Newsletter
- 3rd March 2017
"Mind
the gap!": London Transport staff registers go online NEW
1642 'Census'
begins to appear online BREAKING NEWS
Cousin
marriages - legally right, genetically wrong?
Do
identical twins have identical DNA?
Impossible
date in baptism register
Northern
Ireland's 1939 Register
GRO PDF
trial: phase 3 will not include digitised records
Colour
tithe maps for Northumberland now online NEW
Abandoned
ashes found on Essex seafront: fake news?
"To
Whom It May Concern": a moving radio programme
The
Russian Orthodox Church in London NEW
DNA
identifies soldier who died at the Somme
Imperial
War Museum celebrates centenary
Review:
The Grass Roots of English History
Review:
The Fun of the Fifties
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"Mind the gap!":
London Transport staff registers go online
Nearly 37,000 entries from historic
staff registers held by Transport for London have gone online at Ancestry
- will they fill a gap in your knowledge? You can search them here.
Tip:
to see what records are included refer to the 'Browse this collection' box at
the right, then drag down the slider to see the many different components.
1642 'Census' begins to
appear online BREAKING NEWS
The House of Lords is very much in the
news at the moment - but for family historians the best news is that digitised
images of some of the Protestation Returns of 1642 (held in the House of Lords
archives), are now available online.
In May 1641 all members of the House of
Commons swore an oath of allegiance to the Protestant religion, and in the
following January the Commons ordered that all adult males should do the same.
The names of those who conformed were listed by parish, and this return was
submitted to Parliament. In a few cases those who refused to sign were also
listed.
Note:
in a few areas (such as Cornwall), people wrote their own names, but usually a
local official wrote out all the names.
There are nearly 3,500 Protestation Returns
that have survived - not all are for parishes, but they include about a third
of English parishes at the time. According to Ancestral Trails there are
none at all for the City of London, Bedfordshire, Gloucestershire,
Herefordshire, Leicestershire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Rutland, or Suffolk -
but they are nevertheless the closest we have to a census for the period just
before the Civil War. The returns were made in March, and because the legal year
ended on 25th March until 1752 they were dated 1641.
There's a map on the Parliament website
that shows the approximate location of the parishes for which returns have
survived - you'll find it here.
Just type in the name of the place of interest, or the nearest town - you'll
probably need to enlarge the map to see the markers for individual parishes (I've
already done that in the example below):
Click the marker to confirm the name of
the parish and display a link to the online catalogue entry.
When you click the link you'll either be
taken to an image of the return or, as in this case, you'll get an error
message:
I believe that this page
lists all of the returns which are currently available online (note that
they're all from the counties of Berkshire, Cornwall, and Cumberland), but the
only way to be absolutely sure is to click the relevant link - if there is one
- in the catalogue entry. But please don't contact the Archives to complain or
ask when the problems will be fixed as they're already working hard to put it
right, and the more emails they have to answer the longer it will take.
As luck would have it none of the
returns for the parishes where my ancestors are known to have lived in the 17th
century are currently available online, but you could well be luckier. If
you're not, here's a link to the
record for Chieveley in Berkshire (now better known
as the site of the M4 Motorway Services).
Note:
I've created a web page with links to all of the returns, both those that have
already been placed online and those that should be uploaded in the coming
weeks and months - you'll find it here.
I don't know about you, but I haven't
identified all of my 9G and 10G grandparents - the ancestors who might be
recorded in the Protestation Returns (this is hardly surprising, of course, since
- barring cousin marriages - there are 2048 of the former and 4096 of the
latter). So when the returns are all available what I'll be doing in most cases
is looking for surnames that I recognise in the hope of breaking down some of
my 'brick walls'.
Talking of cousin marriages reminds me
of an interesting discovery I made this week….
Cousin marriages -
legally right, genetically wrong?
My great-great grandfather John Calver
and his brother William married two sisters, Sarah and Susan Bray - this is just
one of many instances in my tree where two brothers married two sisters, and
I'm sure that most people reading this could point to numerous instances in
their own tree.
To the best of my knowledge there never
has been any bar to marriages of this kind: when William and Susan married in
1843 it was a case of brother-in-law marrying sister-in-law - there was no
genetic link between them. Marriages between 1st cousins, on the other hand,
have always been regarded with a degree of caution - even today they are barred
in nearly half of US states, and the Roman Catholic church requires cousins to
get dispensation before marrying.
This article from
the New York Times suggests that the
genetic risks are low, but looking at a marriage between 1st cousins that I've
found in my family tree, I'm not so sure. In 1871 Mary Calver, daughter of my
great-great grandparents John Calver and Sarah Bray married Charles Bray, the
son of Sarah's brother William. Although they were married for over 30 years at
a time when most couples had large families, they only had one child, Charles
William Bray, born in 1876 - and whilst he married in 1903, his wife had no
children at all (a fact that I have long suspected, but was able to confirm
using the GRO's new birth indexes).
There are other cousin marriages in my
tree, but so far I haven't found any others between 1st cousins. Do you have any marriages between 1st cousins
in your tree and, if so, is there any evidence that it affected their
reproductive capacity, or the health of their offspring? Note: there's no need to
write if there is no evidence of problems, as will normally the case (after all,
cousin marriages wouldn't be allowed if the risks were that great).
Note:
the Royal families of Europe are renowned for their interconnectedness. I wrote
last year about cousin marriages and the genetic problems these caused for one
Royal house - you'll find the article here.
Do identical twins have
identical DNA?
Identical twins are the result of a
fertilised egg splitting to form two embryos, which necessarily have the same
DNA. But do they continue to have the same DNA throughout their lives?
The answer is 'Yes' if you believe this Daily Mail article
from 2013 - but I prefer to believe what the experts tell us, for example this
2008 article
from Scientific American and this
2016 article
from the BBC Science Focus website.
I was prompted to research this question
by watching a report
from an American TV programme which highlighted the differences between the results
when identical triplets and quadruplets were tested. If you're tempted to watch the clip I should
point out that it only talks about ethnicity - either the Inside Edition researchers didn't examine the raw data or they
didn't think it worth reporting what they found.
It doesn't matter which company you test
with, they can't tell which parts of your DNA came from a specific ancestor,
let alone the ethnicity of individual ancestors. All they can do is use complex
statistical algorithms to compare your DNA with samples of DNA from different
parts of the world - and by allocating segments of DNA to specific regions they
build up an overall picture of your supposed ethnicity.
Small differences in the underlying DNA
can potentially lead to big differences in the results - it depends how robust
the statistical algorithms are. But that's not the only factor - the reason
that consumer DNA tests are so cheap is because they're not designed to be 100%
accurate or 100% complete. There will be a small number of bases (out of around
700,000 pairs) that have been misread, and some that haven't been read at all -
and even if the same person tested twice they won't be the same bases.
I've always considered ethnicity analyses
to be "for amusement only" - sometimes they'll tally with what we
know, or think we know, and sometimes they won't, but either way they're
unlikely to help us break down any 'brick walls', not least because the geographical
areas are large and overlapping. The only exception is the new test from Living DNA
which, rather than using broad brush areas such as Western Europe or British
Isles, provides much greater detail.
Impossible date in
baptism register
Earlier this week I spent a couple of
days researching my Kent ancestors using the Canterbury Cathedral Archives
registers at Findmypast. It's a real treat for me to be able to focus on my own
tree, and I got so involved that at one point I found myself tracking the
family of the woman my great-great-great-great uncle married in 1822. I'm glad
that I did, because when I found the baptism of her great uncle Thomas Oliver
Saunders I noticed something rather unusual:
© Image copyright Dean and Chapter of
Canterbury; used by kind permission of Findmypast
The baptism of Thomas Oliver Saunders
was clearly added later (because it has been interlined), but have you noticed
the date - 29th February 1769? 1769 wasn't a leap year, so the day after
February 28th would have been 1st March - which is probably the date when the
child was baptised (though we'll probably never know for sure).
Northern Ireland's 1939
Register
The 1939 Register at Findmypast covers
England & Wales - but it is possible to obtain extracts from the Northern
Ireland register by contacting the Public Record Office for Northern Ireland
(PRONI). And best of all, they're not charging for the information.
I'd never seen an example from the
Northern Ireland register before so when a LostCousins member told that she'd
obtained a copy I asked if I could share it with you:
Notice that whilst the details for some
members of the household have been obscured completely (to protect the privacy
of those who are, or may be living), it's possible to view the notes on the
right-hand side, which are largely excluded from the English release.
If you review the notes you'll see that
none of the dates is later than 1951, when identity cards were still
compulsory, and rationing was continuing. This suggests that, unlike the
English register, the Northern Ireland register was not used as the NHS Central
Register (although I'm still waiting for confirmation of this point by PRONI).
Note:
at the time of writing there is no dedicated page on the PRONI website - but you
can complete the online form here
(thanks to Claire at Irish Genealogy News for her help).
GRO PDF trial: phase 3 will not
include digitised records
Although I already knew the answer, I
decided to doublecheck with the GRO that phase 3 of their PDF trial will
EXCLUDE those register entries that have already been scanned, ie births up to 1934, and deaths up to 1957.
Those births and deaths were, of course,
included in phase 1 of the trial - when you could have bought a PDF for just
£6. During phase 3 the cost will be £8, which reflects the higher costs
incurred by the GRO.
When will phase 3 begin? It's certainly
not imminent, but I doubt that the GRO will want to delay any longer than they
have to, especially with the end of the financial year approaching.
Colour tithe maps for
Northumberland now online NEW
The Genealogist
have just added full colour tithe maps for Northumberland to their impressive
collection - there are over 600 maps, linked 62,000 tithe records for the
county. The following example is for the village of Bilton:
© Crown Copyright image reproduced
courtesy of the National Archives and The Genealogist
Also new at the site are 'Police Letter
Books' for Hampshire - covering the period 1891 to 1911 they could provide
insight into the careers of ancestors who served in the Hampshire County
Constabulary.
Tip: you can save £20 on a Diamond subscription to The Genealogist
if you follow this link.
Over 1500 members entered my seasonal
competition - which just goes to demonstrate what a wonderful array of prizes
there was on offer!
1ST
PRIZE was won by Paul in
Northamptonshire, who chose the Living
DNA test as he already had a Findmypast subscription
2ND
PRIZE went to Monica in Yorkshire -
she chose the Findmypast World
subscription worth over £155 (Monica's experience demonstrates that anyone
could have won - she walked away with the most valuable prize even though she
only entered 7 relatives on her My
Ancestors page!)
3RD
PRIZE of a Findmypast Britain subscription
was won by Sara in Gloucestershire, who like Monica had been a LostCousins
member for less than a year
4TH
PRIZE went to Simon in Lancashire,
who already uses Family Historian, so chose the Findmypast credits, which he will use alongside his existing
Britain subscription so that he can view records from other countries
5TH
PRIZE, a copy of Family Historian v6, was won by Sylvia in Australia
Many thanks to Findmypast, Living DNA,
and Simon Orde of Calico Pie for donating such
wonderful prizes. There were also 10 LostCousins subscriptions on offer - of
these 7 went to members in the UK, and the other to
members in Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland.
Congratulations to all the winners - and
to the hundreds of members who may not have won prizes, but who were matched
with new cousins as a result of the entrants' outstanding efforts. After all,
connecting with someone who not only shares your ancestors, but is researching
them, is one of the best gifts there is!
Abandoned ashes found on
Essex seafront: fake news?
Last week the BBC News website reported that a
box containing the ashes of 'Rupert 1978-2003' had been found on the promenade
at Brightlingsea, a coastal town in Essex. The writer
of the article speculated whether the ashes were human or animal remains - so
naturally I took up the challenge.
It didn't take long - a 30 second search
at Findmypast revealed that nobody called Rupert who died in England during
2003 was born in 1978.
But I guess that if the reporter had
bothered to do what I did, it would have turned from a story to a non-story…
"To Whom It May
Concern": a moving radio programme
Much more interesting was a recent
episode in the BBC Radio 4 documentary series 'Objet Trouve' about a military jacket found in a Belfast shop
which turned out to have a note in the pocket. It's not often that I listen to
a radio programme all the way through, but this one was so riveting that it
held my attention for every one of the 28 minutes! You can listen to it here.
Tip:
you can listen to BBC radio programmes wherever you are in the world.
The Russian Orthodox
Church in London
Findmypast have made available online browseable images of marriage and other records for the Russian
Orthodox Church in London. Although I attempted to learn Russian at school half
a century ago, after half a dozen lessons I gave up and switched to Italian - so
what I can tell you about these records is quite limited (even if they were in
Italian I'd still be struggling!). But if you have Russian ancestors you'll
almost certainly recognise the names of family members should they appear in
the records, which include marriages up to 1915.
Finding
a marriage which may or may not have taken place in 1915 is at the heart of MJ
Lee's latest genealogical mystery, The Somme Legacy.
Over 19,000 British soldiers died on the
first day of the Battle of the Somme, and 9 Victoria Crosses were awarded for
extreme bravery (one of which sold at auction this week for £240,000 - see this
BBC News article).
Ex-detective turned genealogist Jayne
Sinclair has to get to grip with a multitude of family squabbles: her own, with
her husband Paul; her client's, with his curmudgeonly father - and last, but
not least, the in-fighting between her client's putative ancestors. All of this
takes place against the backdrop of an immoveable deadline - the estate of the
last Lord Lappiter will pass to the Crown in a matter
of days unless our intrepid heroine can prove that the marriage between war-hero
Lieutenant David Russell, heir to the Lappiter title,
and Rose Clarke, a mere shop-girl who spent most of her life in an asylum,
actually took place.
As in his previous book, The Irish Inheritance (you'll find my
review here)
the author employs an enormous amount of well-researched historical detail to
bring the events to life. I thought his research had gone a bit awry when he talked
about the smells of rotting vegetables and fish at Smithfield Market (London's
wholesale meat market) until I looked into its history - fish and vegetable
markets were indeed built there in the late 19th century.
Almost every genealogical mystery I've
read has a villain with a screw loose, and this book is no exception. At first
sight Herbert Small is an unbelievable character, but then I realised that in
my time I've come across quite a few people who are just as selfish and petty
(none of them current LostCousins members, I'm glad to say!).
On several occasions I had to force
myself to put this book down, because it was such a pleasure to read that I
would have felt guilty had I finished it before I'd researched and written this
newsletter and replied to all the emails in my inbox. I hope you enjoy it every
bit as much as I did, but without the interludes!
I read the Kindle version, which costs
just £2.38 - but there is also a paperback available at £8.99 - and, as ever,
you can support LostCousins by using the links below:
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca
Tip:
you can support LostCousins by using these links whenever you shop at Amazon -
even if you're buying something that I haven't recommended.
DNA identifies soldier
who died at the Somme
Identifying the remains of those who
died in the Great War was a challenge - there was no DNA in those days - and
the work is still continuing. I'm grateful to DNA expert (and LostCousins
member) Debbie Kennett for referring me to this BBC article which
tells how one of the fallen at the Battle of the Somme has finally been
identified after more than a century.
Imperial War Museum
celebrates centenary
The Imperial War Museum museum plays a
key role in Jayne Sinclair's investigations in The Somme Legacy so I thought I'd draw your attention to the fact
this is the centenary of the museum's foundation.
Originally based in the ill-fated
Crystal Palace (which had been the home of the 1851 Great Exhibition when first
erected in London's Hyde Park), then at Kensington, the museum moved to its
present London home in 1936 (it occupies a building that was previously part of
the Bethlem Hospital, better known as Bedlam).
To mark the centenary the museum is
putting on display some of the many personal items that were submitted by
grieving families when the museum first opened - letters, photographs, and
other mementoes of those who gave their lives in the service of their country.
You can read more in this BBC article.
Review: The Grass Roots of English History
David Hey's final book (he
died last year while it was in production) isn't a history book in the
conventional sense - instead it looks at the history of our green and pleasant
land from the point of view of local and family historians, whose primary
interests lie not in the adventures of kings and princes, but the everyday
lives of their very ordinary ancestors.
I learned an awful lot while reading
this book - not about my ancestors themselves, but about the places and the
times in which they lived. Thanks to this book I'm going to be visiting places
that I've never been to before - even though some of them are in the county
where I live - and revisiting others, but viewing them in a new light.
It's not a thick book - less than 200
pages if you don't count the copious notes, extensive bibliography, and the
index - but it took me nearly 3 weeks to read, because it’s so crammed with
information that I found that I couldn't absorb more than a few pages at a
sitting! You simply cannot skim a book like this - every page has something
that will intrigue you or surprise you, or get you thinking (and often all
three).
If your only interest is adding names to
your family tree this book isn't for you - but if, like me, you want to
understand more about your ancestors' everyday lives it will provide insights
that you won't get from watching TV documentaries.
I bought a (very slightly) used copy of the
paperback edition of The Grass Roots of
English History, which cost me just under £14 including
shipping, but currently the best deal is a new copy for about £16.50 (these
prices were at Amazon.co.uk - it wasn't
any cheaper elsewhere when I looked, but iof you're outside
the UK the Book Depository might work out
cheaper). The Kindle version is a little cheaper - but when it comes to a book
like this, which I'm going to be referring to time and time again, I'd rather
have the real thing, and I suspect you would too.
Review: The Fun of the Fifties
My memories of the 1950s are all in black and white,
and somewhat faded, so it was refreshing to pick up Robert Opie's book The Fun of the Fifties, which is
packed with hundreds of colour images of things that surrounded me as I was growing
up. Some I could have listed without seeing the book, but others I'd completely
forgotten about!
This book will mean little to someone
born after 1960, but if like me you grew up in the 50s (or earlier) I can guarantee
that it will bring back memories. For example, Shredded Wheat is still with us,
but I'd completely forgotten that in those days it was 'Welgar
Shredded Wheat'.
In fact, I was so inspired by the book
that I paid much more than I had originally intended to buy a 1950s Hornby Dublo electric train set
- something that I always wanted as a boy, but never owned (though I did
have a clockwork 'O' gauge set and, much later, a Trix
Twin electric set).
My hardback copy of the book says £12.99
on the back, but I bought it brand new for just £3.99 - money well spent, in my
opinion!
As I was looking through back issues of
the Toronto Star from 1970 (trying to
track down the descendants of my great-great uncle Richard Calver, who
emigrated there with more than half of his 15 children in 1910) I came across
an advertisement for a 25in colour television reduced from $699 to 'only' $549.
Now I can't tell you exactly how much that is in 2017 Canadian dollars because
I couldn't find a suitable index, but I reckon it would be over $3000, or
around £2000 in British terms.
It's amazing to consider that TVs and
computer monitors, once luxury items, are now so cheap - Argos
are selling a 24in flat screen TV with a built-in DVD player for under £100.
I'm sure it isn't the best quality - it's not even full-HD - but it gets great
reviews from customers (and I don't remember 1970s televisions being that
wonderful, either).
These days just about any TV can be used
as computer monitor (even if you don't have an HDMI port on your laptop you can
get a USB adaptor - I bought this one,
though I'm sure there are now cheaper alternatives available). But I'm always
surprised how few people use an external screen with their laptop when they're
working at home - just because your computer has a built-in screen that doesn't
mean you have to use it!
Of course, the simplest option is to buy
a dedicated computer monitor - and these have come down in price just as
dramatically. The great thing about buying an external monitor for your laptop
is that you'll still be able to use it when you upgrade to a new computer.
My very first home computer (bought in
1978 for nearly £700) had a 9in black and white screen - now you can get 24in
flat screen monitors with full HD resolution for under £100 including delivery!
You'll find a good selection of well-known brands at competitive prices here (but make sure you choose one that has
an HDMI port, even if you don't need it at the moment). Amazon is another good source, and you should
read their customer reviews even if you are going to buy elsewhere.
Talking of reviews, I regularly
contribute reviews to TripAdvisor, and
never eat out unless I've previously checked out the reviews. I tend to rely
more on what other customers say about the food than the service, since I don't
mind putting up with bad service if I get good food (whereas good service and
bad food is an embarrassing combination), but the great thing is that we can
all make up our own minds based on what is important for us.
Back in the 1970s I used to buy a
magazine called Time Out and if I
wanted to go to the cinema I'd always choose one of the films that they panned
- I seemed to have very different likes and dislikes to their film critics! So
I'm taking a chance when I recommend to you a film that I watched this week and
greatly enjoyed - it was Saving Mr Banks, telling how Walt Disney
nearly didn't get the rights to create Mary
Poppins. I watched Mary Poppins at the age of 14 soon after
it came out - it was the last but one time that I went to see a film with my
parents (The
Sound of Music, which came out 3 months' later was the last).
Another film set in the same era is Eight Days a Week, a documentary about
the Fab Four (and if you're around my age you'll know exactly who I'm talking about!). My wife gave me the 2-disc Special
Edition for Christmas and we both enjoyed watching - and, of course, listening
- to both the movie itself and the extras on the second disc.
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......
I suspect that with Who Do You Think You Are? Live we're entering a busy time for
family historians - which means I'll also be kept busy. But please don't stop
writing in with your questions and suggestions for the newsletter - many of the
articles are inspired by emails from members like you!
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2017 Peter Calver
Please
do NOT copy or republish any part of this newsletter without permission - which
is only granted in the most exceptional circumstances. However, you MAY link to
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membership (which includes the newsletter), is FREE