Newsletter - 16th March 2019
Hampshire
parish registers briefly online BREAKING NEWS
Ancestry UK DNA sale begins - at last!
Understanding Ancestry's ThruLines™
How ThruLines™ can help - even when they're
wrong!
Anglicised surnames: follow up
Queensland genealogy conference
Never give up! Searching for an unknown father
How Mary lost one father and found another
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous newsletter (dated 10th March)
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!
Hampshire
parish registers briefly online BREAKING NEWS
A week ago
that I reported that FamilySearch had added 2 million parish records - but
warned that the parish register pages could only be viewed at Family History
Centre or affiliated library (such as the Society of Genealogists).
Yesterday (Friday) I discovered,
thanks to LostCousins member David, that the register images were available
online - which sounded like excellent news for anyone with ancestors from
Hampshire. But today (Saturday) they've disappeared. At this stage I've no idea
whether what I saw on Friday was a programming glitch or a trial, so if you
have any insight into what happened, please let me know.
In the meantime, if you do
have Hampshire ancestry, I'd suggesting crossing your fingers and checking from
time to time......
Ancestry UK
DNA sale begins - at last!
In the last issue I was able
to tell you about the special offers in the US, Canada, and Australia that are
timed to coincide with St Patrick's Day (17th March). Those offers all end on
Sunday or Monday - you'll find full details and links here.
Now it’s the turn of researchers
in the UK - you can save £20 on Ancestry DNA, bringing the price down by 25% to
just £59 (plus shipping - which is £10 for the first kit, plus £5 for each
additional kit ordered at the same time and sent to the same address).
Remember, you can only order DNA
kits from your local Ancestry site - in fact, you'll usually be re-routed to
your local site when you try to access the DNA section of an overseas site.
Note: if you've previously purchased
an Ancestry DNA test you may need to log-out from your Ancestry account before
clicking the link below.
Ancestry.co.uk
- £59 plus shipping SALE ENDS 11.59pm (London time) Wednesday 27th March
Understanding
Ancestry's ThruLines™
When you test at Ancestry you're likely to have at least 20,000 matches with
genetic cousins, and quite possibly 40,000 or more. Clearly
it'll never be possible to figure out how you’re connected to all of them, but
how do you determine which of those thousands of matches are worth following
up?
One approach is to follow the
strategies in my Masterclass
- these focus attention on the matches that are most
likely to help you knock down your 'brick walls'.
But now there's another
option being trialled at Ancestry: ThruLines deduces
possible connections using the wealth of information in Ancestry trees - not just
the trees of your genetic cousins, but any public or (searchable) private tree,
whether the tree owner has tested their DNA or not. However, please bear in
mind that Ancestry are coming up with hints, and not definite answers!
Nevertheless, if you use both
methods you'll be more successful than if you rely on one
or the other.
How ThruLines™ can help - even when
they're wrong!
In the last issue I included
an example from Kate's tree so that those of you who haven't tested your DNA
with Ancestry, or haven't qualified for the beta test
could get a feeling for how ThruLines works.
Most Ancestry trees contain
errors, of course, so the leads that ThruLines provides
are only as good as the trees they're based on - but it might surprise you to
know even when the trees are wrong (as they were in Kate's example) it’s still possible
to make useful discoveries.
When we research our ancestors
we're generally working backwards in time, and - not surprisingly - the
information recorded on certificates and in parish registers is most helpful
when we're working backwards. Working forwards, as we do when we're tracking the
branches of our tree, is significantly more difficult.
For example, I long ago found
the marriage of my great-great grandmother's youngest sister, Charlotte in 1872
- she married a sailor, so when I couldn't find them on any of the subsequent censuses I presumed they'd gone overseas. What I didn’t expect,
and didn’t look for, was a second marriage to another sailor in 1881 - using
her maiden name and claiming to be a spinster.
I would probably never have
discovered the second marriage had ThruLines not prompted
me to look at the tree in which it was recorded - the tree owner isn’t a DNA
match of mine, or even a cousin.
But for me, perhaps the most
valuable aspect of ThruLines is the way it draws my
attention to discrepancies in the trees of other Ancestry users, some of whom are
my cousins. So far everyone I've contacted has been grateful for my assistance,
even though some have turned out not to be cousins at all.
Anglicised
surnames: follow up
It's not always obvious when
one of our ancestors has changed their surname. Following the article in the
last issue Ann wrote in with this example from her cousin's tree:
"I
spent nearly 3 years looking for Christina Lawrence, my cousin's natural
grandmother, to no avail, but after contact with a DNA match, we discovered
that her name was Lorenz - her father was German. During the 1st World War
Lorenz was anglicised to Lawrence."
With the benefit of hindsight it's obvious - but if you've got no hint that your
ancestors were immigrants it's very hard indeed to pick up something like this.
Queensland
genealogy conference
If you live in Queensland, or are going to be there towards the end of May,
you'll be interested to know that the 'Waves in Time' Family & Local
History Conference & Fair is being held between 24th-26th May 2019 at the
Lake Kawana Community Centre (in Bokarina).
For full details please
follow this link to the
conference website - there's a very impressive list of speakers.
Note: if you book your place at the conference before
the end of March you'll qualify for the Early Bird rates.
The fair is free, including the talks on Friday morning.
Never give up! Searching
for an unknown father
I've been corresponding with Bob
for many years, so I was delighted to hear of his success - and asked his
permission to share the story with you.....
"On
my birthday last November, if I’d had looked at the results of 25 years of family
history research, I’d not have been happy. My wife’s
had yielded good results but as for mine…. a father totally unknown, and a
grandmother’s birth certificate that was not hers, transforming her into a
dreaded brick-wall to a quarter of my family tree. Yet a fortnight later much
had changed.
"An
email from Ancestry DNA produced two close relatives – Ellen in Canada and
Chris sixty miles away. Exchanging emails led to a rapid discovery of how we were
linked. Ellen, on facial features, insisted I resembled two of her
great-uncles; Chris, by producing the birth-father’s name (let’s call him
‘RBW’) on his own father’s adoption papers, identified which great-uncle was
the link.
"Now
the field was extended as Ellen alerted family members in Canada and encouraged
contact between her two ‘new’ cousins and the daughter and two granddaughters
of ‘RBW’ They lived in England and couldn’t be more co-operative.
"Another
DNA test confirmed the links were sound and, as a blood descendant, Chris is
being helped to secure details of RBW’s war-service etc. So, about three months
after Ancestry’s email, I’ve met up with Chris and FR (one half-niece); illness
foiled a full quorum a
few days ago but in April I’m due to meet my half-sister and two more
half-nieces (Chris has a sister). Of course, I don’t expect to stop there –
would you?
"And
there’s more: the Ancestry DNA test is autosomal, so
it doesn’t readily distinguish between paternal and maternal cousins. I’m discovering
that contacts whom I’ve failed to connect to my maternal side over the last two
years, are really linked to my ‘new’ family.
"One
contact is intrigued by how his mother’s maiden name matches the middle name of RBW’s father. Another is
now trying to link known Irish migrants to my ‘new’ great-grandmother. I could
never find any Irish/Scots individual in my known
ancestry to justify the 1/3 ethnic background revealed by Ancestry DNA - now
they’re tumbling out into my family tree. As is often the case, one answer
means two new questions – which is what makes family history research so
addictive.
"In
summary, it’s not just a brick wall that’s been knocked down: it’s more like
revealing the other half of a semi-detached house. So NEVER GIVE UP!!
How Mary lost
one father and found another
It's only by combining records-based
research and DNA that you can achieve the best results, as this story from
LostCousins member Mary demonstrates:
"After
many years building my family trees I decided at Christmas 2017 to take an
autosomal DNA test with Ancestry.
"When
the results came back in February my best match (62cM over 3 segments) was with
a lady whose ancestors came from Sussex. We spent months trying to find the
connection without success. I found a scattering of matches to my maternal
trees, and what appeared to be near misses in Aberdeenshire which I assumed was
my paternal tree, but no definite matches at all. Initially putting this down
to ineptitude, I slowly began to entertain the possibility, that I could be a
cuckoo in the nest. With some help from a niece I persuaded my oldest sister to
test, and minutes after the results arrived in July, I knew that we were
half-sisters, especially as she instantly got a flurry of matches on what I had
believed to be my paternal tree.
"It
took a while to accept that this could be so, and my first steps were to quiz
my older sisters, and then friends from my birth village, to find out if they
had concealed a secret. They hadn't, so at the age of 75 I had to embark
on a quest to discover my birth father, despite my sisters' active
discouragement. (They saw my actions to be disloyal to my family, and likely to
cause upset to my biological kin, should I succeed.)
"It
wasn't until September 2018 that I made a start - with my hitherto best match
of 62cM across 3 segments. My supposed 3rd cousin had kept in touch and been
encouraging throughout, and it was she who pointed out that a scatter of shared
matches all pointed to shared great-great-great grandparents Joe and Sarah M, a
prolific farming family in East Sussex. They had 10 children and most of them
had a similar number, so there are a lot of living descendants.
"Having
established that I also had DNA matches to siblings of both Joe and Sarah, I
proceeded to construct their family tree, eliminating all of the lines I had
DNA matches to, on the assumption that their matches were not strong enough. Nevertheless these relatives were all most encouraging,
including one who himself was on the hunt for a father connected to the same
family tree. Having gone down through a number of
generations I had a great number of possible fathers but nothing concrete, and
no connection between any of them and my cluster of Aberdeenshire matches.
"I
looked again at these Aberdeenshire matches, but could find no clear
connections between them that would point me in the direction of travel. I
looked again at Sussex, searching under place names and immediately found a
match with a lady whose great-great-great grandparents came for the same
village as my M family. There were no shared matches, but I nonetheless found
matches with earlier lines from this second couple, Emma and Alan S. They did
not have quite as many children, but still plenty and I traced the trees down
hoping for a link between the M and S families. Again, nothing.
"The
only thing I could think to do was double check the tree I had constructed for
the M family in case of error.
"Then
I had my second bit of luck. I had been seeking help on the Sussex Rootsweb site, and been in contact with a lady related to
Joe M's family. She was interested in the M family and started sending me
details of descendants, the bulk of which matched my own research, but with one
significant exception. A daughter of Joe and Sarah, Lucy, had shown up in the
GRO indexes as having married one of two potential husbands. One I had found,
the other showed no trace on the census record.
"The
marriage I had found resulted in a dead end: both Lucy and her daughter died a
year after the marriage. When I had first found this I
was quite relieved, as it was one less branch to pursue. My Rootsweb
contact had, however, a quite different husband for Lucy. Not the one on the
GRO, but a man with the same surname as the GRO match. This I readily found on
censuses, and when I checked the mother's maiden name for the children (using
the new GRO birth indexes) it matched the M family, as did her age and place of
birth. My helpful contact had restarted my search!
"Lucy
and Alan F had followed the family tradition and produced 10 children. Once
more I did my best to find matches for their offspring, but
drew no conclusions. As it was late I decided to wait
for Ancestry hints to arrive. When they did I could
scarce believe my eyes. One middle son, Joe F appeared on a Scottish tree, and
had married a Clare N in 1912, way up in Banffshire.
"I
had a match to the tree owner of 39cM across 2 segments, so at last there was a
link between my Sussex and Scottish matches. I again developed the Scottish
tree and found other weaker, and not shared matches within other branches of
this tree.
"My
luck held. This lady had identified Joe and Clare's first child, and she had
married a man with a very unusual surname.
"By
checking the Electoral Register, plus Facebook pages, I was able to identify a
grandson of Joe and Clare who I believed had every chance of being my
biological cousin. I wrote, and after a long delay (they had moved
house) I received an email. The cousin and his wife could not have been
nicer, and he was able to tell me that his mother had had only one sister and
one brother, the latter very much younger than I had been expecting, and if my
research was accurate, my biological father.
"Photos
were exchanged, and the young man did have fairly strong resemblances to the
younger me and to my daughter, and my cousin was astonished by my resemblance
to his granny. He was happy to agree to a DNA test, and because I now had a
name of my putative biological father, I was able to find his marriage and
death. I sent off for the death certificate whilst the DNA results were
awaited. After a very long delay over the Christmas period the death
certificate arrived with the name and address of the son, my half-brother, and
further Electoral Register searches showed him at the same address in London as
he had been 20 years before. I even had a telephone number.
"My
cousin's wife kindly offered to act as an intermediary to lessen the shock to
my 'brother'. At this point I was undecided as that meant I would lose quite a
lot of control, so I delayed a decision, hoping for DNA confirmation, and
meanwhile wrote a letter explaining my background etc. (though it was never
posted).
"There
seemed to have been some delay sending off the DNA kit, and as the months went
by and I anxiously checked Ancestry, I again talked to the cousin's wife and
decided to take her up on her offer. A few days later she rang to say that she
had spoken to my 'brother' and strange to say, his father had told him, some 50
years before that he had a sister, and had named the county of my birth (it was
where his - our - father had been stationed during the war).
"Telephone
numbers and email addresses were exchanged with a truly remarkable level of
acceptance; a frank exchange of information with many more photos followed. We
still are awaiting the DNA confirmation but even without it though we are in no
doubt of the outcome. It is so good to see physical resemblances and to find
common personality traits being described. A real life demonstration of the
balance of nature and nurture.
"So although at the start with my very distant matches, the
likelihood of success seemed low, perseverance and a great deal of luck has
given me a result, albeit one that is yet to be finally confirmed by DNA."
Sylvie also wrote in this
week with a tale of DNA discovery - it's amazing how everything seems to be
coming together!
"Another
success story following your piece on the changes in DNA reporting at Ancestry.
Thank you
"I
don't want people to be frightened by centiMorgans! I
was, even though I'd had a couple of matches. First
was the daughter of my great-grandfather's half-brother - that was 46 centiMorgans (cM) , and solved with a quick message (this was someone that I
have been sharing tree information with for years). Then a match of 571cM and
initials only. Again, an exchange of messages revealed her as a 1st cousin.
"Then
two weeks ago, quite a shock, Wow, 1912 cM! If my 1st
cousin was 571cM - just what is this? The match had a small tree on the site
and as soon as I looked, I knew exactly where it was leading because I knew her
name - she was the daughter of my mother's best friend born some eight years after
me. I even have photos of her on this very computer! However
there was a very big but - she didn't know who I was (no contact for many many years, my married name on the site and no public tree).
"She
was very keen to find out. It took a week of exchanges, a week of worrying about
the ethics, of taking advice, a week of treading on eggshells and feeding
snippets of information about me and my parents - and then the penny dropped. Squeals
of delight as she exclaimed 'Oh, my wonderful Auntie and Uncle are your Mum and
Dad!' It has a happy ending, we are indeed half-sisters and she is delighted.
"Just
thought you'd like to know - I can't imagine that you would want to publish
this!"
Private John Trickett would
have been shot through the heart had it not been for the lucky penny that he
kept in his breast pocket. Now it's been put up for auction - as you can see
from this BBC article - but
what a shame it couldn't stay in the family.....
What circumstances would lead
you to sell a family heirloom like this? As his grand-daughter says in the
article, "It's strange to think that, but for that penny, his children
would not have been born and I wouldn't be here."
A surprise arrival on my desk
this week was Ghost Swifts, Blue Poppies
and the Red Star, a new book from one of my favourite authors, Nathan Dylan
Goodwin. Set in the aftermath of the Great War, it follows a mother as she
tries to understand how her middle son, Malcolm, came
to lose his life in the trenches.
The sub-title is Mrs McDougall Investigates Book 1 so it looks as if the author is planning a new series
- let’s hope it doesn’t stop him adding to the wonderful Forensic Genealogist series featuring Morton Farrier. If you don’t want
to wait for my review of this new book, or need to catch up on one of the
Morton Farrier books,you can
support LostCousins when you use the links below:
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca
There was another surprise this
week - a pre-release copy of a book from another of my favourite authors. But
I'm sworn to secrecy....
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......
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2019
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?