Newsletter
- 1st March 2016
10
million Irish Catholic register entries: online,
indexed, and FREE!
Free
access to all Ireland records at Findmypast ONE
WEEK ONLY
Find
your Irish cousins ENDS TUESDAY
Did
your ancestors work 'at the big house'
Learning
from other peoples' mistakes
Inside the
NHS Central Register EXCLUSIVE
No girls
allowed: US compromise on three-parent babies?
Is
DNA testing worth the money?
Will
your genes help you live to 100?
Society of
Genealogists to sell off surplus books
Tracking
living relatives through company records
Centenary of conscription
Why
Stirling Moss didn't pass his driving test
Review:
Bletchley Park - the Secret Archives
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
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10 million Irish Catholic
register entries: online, indexed, and free!
Less than a month ago I broke the news
that Findmypast would be launching indexes to the 3500 Irish Catholic Parish
Registers, covering more than 1000 parishes across the island, which were put
online last year by the National Library of Ireland. Here's what it says on the
NLI website:
"For
most family history researchers, parish registers provide the earliest direct
source of family information. Unlike many other records, parish registers
provide evidence of direct links between one generation and the next (via
baptismal registers) and one family and another (via marriage registers). They
are also, for the majority of Irish people who lived during the 18th and 19th
centuries, the only record of their existence."
Originally I reported, based on what I'd
read at the Irish Genealogy News website, that they would be included in
Findmypast's Ireland and World subscriptions, but there's been a significant
change: they won't be included in any subscriptions, because they're going to
be free. "Free forever" were the words ringing in my ears after I
came off the phone to Findmypast late yesterday afternoon, which is fantastic
news for researchers with Irish Catholic ancestors - and of course, most of the
population of Ireland were (and still are) Catholic.
Images of the registers have been free
at the National Library of Ireland's website since last July's launch, but it's
like looking for a needle in a haystack if you don't have any idea which of the
1000-plus parishes your ancestors came from. And since there are more than 30
parishes in the average county, even if you knew the county you'd still have a time-consuming
challenge. It's not surprising that in the 7 months since the images went
online I haven't had a single email from a LostCousins member who has knocked
down a 'brick wall' in their Irish family tree.
Being able to search by name and date
will make an incredible difference - although I wouldn't be surprised if there
are quite a few transcription errors (I found it very difficult to read many of
the register entries that I looked at).
Some statistics to get you thinking:
there are 370,000 images, with more than 10 million entries, which between them
record over 40 million names. Some will have been available previously through
the subscription site Roots Ireland, but for researchers all over the world to
have such a wealth of information at their fingertips - completely free of
charge - will undoubtedly lead to numerous discoveries.
The earliest records date from 1670 and
the most recent from 1900, but the majority of the records are from the 19th
century, with the last entries for many parishes in the early 1880s. Because so
many Irish people emigrated in the 1840s and 1850s, before civil registration
began in 1864, the records will prove invaluable for many who, up to now, have
been unable to locate their Irish roots.
Note:
you may find that in some registers information isn't visible because of the
way the pages have been microfilmed, for example the dates are missing from the
right-hand page of this image from a
baptism register. The transcribers were working from the digitised images, so inevitably
this information is also missing from the transcription. Please don't
contact me about errors in the transcriptions - instead report them to
Findmypast using the 'Report an error in this transcription' link.
ALL Ireland records
at Findmypast are free ONE
WEEK ONLY
To celebrate the release of the indexes
Findmypast are offering free access to ALL of their Irish records, at all four
of their sites from 9am today (Tuesday) and 9am next Tuesday (8th March). All
you need to do is register, if you haven't done so already.
The following links will take you direct
to the special page at the relevant Findmypast site:
Tip:
Findmypast's extensive collection of Irish newspapers is included in the offer;
also, I understand that many researchers have found that the Irish Petty
Sessions Court Registers 1828-1912 (with 22 million records) can be a very
fruitful source of information.
Find your Irish
cousins - completely free ENDS
TUESDAY
Until midnight on Tuesday 8th March you
won't need to have a LostCousins subscription to contact a new cousin who
shares your Irish roots, which gives you a real incentive to enter your Irish
relatives, whether you find them on the Ireland 1911 census, the England &
Wales 1881 census, or the US 1880 census. And because you can get the information
you need from those censuses without paying for any subscriptions it won't cost
you a penny to find your 'lost cousins'.
So get to work on your My Ancestors page now!
Tip:
remember that it's the members of your ancestors' extended families - their
cousins, in other words - who are most likely to link you to your living cousins.
The wider you spread the net, the more likely you are to hit the jackpot.
Did your ancestors
work 'at the big house'
Local
History News recently included an
article about the Landed
families of Britain and Ireland blog which has details of over 200 families
and their homes - and whilst these may not be the biggest and best known
houses, that's what makes this resource so useful.
One of the houses is Frickley Hall in Yorkshire,
home to the Aldam family - about whom I know quite a lot, since in 1993 I
acquired at auction a large collection of correspondence addressed to Mary Stables
Wright, who married William Aldam MP in 1845. I don't have any connection to
the family, by the way - this was in the days before I was researching my own
family tree, and my future wife and I were studying the Victorian era.
If your ancestors worked in a large
house you might well find some useful information in the blog, which is based
on a lifetime's research by Nick Kingsley, who recently retired from the
National Archives - and you might even be able to add to the information that's
there.
Learning from other
peoples' mistakes
One of the great things about the 1911
England & Wales census was the way we could glean extra information as a
result of the mistakes that our ancestors made when filling in the Household Schedule
- for example, my great-grandfather gave the numbers of children born to both
of his wives, and for me this was invaluable.
There are similar opportunities in the
1939 Register that have arisen because of mistakes by the enumerators, for
example:
The entry for Mrs Kate Emms has clearly
been confused with that of her 9 year-old son or daughter (whose record is
closed), and because it was later corrected, albeit only in part, we know the
precise dates of birth of both of them. If we then look at the top of the next
page of the register, we can deduce that the closed entry is for a daughter who
married a gentleman with the surname Royce:
We can also see from the date shown in green
that the marriage took place no later than July 1964 - and indeed there is a
marriage in the GRO indexes in the second quarter of that year.
Tip:
there is all sorts of additional information to be gleaned from the 1939
Register if, like Chris who spotted this record, you keep your eyes open!
Here's another example of an
enumerator's slip, one that certainly amused me - see the occupation given for
Edith Hodgson!
Inside the NHS Central
Register EXCLUSIVE
Soon after the National Health Service
was founded in 1948 it became clear that it was necessary to have some way of
identifying patients in order to ensure that medical records didn't get mislaid
when people moved around the country, or muddled because two people had the
same name, and that the same person didn't appear on the list of more than one
general medical practitioner (GP).
The National Register, created in 1939
and regularly updated, provided an ideal solution - everyone had a unique
number, which became their NHS number. When I was born in 1950 I was added to
the register, and you can see my entry here (I've erased the day of birth for
security reasons):
As you can see, this entry is in an
almost identical format to those in the original 1939 Register - the key
difference is the substitution of 'Family Allowance' for 'Personal Occupation'.
Note the four letter code - this became the first part of my original NHS
number, which was MMJW 463 (the final '3' is the entry number).
But the most interesting part of the
entry is on the right-hand page - the part that we don't see when we
view the 1939 Register:
At first glance it looks like a meaningless
jumble of numbers and letters, but because I know where I was living at various
times in my life I was able to deduce that EX stands for Essex (where I grew
up), SOH is Southampton (where I went to university), NEL is North East London
(the new name for the part of Essex where I lived), LNB is one of the London
boroughs, and MX is Middlesex. None of the dates shown correspond precisely to
the dates when I moved - it's more likely they indicate when I first visited a new
doctor.
How is this significant in the context
of the 1939 Register? The key thing about the 1939 Register is that, having
been adopted for use by the NHS, it continued to be updated until the paper
records were eventually computerised (this happened at a national level in
1991, but locally it happened earlier - my computer record from the Central
Register appears to date from 1983).
The information that we can't see on the
right-hand page of the 1939 Register looks just like the hieroglyphics above -
it simply records when the individual concerned moved from one doctor to
another. Hardly confidential medical information - so I wonder whether one day
we'll be allowed to see it?
Have you got a copy of your entry from the NHS Central
Register? What, if anything, did you learn from it?
No girls allowed: US
compromise on three-parent babies?
I first wrote
in 2012 about the technology that makes it possible for mothers who carry
faulty mitochondria to give birth to healthy children, and I reported
a year ago on the decision to allow this procedure in the UK.
Earlier this month the Food and Drug
Administration in the US received a report from the country's Institute of
Medicine which recommended that whilst donation of healthy mitochondria should
be allowed, it should be limited to boys, as they cannot pass on the donated
mitochondria to their offspring.
However it's unlikely that formal
approval will be granted any time soon - there is a congressional ban that prohibits
the agency from reviewing applications "in which a human embryo is
intentionally created or modified to include a heritable genetic modification".
You can find out more in this Washington
Post article.
Is DNA testing worth
the money?
DNA testing offers a great way to answer
questions that conventional paper-based research cannot solve, because within
our DNA we have clues to our ancestry that can't be found in any other archive.
But that doesn't mean that DNA testing
is the best way to knock down our 'brick walls'. I think most experienced
researchers would agree it's only the best way when the other alternatives have
failed.
A good example of the use of DNA to
knock down a 'brick wall' is when we're trying to discover the paternity of an
illegitimate child, or the parentage of a foundling, and know that if there
were any contemporary records they haven't survived.
But there are relatively few cases like
that - they're the exception rather than the rule. Even where DNA can help,
researchers often choose the wrong test, or test DNA from the wrong person. I
would have hoped that anyone who read the series of DNA articles I published
last year would get it right, but experience has shown that misunderstandings
can persist.
Another common error is to assume that
because DNA testing in relatively expensive, it's an easier way to find cousins
and knock down 'brick walls' than using other routes - LostCousins for example.
In reality autosomal DNA tests are not only more expensive, it's far harder and
more time-consuming to work out which of the hundreds or thousands of people
you've matched with really are cousins, and how you are related.
So I would advise you to add the rest of
your relatives from the 1881 Census before investing in DNA testing - it is a far
easier way to find living cousins, as well as being much cheaper. Remember that
the key relatives to enter are the members of your ancestors' extended families
(their cousins, in other words).
But if you do decide to make use of DNA
testing, make sure you read my DNA articles first - you'll find them by
following these links:
Understanding DNA #1: your genetic
inheritance
Understanding DNA #2: mtDNA myths
Understanding DNA #3: the truth
behind DNA tests
Understanding DNA #4: how DNA is inherited
Understanding DNA #5: choosing the right test
Understanding DNA #6: choosing the
right company
Understanding DNA #6: choosing the
right company (continued)
There's at least one more article to
come, which will describe what to do when you get your results.
Tip:
if you use the links in those articles to order your DNA tests(s) you'll be
supporting LostCousins.
Will your genes help you
live to 100?
Researchers at Stanford University in
California are aiming to identify genetic variations that are more common in
centenarians - and already four have been found, according to this New Scientist article.
Of course, if we haven't inherited those
variants there's probably nothing we can do about it - except to keep plugging
away at our family history, since keeping our minds occupied is believed to be
a great way to stave off dementia.
Or come back as an elephant - research
at the University of Utah reported last year demonstrated that elephants are
less likely to die from cancer because they have at least 20 versions of the p53 gene, whereas humans have only one.
Society of Genealogists to
sell off surplus books
The second-hand book stall was always a
popular feature of the Society of Genealogists stand at Who Do You Think You Are? Live - but when the show has moved to
Birmingham it was no longer practical to transport the books.
Instead, the SoG will be holding a sale
of surplus and ex-library stock at its London premises from 15th March until
the end of April - you don't need to be a member to take advantage of the
bargains that are on offer. And whilst you're there why not visit the library,
which has a wonderful collection (I've found the CDs of parish records very
useful)? Visitor passes start at £5 for 2 hours - you can find out more here.
Note:
on Saturday 5th March Dr Geoff Swinfield will be running a half-day course at
the SoG entitled "Tracing Living Relatives", a topic that is close to
the heart of all LostCousins members. There were still 4 places available when
I last checked - follow this link
for full details.
Tracking living
relatives through company records
Over the past two years I've been
testing a new version of the Companies House website - it has been quite
nostalgic, because in the early 1970s I used to spend a lot of time at
Companies House in City Road, just outside the City of London, doing research for
my degree dissertation, and as part of my job as an investment analyst.
At the old site you can search by
company name, or number, but at the new site you can also search using the name
of a director - it's a great way to track down the relatives from the rich
branch of your family which didn't want to have anything to do with your branch
(or your more successful former classmates)!
Currently the beta site is free - it's not clear
whether they're going to charge when it goes live (some information is free
from the current site, but some you have to pay for, although the sums are
quite small, typically £1 or £2). But why not search now, while it's definitely
free?
In my case I was able to track down a 3rd
cousin who was one of the bridesmaids at my parents' wedding, but moved to
France many years ago - before I even knew of her existence. When she emailed
me back I discovered that she and her husband used to live just a few miles
from where I am now! I wonder who you'll find?
Tip:
if you're running a DNA study for your surname it could be a great way to find
people who might be prepared to take a Y-DNA test, and can afford to pay
for it themselves!
The Military Service Act was passed on
27th January 1916, coming into force on 2nd March - every male between the ages
of 19 and 40 who was single or, if widowed, had no dependent children was
deemed to have enlisted - with very few exceptions. You can find out more about
the Military Service Act here.
By a sad coincidence 27th January 1916
was also the day that my great uncle Herbert, who had volunteered to fight, was
killed at Ypres. My father never got to meet any of his father's brothers - all
three of them died before he was born; similarly I never got to meet my
father's only brother, who died before I was born.
Why Stirling Moss
didn't pass his driving test
My first car was a MGB roadster with
wire wheels - what we used to call a 'sports car', although it was actually
slightly slower from 0-60 than my current Yaris Diesel. Mind you, when you're
that close to the ground it feels like you're going twice as fast as you really
are. It didn't stop me exceeding the speed limit on occasions, however, and if
you got stopped for speeding in those days there was a good chance that the
policeman would enquire "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?".
Sir Stirling Craufurd Moss, OBE was born
on 17th September 1929, so he was not yet 6 years old when compulsory driving
tests began in June 1935. However he never had to take a driving test, because
with the outbreak of World War 2 tests were suspended - examiners were
redeployed on traffic duties, or supervised petrol rationing. It wasn't until
November 1946 that tests were reintroduced, by which time Stirling Moss was
already driving - and the rest is history!
Driving tests were suspended again in
November 1956, during the Suez crisis - they didn't resume until April of the
following year. There's more information about the history of the driving test here.
Review: Bletchley Park - the Secret Archives
The story of the British code-breaking
operations at Bletchley Park has received so much prominence in recent years
that it's hard to remember that until the 1970s the work carried out at this
incredible establishment during the war was still Top Secret. Many of the
workers went to their graves without revealing anything of their experience,
even to the closest members of their families.
Bletchley
Park - the Secret Archives is a
beautifully-presented special edition of a book previously published as The Lost World of Bletchley Park but
with the addition of a slip-case and removable memorabilia that help to bring
the place, the period, and the people to life. Even before I started reading
the book I found myself overwhelmed by thought that this small group of people
could have played such a key role in the winning of the war.
With over 200 images and 15 removable reproduction
documents, including Alan Turing's notes on the Enigma machine, it's a
beautiful way to learn more about this amazing establishment - I really enjoyed
it.
Tip:
although I bought my copy through Amazon, and at a very good price, I
didn't buy it from Amazon themselves - when I'm buying a brand new book I
always pay the cheapest price shown on the Amazon site, which will often be
from an Amazon Marketplace seller.
I decided it was about time I checked
what the differences are between BT's new call-blocking BT8600 phone and the BT8500 model that I've got myself (and have
been recommending to members) - especially since the new model is nearly twice
the price.
I printed out the specifications for
each and went through line by line - it turns out that the only difference is
an extra button. I then worked out how many times I would have used that button
in the past 6 months - had there been one on my phone. Not 50, not 20, not 10,
and not even 1 - I wouldn’t have used it at all!
Why wouldn't I have used it? Because the
button can only be used if an unwanted call gets through - and since this has
never happened since I installed the phone (because it works so wonderfully
well). So my advice is to buy the BT8500 now just in case BT decide to
discontinue it in favour of their high-priced new model. The best prices I've
found are at Amazon - and if you do buy
something after clicking that link, even if it's something completely
different, LostCousins should benefit.
I should mention that I'm not the only
one who is enamoured of this timesaving device, which paid for itself in the
first month of use - LostCousins member Alan wrote in to say that after getting
120 unwanted calls in a month he was at his wits end: "The BT8500 caught
my eye and seemed to be the answer to my plethora of unwanted calls. I bought it and set it up. I had received my last unwanted call! I cannot speak too highly of this product."
Incidentally, you don't need a BT line
to make use of this phone (but I don't think it can be installed outside of the
UK - though maybe one of you will know otherwise).
Tip:
I've always done well when I've bought nearly-new items at Amazon, especially
ones from their own warehouse.
This is where any last minute updates
and corrections will be highlighted - if you think you've spotted an error
(sadly I'm not infallible), reload the newsletter (press Ctrl-F5) then check here before writing to me, in case
someone else has beaten you to it......
That's all for this issue - I'll be back
soon with more news from the wonderful world of family history..
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins