Newsletter – 17th
August 2021
The couple who said
'I do' on a 125mph train to Birmingham
A most informative burial
entry
WW2 service records to be transferred
to the National Archives
MASTERCLASS: Breaking down 'brick walls'
Another 'brick wall'
comes crashing down
Big savings on
Ancestry DNA in the US ENDS TODAY
When London wasn't
the capital
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 10th August) 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!
A
few years ago The Economist suggested that we need a new name for the
over-65s – the article began "What do you call someone who is over 65 but
not yet elderly?".
The
past year and
a half, with all its challenges, has demonstrated that life experience counts
for an awful lot – my perception is that it has been the younger generations
who have found it most difficult to adapt. They say that you can't teach an old
dog new tricks, but just look at the way we embraced Zoom and other forms of
video-conferencing when there was a good reason for doing so.
In
my youth we talked about old-age pensioners, commonly abbreviated to OAPs, but
woe betide anyone who calls me old-aged! In some countries the term 'Seniors' is
used, and I can certainly see its attractions – but I wonder if we can do
better? Please post your suggestions on the LostCousins Forum.
Note:
if you've been invited to join the LostCousins Forum you'll find a link and a
code on your My Summary page at the main LostCousins site. If you haven't been
invited you can still read what others have posted in the open areas of the
forum by following this link
or typing FORUMS.LC into your browser.
The couple who said 'I do' on a 125mph train to
Birmingham
This story caught my eye
since, whilst I knew that there had been some changes in marriage regulations
recently, I wasn't aware that a moving train could be a licensed venue. Indeed,
it seemed most unlikely – but would the BBC really publish an article like this
without checking the facts? Sadly it seems they would.
For an expert opinion I contacted Professor Rebecca
Probert, author of the ground-breaking book Marriage
Law for Genealogists (you can read my review here),
and Professor of Law at the University of Exeter Law School. She was in no doubt
about the answer:
"No, this was
not a legal ceremony - it is not (yet) possible to get married on a train."
Ultimately it seems it was just a bit of cheap
publicity for a train company that I'm not even going to mention.
Note: in the world of
marketing August is known as the 'silly season' because the media are so short
of stories that they'll publish almost anything.
A most informative burial entry
If, like Evelyn, you came across an entry like this
in a burial register you’d think it was Christmas:
© Copyright Lincolnshire Archives, used by kind
permission of Findmypast. All Rights Reserved.
In case you’re struggling to read the handwriting,
it says "Elizabeth Greene wife of Samuel once widow of Robert Stocks and
formerly called Loughton by her Sire-name was buried Dec 25th" - a wealth
of information in one short entry.
As I mentioned in the last issue, it was only in
1969 that death registrations in England & Wales began to include maiden
names, so the vicar of Bassingham was clearly ahead of this time. If only all
burial entries were as informative!
WW2
service records to be transferred to the National Archives
According to a recent article in Who Do You Think You Are? magazine, researchers who have ordered copies of their relative's
service records from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) are having to wait a year or
more (by which time the cheque they've sent with their application is likely to
be out of date). The article quotes an MoD spokesman as attributing the delay
to the pandemic, although I can remember that there were similar delays around
a decade ago (see this article
from June 2012), so it may be a combination of factors.
The good news is that plans are afoot to move the
records to the National Archives (TNA), which should make them more accessible,
though it's only when the records are online that most people are going to have
access to them. There should be an announcement from TNA in the coming months
about their plans – hopefully the delay is because they're negotiating a
contract for the digitisation of the records, although I haven't been able to
find any hint of this online.
MASTERCLASS: Breaking down 'brick walls'
It
can be very frustrating when you're up against a 'brick wall' in your research,
but it's impossible to research your family tree for any length of time without
running into them – in fact, the longer you research the more 'brick walls'
you'll have (I have over one hundred, but no doubt some of you have many more).
Is it really a 'brick
wall'?
But
before turning to the question of how to get those brick walls tumbling down,
it's important to distinguish between real brick walls and the imaginary ones we
create for ourselves. For example, if there are sources of information that you
haven't searched because you don't have the right subscription or don't live
close to the relevant records office, it's not really a brick wall that's
blocking your path.
Of
course, we all have limited time and money, but there are usually routes we can
take if only we stop and think for a moment - these might, for example, include
free access to subscription services at your local library, record office, family
history society, or LDS Family History Centre. Of course, sometimes the records
you want to search are only available at an archive that's thousands of miles
away - but even then you've got the option of employing a researcher, or
contacting a friend or cousin who lives nearby.
For
me, a brick wall is something that stops me getting back any further on a
particular line. So being unable to find an ancestor's death or burial place is
rarely a brick wall, but being unable to find their baptism or marriage often
is.
Bishop's
Transcripts
For
most of the period before the commencement of civil registration (1837 in
England & Wales, 1855 in Scotland) copies of parish register entries were
supposed to be sent annually to the bishop or archdeacon. Bishop's Transcripts (generally abbreviated to
BTs) are useful for many reasons, for example:
- The register may have been
lost, damaged, or destroyed
- The handwriting in the
register may be very difficult to decipher
- Some errors and omissions were
corrected when the BTs were produced (though others may have been
inadvertently introduced)
- The BTs may be held at a
different record office, making them easier to access, either in person or
online
However,
there are some pitfalls to look out for:
- Online images that seem to be
register pages may in fact be BTs. Check the website of the record office
that provided the images if you're not sure what you're looking at.
- Transcribed entries may not
give the precise location of a baptism, and may even suggest that it took
place in a different location; this seems to be a particular problem with
Suffolk BTs transcribed by FamilySearch (but now available at other sites)
Family reconstitution
or reconstruction
When
researching prior to 1837 we're often faced with the problem that there are
lots of people with same surname in a few adjoining parishes, which makes it
very difficult to identify who a particular register entry is referring to. Burial registers are particularly problematic,
since there's often no indication of the age of the deceased, but baptism
registers which only give the name of the father, or give the wrong name for
the mother (an annoyingly common occurrence) are also a hindrance.
Sometimes
the only way to make sense of the entries is to take all the entries for a
particular surname and apportion them amongst the families who were known to be
living in the area at the time - it's like the overlap between a One-Place
Study and a One-Name Study. It may be necessary to draw on records other than
parish registers - later census and marriage records can provide insight into
happenings in the early 19th century, even though the information can't be
assumed to be correct (birthplaces and ages on census are often wrong, as are
ages and fathers' names on marriage certificates).
Collaboration
But
when you've checked all the readily-available records, what next? One approach
is to find others who are researching the same line, which is where LostCousins
can help: make sure that your My Ancestors page is as complete as
possible. Finding relatives who are researching the same families can lead to
all sorts of discoveries - even someone who isn't as experienced as you may
well have some clues that you don't have.
Tip: most researchers
tend to spend more time working on their direct paternal line than any other -
partly because our ancestors in that line bear the surname that WE were born
with, and partly because following a single surname made life a lot easier in
the days when we had to rely on microfilms and index cards. So when you're
researching one of your many other lines, finding someone for whom that line is
their direct paternal line is almost always good news - even though they might
otherwise not have as much experience as we do.
A different
perspective
Sometimes
simply starting from a different place on the tree can make all the difference.
For example, a few years ago I obtained the will of my great-great-great-great
aunt's husband - which referred to the son of his sister-in-law (another of my
great-great-great-great aunts) but didn't name him. I knew that she wasn't
married at the time the will was written, so it was obvious that the child was
illegitimate - and suddenly I realised who that son must be (and that the
father shown on BOTH of his marriage
certificates was nothing but fiction).
Even though it didn't
break down any of my own brick walls it was a ground-breaking discovery for the hundreds of descendants
of that child (now confirmed as my cousins), because it revealed who the mother
of the child was, and at the same time prevented them from expending more
effort trying to find a non-existent father. Starting from where they are on
the tree there would have been no reason for them to ever obtain a copy of that
will - it was only when they connected with me, their 5th cousin, that the
mystery could be solved.
There
are many other examples from my own tree that I could cite, but
there are just as many situations where I've been helped by cousins who have
clues that I wouldn’t have found in a million years (DNA matches are
particularly useful).
Tip: it doesn't matter
how distant your cousins might seem - all of them share your ancestors, and
that's what is important!
Be open-minded
The
discovery described in the previous section depended on spotting the link
between seemingly unrelated information from three different parts of my tree.
Making such connections usually requires us to have a very ambivalent attitude
towards the information in our tree: in other words, we always have to have in
the back of our minds the possibility that what we've been told, or what we've
read in a register or on a certificate isn't true - at least until we have
found so much supporting evidence that we have to accept its veracity. It’s rare
that we can be 100% certain unless we have DNA confirmation – even if we've
found all the right records, the records could be wrong!
Whilst
we all know deep down how unreliable family stories usually are, somehow we
fool ourselves into thinking that our family is in some way different. Our bias
is even more evident when it's someone we actually knew: "My grandmother
was so religious, she couldn't possibly have given birth to an illegitimate
child" is a fiction I've heard more than once since I started helping
LostCousins members to knock down their brick walls 17 years ago.
Even
if you don’t understand how it works, make use of DNA. And, whether you understand
DNA or not, follow the simple steps in my DNA Masterclass, otherwise you’re not
only throwing your money away but wasting your time. Almost all of the many
breakthroughs I've made in the last 5 years have been the result of clues and
inferences gathered by testing my own DNA and that of consenting cousins, but
it is the mistakes I made in the previous 5 years that I want you to avoid!
Be patient
Occasionally
we know where the information that will break down a particular brick wall is
likely to come from. For example, there were a lot of people waiting for the
1911 Census to be released because it was the only way they could find out
where their grandfather or grandmother was born, and no doubt there are others
hoping that the 1921 Census will provide the answer they're seeking.
Similarly,
you may know that the parish registers for one of your areas of interest are
due to go online, or are being indexed by the local family history society – either
of which would make it far easier for you to search.
If
you have a pretty good idea that the answer to a puzzle is going to be revealed
by the release of new data, why continue to expend effort? Surely it's better
to use your energies and expertise to solve problems that don't have such a
neat solution?
Be alert, be lucky!
Often
it's serendipity that leads to the solution - though we still have to be alert
to that possibility. For example, the surname of a visitor staying with my
great-great-great grandparents at the time of the 1851 Census seemed vaguely
familiar, and I eventually realised that it was the name of a marriage witness
whose signature I'd had difficulty deciphering some years before. This enabled
me to confirm that I'd found the right Smith family on the census, so I was
able to take the line back another generation - not easy with such a
common surname, especially since the father had changed his occupation from 'carpenter'
to 'rag merchant' and some of the children's names and ages were different.
Read around the
problem
Seek
out inspiration. Read as many family history magazines as you can, and
especially free newsletters - not just mine, but also the blogs of
knowledgeable people with lots of connections like Chris
Paton. The articles in society journals might seem irrelevant to
your current research, but the information you glean could well solve one in
the future, perhaps in a different county and a different part of your tree.
Join
the LostCousins Forum if you've been invited (check your My Summary page - over half the people who have been invited
haven't joined yet). Listening to how other people knocked down their brick
walls may inspire you to knock down your own.
Sometimes the solutions
arrive before the problems – we usually refer to it as 'experience'.
Do nothing!
Rather
than bang my head against a brick wall I often choose the 'do nothing' option.
That's right, instead of running round like a headless chicken I put
that particular problem to one side and focus on another part of my tree, or
else on writing a newsletter. It's amazing how often some small discovery I
make when researching the articles in my newsletter provides an insight into how
I might solve a problem that I've filed in the 'too difficult' drawer.
To
be really successful we have to be flexible not only in the way we do our
research, but also the order in which we do it!
And
finally….
Make use of ALL the resources
available, even if it costs you money! Joining a family history society to get
access to the Members Only records, or purchasing CD ROMs of parish register
transcripts that aren’t likely to go online in the foreseeable future could be
the only way to knock down a particular brick wall. Don’t ignore local history
societies just because they have a different focus – you'll find that the
members have a great deal in common with us.
And certainly don't make the mistake of
ignoring your 'lost cousins'. Would you believe it, some people seem to think
that because we use the 1881 Census to identify members who share the same
ancestors, the LostCousins system only works for beginners!
Another 'brick wall' comes crashing down
This week I've knocked down another of my own
'brick walls', thanks to DNA, but instructive though it is, I'm going to save
that story for a future issue, because I want to tell you John's story – which also
features DNA:
"A few weeks
back, I was on my Sheppey Facebook group which is where my Fletchers were
(Sheerness, Kent) when I saw an American lady asking for help.
"She was
particularly interested in the 'hulks', which were either floating old warships
housing prisoners, or sunk warships inhabited in the 1700s by workers &
their families before Sheerness was built. In 1801 there were 186 such
families. Her Mockett family was one, as was my Fletcher, but though I'd
thoroughly researched mine, I had no link.
"I helped
her, passing on a fair bit of general and Mockett-related information, then
casually mentioned DNA: had she tested? Yes. On what site(s)? To my
astonishment, we matched.
"So, a feverish
reappraisal of the paper trail ensued and, bingo, we were connected by a great-great-great-great-great
grandfather, a fact which had previously been missed because some baptisms of
my family took place in the dockyard church whose records are tricky to find, and
some weren't baptised till they were adults."
These days so many of the discoveries we make are triggered
by a DNA match, as you'll see when I write about my latest breakthrough, probably
in the next issue.
Big savings on Ancestry DNA in the US ENDS TODAY
There's
a phenomenal offer for family historians in the US, but it ends in hours (at
23.59 ET today, Tuesday). Apologies for the late notice, but putting together a
newsletter takes time…
The
regular price in the US is $99 so the price of $59 represents a 40% saving
(ignoring shipping); but the icing on the cake is the chance to get a 3-month
World Explorer membership for just $1 more.
Please
follow this link so
that you can support LostCousins when you make your purchase.
Tip:
Ancestry's DNA test is the one that is responsible for almost all of the many breakthroughs
I've made in my own research in recent years – if you buy a different test
you're likely to regret it!
The
10th August issue of this newsletter was extremely well-received – thank you
for all your generous comments which had me blushing, as my wife can attest.
However, some people didn’t receive the newsletter at all. That's because I didn’t email all 70,000 members on the mailing
list – I left off anyone who hadn’t logged-in to their LostCousins account
since 2014.
As
a sender of bulk emails it's important that LostCousins has a good reputation
with email providers, otherwise my emails might not get to the people who want
to receive them. One of the best ways to achieve this is to cut down the number
of emails I send to members who have been inactive for a long time – hence the
truncated mailing list.
Logging
into your LostCousins account from time to time is good practice – it allows
you to check whether you have any new matches. After logging-in choose My
Ancestors from the menu, then click the Search button on your page;
finally go to your My Cousins
page and look for any New Contacts.
When you next log-in please also visit your My Details page and check
that the information there is as correct and complete as possible. In particular,
do make sure that you have provided some alternative contact details so that I can
still reach you if your email address changes.
However if you've been a member for some years you'll
find that there are additional questions that weren't there when you joined –
it would be helpful if you could answer those.
And do please enter the email address of your
beneficiary, the person who is going to take over your research when the time comes.
Even if they're not intending to actively continue the research, and will
simply be safeguarding it for the benefit of future generations, it would be
good for them to have access to the information you've entered – and who knows,
they might get hooked on family history just as we did!
When London wasn't the capital
Everyone
knows that London is the capital of England, and Paris is the capital of France.
But it hasn’t always been the case – when the Romans first arrived on the island
they called Britannia they built their capital at Camulodunum, the site of
modern-day Colchester.
The
Romans eventually moved their powerbase to Londinium, but after they left England
was divided into several kingdoms with different rulers. Nevertheless at
various times the country came under control of a single ruler, and according
to this website
the capital was Tamworth under King Offa in the 7th century and Winchester
during the reign of Alfred the Great in the 9th century.
William
the Conqueror was crowned at Westminster Abbey, now thought of as being in
London, though in medieval times Westminster was a separate town to the west of
the city. Whether either Westminster or London can be regarded as the capital is debatable, because
in the 11th and 12th centuries successive monarchs moved the court around the country;
some would argue that Winchester, where the Royal treasury and records were kept,
has the best claim.
But
from the 13th century onwards Westminster was the seat of government – except
during the Civil War when King Charles chose Oxford and Cromwell chose
Westminster. Westminster by then adjoined London, creating a single city –
though even now the City of London Corporation controls the 'Square Mile' of
the original city, which has its own Mayor and its own police force.
I
was prompted to look into this topic by a recent survey which shows that
housing in Winchester is the least affordable of any UK city. I'm not that the methodology
would stand up to critical scrutiny, but it did at least get me thinking of the
time when Winchester was a capital city.
And
as for Paris… well, this page has a
long list of the capitals of France over the past 1500 years. I'm not going to even
attempt to summarise it!
I
occasionally get emails from readers who feel I've mangled the English language,
so here's a link to an article
from the Wall Street Journal which outlines some of their stylistic
preferences.
One
of the key differences between LostCousins and the big genealogy sites is the
personal touch. There's nothing more frustrating than someone who doesn’t reply
to a message, but at most sites the best you can do is send occasional
reminders in the hope that one of them eventually gets read.
However
at LostCousins you can ask me to chase up a cousin who hasn't responded to an
invitation, and if it turns out that their email address has stopped working I
do everything I possibly can to find some other way of reaching them (I even
use Facebook if I really have to).
For
example, last week a member asked me to chase up a cousin who hadn’t responded
to an invitation. I discovered that the cousin's email address had stopped working
in 2006, but fortunately they'd provided a postal address when they registered
earlier that year. After carrying out a few Internet searches to check that
they hadn't moved home, I typed up a letter and got it in the post the same day,
franked with an eye-catching selection of colourful stamps so that nobody could
resist opening it!
My
letter was delivered the next morning, and just after lunch I got a very nice
email from the cousin - who was very grateful for the trouble I'd taken and
complimented me on my tenacity. I don't always get such a quick response, and occasionally
there's no response at all – but by the time I've worked my magic the overall
response rate is in the region of 90%, which in my experience compares extremely
favourably with other sites.
Of
course, the other difference is that the vast majority of connections are
between two highly-experienced family historians. It's not that we don't
welcome beginners at LostCousins but, other things being equal, the number of
relatives that members can enter on their My Ancestors page, and the
number of matches they make, tends to be highly correlated with their level of
experience.
Looking
out the window I can see that it's cloudy and wet, and it’s certainly not as
warm as it ought to be in August – just like the summers of my youth, when I
spent more time shivering than sunbathing on those rare trips to the seaside.
But
for me summer only truly begins when I am able to start picking fruit from the
hedgerows, and last week I collected blackberries for the first time. Some are
in the freezer, others I've cooked up with windfall apples - perfect as part of
a healthy breakfast or, for a real treat, poured hot onto a scoop of ice cream.
This
month we're switching our electricity supplier. Symbio Energy have been very
cheap up to now, but they've increased their daytime rate by half and abolished
their Economy 7 tariff altogether, so I'd have been paying more than twice as much
for off-peak electricity. I'm moving to EDF Energy, one of the biggest
providers, but one that has targeted the electric vehicle (EV) market with
special tariffs.
At
the moment we don’t have a smart meter so we'll start on their single rate
tariff, but it's still a lot cheaper than if we hadn’t moved. We don't have gas,
so I can’t comment on their gas prices, but if you're considering moving to EDF
for gas, electricity, or both, you can get a £50 credit by signing up using
this link (I'll also benefit by the way).
You don't need an electric car, by the way – that's optional.
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......
I hope you've enjoyed reading this newsletter, but always remember
that the main reason you joined LostCousins was to connect with the other
experienced family historians who are researching the same ancestral lines!
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2021 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 this newsletter or any article in it without asking for
permission - though why not invite other family historians to join LostCousins
instead, since standard membership (which includes the newsletter), is FREE? To
link to a specific article right-click on the article name in the contents list
at the top of the newsletter.