Newsletter – 15th
April 2022
A special welcome to readers of Who Do You Think You
Are?
British Newspaper
Archive hits 50 million pages BREAKING NEWS
Ancestry launch
SideViewTM BREAKING NEWS
Unlocking the Past: the
1901 Census
Not so old phonebooks
at Ancestry
Another 7 days to connect
with your cousins….
…but you only need
half an hour
Review: Cemeteries
and Graveyards
At last – common sense
prevails
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 9th April) click here; to find earlier articles use the customised Google search between
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2009, so you don't need to keep copies):
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whenever there's a new edition of this newsletter available!
A special welcome to readers of Who Do You Think You
Are?
Although
my copy hasn’t arrived in the post yet, I’m reliably informed that there’s a major
article about LostCousins in the May 2022 issue, and I know that quite a few
readers have joined LostCousins as a result of reading
it.
Whilst
this newsletter goes out to over 70,000 LostCousins members, every one of them
a family historian, I aim to reply to every email I receive. So do get in touch
if you’re not sure what to do next!
British
Newspaper Archive hits 50 million pages BREAKING NEWS
It
seems like only yesterday that the British
Newspaper Archive reached the 40 million page target set when they entered
into a partnership with the British Library back in 2010, but checking my
records I can see that the landmark was reached in November 2020.
Nevertheless,
taking the total from 40 million to 50 million pages in just 17 months is quite
an achievement, especially when you consider that their competitor Newspapers.com has
only 12 million pages in total from UK newspapers (though many more from other
parts of the world).
The
newspapers in the British Newspaper Archive can also be searched at Findmypast,
and they’re included in Pro and Ultimate subscriptions. There are no special
offers – or any on the horizon – but the subscriptions are still great value
for serious researchers with ancestors from the British Isles:
Findmypast.co.uk Findmypast.ie Findmypast.com.au Findmypast.com
Tip:
12 month Findmypast subscriptions which renew automatically
benefit from a 15% Loyalty Discount.
Ancestry launch SideViewTM
BREAKING NEWS
One
of the key benefits of working with autosomal DNA is also one of its key challenges
– the fact that we inherit DNA from both of our parents means that we can explore
all of our ancestral lines with a single test, but the
way that our DNA is read means that we can’t tell which bits of DNA were
inherited from each parent.
As
most of you will know, Ancestry have by far the
largest database of DNA results, over 20 million of them. Not only is this good
news in terms of finding genetic cousins, it also
allows Ancestry to introduce powerful new features that wouldn’t be possible at
other sites.
From
today they are beginning the roll out of a new feature called SideViewTM,
which will eventually enable them to sort most DNA matches into maternal and
paternal side. The immediate benefit is much more limited: ethnicity estimates
will be split into maternal and paternal components.
Note:
whilst ethnicity estimates are of limited value, and can even be misleading, this
additional breakdown increases the chance that we might learn something useful.
Here’s
my overall ethnicity estimate:
Interestingly
the percentage of DNA from Scotland has been increasing:
it’s 14% now, but it was shown as 8% last autumn, and in the update before that
it was only 3%. However I’ve got no known Scottish
ancestry, indeed I’m not even aware of any ancestors who came from the north of
England. But there’s an explanation, which I reproduced
last September – I just wish there was a less confusing description.
These
sorts of issues are not unique to Ancestry, but what is unique is the ability
to separate the estimates between parents:
Note
that Ancestry refer to Parent 1 and Parent 2 – it’s up
to me to work out which is my mother and which is my father. For now I’m going to assume that my mother is Parent 1, since my
only known Irish line is on her side of the tree.
It’s
important to remember that whilst we inherit an equal amount of autosomal DNA from
each parent – one set of chromosomes from each – the DNA passed on to us won’t
be representative of our parents’ ancestry, because we don’t get an equal amount
from each grandparent. That’s another reason why ethnicity estimates have to be regarded very cautiously!
This
is just the first small step in making use of the SideViewTM technology
– what I’m really looking forward to is seeing how my matches are allocated between
the two sides of my tree.
Note:
some lucky readers will have been able to test both their parents – but that
doesn’t mean this analysis is of no value, instead it means that you can apply
it a generation earlier, potentially making it twice as useful.
Unlocking the Past: the 1901 Census
I
began researching my family tree in 2002, when the 1901 Census for England
& Wales was released. At least, I endeavoured to start in the first week of
January 2002 – but as many readers will know – the census site collapsed under
the weight of traffic and only came back online towards the end of the year.
Since
the recently-released 1921 Census for England &
Wales has come in for some criticism (mostly unjustified), I thought it would
be interesting to look back at an earlier census that was digitised and released
under similar conditions. The 1901 Census was such a disaster that the matter
was raised in Parliament by Edward Davey, the MP for Kingston & Surbiton
(now better known as Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal party) – you can read
the Hansard transcript here.
The
National Audit Office produced a report on the 1901 Census which was published
in November 2003 – you can download it here.
Not so old phonebooks at Ancestry
Ancestry
have long had British phone directories from 1880 up to 1984, when British
Telecom was privatised – you’ll find them here.
Now
they have a new collection, from 2001 and 2003, which could well prove useful
if you’re trying to track down living relatives. There are nearly 26 million entries
in this more modern collection – start your search here.
Another 7 days to connect with your cousins
LostCousins
is currently completely free, but only until St George’s Day, 23rd
April (though it’ll still be mostly free after that, as it always has
been). But do make the most of this opportunity – collaborating with a family historian
researching the same ancestral line(s) will enable you to achieve more for less
effort.
A
question I’m often asked is how long it takes to find a ‘lost cousin’. Back in 2004,
when the site first launched, the answer was 2½ months – that’s how long it was
from the day the site opened to the very first match – for anyone!
…but you only need half an hour
Now
that there are millions of entries in the database, these days it typically takes
around 30 to 40 minutes to get a match – the time it takes to enter 20 households
from the 1881 Census on your My Ancestors page.
Should
you find that it’s taking you longer than 1 or 2 minutes to enter a household,
here are some tips that will help:
·
Work from a print-out, or display the census information on
a separate screen if you can
·
Don’t try to copy and paste – it’s not going to save time
·
Use the tab key to move from one box to the next – this saves
continually switching between mouse and keyboard
·
When you get to the end of the form you can press the Return
key rather than clicking the button – again it saves switching from mouse to
keyboard
·
Don’t click unless you really want to add optional
information – filling in the extra details won’t improve your chances of a match
·
After entering the first person in a household click the symbol to make sure you’ve entered the census
references correctly; that way if you’ve made a mistake only one entry needs to
be altered
·
Click the symbol to add a relative to an existing household
– you’ll find that most of the information is entered automatically (typically
you’ll only need to enter your relative’s forename and age)
·
Don’t click the button after entering each household, be
patient!
As
family historians we tend to think of DNA as a way of filling gaps in our tree,
but it’s much important than that – it’s our DNA that differentiates us from
other creatures.
Over
time DNA mutates, but it doesn’t mutate at the same rate in all creatures, nor do
the largest creatures accumulate the most mutations, as you might expect.
Researchers at the Sanger Institute, based just 14 miles north of LostCousins,
have discovered that there’s a correlation between the lifespan of different
species and the rate at which they accumulate mutations. For example, mice accumulate
around 800 mutations a year, dogs 249, but humans just 47 – which goes a long
way to explaining the relationship between dog years and human years.
You
can read the research, which was published in Nature, here – but this article on the BBC News
site is much easier to follow. Will science one day enable ageing to be slowed,
or even reversed? I suspect so, but it’ll almost certainly be too late for me!
My
first degree was in Commerce & Accounting – there was no such thing as Business
Studies in those days – but it still took me a while to get used to debits and
credits. The wonders of double-entry book-keeping mean that assets appear in your
books as debits and liabilities as credits (hence the word ‘creditors’). I can still
remember when bank statements showed balances in red ink to avoid confusion (hence
the phrase ‘in the red’).
But
what I really want to talk about are debit and credit cards. I always pay off
my credit card bill in full, so for me the main benefit of using a credit card
is not having to keep a daily watch on my bank balance – but I know that there
are some who eschew credit cards in favour of debit cards, perhaps because they
remember the Shakespeare quotation “neither a borrower nor a lender be”. Ironically
anyone who has a bank account is either lending money or borrowing it, unless
the balance is precisely zero, so I wouldn’t worry too much about what Polonius
said to Laertes!
For
those of you who live outside the UK, but need to buy things from the UK, the
distinction between debit and credit cards can be very important – typically you
can’t buy something priced in a foreign currency using a debit card (or a
pre-paid credit card). This is why at LostCousins we accept
PayPal, even though they charge more commission – but if you’re trying to order
certificates from the GRO website you don’t have that option. The obvious
solution is to get a credit card, but I know that for someone who has managed
all their life without one it might be step too far.
Note:
the other reason I use my American Express card is because I get cashback on
every purchase, not a lot but over the course of a year it’s enough to pay for
a week’s groceries; if you’re interested let me know, since if I invite a friend we both get a bonus the first time you use your new
card.
Review: Cemeteries and Graveyards
Professional genealogist,
historian, tutor – and a long-time LostCousins member – Celia Heritage has impeccable
credentials as well as wonderful name for someone involved in family history.
Her latest book is titled Cemeteries and Graveyards: a guide for family and local
historians in England & Wales, but I should make clear that you don’t
have to live in England or Wales to benefit from this book – it’s where your
ancestors were buried that matters!
One
of the author’s previous books was Tracing Your Ancestors Through Death
Records, which focused on the documentary evidence. This book addresses the
locations: parish churchyards, burial grounds (including those at prisons and
workhouses), as well as private and municipal cemeteries and crematoriums. It also
considers gravestones, and how these have changed over the centuries.
However Celia Heritage also addresses the records (in
Chapter 6): what records were kept, what they’re likely to tell you, and where
they can be found. Burial registers are the most obvious source of information,
but they’re far from the only source – consider also the
records of stonemasons and undertakers.
In
Chapter 7 she considers what records can be found online, but also offers words
of warning for the unwary – it’s as easy to identify the wrong burial record as
it is to identify the wrong baptism record.
There
are notes and source for each chapter, including web links and other references,
and there’s an extensive bibliography with suggestions for further reading –
but I suspect that many readers will find that this book alone is sufficiently
comprehensive for their needs!
The
paperback is priced at £15.99, but was out of stock at
Amazon.co.uk when I checked just now; however, I usually buy my books from Amazon
Marketplace sellers, and they certainly have stocks – one was offering the book
at £12.37 including UK delivery, which is a very good deal for such a new book.
Just
out in the UK, released at the beginning of May in the US and Australia, and in
June in Canada (but
you can pre-order the links below).
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.com.au
Not long before COVID
struck I had the pleasure of hearing Ferdinand Mount talk about his Aunt Munca at
a literary lunch I attended, and was so intrigued –
what keen family historian wouldn’t be – that I put the book on my Amazon wish
list.
However,
when Wendy wrote to me recently I still hadn’t got
around to ordering the book, let alone reading it, so I was very interested to
hear what she had to say. So interested in fact, that I persuaded her to write this
review:
“When
you set out to do your family history, you hope you’ll come across things you
never knew. When Ferdinand Mount, a man with quite a history of his own (journalism,
peer of the realm, novelist, political commentator), decided to find out more
about his Aunt Betty the story he wrote was so intriguing that it was my book
club’s choice for March.
“Our
little group agreed that Kiss Myself Goodbye: The Many Lives of Aunt Munca
was fascinating – grimly humorous, as it said on the cover. It was also very
complicated with names, places, and events changing frequently, requiring us (the
readers) to keep up by making notes. The Aunt Betty he thought he knew was throughout
her life someone else entirely, and superb at hiding the facts.
“Mount
thought his task complete when he published the book in 2020, but a new edition
was needed as the copies he sent to members of his godmother’s family resulted
in him receiving an abundance of memories, documents and photographs ‘to fill out
this unsettling family album’. The postscripts are filled with startling
revelations and how DNA tests didn’t solve all the problems of who was who and
who wasn’t who. But the marriage and birth certificates found by this
wider-family research, together with Mount’s own hunches, complete this extraordinarily
complicated story littered with births, deaths and bigamy.
How did she get away with it all?
“As
a keen family history sleuth myself, I’d done my DNA
and was now compiling what I hoped was a comprehensive tree about my families
who came from Ireland and England and settled in Australia. When I married in 1975
in the UK I had to produce evidence of my Australian birth
and divorce and I thought this was usual. But clearly Aunt Munca and many of
the other characters in her story don’t have to do this and at the various
Register Offices put down any age and names that suited them at the time!
“By
the time I finished the book I was filled with amazement at how she remembered
who she was as she changed her name so many times. I could appreciate why she
insisted on being called Aunt Munca during her longest marriage to Mount’s
uncle Greig who was to be known as Unca, supposedly after a Beatrix Potter tale
(though even that turned out to be wrong!).
“I
enjoyed Mount’s book and, while the other club members were not so sure, I
liked the way he adds information to put time, place
and people in perspective. On one hand it could be called name dropping, on the other it explains much about times past.”
Thanks,
Wendy – I’m looking forward to reading it myself when I eventually get to the
bottom of my existing pile of unread books, some of which have been waiting for
over a year to catch my attention. As family historians we’re used to discovering
that the stories passed down aren’t what they seem, but Aunt Munca seems to set
a new standard. Hilary Mantel described the book as 'Grimly funny and superbly
written, with a twist on every page' – high praise from someone who has won the
Booker Prize twice.
One
advantage of delaying my purchase is that there are now used copies available
at greatly reduced prices, so I might treat myself to the hardback!
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.com.au
At last – common sense prevails
For
nearly two years I’ve been arguing that just because COVID restrictions have
been relaxed there doesn’t have to be a one-size fits all solution. My idea was
that restaurants should have one night of the week when extra precautions were
taken so that those of us who feel vulnerable could have an occasional treat – but
there seems to be a lack of imagination in the hospitality sector.
At
least the issue is getting some attention now that actress Liz Carr (Silent Witness)
has called for theatres to offer some face-mask only performances – see this BBC
article
for more information.
Royal
Mail have now launched the exchange scheme that I mentioned
in February: it has changed slightly – it’s no longer necessary to exchange
Christmas stamps – but there are still questions I’d like answered. For example,
there are some special issue (commemorative) stamps that look very like definitive
stamps – see some examples here.
It’s not clear to me whether these will continue to be postally valid after next
January.
I
mentioned in the last Peter’s Tips article that I was looking for a substitute
for cling films to seal jugs, and Mary proposed beeswax wrap. Aluminium foil is
another possibility since it can be recycled so long as it is clean. Any other
suggestions?
Good
news and bad news – I was told recently that I have
cataracts in both eyes (no doubt the result of watching too much TV as a child
and reading under the bedclothes by torchlight). That’s the bad news – the good
news is that according to a study
published in December people who have cataract removal surgery are nearly 30%
less likely to develop dementia.
This is where any major updates and corrections will be
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check again before writing to me, in case someone else has beaten you to
it......
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2022 Peter Calver
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