Newsletter – 20th
November 2023
MASTERCLASS: How to overcome 'brick walls'
Which DNA test should you choose?
Time to take that DNA test! LOWEST PRICES OF THE YEAR
Already tested? Here’s now to make the most
of your results
British Newspaper Archive passes 72 million pages
Findmypast enhance newspaper search
Re-registration of a birth as legitimate
Stop Press FINDMYPAST OFFER
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MASTERCLASS:
How to overcome 'brick walls'
It can be very
frustrating when you're up against a 'brick wall' in your research, but it's
impossible to research your family tree for any length of time without running
into them – in fact, the longer you research the more 'brick walls' you'll have
(I have well over one hundred, but if you’ve been researching longer than me
you could well have many more). You won’t get past a ‘brick wall’ by venting
your anger, but you might if you follow the advice in this Masterclass.
What is a ‘brick wall’?
Some people talk about
anything that blocks their path as a ‘brick wall’, but most researchers
consider that a ‘brick wall’ is something that stops you going back to previous
generations on a particular ancestral line. So not knowing what happened to
great aunt Molly might be frustrating, but it isn’t a ‘brick wall’.
For me, a brick wall is
something that stops me getting back any further on a particular line. So being
unable to find an ancestor's death or burial place is rarely a brick wall, but
being unable to find their baptism or marriage often is.
Is it really a 'brick wall'?
But before turning to
the question of how to get those brick walls tumbling down, it's important to
distinguish between real brick walls and the imaginary ones we create for
ourselves. For example, if there are sources of information that you haven't
searched because you don't have the right subscription or don't live close to
the relevant records office, it's not really a brick wall that's blocking your
path.
Of course, we all have
limited time and money, but there are usually routes we can take if only we
stop and think for a moment - these might, for
example, include free access to subscription services at your local library,
record office, family history society, or LDS Family History Centre. Of course,
sometimes the records you want to search are only available at an archive
that's thousands of miles away - but even then you've
got the option of employing a researcher, or contacting a friend or cousin who
lives nearby.
SOURCES YOU MIGHT NOT
HAVE CONSIDERED
Bishop's Transcripts
For most of the period
before the commencement of civil registration (1837 in England & Wales,
1855 in Scotland) copies of parish register entries were supposed to be sent annually
to the bishop or archdeacon. Bishop's
Transcripts (generally abbreviated to BTs) are useful for many reasons, for
example:
- The register may have been lost, damaged, or destroyed
- The handwriting in the register may be very difficult
to decipher
- Some errors and omissions were corrected when the BTs
were produced (though others may have been inadvertently introduced)
- The BTs may be held at a different record office,
making them easier to access, either in person or online
However, there are some
pitfalls to look out for:
- Online images that seem to be register pages may in
fact be BTs. Check the website of the record office that provided the
images if you're not sure what you're looking at.
- Transcribed entries may not give the precise location
of a baptism, and may even suggest that it took place in a different
location; this seems to be a particular problem with Suffolk BTs
transcribed by FamilySearch (but now available at other sites)
Wills
Most of my ancestors
didn’t make wills or, if they did, the wills didn’t go to probate – so haven’t
survived. But even if your ancestors didn’t make wills themselves
they may have been mentioned in the wills of others, and if you’re particularly
lucky there will be an index to beneficiaries that you can search (check the websites
of the local record office and the local family history society).
Local or specialist websites
There are some
phenomenal resources that have been compiled by family history societies, local
history societies, projects of all kinds, and individual researchers. For example,
as a member of Essex Society for Family History I can refer to the indexes of Poor
Law records for the county that have been compiled by volunteers. At a more
local level the Earls
Colne database, which was constructed by a team at the University of
Cambridge between 1972 and 2002, contains a large part of the surviving records
of a single Essex parish over the period 1380-1854.
TECHNIQUES THAT ARE
WORTH TRYING
Family reconstitution or reconstruction
When researching prior
to 1837 we're often faced with the problem that there are lots of people with the
same surname in a few adjoining parishes, which makes it very difficult to
identify who a particular register entry is referring to. Burial registers are particularly problematic,
since there's often no indication of the age of the deceased, but baptism
registers which only give the name of the father, or
give the wrong name for the mother (an annoyingly common occurrence) are also a
hindrance.
Sometimes the only way
to make sense of the entries is to take all the entries for a particular
surname and apportion them amongst the families who were known to be living in
the area at the time - it's like the overlap between a One-Place Study and a
One-Name Study. It may be necessary to draw on records other than parish
registers - later census and marriage records can provide insight into
happenings in the early 19th century, even though the information can't be
assumed to be correct (birthplaces and ages in censuses are often wrong, whilst
ages and fathers' names on marriage certificates are equally unreliable).
Collaboration
But when you've checked
all the readily-available records, what next? One
approach is to find others who are researching the same line, which is where
LostCousins can help: make sure that your My Ancestors page is as
complete as possible. Finding relatives who are researching the same families
can lead to all sorts of discoveries - even someone who isn't as experienced as
you may well have some clues that you don't have.
Tip: most researchers tend to spend more time
working on their direct paternal line than any other - partly because our ancestors
in that line bear the surname that WE were born with, and partly because
following a single surname made life a lot easier in the days when we had to
rely on microfilms and index cards. So when you're
researching one of your many other lines, finding someone for whom that line is
their direct paternal line is almost always good news - even though they might
otherwise not have as much experience as we do.
Sometimes simply
starting from a different place on the tree can make all the difference. For
example, a few years ago I obtained the will of my great-great-great-great
aunt's husband - which referred to the son of his sister-in-law (another of my
great-great-great-great aunts) but didn't name him. I knew that she wasn't
married at the time the will was written, so it was obvious that the child was
illegitimate - and suddenly I realised who that son must be (and that the
father shown on BOTH of his marriage
certificates was nothing but fiction).
Even though it didn't
break down any of my own brick walls it was a ground-breaking discovery for the
hundreds of descendants of that child (now confirmed as my cousins), because it
revealed who the mother of the child was, and at the same time prevented them
from expending more effort trying to find a non-existent father. Starting from
where they are on the tree there would have been no reason for them to ever
obtain a copy of that will - it was only when they connected with me, their 5th
cousin, that the mystery could be solved.
There are many other
examples from my own tree that I could cite, but there are just as many
situations where I've been helped by cousins who have clues that I wouldn’t have
found in a million years (DNA matches are particularly useful).
Tip: it doesn't matter how distant your cousins
might seem - all of them share your ancestors, and that's what is important!
DNA
DNA testing is a bit
like Marmite – some people like the idea of using technology to inform their
research, and some people don’t. But whether you like the idea or not, you can’t
ignore the fact that your DNA (and the DNA of your cousins) provides evidence
of who your ancestors were - evidence that can’t be faked.
The great thing about
DNA is that it can not only solve mysteries, it can verify
the records-based research that you’ve already carried out. Sometimes we’re 95%
(or even 99%) certain that we have the right baptism but can’t find evidence
that will prove it beyond all reasonable doubt. Of course, the flipside of this
is that very occasionally you’ll discover that you’ve been researching the
wrong line, whether because of marital infidelity or sloppy record-keeping. Far
better that you research your own ancestors and your own brick walls than
someone else’s!
Even if you don’t
understand how it works, DNA can still work for you. But whether you understand
it or not, if you don’t follow the simple steps in my DNA Masterclass
you’re not only throwing your money away but wasting your time. Almost all of the many breakthroughs I've made in the last 6 years
have been the result of clues and inferences gathered by testing my own DNA and
that of consenting cousins, but it is the mistakes I made in the previous 5
years that I want you to avoid!
TRY THINKING ABOUT THE
PROBLEM DIFFERENTLY
Be open-minded
The discovery described
in the previous section depended on spotting the link between seemingly
unrelated information from three different parts of my tree. Making such
connections usually requires us to have a very ambivalent attitude towards the
information in our tree: in other words, we always have to have in the back of
our minds the possibility that what we've been told, or what we've read in a
register or on a certificate isn't true - at least until we have found so much
supporting evidence that we have to accept its veracity. As I mentioned in the
previous section, it’s rare that we can be 100% certain unless we have DNA
confirmation – even if we've found all the right records, the records could be
wrong.
Whilst we all know deep
down how unreliable family stories usually are, somehow
we fool ourselves into thinking that our family is in some way different. Our
bias is even more evident when it's someone we actually knew:
"My grandmother was so religious, she couldn't possibly have given birth
to an illegitimate child" is a fiction I've heard more than once since I
started helping LostCousins members to knock down their brick walls nearly 20
years ago.
Be patient
Occasionally we know
where the information that will break down a particular brick wall is likely to
come from. For example, there were a lot of people waiting for the 1911 Census
to be released because it was the only way they could find out where their
grandfather or grandmother was born, and no doubt there are others hoping that
the 1921 Census will provide the answer they're seeking.
Similarly, you may know
that the parish registers for one of your areas of interest are due to go online, or are being indexed by the local family history
society – either of which would make it far easier for you to search.
If you have a pretty
good idea that the answer to a puzzle is going to be revealed by the release of
new data, why continue to expend effort? Surely it's
better to use your energies and expertise to solve problems that don't have
such a neat solution?
Be alert, be lucky!
Often it's serendipity that leads to the solution -
though we still have to be alert to that possibility. For example, the surname
of a visitor staying with my great-great-great grandparents at the time of the
1851 Census seemed vaguely familiar, and I eventually realised that it was the
name of a marriage witness whose signature I'd had difficulty deciphering some
years before. This enabled me to confirm that I'd found the right Smith family
on the census, so I was able to take the line back another generation -
not easy with such a common surname, especially since the father had changed
his occupation from 'carpenter' to 'rag merchant' and some of the children's
names and ages were different.
Read around the problem
Seek out inspiration.
Read as many family history magazines as you can, and especially free
newsletters - not just mine, but also the blogs of knowledgeable people with
lots of connections like Chris Paton. The articles in society journals
might seem irrelevant to your current research, but the information you glean
could well solve one in the future, perhaps in a different county and a
different part of your tree.
Join the LostCousins
Forum if you've been invited (check your My
Summary page - over half the people who have been invited haven't joined
yet). Listening to how other people knocked down their brick walls may inspire
you to knock down your own.
Sometimes the solutions
arrive before the problems – we usually refer to it as 'experience'.
Do nothing!
Rather than bang my head
against a brick wall I often choose the 'do nothing' option. That's right, instead
of running round like a headless chicken I put that particular
problem to one side and focus on another part of my tree, or else on
writing a newsletter. It's amazing how often some small discovery I make when
researching the articles in my newsletter provides an insight into how I might
solve a problem that I've filed in the 'too difficult' drawer.
To be really
successful we have to be flexible not only in the way we do our
research, but also the order in which we do it!
And finally….
Make use of ALL the resources available, even if it
costs you money! You might resent paying money to big companies
but they wouldn’t get that big if they didn’t provide a valuable service.
Which DNA test should you choose?
If
you’re an experienced family historian you will inevitably
have dozens of ‘brick walls’. One of them will be on your direct paternal line
(the line that goes up the far left-hand side of your tree), one will be on
your direct maternal line (the line at the far right) – but all the rest will
be on the lines in between. The only type of DNA test you can take which
will tell you anything about the lines in the middle of your tree (which,
after all, is where all but two of your ‘brick walls’ are) is an autosomal DNA test.
So you won’t be surprised to learn that ALL of the major
companies that provide DNA tests offer autosomal tests – and in most cases
these are the only tests that they offer.
Typically autosomal tests can help with ‘brick walls’ up
to 6 or 7 generations back. So not all of your ‘brick
walls’ will be within reach, though I’m sure you would agree with me that it’s the
most recent ‘brick walls’ which are the most frustrating. It’s because of this
limitation that I advise testing relatives from the earliest surviving
generation – even if they are not in your direct line.
Autosomal
tests can also help with ‘brick walls’ on your direct paternal and direct
maternal lines provided they are within 6 or 7 generations, but there also tests
that specifically look at those two lines (and no other). Whilst Y-DNA (paternal
line) and mtDNA (maternal line) tests can, in theory,
look back many more generations, they are not only more expensive, the chances of them telling you anything of practical value is
quite low. You might be lucky – but most people aren’t, and more than a decade
after I took those tests I’ve learned next to nothing,
despite spending many hundreds of pounds.
For
all the reasons stated autosomal DNA tests are the best choice for family
historians – but which of the many companies should you choose? Fortunately the decision is clear-cut – there is one company
that has sold far more tests to family historians than any other, and the same
company has more family trees than any other. Even better, the way in which DNA
matches and family trees are integrated means that this company does a lot of
the things that you’d have to do yourself if you tested with another provider.
That company is, of course, Ancestry. Their tests may be more expensive but believe
me, they’re well worth the extra!
Tip:
you don’t need an Ancestry subscription to make use of an Ancestry DNA test,
but it’ll certainly help – so if you have a cousin who is a subscriber, consider
giving them access to your DNA results. Similarly, if you’re the one with the
subscription suggest that your cousins allow you to manage or collaborate on their
DNA results.
Time to take that DNA test! LOWEST PRICES
OF THE YEAR
Black
Friday often brings the lowest prices of the year, and that certainly applies
to DNA tests from Ancestry UK, as they are discounted from £79 to £49 from noon
today until noon on Wednesday 29th November. Prices exclude shipping,
but it’s worth bearing in mind that Ancestry pay for shipping BOTH ways.
Ancestry
Canada also has an outstanding offer starting today, and again it’s the lowest
price of the year:
In
Australia and New Zealand you can take advantage of an
enormous saving at Ancestry.com.au:
Already tested? Here’s now to make the most
of your results
It
might surprise you to learn that taking a DNA test frequently causes amnesia.
That’s right, people who take a DNA test often forget why it was they tested!
To
be fair, it’s not the fault of the test itself – it’s the way that the results
are presented. You get a long list of matches (over 10,000 of them when you
test with Ancestry), and they’re sorted according to the amount of DNA each
person shares with you. So it’s natural to start at
the top and work your way down the list, isn’t it?
But
you have to ignore that primeval urge and remember WHY
it was you took the test – wasn’t it to knock down some of your ‘brick walls’? Experienced
family historians like you and me have dozens, perhaps hundreds, of ‘brick
walls’, each one blocking our way to earlier generations of that line and all
the lines that it leads to. Until I took the Ancestry DNA test I couldn’t identify
the father of my illegitimate great-grandmother, which meant that 6% of my tree
was unknown and unknowable. On the other side of my tree
I couldn’t identify the parents of one of my great-great grandmothers – it turned
out she had been brought up in the workhouse, where they changed her surname
and changed her religion, so another 6% of my tree was blocked off until DNA
came to the rescue.
On
my direct maternal line I was stuck with my
great-great-great grandmother Maria Shearing, who was shown in the 1851 Census
as born in Leith, Scotland – but it with the help of DNA I could confirm that
she was born in Lee, Kent, opening up another 3% of my tree to exploration. Having
confirmed who her father was I was temporarily stymied by another census
enumerator, who in 1851 recorded his birthplace as Hatcham, Surrey – very close
to where he was living at the time. But thanks to Ancestry DNA matches I could
prove that he was born on the other side of the county, in Fetcham – the son of
John Sheiring.
So
DON’T do the obvious thing and work your way through
your list of matches from the top because, unless you have an unknown parent or
grandparent, the matches that will help you knock down your ‘brick walls’ are
likely to be so far down the list that you’ll never get to them. You didn’t test
your DNA to find more cousins, you did it to knock down ‘brick walls’ – so follow
the simple, straightforward strategies in my DNA
Masterclass and your DNA test will repay your investment, time and time
again!
British
Newspaper Archive passes 72 million pages
The
world’s largest collection of historic newspapers from the British Isles continues
to grow. Their original aim was to digitize 40 million pages over the course of
a decade, but now the British Newspaper Archives is on course to reach double
that number in the next couple of years, having just passed the 72 million mark.
When
you bear in mind that a single page might have a dozen or more articles, and a
single article could mention numerous names, there must be billions of names in
the archive, Those of celebrities and politicians might occur thousands of
times, whilst your great-great grandfather only appears twice – but those two mentions
will be more valuable to you than all the mentions of Lloyd George and Winston
Churchill.
Findmypast enhance newspaper search
In
the past I’ve always recommended the dedicated British Newspaper Archive site
for anyone who relies heavily upon newspapers articles as a way of filling in
the gaps in their family history. After all, much of what we know about our antecedents
comes from censuses, so we’re relying on snapshots at 10-year intervals – it’s a
bit like looking at passport photos without seeing the pages that record the countries
visited. By contrast local newspapers were published weekly, or even daily, so provide
much more information on those relatives who were fortunate – or unfortunate –
to feature.
For
me, the ‘killer feature’ that the British Newspaper Archive offered was the
ability to restrict my search to pages added to the archive after a specific
date. By contrast, if I was searching at Findmypast I’d have to plough through
the same results every time I searched for a particular relative – I’d have no
way of separating out the new additions.
But
not any more – you can now
sort the results of a newspaper search by ‘Date added’, so that the most recent
additions are at the top of the list. It’s not a perfect solution since if you’re
sorting by ‘Date added’ you can’t simultaneously sort by ‘Relevance’, but it
goes a long way to meeting my needs.
Note:
newspapers are only included in Pro/Ultimate, and Premium subscriptions. To
find out how much they cost follow these links to Findmypast’s UK, Ireland,
Australia
or US
sites.
Re-registration of a birth as legitimate
The
Legitimacy Act 1926 enabled a child to be classified as ‘legitimate’ when
their parents married after their birth:
(1) Subject
to the provisions of this section, where the parents of an illegitimate person
marry or have married one another, whether before or after the commencement- of
this Act, the marriage shall, if the father of the illegitimate person was or
is at the date of the marriage domiciled in England or Wales, render that
person, if living, legitimate from the commencement of this Act, or from the
date of the marriage, whichever last happens.
(2) Nothing
in this Act shall operate to legitimate a person whose father or mother was
married to a third person when the illegitimate person was born.
Intriguingly
the Act also states that “It shall be the duty of the parents of a legitimated
person, or, in cases where re-registration can be effected on information
furnished by one parent and one of the parents is dead, of the surviving
parent, within the time hereinafter specified, to furnish to the
Registrar-General information with a view to obtaining the re-registration of
the birth of that person”.
Until
last week I’d never seen an example of a birth that had been re-registered, but
LostCousins member David was able to rectify that with these two images:
It’s
interesting to note that the wrong year was shown at the top of the latter certificate
– more proof (were it needed!) that officials can
make mistakes. Note too that whilst the mother’s occupation was shown in the
original birth registration, it was (correctly) omitted when the birth was
re-registered.
Incidentally,
the couple married in 1929 – so the birth was not re-registered within the 3 month period specified in the 1926 Act.
GRO
do the decent thing
Earlier
this month I showed
you the birth certificate for William Alfred Ridley that Joyce received from
the General Register Office in 2001. The date of birth was given as 4th
November, but it turned out that the GRO clerk who prepared the certificate had
misread the register entry, and that the correct birthdate as 10th
November. I suggested to Joyce that in the circumstances the GRO ought to provide
a replacement certificate, and whilst they initially demurred, last week she
received a replacement in the post.
The
primary objective of LostCousins is to connect you to family historians who are
researching the same ancestors – your ‘lost cousins’. Of course, as you’ll know
from searching online trees, some of the people who have your ancestors in their
trees aren’t cousins of yours at all – they’re only related to you by marriage,
and it can sometimes be quite difficult to figure out which is which.
At
LostCousins it’s done automatically – the software that drives the website works
out whether you and the member you’re matched with share a common ancestor. However,
for the algorithm to come to the correct conclusion you need to have entered
the correct relationship between yourself and each of the relatives you’ve
entered.
Does
it matter what relationships are shown in the census? For example, if the
householder describes a child as his ‘daughter’, when you know for a fact that she
is actually his ‘step-daughter’, should you take that
into account? Probably not - what matters is the actual relationship between
yourself and the person you’re entering – and that doesn’t change just because someone
filled in the census form incorrectly.
Tip:
if you’re researching on behalf of someone else, even your spouse or partner,
use a separate account so that the relationships shown are correct for them.
You can have two LostCousins accounts at the same email address provided the passwords
are different.
Not
sure which relationship to use? There’s a short reminder on the Add Ancestor
form but you’ll find more detailed information in the FAQs.
I
had mixed feelings when I read this article
about the man who caught the former commander of the Auschwitz concentration
camp. Of course it was right that Rudolf Höss should be brought to
justice for the horrific crimes against humanity that he had perpetrated, but
when I read that his hiding place was discovered only because his wife was
interrogated for 6 days, before “she finally broke down” I couldn’t help
wondering how brutal that post-war interrogation had been.
I am delighted that until Monday 27th November Findmypast
are offering a 25% discount on their 3 month subscriptions as well as their 12
month subscriptions. Of course, the discount only applies to the first payment
so if you can possibly manage it, purchase a 12 month
subscription and lock in your saving for a whole year. And, as a 12 month subscriber you’ll also benefit from a 15% Loyalty
Discount should you opt to renew your subscription, as many of you undoubtedly will.
Findmypast.co.uk - Save
25% on 3 and 12 month subscriptions – ends 10am Monday
27th November
Findmypast.ie - Save
25% on 3 and 12 month subscriptions – ends 10am Monday
27th November
Findmypast.com.au - Save
25% on 3 and 12 month subscriptions – ends Sunday 26th November (10am
London time on Monday 27th)
Findmypast.com - Save
25% on 3 and 12 month subscriptions – ends 10am London
time on Monday 27th November
There could be more offers later in the week – Thursday is
Thanksgiving, which means Friday is Black Friday. If so
I’ll update the Stop Press, so check back in a couple of days’ time.
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2023 Peter Calver
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