, so look out for more book reviews
in the next issue.
Peter Calver
Founder,
LostCousins
© Copyright 2019
Peter Calver
Please do NOT copy or
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