Newsletter – 7th May 2025
A chance to hear the Editor of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine EXCLUSIVE
Scottish place name site mentions people as well as places
Free access to wartime records at Ancestry.co.uk ENDS SUNDAY
Last chance to access the most comprehensive 1939 Register FREE UNTIL FRIDAY
Do you have ancestors from Nottinghamshire or Essex? FREE
Cambridgeshire added to ‘Lloyd George Domesday’ online NEW
Suffolk tax records from 1640 FREE
See you at Secret and Lies in September
British woman is the oldest in the world
Deceased relatives in the 1911 Census (and other anomalies)
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue (dated 27th April) 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!
1st May was the 21st Birthday of LostCousins – so how are things going to change now that we’re grown-up?
Already in 2025 we’ve made the change from Subscribers to Friends, emphasising the collaborative nature of the website: two members who are researching the same ancestral line can only be matched if they both enter the same relative from the same census.
I’m also doing my best to remind all readers of this newsletter that you belong to a website, not a mailing list. You may have joined LostCousins because you wanted to receive the newsletters – it’s probably the most common reason for joining – but the reason this newsletter exists is to encourage more researchers to connect and collaborate with other family historians. You can, of course, do that through other sites – but LostCousins has the most experienced researchers. Most LostCousins members – and that includes you – have been researching for between 20 and 40 years.
Note: don’t worry if you haven’t been researching for as long as other members – so long as you are serious about family history, care about accuracy, and are prepared to exchange information with others who share your research interests, you’re very welcome.
Of course, you can’t enter data or search for ‘lost cousins’ if you don’t log into your LostCousins account – and believe me, if you received an email telling you about this newsletter you do have a LostCousins account, even if you think you don’t!
So another change in 2025 has been to organise free online events that you can only attend if you log into your LostCousins account – last month alone there were 6 talks from family history societies, plus an exclusive preview of the Secrets and Lies conference taking place this September, and there are going to be many more events over the coming months.
Tip: recordings of all 7 of those talks are available NOW through your My Events page – you don’t need Zoom to view the recordings, just click the link on your My Events page.
A chance to hear the Editor of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine EXCLUSIVE
On Wednesday 21st May we’re going to be hearing from Sarah Williams, Editor of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine, who will be talking over Zoom about how to go about submitting your stories for publication – and I can assure you that you’ll find it fascinating. We’ll also be hearing a little about the Who Do You Think You Are? TV series, and how closely the programme’s creators and the magazine’s editorial team work together.
The talk will be at 5pm London time (that’s 12 noon in New York, 9am in San Francisco), but will be recorded so that nobody need miss out. Whether you plan to attend live or watch the recording please register NOW on your My Events page, where you’ll also have an opportunity to ask a question in advance (concise general questions are most likely to be answered).
Not a subscriber to Who Do You Think You Are? magazine? In the UK you can get SIX issues delivered to your door for the just £11.99 – just under £2 per issue compared to the cover price of £5.75
To take advantage of this offer – and support LostCousins – please follow this link.
Scottish place name site mentions people as well as places
There’s a useful tip in the May issue of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine, and (like many of the tips in this newsletter) it had been sent in by a reader…..
You may recall that in my February article Down the rabbit-hole I mentioned a number of websites which have information about the origins of place-names. One site I didn’t mention in that particular article (though I first wrote about it over 15 years ago) is ScotlandsPlaces, which has free resources that you can search simply by entering a place-name.
Something I’d never thought about, but seems obvious when you know, is that when Ordnance Survey maps were being drawn up the surveyors would consult local people to ask about the names of places and that would be named on the map. What’s perhaps less obvious is that the surveyors would not only record the information they were given, but also note their sources – and there’s a chance that your ancestors were mentioned.
The example above is the one mentioned by the letter writer, whose ancestor Christopher Young ran the Cross Keys Inn, and is named in the final column (follow this link to see the entire page).
The Name Books for England & Wales are held by The National Archives but the only counties whose records survived the bombing of the Ordnance Survey headquarters in 1940 are Cumberland, Durham, the Isle of Wight, Northumberland and Westmorland. The Northumberland Name Books have been digitised and indexed by a large team of volunteers and can be found here (or follow this link to see an example page).
Free access to wartime records at Ancestry.co.uk ENDS SUNDAY
To help us commemorate the 80th Anniversary of VE-Day, and honour the memory of those who served during two World Wars Ancestry are offering free access to several of their record sets, including WW1 Medal Roll index cards,WW1 War Diaries, Royal Navy registers of seamen, Incoming Passenger Lists, the 1939 Register for England & Wales, WW2 Civil Defence Gallantry Awards, and the National Probate Calendars for 1858-1995 (which are easier to search at Ancestry than any other site).
VE Day 80: Free Access to Wartime records at Ancestry.co.uk
Note: you will need to register if you haven’t done so previously, but you won’t be asked to provide payment information, and you’ll only be asked to subscribe if you try to access records or images that are not included in the offer.
Last chance to access the most comprehensive 1939 Register FREE UNTIL FRIDAY
Right now you can search the 1939 Register for England & Wales completely free at TWO sites, Findmypast as well as Ancestry. Someone new to family history might well think, “So what?”.
But as we all know, there can be significant differences between two sites, both in the transcriptions and the search options. The way that Findmypast were obliged to transcribe the register for the initial release inevitably led to a higher than usual number of errors – though, on the other hand, it was so long ago that many of them will have been fixed by now. Even so, the complex nature of the records – with multiple amendments to names and, sometimes, dates of birth – means that there is plenty of opportunity for discrepancies to arise between two transcriptions.
Furthermore, Findmypast claim to have more open records than Ancestry, although it’s difficult to know how the difference has arisen, as both sites say that they add new records as they are opened by The National Archives. However if I search the two sites for males there are 560,000 more results at Findmypast, and if I search for females there are 712,000 more – quite big differences.
1939 Register at Findmypast.co.uk FREE UNTIL 9TH MAY
Note: last November I updated ‘Inside the 1939 Register’, the most comprehensive guide to this important source for family historians – you’ll find it here.
Do you have ancestors from Nottinghamshire or Essex? FREE
On Monday 9th June Essex Society for Family History are going to be telling us what they offer members; then on Wednesday 18th June we’re going to be hearing from Nottinghamshire Family History Society about the benefits of membership.
Each of these Zoom presentations begins at 10am London time (that’s 5pm in Perth, 7pm in Sydney, and 9pm in Auckland), but if the timing isn’t convenient for you recordings will be available a day or two afterwards. To watch a recording doesn’t require Zoom or any other software – just click the link on your My Events page.
Please register in advance even if you plan to watch the recording, as this will not only allow me to keep you up to date with any changes, it will allow you to ask a question in advance (particularly important if you are going to be watching the recording!). Concise general questions are most likely to be answered as the information will be more helpful to the audience as a whole.
Note: bookings are open NOW for Friends, and will open to all members next week; even if you cannot book yet, put the date in your diary if you’re hoping to attend the live presentation.
Cambridgeshire added to ‘Lloyd George Domesday’ NEW
Cambridgeshire is the latest county to be added to TheGenealogist’s EXCLUSIVE collection of records and maps from the 1910 Land Valuation. For me it’s a timely addition since in just over a week I’m going to be giving a talk at the Annual General Meeting of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Family History Society in Ely (only my second in-person presentation since the pandemic).
Although, as the Isle of Ely was a separate administrative county from 1889 until 1965 (when it joined with Cambridgeshire), I wasn’t expecting Ely to be included in this latest release. However, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it is.
For a limited time, you can subscribe to TheGenealogist for just £99.95 – a saving of £40 on the usual cost of a Diamond subscription – and receive over £60-worth of tickets and digital books. The discount is a Lifetime Discount, so you’ll save £40 every year that you continue subscribing.
Additionally, in the first year you’ll receive:
- 12-Month Subscription to Discover Your Ancestors online magazine worth £24.99
- Andrew Chapman’s Regional Guidebook (ebook) worth £9.95
- 2 Tickets to The Family History Show at Liverpool, London or the Midlands worth £24
- 1 Ticket to The Family History Show Online worth £10
If you claim the offer by following this link LostCousins will benefit from the purchase.
Tip: if you live overseas you can exchange the tickets to in-person shows for additional ebooks
Suffolk tax records from 1640 FREE
Ship Money was a tax that was initially levied on coastal towns in order to build warships, but by the time it was abolished by Parliament in 1640 King Charles I was using the tax to raise money to cover general expenditure. Furthermore, it was no longer confined to coastal towns – as you can see from the records that survive from Suffolk, which were published in book form in 1904. Now out of copyright, the book is available here on the Internet Archive. The transcribed records are organised first by hundred, and then by parish, but there is a surname index at the back of the book (remember to check alternative spellings).
Most of my ancestors would have been too poor to pay taxes, but it’s always worth checking!
Note: relatively few Ship Money records have survived. Hearth Tax Returns are more likely to have survived and many of these records are online. For example, the Suffolk records for 1674 were published in book form in 1905, and are available here in the Internet Archive. For more information about taxes before 1689 see this Research Guide on the website of The National Archives.
A recent article in New Scientist provides a new twist to the theory that smartphones are turning the nation’s children into cabbages. That may or may not be true – though I didn’t end up with square eyes, as my mother warned would happen if I watched too much television.
The good news is that for older people digital devices seem to have a positive impact: an analysis of nearly 60 studies involving 410,000 individuals in the over-50 age group has found that those of us who spend more time using smartphones, computers, and the Internet are less likely to have cognitive impairment than people who use them infrequently.
When you add in the positive impact of exercising our brains in the course of researching our ancestors, I think we can be fairly confident about the future – let’s just hope that our bodies can keep up with our minds!
See you at Secret and Lies in September
My wife and I have booked our places at Secrets and Lies, the genealogy conference run by the Halsted Trust charity – it takes place at the Holiday Inn, Peterborough West from 19th to 21st September 2025. Now, if you think conferences are boring I suggest you take a look at the exclusive preview for LostCousins members (you’ll find a link to the recording on your My Events page).
The latest addition to the list of speakers is Ian Keable, whose talk is entitled The Century of Deception: The Birth of the Hoax in the Eighteenth Century – and as Ian is a professional magician there’s not much he doesn’t know about deception. All of the 16 speakers have impeccable credentials – I’ve lost count of the number of doctorates and other qualifications – and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the vast majority are LostCousins members. You can see who all of the speakers are if you follow this link to the conference website.
Incidentally, talking of deception – don’t be fooled by the picture of an enormous conference theatre on the home page of the Secrets and Lies website – it’s a stock photo.
Finally, I just wanted to let you know that there’s a bonus for LostCousins members attending Secrets and Lies – I’m in the process of organising an informal get-together in one of the conference rooms. Nothing grand, but it’s 10 years since the last time LostCousins members got together face-to-face, at the Genealogy in the Sunshine conference that I organised in Portugal – so I thought it would be a good opportunity to meet old friends and make new ones.
Note: if you are going to be attending the conference please indicate this in the Comments/Questions box on your My Events page.
None of us are getting any younger, but I’m continually surprised how active LostCousins members in their 90s can be – I don’t know whether it’s “in the genes” or whether it’s an attitude of mind. But whatever the reason, it certainly gives me hope for the future.
I can’t share information about the members concerned, but what I can do is share this wonderful article from the Guardian, which has photographs of ladies in their late 80s and 90s – and two who are 101 – who are all much more active than you might expect. Access to the article is free, but the newspaper will probably invite you to make a contribution, if you can afford to.
But they’re certainly not the oldest ladies in Britain, as you can see from the next article….
British woman is the oldest in the world
On Thursday Ethel Caterham (née Collins) became the oldest woman in the world, at 115 years and 252 days – you can see her birth register entry below:
She is the ONLY survivor of the more than 45 million UK inhabitants recorded in the 1911 Census, and she is also the only surviving subject of King Edward VII, who died on 6th May 1910 – exactly 115 years ago yesterday. You can read more about Ethel Caterham in this BBC article.
Deceased relatives in the 1911 Census (and other anomalies)
With the exception of Ethel Caterham, EVERYBODY recorded in the 1911 UK Census is now deceased – but some readers were surprised by the article in the last issue which featured a child who was recorded in 1911 despite having died in 1880.
It might seem remarkable now that anyone might have recorded a dead child in the census, but the questions about the number of children who had died did lead quite a few householders to incorrectly list children who were dead at the time of the census (in some instances they had died long before). In almost every case those errors were picked up by the enumerator, and struck out, but the entry for Clare Louse Cady (sic) is a rare exception. It looks as if the enumerator realised there was something wrong with the original entry and added the prefix ‘grand’ in front of ‘daughter’ without checking.
That said, it’s difficult to know who wrote what. Looking at the handwriting for other documents from the same enumeration districts it’s apparent that there were at least two people involved in the process – this excerpt from the list of households shows what I mean:
© Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London, England. Used by kind permission of Findmypast
The writing on the left-hand page is not nearly as well-formed as the writing on the right-hand page – it’s possible that the enumerator enlisted his wife or (more likely) one of the children to help out. It’s interesting that there is a mark, possibly a tick, against the entry we’re interested in (the census schedule was reproduced in the last issue).
Generally I don’t look at any of the supporting documentation, but here it’s of interest because it helps us to understand how the enumerator failed to correct the error. From the cover of the enumeration book we can see who the enumerator was – and confirm that his is the neater handwriting:
© Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London, England. Used by kind permission of Findmypast
So, who was J Lambourn? I think this is his own 1911 schedule:
© Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London, England. Used by kind permission of Findmypast
John Lambourn’s occupation at the time was ‘insurance agent’, so he would have been used to knocking on doors – and he may also have entertained the hope that some of the families he visited would become clients. The Lambourn family were living in Borthwick Road, Boscombe – not in the same enumeration district, but just a few minutes’ walk from Garfield Avenue.
John Lambourn may have been an enumerator in 1911, but his own census form wasn’t filled out correctly. For a start, columns 6 and 7 should only be completed for a Married Woman, as stated in the heading, whilst column 15 should only be completed for people who were born in a foreign country. And if you look closely at column 3 you’ll see that the age of his wife and the age of his daughter were originally written in that column, but have been partially erased and rewritten in the correct column. The misspelling of his stepdaughter’s first name is probably just carelessness.
One thing we can’t blame on Mr Lambourn is the premature death of his wife, Ellen Jane Lambourn (née Furlong), from heart failure in January 1902:
Though, on the other hand, since she died just three months after giving birth to their 12th child in 18 years some might consider that he had something to do with it!
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......
Finally, just to say that I had hoped to get this newsletter out yesterday (6th May). Tuesday was not just the 2nd Anniversary of King Charles III’s coronation, and the 115th Anniversary of the day that King Edward VII died and King George V succeeded to the throne, it would also have been my father’s 109th birthday, had he been fortunate enough to have lived as long as Ethel Caterham!
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2025 Peter Calver
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