Newsletter - 25th October 2019
Findmypast add new Norfolk records
Colour tithe maps for Warwickshire online
Woman finds childhood book in museum
Why the census matters - and not just to us
British
Medical Journal article warns about health DNA tests
New
gene editing technique could fix many defects
Updated ethnicity estimates from Ancestry
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
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Thousands of keen family
historians attended the opening day of the inaugural RootsTech
London, at the Excel complex in the former docklands - but the exhibition hall
is so vast that the number of people attending was really only apparent when we
gathered in the auditorium to hear Steve Rockwood, President and CEO of
FamilySearch International, welcome us all.
For me it was particularly heartening
to hear him focus on the importance of making connections, because that's something
that LostCousins has been doing since 2004 - however we couldn't have done it nearly
so effectively had FamilySearch not made the 1881 Census freely available, both
on their own website and through other sites. Thank you!
Nick Barratt - a long-time
friend and supporter of LostCousins - took over as compere, introducing TV historian
Dan Snow, who gave a very moving keynote address about the role his
great-grandfather played in the Great War. Having recently watched Stanley
Kubrick's masterpiece Paths of Glory
for the first time it was chilling to learn that Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas D’Oyly Snow had also blamed his men rather than accept that
his own decision-making was at fault.
The photographs below show
just a small fraction of the exhibition hall, and an even smaller fraction of
the visitors - I'm told that even more people are coming today and tomorrow!
For more about what's happened
(and happening) follow this link.
Findmypast add
new Norfolk records
Norfolk parish registers and
other records can be found at multiple sites - but the latest tranche released
by the Norfolk Record Office are, for now at least, only available at Findmypast.
My heart leaps whenever Norfolk records go online because some of my Suffolk
ancestors lived very close to the border, so it's very possible that some have
Norfolk origins.
According to Findmypast their
new records come from over 2,500 registers, and include over half a million new
baptisms, adding 307 new parishes to the collection, over half a million banns
and marriages covering 461 new parishes, and over 400,000 burials from 301 new
parishes.
There are now well over 4
million records from parish registers in Findmypast's Norfolk collection:
Colour tithe
maps for Warwickshire online
One of the
outstanding features of The Genealogist is their collection of tithe maps and
tithe records, which they are in the processing of updating with colour maps.
The latest addition is from Warwickshire, mostly covering the years 1837-55.
The
Genealogist has previously released apportionment record books and national
greyscale maps; they also have colour maps for Rutland, Huntingdonshire, Buckinghamshire,
City of York, Middlesex, Northumberland, Surrey, Westmorland, and the North and
East Ridings of Yorkshire. You can save on a subscription to The Genealogist,
and get a free subscription to Discover Your Ancestors online magazine
if you follow this link.
DNA can help all of us to
research our family trees, but now and again we'll discover that the genetic
tree doesn't match the one on paper - often because there has been an adoption
at some point. The discovery in this story, sent in by Margaret, came like a bombshell
- it was so unexpected. And yet it was the most wonderful news imaginable.....
"In
September 2016 I received the results of my DNA test. There wasn't anything obviously
significant about any of the matches shown, mostly 3rd and 4th Cousins. I left it
there - at that time Peter hadn't written his Masterclass, so I had nothing to
guide me to the next level.
"Then
in September 2017 I received through Ancestry a message from a Lisa Woodward
stating she had just received her DNA results and discovered that it was
extremely likely that I was her 1st Cousin.
"As
I had - or so I thought - completed my immediate family tree, this seemed to me
very unlikely. But after many emails backwards and forwards it was decided that
a brother of my father had had an affair, and fathered a child, who had then
been adopted. The person in question was Lisa's father who - according to Lisa -
was born in the north of England, adopted and then at the age of around 20
emigrated to Australia. There he met his future wife, married and had three
girls - of whom Lisa is the eldest.
"At
this time I asked Lisa if her father had his birth certificate
as it would show at least the mother's name. Sadly it
had been mislaid some years ago and no one could remember the contents. No
further communication was made until this year.....
"On
20th March I received out of the blue an email from Lisa headed 'Certificate'.
Eager to open the email to find out the name of the Mother I was given the
biggest 'bombshell' imaginable, the child, David was born on 16th June 1947 to
Jenny and John Brown and there in the notes was the word 'Adopted'.
"Readers,
this may not seem unusual to you, but this Jenny and John Brown were my
parents. This meant that David was my brother! He was born in the very house I
was brought up in - and where my sister was born five years after David (this
child they kept). What family remain today are totally unaware of this
situation.
"It
doesn't end there, David was legally adopted through a Juvenile Court just a
few weeks after his birth, but not by strangers - the couple who adopted him
were related to me through marriage and lived just 34 miles away. He visited
the same family that I did.
"Naturally
I asked myself as to why I had not pick up this birth in the GRO index - I now
know why. My mother had her name changed
by Deed Poll prior to David's birth as my parents were not married, resulting
in her maiden name showing as Brown, which was not her birth name.
"At
the time of this development David was out in Vietnam teaching English through
the TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) system soon after he joined
the Mercy Ship in Gran Canaria as a Volunteer. He
finally made it to the U.K. on 28th July where I picked him up from a Lincolnshire
Station.
"There
was another shock - seeing David in the flesh I felt my (sorry, our) late father
had walked back into my life, because the resemblance was unmistakable. My life
has taken on another phase - after 72 years I finally got to meet up with a
brother I never knew existed!
"The
experience has been truly wonderful: lots of chatter, laughter, and sharing photographs.
We even discovered one of the two of us aged about 2 and 7 on a beach with a
family friend - of course, at the time we had no idea that we were brother and
sister. This photograph had also appeared in an old family album belonging to
my parents - I had never known who the boy was.
"Of course there are still many unanswered questions. Sadly David's adoption papers so far have been unavailable,
though we live in hope. David had to leave at the end of September, however he
has booked a return flight to join me again next May - I can't wait.
"Without
DNA this would never have come to light - and yet the only reason I tested was
because I was researching my family tree. I wonder how many others will miss
out on wonderful, life-changing discoveries."
If you've been banging your
head against the same 'brick wall' for years then a
different approach is needed. In this example sent in by a reader it was DNA
that provided the vital clues (note that the names have been changed to protect
the privacy of the individuals involved):
"Hannah
Glover had three children: Ernest was born in 1916 – no father was shown on his
birth certificate. Joyce and James were born in 1921 and 1922; their parents were
named as Andrew Peters, a carpenter, and Hannah Peters formerly Glover - yet Joyce
and James never knew their father. When Hannah married in 1938
she did so as Hannah Peters, widow.
"We
have searched many times for the marriage of Andrew and Hannah but without
success, so we were hoping that they were together at the time of the 1921
census (between the births of Joyce and James) which would give us some more
information about him.
"But
along came DNA and James’ daughter Hazel tested with Ancestry along with her
mother, and also Joyce’s son Reg. Hazel and Reg match
on Ancestry as probable first cousins which is what we expected, although we had
never previously been absolutely sure. They have a number of
shared matches on Ancestry but no surnames on any of the accessible trees match
anything in their joint ancestry. However the surname
Andrews turns up in several trees and some matches also have the surname
Andrews. In particular we noted the name Andrew Peter
Andrews, a carpenter who would have been living around the same time as Andrew
Peters.
"The
closest match with Hazel on Ancestry is a grandson of the aforesaid Andrew
Peter Andrews - and one of the most likely relationships suggested by Ancestry is
half 1st cousin, which would certainly be consistent with Andrew Peter Andrews
and Andrew Peters being the same person. (The other suggested relationships such
as 1st cousin once removed and great-great grandparent can almost certainly be ruled
out as being virtually impossible in practice.)
"The
second closest match is a great granddaughter whose suggested relationship is half
1st cousin once removed or similar. Other matches who are further away are
relatives, but not direct descendants, of Andrew Peter Andrews - again
consistent with the hypothesis. We know that Andrew Peter Andrews was married
and had several children with his wife, two of whom were born in West Ham, one of
them in 1921. Joyce Peters was also born in West Ham - in the same month!
"Ernest’s
daughter has also been doing detective work using DNA, and has made contact
with her unknown grandfather’s family, who have provided family photos and a
location providing additional evidence."
As you can see from this
story, DNA doesn't hand you the answers on a plate - you still need to use your
research skills and powers of deduction. But it very often provides new leads
that you’d otherwise have been unlikely to stumble across.
Woman finds
childhood book in museum
I was fortunate that after my
father died I found a cardboard box in his loft containing bits and pieces from
my childhood that had been kept for over half a century - a story that I wrote
at the age of 6, a picture I drew a couple of years later, and other bits and
pieces that I never expected to see again.
This BBC News article tells how
somebody else made an unexpected discovery from her childhood - has anything
similar ever happened to you?
This issue's excerpt from
this wonderful book is about entertainment. As the author points out, whilst
many homes had wirelesses, there were no programmes designed for children until
the War - and as for television, that really didn’t get going until the 1950s
(my family rented a set for the Coronation in 1953, and my father was still
renting from the same company half a century later.
So what other entertainment was there? These quotes from
contributors to the book are a reminder of a different world, but one that many
reading this will remember:
"On
one occasion I saw a barrel organ in the street with men dressed up as women dancing
in order to get some pennies. This was at a time of mass unemployment and was
the only way they could get any money."
"One
man used to come down the street sometimes with a roundabout pulled by a horse.
He charged a halfpenny a ride, and the roundabout had to be pushed by hand by
one of us, which would earn us a free ride."
"We
spent hours skipping with a rope stretched across the road, singing esoteric
skipping chant.... When we were skipping across the street the rope holders
would think of a colour or film star or food, and the jumper had to guess it....
When you skipped they’d swing the rope higher and
higher, and you took it in turns to jump over it. Eventually you’d hit it as
you jumped and you were out. There were lots of
skipping chants."
"In
the war we used the shrapnel we collected to play hopscotch.... The markings in
chalk on the pavement were 1–23–4–56–KQ."
I don’t suppose the games were
so very different in other towns and cities. You can download a free PDF copy
of Growing Up In London, 1930-1960 by
logging-in to your LostCousins account (yes, if you received an email about
this newsletter you do have an account!) and going to the Peter's Tips page.
Why the census
matters - and not just to us
This article in Nature
explains why the potential demise of conventional censuses is not just a
concern for family historians in the rich world, but also for people in poorer countries.
British Medical
Journal article warns about health DNA tests
An article published in the British
Medical Journal last week warns against relying on health inferences from
home DNA tests - the authors' criticisms are not very different from what I've
written in the past.
The BMJ article is behind a
paywall, but this news story
on the BBC News site summarises the key points.
However if you've got half an
hour to spare, this BMJ podcast
is brilliant - very informative and well worth listening to (it helps that the
main contributors are GPs). The way in which they discuss the tests is really insightful, and perhaps the most important lesson is
that genetic tests aren't necessarily any more accurate than other medical
tests.
Near the beginning one of the
contributors mentions that there are around 250 companies offering direct-to-consumer
DNA tests, so it’s worth bearing in mind there because are only a handful of
DNA test providers that I've ever recommended to genealogists (which means that
there are a lot of companies that you should probably steer clear of). And by
the way, whilst the title of the podcast starts with the words 'Ancestry DNA',
they're definitely not talking about Ancestry
(the company), who didn't offer health tests at the time the recording was
made.
Note: see the last
newsletter for information
about the new health tests announced by Ancestry, which are initially available
only in the US.
New gene editing
technique could fix many defects
US scientists are working on
a new gene editing technique with the potential to fix up to 89% of the 75,000
known harmful defects, though it's at a very early stage. See this BBC article for more details.
Updated
ethnicity estimates from Ancestry
Ancestry are rolling out
updated ethnicity estimates for those who have already tested, and if my
experience is anything to go by, they're getting rather good.
In the past I've warned that
ethnicity estimates should be regarded as being "for amusement only"
but when I logged-on and discovered that they've correctly identified me as
having German ancestors I was really impressed:
Many supermarkets sell packs
of 'Cooking Bacon' - they’re off-cuts and scraps, and
what you get in a pack varies enormously. For example, I recently purchased a
pack which had two thick steaks - but usually I look out for packs with thinly
cut rashers, as they're more versatile. But whatever is in the pack, at 72p for
500g in my local supermarket it’s a bargain buy, whether you end up using the
bacon as an ingredient (as in the Chicken & Bacon Risotto I made earlier
this week), or as the heart of a meal. (Earlier this year the packs were even
cheaper, at just 58p!)
Chicken livers are another
tasty, but economical ingredient - fry and add yoghourt, or balsamic vinegar. Or
try lamb's kidneys cooked in a frying pan with mustard and tomato sauce (or cream
and sherry if you want to splash out). Delicious food doesn’t have to be expensive,
nor need it be difficult or time-consuming to prepare - I can eat for a week
for the price of a single meal out.
Do you have a favourite budget
meal that's easy to prepare and - ideally - quick to cook? If there are
sufficient suggestions we could put together a LostCousins
cookbook!
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......
I was going to
tell you a little more about Miss Eva Burren in this issue, but I've run out of
time (and space), so I'm going to hold it over to the next newsletter. And as
for Henry Morton Stanley - we're still struggling to find him on the 1841
Census. Can you do better? If so, please join the discussion on the LostCousins
Forum.
Peter Calver
Founder,
LostCousins
© Copyright 2019
Peter Calver
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