Newsletter - 16th July 2019
Cheapest ever Ancestry DNA tests? ENDS MIDNIGHT
Save 30% on a 3 month Findmypast.co.uk subscription
Ireland's 2021 census will include a message for
descendants
The truth about cat and dog owners
Silk manufacture in the early 18th century
Continuing series: Growing up in London 1930-1960
Review: Apollo 11 - the Moon landing in real time
Reach out - and they'll be there
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue (dated 10th July)
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):
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Cheapest
ever Ancestry DNA tests? ENDS
MIDNIGHT
It's Amazon Prime Day, and at
Amazon's UK site Ancestry are offering DNA tests for just £53 including
shipping, the cheapest online price I've ever seen. Follow this link to find out more - but you'll need to
be quick because the offer ends at midnight tonight.
There's also a massive discount
on 23andMe health & ancestry tests - they're less than half-price, but
again the offer ends at midnight.
Note: Prime Day offers are
only open to Amazon Prime Members, BUT you can get a free trial if you follow
this link.
Save 30% on a
3 month Findmypast.co.uk subscription
Findmypast and Ancestry are
the two sites which have the most British and Irish records, but not everyone
can afford to buy an annual subscription to both. So
the offer of a 30% discount on 3 month Plus or Pro subscription
to Findmypast.co.uk is likely to be very attractive to a lot of readers who haven't
subscribed to Findmypast previously.
Tip: the
Plus subscription includes all British and Irish records, but not newspapers;
the Pro subscription includes all of Findmypast's worldwide records and
newspapers.
Will you be able to take up
the offer if you live outside the British Isles? I honestly don’t know, but by all means have a try - if you can get through to the Findmypast.co.uk
site using my link then you're probably going to be OK.
To take advantage of
Findmypast's offer and support LostCousins at the same time please use this link.
Note: this offer is for new subscribers only; the discount applies
only to the first 3 months of your subscription, but you can always cancel.
Ireland's
2021 census will include a message for descendants
I was laughed at when I
suggested to the Office for National Statistics that respondents to the UK 2021
census, possibly the last of its kind, should have the opportunity to add
information for their descendants to read a century later.
But earlier this month the
authorities in Ireland accepted just such a suggestion - you can read all about
it here.
Maybe it's time for the ONS to think again?
The truth about
cat and dog owners
About 20 years ago I met a
psychology professor from the University of Hertfordshire, called Richard
Wiseman - it was the first time that I saw this video which has passed into legend.
Professor Wiseman's research is pretty quirky, so it’s not surprising to discover
that his website is called Quirkology (he has also written
a book with the same name - when I
checked Amazon.co.uk just now there were
copies of the hardback version for less than £3 including UK postage).
Currently Professor Wiseman
and his team are looking into the links between the personalities of pets and
their owners - and the findings are intriguing:
"The
results revealed significant similarities between the personality of owners and
their pets. Previous studies have revealed that owners often show a physical
resemblance to their pets, and this work suggests that they may also think
alike. Interestingly, this similarity increased over time, suggesting that pets
may slowly come to adopt their owner’s personality, or vice versa.
"Large
differences also emerged between the personalities of pet owners. Fish owners
were the happiest, dog owners the most fun to be with, cat owners the most
dependable and emotionally sensitive, and reptile owners the most independent."
It got me wondering whether
we could get insights into the personalities of our ancestors if we knew what
pets they owned. My grandmother had a budgerigar called Joey - apparently only
38% of birds have a good sense of humour, compared to 62% of dogs, but I always
thought my Nan had a good sense of humour (she was certainly fun to be with
when I was younger).
How can you find out what
pets your ancestors owned if you never knew them? Findmypast have a collection of
over 7 million dog licence records for
Ireland; you might find that pets appear in some family photographs. That might
also be an opportunity to see whether dogs really do look like their owners!
Silk manufacture
in the early 18th century
In the last issue I wrote
about the espionage that enabled silk spinners in Derby to improve their production
using technology from Italy. The article prompted an email from author and
professional genealogist Michael Sharpe (whose book Tracing Your Potteries
Ancestors I reviewed
last month). Here's what he had to say:
"I
was interested to see you refer to John Lombe in last
week's issue. In fact, the story of the factory at Derby starts even further
back.
"The
first person to bring silk-weaving to Derby on an industrial scale was Thomas Cotchett, who built a water-powered mill on the River
Derwent in about 1705. Thomas was from a Derbyshire gentry family and one of
his ancestors fought for Cromwell during the Civil War. He appears to have become
interested in silk-weaving during a tailor's apprenticeship in London. His
Derby venture failed, primarily because the so-called 'Dutch machines' of the
time were unable to produce silk of high enough quality to compete with that
coming from Italy. John Lombe was a friend and
possibly an employee of Cotchett's. He took over what
in contemporary sources is described as 'Cotchett's
Mill' and began to build a new one alongside. John died in 1722, as the article
says in unknown circumstances, leaving his step-brother Thomas Lombe to carry on the work. By 1730 the enterprise employed
around 300 people. While the Lombe brothers receive
the credit in published accounts, they are unlikely to have succeeded without Cotchett's groundwork. On her memorial in Derby cathedral,
Thomas Cotchett's sister Hannah is described as
'incomparably ingenious', leading some to speculate that she was also involved
in the original silk mill in some way.
"These
observations come from three years I spent researching the history of the Cotchett family for a client."
According to an online article
there are no maps which state "Here be dragons", though there is one
globe which bears the Latin equivalent. Similarly I've
never seen a dragon when visiting Wales, yet there is a red dragon on the
official Welsh flag.
This article on the BBC website
explains the history of the Welsh flag - if you have Welsh ancestry you might
find it interesting.
Wales has been in the news recently
for another reason - a street in Harlech
has been recognised as the world's steepest residential street by Guinness
World Records. The previous holder was Baldwin Street in Dunedin, New Zealand - it hasn’t been New Zealand's week, I'm afraid.
The first time I visited San
Francisco, in 1981, I was told that Lombard Street was the steepest street in
the world - but researching this today I discovered that Lombard Street isn’t even
the steepest street in San Francisco (that honour goes to Filbert Street). Incidentally,
I once managed to get a parking ticket in San Francisco even though I was in
the vehicle at the time - I'd stopped on one of the steep hills and turned the front
wheels in what I thought was the right direction, then climbed into the back of
the vehicle for a doze (I was suffering from jetlag,
not a hangover). The thing that annoyed me is that if what I'd done really was
dangerous, shouldn't the parking enforcement officer have woken me up?
There was an amazing response to the article
in the last newsletter which began the new series Growing up in London
(you'll find the next instalment below). Dozens
of readers wrote to tell me that the name of the toothpowder would have been Gibbs
Dentifrice, which came in red, blue, or green tins (mine was blue - I suspect
my sister had the red tin). 'Dentifrice', incidentally, isn’t a trademark (as I
had always imagined), but a generic term for toothpastes and toothpowders.
According to this entry
in the catalogue for the Unilever archive the firm of D & W Gibbs had its
origins in a business founded in 1762, which was acquired by two Gibbs brothers
in 1804-5. Prior to 1906 dentifrices were sold as powders, and the innovation
of Gibbs was to produce their dentifrice as a solid
block. It was originally produced for the French market, and when first sold in
Britain it went under the name 'Gibbs French Dentifrice'. The earliest advertisements
I could find at the British Newspaper Archive were in 1914, just before the start
of the Great War, during which Gibbs Dentifrice reportedly
proved popular with soldiers in the trenches. According to the archive Catalogue
entry " The soldiers liked the fresh
flavour and convenience. They also discovered that the dentifrice was an
excellent cleaning product for the brass buttons on their tunics and the
regimental badges on their caps."
You can see a black and white
advert from 1946 here;
this advert, also
from the 1940s, is in colour (and shows the different coloured tins). As far as
I can tell other manufacturers of dentifrices continued to sell them in
powdered form, or as toothpastes - the earliest mention of toothpaste that I could
find in the British Newspaper Archive is Gilbert's Imperial Tooth-paste - it appeared
in the Ipswich Journal on Saturday 8th October 1803.
Going back to Gibbs
Dentifrice, one reader commented that it tasted like soap - and that certainly fits
with what I remember. But I believe it was supposed to taste of peppermint or
spearmint.
Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY
BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (used by kind permission of Findmypast)
Continuing
series: Growing up in London 1930-1960
In the first article of this
new series the memories I chose from the book were about personal hygiene; this
time we're going to bring back memories about keeping the house spick and span
(they're from page 33 of the book):
"I
had to whiten the hearth step once a week. You bought a stone lump from the hardware
shop for a penny or tuppence, got a bowl of water and cloth, dampened the
stone, then wiped it over the hearth and finally smoothed the paste out with the
cloth. The front doorstep was simpler, usually cleaned on Fridays so it would
be immaculate for the weekend."
"I
did all the housework on my own, though my sister helped with the washing up A
bowl of water with soda in that would get greasy and disgusting. ‘Stop
whispering out there’, from my stepmother. I told my sister not to speak and
she still claimed to hear us."
"There
were two types of polish in flat round tins. Mansion polish was for lino, hard work.
You did the furniture the same way. Cutlery too, both on Fridays."
Housework wasn't just for
girls - if I was on holiday from school my mother would set me to work dusting
or vacuuming. She insisted that the house was cleaned every day - usually I couldn’t
see any dust or dirt, but I had to go through the rigmarole anyway. I too remember
Mansion polish - and polishing the front step, which was painted red. My grandmother,
who lived next door, refused to borrow our Hoover, and would use a Ewbank carpet sweeper instead.
Even on the stairs!
I'm afraid that stocks of Growing
Up In London 1930-1960 are now exhausted - there
were so many orders following the article in the last newsletter that Peter
Cox, who compiled, edited, and published the book has completely sold out!
Well done if you got in quick.
But if you didn’t manage to secure a copy, all is not lost - Peter Cox has kindly
provided me with the set of PDFs which he supplied to the printers,
and given permission for them to be made available online for
LostCousins members to download. In the next issue I'll let you know how to go
about it.....
I wrote recently about the
shortage of space in cemeteries in Britain, however I can't imagine that
there's a problem in Texas - which is three times bigger than the UK, but has less than half the population. So this story on the BBC
News website about a woman who lived in a house with her mother's corpse for 3
years reminded me more of a Hitchcock movie than it did reality.
Equally reminiscent of a film
plot was this story
about people who attend their own funerals - while they're still alive. Do you
think it is going to catch on?
Review: Apollo
11 - the Moon landing in real time
We're just days away from the 50th anniversary of the
first Moon landing, and reading this book by Ian Passingham
has brought back a lot of memories. However it's packed with details that I didn't know at the time
- we didn’t have the Internet or 24 hour news channels in those days (at least,
not in Britain). Perhaps most surprising was to read that after the capsule
successfully splashed down on its return journey, the Russians interrupted
their normal radio schedule to broadcast a congratulatory message to the American
astronauts.
(Around the time of the 25th
anniversary I saw Buzz Aldrin at the Consumer Electronics Show, where he was
promoting a computer game that he had endorsed. I wish now that I'd taken the opportunity
to go up to him and shake his hand!)
If, like me, you can remember
those exciting days in 1969 when nobody really knew whether the mission would
be successful, you'll find this book fascinating. At the full published price
of £25 it is rather expensive, but when I checked just now it was available
from Wordery for just £17.06 including shipping (either direct from them or through
Amazon Marketplace).
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Wordery
I thought it would be interesting to go back to the
early 1960s, before the Apollo program had started, and see how we might have
expected the future of space exploration to pan out. I chose as my source the Eagle Book of Rockets and Space Travel -
after all, who better to look into the future than the publishers of Dan Dare?
There's table on p.158 headed
'Estimated chronology of U.S. Space Programs' which predicts a manned flight
around the moon in 1967, and a manned landing on the moon in 1969. In the event
the first manned circumnavigation of the moon (Apollo 8) was in late December
1968 - delayed by the disastrous fire that claimed the lives of the crew of Apollo 1
in January 1967 - so the fact that Apollo 11 landed on the moon just 7 months later
was an incredible achievement.
But let's look beyond 1969:
for 1970-75 the prediction was for a manned lunar base as well as manned
flights to nearby planets; for 1975-85 the calendar shows manned bases on Mars
and/or Venus, followed by manned flights to more distant planets, and between
1985-2000 manned bases on distant planets. We're still waiting for all of those
- though we do at least now know that landing on Venus is impossible.
On the other hand we have
GPS, far better weather forecasts, and Google Earth; we're also able to better
monitor the effects of climate change (as anyone who watched the recent BBC
series Earth From Space - still available on BBC iPlayer). So we haven't done too badly. By the way, I didn’t include
Teflon in the list because it wasn't a by-product of the space program (it was
invented - or rather, discovered - way back in 1938!).
Reach out -
and they'll be there
Your cousins are out there -
but you're not going to connect with them unless you reach out.
Finding other people
researching the same ancestors is a great way to expand your knowledge of your family
tree, but connecting with the many members who are
your 'lost cousins' requires you to reach out. If the only relatives
you enter on your My Ancestors page are your direct ancestors and the
members of their households you're only scratching the surface.
Remember ALL
of your living cousins are descended from the branches of your tree - so
it’s by entering relatives from the branches that you'll connect with most of
your cousins. A good strategy is to start in 1841 (or earlier if you can), then
track each relative through the censuses as they marry and have children (and
possibly grandchildren) too. The more branches you track the bigger your tree
and the more 'lost cousins' you'll find.
Tip: this is especially
important if you've tested your DNA or are planning to.
I always said that my next
car would be electric - so when my present vehicle passed its 10th birthday a
couple of months ago I test drove the new Kia e-Niro, which has a fantastic
range, and incredible acceleration - no wonder was chosen as 'Car of the Year'
by What Car. However, whilst I've put down a
small deposit, it's going to be the car of next year for me - there's a 15
month waiting list - so I won’t have to draw down my pension just yet.
Ironically the review
a few days ago in the Independent was headlined 'The car of the future,
now'.
According to an article
in AutoExpress the Government is going to make
it mandatory for all new homes to have a charging point - you can read the
article here.
If and when my new car does eventually arrive I'll certainly
be jolly glad that we have Economy 7 electricity (which offers a reduced
overnight rate - roughly equivalent to 2.5p per mile travelled).
But I'm really looking
forward to the day when all cars drive themselves - it will not only be safer
and better for the environment, it will be empowering for those who as a result
of age or infirmity are unable to drive. It's one way to solve the problem of
families not visiting their aged relatives!
I've updated the article about
Findmypast's offer to make clear that it is only for new subscribers - I wasn't told about
this originally, I'm afraid.
Peter Calver
Founder,
LostCousins
© Copyright 2019
Peter Calver
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