Newsletter
- 22nd July 2015
Access to
historic BMD registers
Are you
free on Thursday evening?
The
Genealogist adds records of Jewish Londoners
Only
related by marriage? Take another look....
Understanding
DNA #1: your genetic inheritance
Understanding
DNA #2: mtDNA myths
Understanding
DNA #3: the truth behind DNA tests
Colour
photos that are over a century old!
Thousands
of British films from 1895-2015 to go online
Is
your relative missing from the war memorial?
Interview:
Geraldine Wall EXCLUSIVE
Review:
The World we have lost
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
fortnightly. To access the previous newsletter (dated 10th July) click here, for an index to articles from 2009-10
click here, for a list of articles from 2011
click here and for a list of articles from
2012-14 click here. Or do what I do, and use the customised
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spurious results):
Whenever possible
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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
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Access to historic BMD
registers
I understand that the GRO plan to
consult widely before deciding how to provide better access to historic birth,
marriage, and death records for England & Wales. Although this could mean
that we'll have to wait quite a time for the new system to come into effect, it
should improve the chance that, when it does, it will offer more of the
features that family historians need.
If you're a member of the LostCousins
Forum you can contribute to an informal consultation
that I've set up - the aim is to ensure that we look at a wide range of
possibilities, rather than simply settling for an equivalent to the systems
that already exist in other countries. For example, I'd like to be able to
search for births in the same way that I usually search for baptisms, ie naming the father and mother.
Tip:
check your My Summary page to find out whether you've been invited to join the
forum - invitations are being issued all the time.
Are you free on Thursday
evening?
This Thursday, 23rd July, I'll be
speaking about LostCousins, family history, and history generally to the Stock & Buttsbury
Heritage Society - and because of a conflicting event in the village it's
likely that there will be quite a few empty seats.
So if you live in Essex (or on the
eastern side of Hertfordshire), by all means come along! As I'm giving my
services for free I would hope they will allow LostCousins members in at the
society rate of £1 (which includes coffee and biscuits), but even the rate of
£3 for strangers is hardly extortionate. The evening starts at 8pm in the village hall, and I understand
that it will finish at around 9.30pm.
Tony wrote from the US to tell me that
he'd found the wills of some of his Hertfordshire ancestors in the Essex Record
Office. Although I've made many trips to both record offices over the past 15
years I'd never noticed this overlap, though when you consider that prior to
1858 probate was a matter for the church courts, not the civil authorities,
it's hardly surprising.
This is just the sort of useful information
that you'll find on the county resources pages
at the LostCousins Forum - you don't need to be a member of the forum to view
this information, but if you have been invited to join (see your My Summary page at the main LostCousins
site) I'd recommend that you do take up the offer. If you have additional information
that you'd like to see added to one of the county pages please post it in the More Resources area for that county.
Note:
unfortunately I haven't had time to complete all of the
resources page, but nearly half of those for English counties are online. You
can post information in the More Resources area even if the relevant resources
page doesn't exist - your contributions will make my Sisyphean task easier!
The Genealogist adds
records of Jewish Londoners
At a time when Ancestry and Findmypast
have gone quiet, it was a pleasant surprise to receive a press release from The
Genealogist about their latest records. There almost 100,000 records in
their new collection,
which lists Synagogue Seatholders and holders of
various offices.
Tip:
also check out the UK datasets
at the JewishGen website.
Only related by
marriage? Take another look....
In earlier centuries communities were
smaller and the chances are that some of our ancestors unwittingly married
their cousins - not their 1st cousins, of course, but more distant relatives.
When lives were shorter and many were unable to read or write it must have been
more difficult to keep track of extended family, especially if they moved to
another parish.
Bryan wrote from New Zealand to tell me
that after further research he'd discovered that one of the members he'd
matched with who had previously been shown as 'related by marriage' had now
been upgraded to 'cousin', following the discovery that the couple who married
were themselves distant cousins.
When you make a match with a relative
it's always worth following Bryan's example and researching a little further -
when you collaborate the chances of making discoveries are so much higher!
Understanding DNA #1: your
genetic inheritance
It's one thing to understand how DNA works in theory, but
quite another to appreciate how it works in practice. For example, there's a table on the
ISOGG (International Society of Genetic Genealogy) website which shows the
average percentage of our DNA that we share with our cousins, depending how
closely -related we are to them, but the actual percentage can be very
different.
I share about 3% of my DNA with my 2nd
cousin once removed, considerably more than the 1.56% average shown in the
table - but my brother only shares 0.5% of his DNA with our mutual cousin.
Although my brother and I each inherited half of our DNA from our father, and
half from our mother, they didn't
pass on the same DNA to both of us. That sounds a little strange, doesn't it? In
fact, you might even be wondering whether he and I really are brothers.....
But it's actually
perfectly normal - and to explain why, we only have to go back a generation. My mum got her
DNA from her parents - half from her father, my maternal grandfather, and half
from her mother. She couldn't pass both sets on to me, so instead I got a
mixture - roughly 50% from each grandparent. The same happened on my father's
side - he could only pass on half the DNA he had inherited from his own
parents, my paternal grandparents.
The same thing would have happened when my
brother was conceived, except that he got a different mixture - indeed, the only time that two siblings inherit
exactly the same DNA is when they are identical twins!
Is this pattern of inheritance good news
or bad news for genealogists? Both, actually! On the one hand it's problematic,
because a match between two cousins might be missed if you test the wrong
sibling - but on the other hand it's good, because between us my brother and I
will match more cousins (provided we both test).
This diversity between siblings applies
at each generation, thus my mother would have inherited different DNA from her
sisters - which means that their children, my 1st cousins, will almost
certainly have DNA that neither I nor my siblings carry, even though it came
from ancestors that we all share (our maternal grandparents). The more distant
our cousins are, the less likely is it that we've both inherited the same DNA
from the same ancestor - which is why autosomal DNA tests, like Family Finder,
work best for more recent generations.
Understanding DNA #2: mtDNA myths
Autosomal DNA tests are relatively
recent - the first tests used by genealogists were Y-DNA tests, tracking the DNA
that men inherit from their fathers, and mtDNA tests,
which follow the maternal line.
A common misconception is that if you
want to solve a mystery on your father's side of your tree you use a Y-DNA
test, whilst if you want to knock down a 'brick wall' on your mother's side you
go for an mtDNA test. It's an easy mistake to make -
a lot of people have wasted a lot of money going down these particular blind
alleys (including quite a few LostCousins members, sad to say). The fact is,
companies selling DNA tests tend to focus on what they can do, rather than what
they can't do, allowing our wishful thinking to blind us to the facts.
Many claim to tell us about our ethnic
origins, but without explaining that the figures are only estimates based on
statistical analysis of samples (and pretty small samples in some cases). Some
will tell you that you share your DNA with a famous figure from history, or a
skeleton that has been discovered by archaeologists, but without making it
clear that your connection is very tenuous, or shared with tens of millions of
others.
One website claims to tell you which of
the "Seven Daughters of Eve" you're descended from in order to get
you to splash out on an over-priced test that is of little or no genealogical
value. The reality is that if you are of European ancestry you're almost certainly
descended from ALL of them, just not through your direct maternal line.
Mitochondrial DNA mutates very slowly,
as a result of which mtDNA tests are of limited value
to genealogists - since even if you get a perfect match, the common ancestor could
well have lived so long ago that you'll never know who they were. However mtDNA can come in handy when you have a hypothesis that you
want to examine - a good example was the discovery of a skeleton which was
believed to be that of King Richard III. In that case mtDNA
from the skeleton was matched to a descendant in the direct female line of his
mother - and whilst in isolation it didn't prove the identity of the skeleton
beyond all reasonable doubt, when other evidence was taken into account it was
very convincing.
However, consider a superficially
similar situation: suppose that an unidentified skeleton is discovered which is clearly many hundreds of years old, and having sequenced
the mtDNA there are a number of matches with living
people. Unfortunately without other evidence it wouldn't be possible to
say anything about the identity of
the skeleton - that's the problem with mtDNA, and why
those of us who have tested our mtDNA are mostly
disappointed with the results.
Understanding DNA #3: the
truth behind DNA tests
In this article I'm going to deal with
the myth that Y-DNA tests are for your dad's side, and mtDNA
tests are for your mum's side. It's absolute poppycock, and here's why.....
The fact is, each of those tests will
tell you about just one ancestral line: a Y-DNA test will tell you about the
direct paternal line (father's father's father etc) of the man taking the test, whilst an mtDNA test relates to the direct maternal ine (mother's mother's mother etc) of the individual taking the test.
Note that I referred to "the
individual taking the test" - in most situations you won't be the
right person! Whether the 'brick wall' you're trying to knock down, or the
family story you're trying to prove, is on your father's side or your mother's
side, it's very unlikely that an mtDNA test will
provide the answer - so unlikely, in fact, that most of us can simply ignore
these tests altogether. If you think that you are a rare exception I suggest
you talk to me first, just in case.
On the other hand Y-DNA tests are - in
theory - capable of solving many, perhaps most of the problems that we
encounter where the documentary evidence is missing or misleading - for the
simple reason that maternity is generally better documented than paternity (at
least from the 18th century onwards - earlier baptism entries may show only the
father's name). Importantly, this applies whether the question we're trying to
answer is on our father's side of our tree or our mother's side!
I said "in theory" because in
practice we can't always find the right person to take the test. Remember that
a Y-DNA tests tells as about the male donor's direct
paternal line - but there won't always be descendants in the male line from the
person we're trying to find out about. For example, two of my three
illegitimate direct ancestors are female - they won't have inherited their
father's Y-DNA or passed it on to their children. Only if I assume that their
brothers were fathered by the same man have I any hope at all of finding a
donor who carries the unknown father's Y-DNA.
There are several reasons why Y-DNA
testing is more useful than mtDNA. First of all,
Y-DNA is more likely to mutate between one generation and the next - this means
that the number of differences between one sample and another can tell us
roughly how many generations you'd have to go back to find a common ancestor.
For example, my closest Y-DNA match is an American whose Y-DNA has four
differences from mine (out of 111 markers). Based on these results Family Tree
DNA can tell me how far back we're likely to have to go to find a common
ancestor, ie:
|
Generations |
Percentage |
|
1 |
2.55% |
|
2 |
12.12% |
|
3 |
27.31% |
|
4 |
44.22% |
|
5 |
59.75% |
|
6 |
72.35% |
|
7 |
81.75% |
|
8 |
88.35% |
|
9 |
92.76% |
|
10 |
95.60% |
|
11 |
97.38% |
|
12 |
98.47% |
|
13 |
99.12% |
|
14 |
99.50% |
This is pretty reassuring - there's a
very good chance that our common ancestor lived within the last 400 years, and
will have been recorded in parish registers. Of course, we still have to do the
research, but my cousin now has a pretty good idea that his direct paternal
ancestor came from Suffolk - and that his surname has changed slightly over the
centuries.
But the main reason why Y-DNA tests are
so much more useful is that, like Y-DNA, surnames normally follow the male line
- so there's a tendency for people with similar Y-DNA to have the same surname.
(This doesn't quite work in reverse - people with the same surname are less
likely to have the same Y-DNA, because many surnames originated in more than
one place and at more than one time). This means that if you're able to sample
the Y-DNA of a descendant in the direct male line of your unknown ancestor you might discover what his surname was -
and in a small village there might only be one male of the right age with that
surname.
Because Y-DNA and surnames travel
together it's relatively easy to identify potential donors. Of course, in the
case of an illegitimate birth the child usually takes the mother's surname, so
it's her surname you should be looking for. If you don't have any male cousins
who bear that surname, and have no prospect of finding any through further
research you won't be able to use Y-DNA testing to solve that particular
problem - though you may be able to use it elsewhere in your tree.
However, useful as Y-DNA tests can be,
the chances are you won't get very many close matches. For this reason they are
primarily of interest to people like me who are running Surname Studies - for
example, I'm
trying to discover whether the Calver surname, which is mainly found in Suffolk
and Norfolk, is connected with the village of Calver in Derbyshire (I'd also
like to investigate whether the name has a single origin - wherever that might
be).
In the next newsletter I'll be writing
about autosomal DNA tests, and explaining why so many researchers are using
them to supplement conventional research methods.
While researching the DNA articles above
I can across this news report from 2007,
of the only known semi-identical twins. The twins are identical on their
mother's side, but share only half their genes on their father's side.
Mind you, as more and more us take DNA tests perhaps we'll amaze the scientists with
more discoveries of unusual patterns of inheritance?
AncestryHealth is "a free online tool that helps you discover,
preserve, and share your family’s health information" according to the
FAQs on the new website. You can
create a private copy of your existing Ancestry tree, then
add information about health conditions that have affected you and your
ancestors. When I first heard about the new site I assumed that it would be
using DNA results, but apparently that isn't the case - at least, not
initially:
However, the fact that the same press
release revealed that the number of tests carried out by AncestryDNA
has passed the 1 million mark might perhaps be a pointer to the future. My
guess is that Ancestry are anxious to avoid the problems that 23andMe
experienced when offering a health-related DNA analysis in the US.
Colour photos that
are over a century old!
When I was growing up TV was monochrome,
many of the films I saw at the cinema were black-and-white, and the only family
photos in colour were from the 1960s. As a result I've always thought of colour
photography as a recent invention - but I was wrong.
The Telegraph
newspaper recently published on its website some stunning colour photographs
from 1908 - you can see them here.
Taken by the pioneering amateur photographer Etheldreda
Laing, they used the autochrome process invented by
the Lumière Brothers (who I'd previously only associated with moving pictures)
in 1903 and first marketed in 1907. I found some photographs from 1913 which
were taken using the same process here,
on the Daily Mail site.
There are earlier examples of colour
photographs - arguably the first dates from 1861 - but it's
Etheldreda Laing's garden photos that most impress me.
Thousands of British films
from 1895-2015 to go online
The British Film Institute recently
announced that 10,000 films depicting life in Britain over the course of more
than a century are to be made available online. The target date is 2017, and you
can see some short clips in this BBC article.
Is your relative
missing from the war memorial?
A determined LostCousins member has
managed to get the name of her husband's uncle added to the war memorial in
Ealing, as you can see from this online news article.
If your relative's name is missing you might
like to know that according to a letter from the Borough Architect in Ealing
"There are no cost implications to the family as it remains the Council's
duty to ensure the War Memorial is as accurate a record as possible of the
names of residents who lost their lives serving their country during the Great
War." Hopefully other councils will prove as diligent and understanding as
Ealing- but if not I can assure them of some appropriate publicity in this
newsletter!
Mags ended her email by saying that
"None of this would have happened if I had not been interested in family history,
so I feel that something positive has come from all those hours spent trawling
through information on line and at various archive offices." Her story is just
one of many positive experiences related to me by members - I only wish I could
print them all.
Interview:
Geraldine Wall EXCLUSIVE
As you'll know from my reviews, I really
enjoyed File
Under Family and File
Under Fear, the first two books to feature Anna Ames, probate
genealogist (and mother) - so I set about tracking down the author, which
turned out to be quite a challenge! But like Anna Ames, I don't give up.....
Peter: Geraldine, when did you start writing? Was File Under Family your
first book?
GW: I suppose that the true answer to that is aged 9! I wrote a story about Albert the Flea and his
adventures when he went to London and met the Queen. My mother sent it to
Children’s Hour and I got a kind letter from Geoffrey
Dearmer saying that it was a good story but maybe
next time I could choose a more acceptable main character! Of course, I had no idea what he meant.
As I grew up, as for so many people who
like to write, time and energy were needed elsewhere and it has only been in
the last few years that I’ve started writing fiction again. File Under Family
was my first attempt.
Peter: What inspired
you to create the Anna Ames character and plan a series of three books around
her experiences?
GW: I like female
mystery heroines but I wanted Anna to be believable (flawed!) and have a home
life, too. I remember hearing a probate
researcher talk about her work on the radio years ago and thought it would be
interesting to write some stories around that work. I wanted her to be competent and
conscientious but not perfect and for her to see her mistaken decisions only in
retrospect because that’s what happens to most of us. I hope the readers go along with this and are
as taken aback as she is when things twist around unexpectedly. I honestly
don’t know why I wanted from the beginning to do three books. I think a lot of that has to do with Harry,
her husband, and his story.
Peter: Although your
heroine is a probate genealogist, there's at least as much in your books about
her family as there is about her work. I thought it was wonderful how you
introduced us to them, especially Harry, and they all seem so real that I
genuinely care about what happens to them. Did you draw on your own experiences
in order to paint such a realistic backdrop to the story?
GW: There is a lot
of my grand-daughter in Faye! I do have
two sons but Ellis is not really modelled on one of them although I they were
and are both bright and thoughtful and I think boys sometimes get unfairly
stereotyped. There is a little of my own
father in George as he loved quirky facts but also my partner who is no longer
alive, sadly, but who was an avid small-press poetry writer and editor. Generally all the characters are a mixture of
people I’ve known and quite a lot of imagination. Harry is very important to me, as he is to
his family, and I wanted to explore through him the difficulties of all kinds
that we go through when the people that we love slowly disappear through illness
or absence for other reasons.
Peter: Is it as
enjoyable writing your books as it is reading them? Do your characters talk to
you inside your head, or do they only exist on paper?
GW: This is such a
great question! I absolutely loved
writing them and thought about the characters all the time when I didn’t have
to be doing other things. One of the
reasons that I self-published through Kindle is that I didn’t want to take time
out to push my work to agents and publishers which I thought would be
frustrating and time-consuming. As for
my characters talking to me, it’s not so much that, as that I did once
want to write a scene (I’m thinking of
one in Fidelity that I had planned to write from the start) and when I came to
it, it just wasn’t right. It wasn’t
right for that story and wouldn’t have been respectful of the characters so I
made myself drop it. I do like most of
my characters very much and try to understand the ones I don’t like! At the moment I do feel quite bereft of the
family but I am working on something else.
Peter: Despite all
the challenges she faces, Anna Ames never gives up, which is a good lesson for
us family historians. Is there a little bit of you in Anna?
GW: I’ve had to
think about this question quite hard. I
think Anna is persistent because she wants to do the best for her clients but
there is also a part of her that is fascinated by a mystery so she pushes on
partly out of curiosity and partly out of a desire to see justice done. I hope there is a little of me in her in the
conscientiousness and compassion she shows as I’ve had some challenging jobs
which needed those qualities, but she is not really ‘me’ in other ways. I was very much helped in the genealogy
aspect of the books by Catharine Stevens (thanked officially at the end of the
third book) who has dedication and attention to detail in shed-loads so I know
how important those traits are in family historians!
Peter: Have you
researched your own family tree, and if so how far have you gone?
GW: I used to stay
with a great-aunt in Derbyshire when I was a child and one summer she showed me
her copy of our family tree on that side (my father’s). It was a creased and torn old document so I
copied it carefully on to sheets of sugar paper. It was fascinating to see the names go down
the generations and to know little snippets of information about some of the
people. It went back to 1640. I have
since re-copied and updated it since the sugar paper was not the best support!
My mother’s parents were both called Smith which made tracing them more difficult
as you can imagine but I do know a few generations back.
Peter: The third book
in the series, File
Under Fidelity, has just been published - is
this really the last we're going to hear of Anna Ames? (I haven't read it yet -
I'm saving it for a special treat.)
GW: I did plan to
write just one trilogy but I do miss the characters. What I may do is pick the family up again a
couple of years on in their lives when I’ve finished the book I’m now working
on. It will be interesting to see how
they are getting on!
Peter: Tell me about
the new book - is it going to appeal to similar audience?
GW: I’m at the
stage with the new book where the vegetables are chopped and are ready to be
cooked, so to speak. I have the
characters and some plot-lines, but more importantly I have the area of human
experience I want to explore. There will
be an element of genealogy in the book but it will not be the dominant theme, I
don’t think. This book will be looking
at disconnection and resilience in the main characters’ lives. Well, that’s the plan – I wait to see what
actually emerges!
Peter: I very much
look forward to reading it! Geraldine, thank you very much
for taking the time to talk to me - but most of all thank you for giving so
many people so much pleasure through your books.
Tip:
if you've missed out on any of Geraldine's books, which are currently only
available in Kindle format, please use one of the following links: UK,
USA,
Canada,
Australia
Review: The World we have lost
Most of the books I review have been
published recently, but every now and then I discover a gem from earlier times.
The
World we have lost by Peter Laslett was first
published half a century ago; when I started reading the 2nd edition (1971) I
found the subject matter so compelling that I read it all the way through. Now
if only I'd been as dedicated to my studies in 1971, when I was at university!
I'm a family historian, not a social
historian - so why did I find the subject matter so interesting? The fact is
that unless we can put our ancestors' lives into context, we cannot understand
them. What did it mean if someone was a yeoman, or described as a gentleman? What
did the abbreviations Mr and Mrs stand for? One of the
chapter's in Laslett's book is entitled "Did the
Peasants Really Starve?"; another is "The
Village Community" - it's full of answers to questions, including
questions you might not have thought to ask.
Some of the information will already be
familiar if you've read Wrigley & Schofield's The Population History of England 1541-1871, such as Gregory King's
table of income and expenditures for the year 1688, but there is an awful lot
that was new to me, and no doubt will be to you too - and it's a much easier
read than Wrigley & Schofield! I even found out how William Shakespeare's
father signed his name.
I bought a second-hand copy for a few
pounds; at Amazon
there are copies of the 1983 3rd edition that are even cheaper (and it's 15,000 words longer than the 2nd edition). I can
thoroughly recommend this book for any family historian seeking to appreciate
what life was really like for our forebears.
The term 'chrisom' or 'chrissom' has had several meanings over the centuries -
according to Wikipedia it initially referred to a small piece of cloth placed
over a baby's head at the time of christening, but later came to refer to the
robe or cloth that covered the child. You may find the term in burial registers
where it is mostly thought to have been used for a child which died within a
month of baptism, though Laslett suggests it was used
for children who died before they
could be baptised - in either case they were buried wrapped in the cloth used
for, or intended for their baptism.
I'd be interested to know whether you
have come across the term in burial registers and, if so, whether you can
identify in which sense it was used (in that parish) by comparing the burials
against the baptisms.
Note:
you can see what Princess Charlotte wore for her christening earlier this month
in this BBC article.
When I was in Portugal earlier this year
for Genealogy in the Sunshine I
rented a car - it not only made it easier to get around, it enabled me to save
lot of money by buying food at large supermarkets, rather than relying on the
minimarket at the resort (where prices of some items were 200% higher).
But whilst it cost less than £5 a day to
hire the car (through this discount website), had I wanted to
take out additional insurance (rather than providing a €1200 deposit via my
credit card) it would have cost me an extra £8 a day, more than I was paying
for the car! Fortunately there is another way - at insurance4carhire
you can get 12 months of UK & European cover for just £39.99 (there's also Worldwide cover from £49.99 if you're venturing further
afield).
Not sure how long it will take to get
somewhere by car? I use the free online TomTom
Route Planner a lot - even though I've got a satnav for the car, I like to keep
an eye on the traffic situation in case I need to leave early. For example,
it'll still be rush hour when I set off for Stock tomorrow, and there's no way
I'd want to be late for such an important appointment. If you've got a
smartphone you've probably got Google Maps, which can act as a satnav when you don't
have one; indeed, my wife and I often find that it works better than our satnav
when we're trying to find a particular place in a town or village.
I've just ordered some after-shave
lotion (Paco Rabanne, if
you really must know) from AllBeauty.com
- it's one of many special offers at discounts of up to 70%, and in most cases
the prices are lower, sometimes significantly lower, than the prices you'd pay
in a duty-free shop. One reason for this is because when you're travelling
within Europe there is no such thing as duty-free any more - the only saving
you make is the VAT that would otherwise be payable.
Which reminds me,
the Competition and Markets Authority recently reported that it had "found
evidence that supermarkets are misleading customers with confusing pricing
promotions". This confirms what I've been telling you over the past few
years, and whilst most of my comments related to Tesco, they aren't the only
culprits (find out more in this BBC article).
I learned today that one of my friends
in the village, who is a few years younger than I am, is showing increasing
signs of dementia. I don't know what his diagnosis is, but I'm sure many of us
will have been heartened by today's report of a new drug that
seems to delay the advance of Alzheimer's disease in some patients.
Unfortunately more trials are needed before this drug can be made available,
and it won't help everyone - but at least it's a step in the right direction.
This is where any last minute updates
and corrections will be highlighted - if you think you've spotted an error
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someone else has beaten you to it......
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2015 Peter Calver
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