Newsletter – 4th
March 2024
British Home Children online at
Findmypast NEW
Make the most of free
searches
What can the Society of
Genealogists do for YOU? THIS FRIDAY
Investigating disinheritance CAN YOU HELP?
Time to save on DNA ENDS SUNDAY
See where your
ancestors lived in 1861?
Who
Do You Think You are? magazine EXCLUSIVE
OFFER
Memories of childhood:
potato crisps
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 23rd February) click here; to find earlier articles use the customised Google search between
this paragraph and the next (it searches ALL of the newsletters since February
2009, so you don't need to keep copies):
To go to the main
LostCousins website click the logo at the top of this newsletter. If you're not
already a member, do join - it's FREE, and you'll get an email to alert you
whenever there's a new edition of this newsletter available!
British Home Children online at Findmypast
If
you’re one of the millions of descendants of the more than 130,000 ‘home children’
who were shipped to British colonies and dominions between the 1860s and the 1970s
you’ve probably found out quite a lot about your ancestor already – after all, most
LostCousins members are highly-experienced researchers (which is why connecting
to and collaborating with ‘lost cousins’ is invaluable).
However if you’re one of the tens of millions who
have ‘home children’ in their tree, but not in your direct line, you might not
even know of their existence. Or, rather, you may have recorded their birth and,
perhaps, found them on one census – but lost track of them after that. We’ve
all got people in our tree who disappear, with no sign of a marriage or death entry, and it’s a particular problem in
the 19th century because the Outgoing Passenger Lists held by The National Archives
only cover the period from 1890-1960. Even after 1890 it’s extremely challenging
to identify a relative who travelled without any other family members – it’s
difficult to be certain that you’ve found the right person when you only have a
name and age, especially since these might not have been written down correctly
in the first place.
Last
week at
RootsTech Findmypast announced a major project to bring together existing
records of British Home Children and make them available free to all registered
users. Adding them to the billions of records already in Findmypast’s
collection will make them more accessible and provide opportunities to make
serendipitous discoveries.
You
can find out more when you follow this link to Findmypast.
Make the most of free searches
There’s
a great article in the March issue of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine
in which the editor, Sarah Williams, explains how to save money by making use
of free sites and free searches. It’s well worth reading the article and
keeping it for future reference (see below for a subscription offer if you’re
not a subscriber, and can’t get access through your
local library).
Because
LostCousins members are some of the most experienced and dedicated family historians
in the English-speaking world most of you belong to at least one of the major
subscription sites, but have you ever considered that this might be holding you
back? One of the biggest mistakes any of us can make is to use a particular site
exclusively just because we’ve got a subscription – sometimes it’s better to use
a free site, or even a free search at site where we don’t have a subscription.
For
example, if you want to search the General Register Office (GRO) indexes of
births, marriages, and death one of the worst sites you could choose is Ancestry.
Don’t get me wrong, Ancestry is a fantastic resource, one that I’ve used for
over 20 years – but like everyone they have occasional weak spots, and their England & Wales, Civil Registration indexes are definitely below par. For a
start it’s difficult to search by registration district, or by county, and the
records are split in two – events up to 1915 are in different record sets from
the events after 1915, which makes it a little bit more difficult to search for
events in the early 20th century. The reason they’re split is
because the 1837-1915 entries were transcribed by volunteers in the FreeBMD project, so Ancestry doesn’t charge for those
indexes – but nor, of course, does FreeBMD, and they’re
now up to the 1990s.
Like most transcribers, the volunteers of FreeBMD occasionally make mistakes – usually because the
image they’re transcribing is unclear – and whilst most entries are transcribed
twice there are still some corrections submitted by users. Once checked the FreeBMD index entries are amended, but those changes don’t
find their way to the corresponding entries in the 1837-1915 indexes at
Ancestry. You can, of course, search by registration district or county at FreeBMD – indeed, you can choose multiple districts or
counties in a single search. Another reason to use FreeBMD
is the postem feature, which allows users to post comments against entries, and
these can be invaluable.
There are also free indexes of births and deaths at
the GRO’s own site. These are not transcriptions of the original quarterly
indexes, but newly-compiled indexes created when the registers
were scanned, and they include information that you won’t find in the contemporary
indexes, such as middle names that were previously shown as initials, and the
mother’s maiden name for births from 1837 onwards. And yet these new GRO
indexes are not necessarily best-suited to our needs – the search features are
very restrictive, and there are more transcription errors than in the original
indexes. Furthermore, the protocol used when they were created may make it impossible
to find the entry you’re looking for, especially if it is a birth in the early years
of civil registration.
All searches at Findmypast are free – you don’t get
to see the records, but the information in the search results may be all you
need to take your search to the next step. For example, if you’re searching for
births you can take advantage of the fact that Findmypast
have somehow managed to add the mother’s maiden names for most of the 1837-1911
entries, even though this important information isn’t in the original GRO
indexes on which Findmypast’s index is based. So a
free search at Findmypast is a great way to find all (or most) of the children
born to a particular couple. Try to do this at the GRO site and you’re hindered
by having to search for males and females separately, by the 5-year maximum
search window, and by the lack of wild cards.
In the next article I’ll give another example of
how free searches can be used.
It’s
always reassuring to know you’ve got something right, so about 10 years ago I added
a little grey arrow next to each entry from the 1881 England & Wales census
on your My Ancestors page. It sits next to the census references because
it’s primary role is to check that the correct references
have been entered. Or, to be more precise, it’s there
so that you can carry out the check quickly and easily – it takes just a
second or two, but can make an enormous difference to your chances of finding a
‘lost cousins’.
Note:
to check entries from the England & Wales censuses we use Findmypast site,
but other censuses use Ancestry or FamilySearch; in each case you need to be logged-in
to the relevant site, but you don’t need a subscription.
How
does the checking arrow work? When you click the arrow symbol it carries out a
search of the 1881 England & Wales census at Findmypast using nothing but
the census references. If you don’t get any results at all that’s a strong hint
that one or more of the census references is incorrect, and if you’ve got the
census information to hand it should be easy to see where you’ve gone wrong (often
it’s just a typing error).
The
ideal time to carry out the check is after entering the first person in the
household – because not only will you have the census entry in front of you, if
the census references turn out to be wrong you’ve only got one entry to
correct.
By
the way, since all of the members of a private household have the same census
references you only need to click one arrow per household. For example, this is
what I see when I click one of the arrows for the Harrison household above:
Remember,
you don’t need to have a Findmypast subscription to see this, you only need to be logged-in. And because the 1881 Census transcription is FREE
at Findmypast you can click the View transcript symbol 
to view
the household: (But don’t click the View image symbol unless you have a
subscription – the copyright in the images is owned by The National Archives,
so you have to pay to see them.)
I’ve
circled the information I entered so that you can see where it came from – not
difficult, is it? Of course, all that information – other than the census
references – is in the search results, so in practice you don’t need to look at
the transcript. Not even to check the census references (because if they were wrong
you wouldn’t have got this far).
Tip:
to find out what the different symbols on your My Ancestors page mean, just
click the red Help icon near the top of the page. There’s lots of other useful advice
too – I believe
in making things as easy as possible.
What
can the Society of Genealogists do for YOU? THIS FRIDAY
Founded
in the heart of 1911, the Society of Genealogists has been a champion of
heritage exploration for over a century. Their mission is to help you:
- Investigate your ancestors
- Preserve, organise
and analyse your genealogy, and
- Delve into social history….
- …So you
can connect with your past and discover your unique family history
Meet
co-CEO Natalie Pithers and superstar genealogist Else
Churchill to discover how the UK's oldest genealogy society has moved in the 21st
century, and can help you investigate your
ancestors wherever you are in the world. This EXCLUSIVE Zoom
presentation takes place on Friday 8th March, starting at 10am
London time.
Originally
this opportunity was limited to winners in the recent competition, but we’ve
managed to triple the number of places available and open it up to all
LostCousins members. If you would like to attend just log into your LostCousins
account and go to the My Prizes page where you will find the event
listed. To apply for a place set the rating to a number between 6 and 10 based
on how likely you are to attend (10 = definite, 6 = probable). If you know that
you cannot attend but would, nevertheless, like to know more about the SoG set the rating to 5 (it is possible that a recording
will be available, in which case I will circulate the link to all those who
have expressed an interest).
IMPORTANT:
make sure you click Update after entering your rating, otherwise it won’t be
recorded
I
will send out Zoom invitations approximately 36 hours before the talk.
Investigating
disinheritance CAN YOU HELP?
Many of you will have attended one of Professor Rebecca
Probert’s talks and lectures over the past 12 years – including the exclusive presentations
she gave to prize-winners in this year’s competition. In return many
LostCousins members have helped by providing data from their own family trees to
assist research that Professor Probert has been carrying out. On this occasion
Professor Probert would appreciate your help on a different topic.
From 1 January 1926, English law set out clear rules as to who
would inherit in the absence of a will. The Inheritance (Family Provision) Act
1938 introduced the possibility of a spouse, unmarried daughter, or infant or
incapacitated son, challenging a will on the basis that it did not make
reasonable provision for them. Not until 1 April 1976 was it possible for any
child of the deceased to bring such a claim. This project aims to investigate
disinheritance in this period, with the aims of (1) informing academic research
and (2) collating and disseminating the information in a way that will help the
wider family history community understand this area.
What information is being collected?
Did any of your ancestors leave a will that was admitted to
probate between 1 January 1926 and 31 March 1986 that did not leave anything to
a surviving spouse or children?
If so,
·
what date was the will admitted to probate?
·
who were the other beneficiaries under the will?
·
were any reasons given on the face of the will
for not leaving anything to the surviving spouse or children?
·
are you aware of any reason (eg
previous substantial lifetime gifts to that person, the greater need of other
beneficiaries, estrangement or disapproval) for not
leaving anything to the surviving spouse or children?
If you would like to share this information
please email Professor Probert at R.J.Probert@exeter.ac.uk
with these and any further details you would like to share (or if you have any
questions about the project).
Emailing the information will be deemed to be consent to it
being used as set out below. Taking part in the research does not pose any
foreseeable risks to those providing information.
How will the information be used?
All data will be entered into an Excel spreadsheet on a password-protected
computer. If anyone wishes to withdraw from the project prior to publication,
they can email me at the address above to request the deletion of the data they
provided. Otherwise the data will be kept for 10 years
and then destroyed.
The findings will inform a chapter on disinheritance for an
edited collection. A summary of the findings will be made available to all
those who provided information and will be disseminated to the family history
community more widely.
All personal data (eg email
addresses) will be processed in line with the data protection principles under
the GDPR.
Who has reviewed this study?
This project has been reviewed by the FHASS Social Sciences
and International Studies Ethics Committee at the University of Exeter (Reference
Number 5450195).
Further information and contact details
If you are not happy with any aspect of the project and wish
to complain you are welcome to contact Ethics Committee for the Faculty of
Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at fhass-ethics@exeter.ac.uk or the
Research Ethics and Governance Team at cgr-reg@exeter.ac.uk.
Thank
you for your interest in this project
This
week a High Court judge decided that Frederick Ward, who died in 2020, was
acting rationally when he rewrote his will in 2018 to exclude the five children
of his late son, Frederick junior. from his £500,000 estate. Instead
the money went to his two surviving children, with token gifts of £50 each to
the grandchildren who, it seems, didn’t visit him very often during his final
years. There is more information in this newspaper article.
Meanwhile,
an article
in the Guardian suggests that, each year, as many as 10,000 people in
England & Wales dispute a will – although most disputes are, thankfully,
settled out of court.
Time
to save on DNA ENDS SUNDAY
I’m
sure I don’t need to remind you that, having taken just about every DNA test
there is (including Whole Genome Sequencing), I’ve concluded that there’s only
one test that I can wholeheartedly recommend, the Ancestry DNA test. Not
because it’s cheaper, or more advanced – but because you’ll get far better
results.
Ancestry
not only have the largest database of people who have already tested, they
integrate their enormous collection of family trees with DNA matches far more
successfully than any other site. For us, the users, it means that it’s much
easier to turn the mass of data into meaningful information – information that
can both help us knock down ‘brick walls’ and validate our records-based
research.
It’s
true that there are some tools other sites offer that you won’t find at
Ancestry, but that’s not a bad thing – using those tools effectively requires
an understanding of genetics and statistics that few of us will ever possess.
It’s like the difference between having to fix up your own car before you can
drive somewhere, compared with getting into a chauffeur-driven limousine. Sure,
you might not know how many horses there are under the bonnet, or what sort of
carburettor is fitted, but you’ll get to your destination far quicker, with far
less effort, and with fewer wrong turnings.
You’ll
also have me to guide you through the process: my DNA
Masterclass includes everything you really need to know – with one
exception, it doesn’t cover the new AncestryDNA Plus subscription, which you’ll
only need if you don’t have any other Ancestry subscription (find out more here).
Bear in mind that whilst everyone who tests needs to open a free Ancestry
account, only the person who manages the test needs a subscription.
Until
Sunday you can save 25% on DNA tests if you’re in the UK or Ireland - please use the link below:
See where your ancestors lived in 1861?
TheGenealogist have added the 1861
England & Wales census to their Map Explorer™, which makes it easier
than ever before to identify precisely where your ancestors were living. Of
course, it doesn’t work for every single property since enumerators didn’t
always give addresses in the earlier censuses, but most of the Greater London
area and other towns and cities can be viewed down to the property level, while
other more rural parts of the country can be identified down to the parish, road or street. If you can’t pinpoint them in 1861 you’ll be glad to know that TheGenealogist
have already geo-referenced the 1871 to 1911 censuses, as well as the 1939
Register.
Of
course, when I’ve written about TheGenealogist
in the past I’ve usually mentioned their amazing collection of tithe maps, many
of them in colour, tithe records, and their ongoing digitisation of the Lloyd
George Domesday records. But if you attended Mark Bayley’s recent talk, or have
watched the recording (you’ll find it here)
you might have been just as impressed by the search options which can sometimes
lead you to records which are impossible to find at other sites.
The
offer that Mark mentioned in his talk has now ended, but the good news is that
I’ve organised a new, and similar generous offer, which you’ll find here.
It includes a Lifetime Discount – so if you renew in 12 months’ time you’ll get the same discounted rate. Note that if you
are outside the UK you’ll be offered digital extras to
avoid the horrendous cost of international postage.
Who Do You Think You are? magazine EXCLUSIVE OFFER
I've been a reader of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine
ever since issue 1, and I can tell you from personal experience that every
issue is packed with advice on how to research your family tree, including how
to track down online records, how to get more from DNA tests, and the
ever-popular readers' stories. Naturally you also get to look behind-the-scenes
of the popular Who Do You Think You Are? TV series.
There's an extra special introductory offer for members in the UK,
but there are also offers for overseas readers, each of which offers a useful
saving on the cover price:
UK - try 6 issues for just £9.99
Europe - 13 issues (1 year) for €74.99
Australia - 13 issues (1 year) for AU
$125
Rest of the world - 13 issues (1 year)
for US $89.99
To take advantage of any of these deals (and to support
LostCousins) please follow this link.
Memories of childhood: potato crisps
These
days supermarkets have entire aisles devoted to crisps and similar snacks, but
when I was a young lad there were no supermarkets, and the only time I saw
crisps was at Christmas – when our extended family shared a large pack of Smith’s
potato crisps. There was only one flavour, potato, and salt was
wrapped in little blue paper parcels, which is why to this day plain crisps are
usually described as ‘Ready Salted’.
Smiths Potato Crisp Company had been founded in
North London in 1920 – and at first Mrs Smith made the crisps in a garage! By
the 1950s there were other British manufacturers – Golden Wonder Potato
Products Company began in Edinburgh in 1947, and Walker’s started making crisps
in Leicester in 1948, but I’d never heard of them. Then suddenly in the 1960s Golden
Wonder invented flavoured crisps, starting with Cheese and Onion which took
the market by storm and, whilst Smith’s responded with Salt & Vinegar, the
downward spiral had begun, and in 1982 Smith’s came under the same ownership as
Walker’s which eventually led to the Smith’s name disappearing from the
shelves.
Golden
Wonder was also taken over, eventually becoming part of the Northern Ireland-based
Tayto Group, which had been selling crisps since 1956 – but nowadays the biggest
competitor for Walker’s seems to be Pringles, though whether their products are
really ‘potato crisps’ is a debate that I’m not going to get involved in. But
what inspired me to look up the history of the humble potato crisp? It was the
news that the rights to produce Marmite-flavoured crisps has passed from Walker’s
to Tayto. For more information about potato crisps (or chips as they’re known
on the other side of the pond) see this article.
I
don’t believe it – postage prices are going up AGAIN! From 2nd April
it will cost £1.35 (27 shillings in old money) to send a 1st Class letter, and
85p (17 shillings) for a 2nd Class letter. Royal Mail say it’s all our fault,
for not sending so many letters, but I think there’s more to it than that.
Wherever
you look there are people offering advice to live longer and stay healthier.
Maybe we should listen instead to Margaret Price, who celebrated her 90th
birthday on 22 February, and is still working as a cleaner at Southend Hospital,
in Essex, after more than 30 years. See this BBC News article for more
on this heartwarming story.
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......
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2024 Peter Calver
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