Newsletter – 24th
May 2024
Save 20% on Ancestry.co.uk memberships ENDS WEDNESDAY
More 20th century marriages missing from the GRO
indexes
19th century marriages may have even more gaps
What are the GRO planning? LATEST NEWS
Memorial Day offers at Ancestry.com
Investigating disinheritance: can you help?
Save 25% at the British Newspaper Archive ENDS MONDAY
Naming traditions in England & Wales
Save 25% on Ancestry DNA UK ONLY
Who Do You Think You Are? magazine OFFER ENDS 31ST MAY
Did your ancestors shop at Sainsbury’s?
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 11th May) 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!
Save 20% on Ancestry.co.uk memberships ENDS WEDNESDAY
It’s
a long time – probably several years – since I’ve been able to offer members a
discount on Ancestry.co.uk memberships. So if you’ve
been considering becoming an Ancestry.co.uk member, whether for the first time or
as a lapsed member, NOW is the time to make up your mind – because the offer
ends at 11.59pm on Wednesday 29th May.
We
all have our personal preferences when it comes to websites and the way the
work, but ultimately what matters are the records in their database – you can’t
find something that isn’t there. And once we get back past 1837 the records
that we rely on more than any other are parish registers – which are usually
only available at one of the major subscription site.
In the Masterclass Tracking
down pre-1837 baptisms and marriages you’ll find this list of parish
registers at Ancestry:
Bexley,
Birmingham, Bristol,
Derbyshire,
Devon, Dorset,
Gloucestershire,
Hampshire,
Lancashire,
Liverpool,
London,
Manchester,
Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire,
Oxfordshire,
Somerset,
Surrey,
Sutton,
East
Sussex, West
Sussex, Warwickshire,
Westminster,
Wigan, Wiltshire,
Worcestershire,
York,
North
Yorkshire, West
Yorkshire, and most of Wales.
Ancestry also have indexed transcriptions of Essex
registers, with links to the register pages at the Essex Archive Online site (this
requires a separate subscription). Ancestry are also
in the process of digitizing Suffolk registers, and have finished
scanning Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire registers, so that’s
something to look forward to in the future.
Of
course, you can also make use of parish registers after 1837 – in particular, most
marriages took place in church during the 19th century, and a downloaded
image of the original marriage register entry is not only cheaper and more authentic
but often more legible than a certificate based on the COPY registers held by
the General Register Office. And you get to see your ancestors’ handwriting,
which is a bonus.
If
you’ve tested your DNA with Ancestry you won’t need to be convinced of the
merits of an Ancestry membership – it will open up features
such as ThruLines and Common
Ancestors, as well as allowing you to view the entire public trees of your
DNA matches (as well as any of the other public trees on the site). Of course,
you should never implicitly trust someone else’s tree – but it’s a great starting
point.
Please
use the link below so that LostCousins can – with luck – benefit from your
purchase (if you can use Chrome or Edge rather than Firefox or Brave it will
greatly improve the chances):
Tip:
if the links appear not to work the first time, log-out from Ancestry then PLEASE
click the link again.
More 20th century marriages missing from the GRO indexes
In
the last issue I revealed that there is an entire page of marriages missing from
the index for the 4th quarter of 1969 – perhaps 140 spouses were unrecorded. Thanks
to Jeff, who visited the British Library, it has been confirmed that they are also
missing from the indexes deposited at a small number of libraries in order to fulfil the General Register Office’s statutory duty.
Jeff also noticed that pages 809 and 810 were identical – but as one is a
left-hand page and the other a right-hand page the error must have occurred when
the paper index was created, and not when it was microfilmed.
Given
that each marriage involves two parties it’s very unlikely that any marriages
were completely missing from the index, but family historians often don’t know
the names of both spouses – indeed, we may not know whether there was a marriage
at all. As there were over 90,000 marriages in that quarter, a very small percentage
are affected – about 0.15% – but it’s nevertheless disturbing that a
computer-generated index could be incomplete.
However it turns out that there was more than one page
missing from that quarter’s index – eagle-eyed Jeff also noticed that page 553
(names between HAVENHAND and HAWKESWOOD) and page 1209 (names between SUCKLING
and SULLIVAN) are also missing from the online indexes – which means that the
number of marriages affected is over 400, approaching 0.5% of the total. Some
of those marriages – perhaps as many as a quarter – will involve relatives of
people reading this newsletter. All of the missing index
entries are pointers to important records.
19th century marriages may have even more gaps
Some
of you will have read the two volumes written by the late Michael Whitfield Foster, and published by him in 1998 and 2002 under the
title A Comedy of Errors or The Marriage Records of England and Wales
1837-1899. It’s more understandable that there would have been mistakes
made in the 19th century, since the system
would have been entirely manual.
Note:
in 1837 photocopiers, typewriters, and duplicators had yet to be invented – though
James Watt, best-known for his invention of the steam engine had, in 1780, come
up with an ingenious way of copying handwritten documents (using a copying
press). However, I don’t believe it was used by the GRO for their registers
and indexes – nor are they likely to have used carbon paper, though it had been
invented in the early years of the 19th century by Ralph Wedgwood,
cousin of the famous Josiah.
One
example of the errors identified by Michael Whitfield Foster appears in
Appendix 8 of the first volume: the marriage index for the 2nd quarter of 1844
jumps from John JENKIN to Thomas JENKINS. Many of the handwritten quarterly
indexes were typed as the pages deteriorated through use, and in this case it seems likely that the clerk turned over two pages rather
than one – if so there must be about 80 entries missing, since there are
usually 40 entries per handwritten index page. It’s only 80 out of 35,000 marriages
that are affected by this clerical error, but if you’ve read the books you’ll know that the author identified many other sources
of errors (which are documented in his books).
Fortunately
for family historians, most 19th century marriages took place in the
parish church, so with more and more parish registers becoming available online
we have an alternative source of information. This isn’t the case for much of
the 20th century, and by 2019 only 15% of couples were marrying in
church.
What
are the GRO planning? LATEST NEWS
All of the missing marriage entries I’ve written
about above would be found if the GRO were to reindex their marriage registers,
as they have already done for births from 1837-1934 and deaths from 1837-1957.
Those new birth and death indexes wers created as
part of a digitisation project which was terminated by mutual agreement in 2008.
You
may recall that at the beginning of this year I referred
to a government tender on behalf of the General Register Office for scanning
and transcription services with an estimated value of £38m over a 5-year period.
I’ve just discovered a press
release from 2nd May put out by a company called XBP Europe
announcing that:
“the Company has been selected by His Majesty’s Passport
Office (HMPO) as its technology and services partner on a nationwide project,
which aims to make documents dating back to 1837 digitally available to the
General Register Office (GRO). This multi-year contract in the UK has an
approximate total contract value of $40 million.”
The
press release continues “The GRO, part of HMPO, maintains the national archive
of births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales. This project is one
strand of a wider transformation program for GRO to update its systems and
services. With some records dating back to 1837, the GRO faces significant
document quality issues, which complicates the process of making them digital.
Varied record formats must be handled, paper records are often faded, and
microfilm can be of poor quality.”
Although
there are clearly issues with the births and deaths that have previously been
scanned and indexed, I would be surprised if marriages were not to be included
in this new project. It would appear from the press release that XBP will be
employing AI to transcribe the records and, considering how successful the
AI-based transcriptions of the US 1950 and Canada 1930 censuses proved to be,
this is a promising approach.
Memorial Day offers at Ancestry.com SAVE 40%
Until
the early morning of Tuesday 28th May you can save 40% on
memberships at Ancestry.com (though if you’re in the UK I think you’ll find
that the UK offer above will work out cheaper once tax and exchange rates are taken into account).
Please
use the link below so that you can support LostCousins
with your purchase:
Save 40% on a 6-month Ancestry® US Discovery membership. Only $69! Ends 28 May 2024.
Save 40% on a 6-month Ancestry® World Explorer membership. Only $99! Ends 28 May 2024.
Save 40% on a 6-month Ancestry® All Access membership. Only $149! Ends 28 May 2024.
Investigating disinheritance: can you help?
Many of you will have attended one of Professor Rebecca
Probert’s talks and lectures over the past 12 years – including the exclusive
presentations she gave to prize-winners in this year’s competition. In return
many LostCousins members have helped by providing data from their own family
trees to assist research that Professor Probert has been carrying out. On this
occasion Professor Probert would appreciate your help on a different topic.
From 1 January 1926, English law set out clear rules as to who
would inherit in the absence of a will. The Inheritance (Family Provision) Act
1938 introduced the possibility of a spouse, unmarried daughter, or infant or
incapacitated son, challenging a will on the basis that it did not make
reasonable provision for them. Not until 1 April 1976 was it possible for ANY
child of the deceased to bring such a claim. This project aims to investigate
disinheritance in this period, with the aims of (1) informing academic research
and (2) collating and disseminating the information in a way that will help the
wider family history community understand this area.
What information is being collected?
Did any of your ancestors leave a will that was admitted to
probate between 1 January 1926 and 31 March 1986 that did not leave anything to
a surviving spouse or children?
If so,
·
what date was the will admitted to probate?
·
who were the other beneficiaries under the will?
·
were any reasons given on the face of the will
for not leaving anything to the surviving spouse or children?
·
are you aware of any reason (eg
previous substantial lifetime gifts to that person, the greater need of other
beneficiaries, estrangement or disapproval) for not
leaving anything to the surviving spouse or children?
If you would like to share this information
please email Professor Probert at R.J.Probert@exeter.ac.uk
with these and any further details you would like to share (or if you have any
questions about the project).
Emailing the information will be deemed to be consent to it
being used as set out below. Taking part in the research does not pose any
foreseeable risks to those providing information.
How will the information be used?
All data will be entered into an Excel spreadsheet on a
password-protected computer. If anyone wishes to withdraw from the project
prior to publication, they can email me at the address above to request the
deletion of the data they provided. Otherwise the data
will be kept for 10 years and then destroyed.
The findings will inform a chapter on disinheritance for an
edited collection. A summary of the findings will be made available to all
those who provided information and will be disseminated to the family history
community more widely.
All personal data (eg email
addresses) will be processed in line with the data protection principles under
the GDPR.
Who has reviewed this study?
This project has been reviewed by the FHASS Social Sciences
and International Studies Ethics Committee at the University of Exeter
(Reference Number 5450195).
Further information and contact details
If you are not happy with any aspect of the project and wish
to complain you are welcome to contact Ethics Committee for the Faculty of
Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at fhass-ethics@exeter.ac.uk or the
Research Ethics and Governance Team at cgr-reg@exeter.ac.uk.
IMPORTANT:
in case anyone is concerned about providing information of this kind, Professor
Probert has asked me to add that the information can be provided without naming
the individuals involved, and that no identifying information will be stored or
published.
Save
25% at the British Newspaper Archive ENDS MONDAY
Until
11.59pm (London time) on Monday 27th May you can save 25% on
subscriptions to the British Newspaper Archive. The offer applies to 1 month, 3
month, and 12 month subscriptions, but bear in mind
that the discount only applies to the first payment, so the longer the
subscription the more you’ll pay. For example, under the offer a 12 month subscription will cost £74.99, but a monthly
subscription would cost £11.24 for the first month and £14.99 for each month
after that – so after just 5 month you will already and have paid over £71.
Bear
in mind that you can also access the British Newspaper Archive through
Findmypast – provided you have a Pro or Premium subscription. So you might find it more cost-effective to purchase a
Findmypast subscription, or upgrade your subscription if you currently have a
Plus subscription.
To
take advantage of the British Newspaper Archive offer and – hopefully – support
LostCousins with your purchase, please use the link below:
British
Newspaper Archive – SAVE 25% until Monday 27th May
Naming traditions in England & Wales
20
years ago I discovered a very interesting article
online – unfortunately I was never able to find it again. But last week I was
sorting out the books, files, and papers in my study when I came across a copy
of the article that I’d printed on 4th September 2004, and which gave
the URL in the footer.
The
bad news was that it was a personal website at a Freeserve
address – and Freeserve disappeared long ago. So I headed off to the Wayback Machine at the Internet
Archive where I could see that the page had been captured on 4th
August 2004, exactly one month before I had printed it out.
What
I found particularly interesting about the article at the time – and still do now – is the
way that it looked at forenames across time, starting before the Norman
Conquest and continuing into the 20th century. However, because I’ve
researched back further than I had in 2004 there are aspects which are more relevant
than they were then, such as the changes after the Reformation.
I
recommend that you follow this link
to the archived version of the article – it is well worth reading.
In
the last issue I explained
that the name of the town of Bourne in Lincolnshire was generally spelled Bourn
until the late 19th century, though at the time of writing I had no idea
what had triggered the change. But the next day I received an email from Peter,
a reader who lives in the area, and had been investigating the spelling of the
name since I first mentioned Bourn(e) two newsletter ago.
Apparently the Post Office added the ‘e’ unofficially
in an attempt to distinguish the town in Lincolnshire from the village of Bourn,
about 50 miles away in Cambridgeshire. This didn’t, however, solve the problem and
by the spring of 1893 the confusion had become so onerous that a meeting was
called to settle the matter. The Grantham Journal set out the arguments
in an article published on Saturday 3rd June 1893 ahead of a meeting
in the town hall on Monday 5th June, which was to be chaired by Mr
Alderman Wherry. There was another article the following week which reported
that the change in name had been unanimously approved – you can read about it here.
Save
25% on Ancestry DNA UK ONLY
If
you are in the UK you can currently save 25% on Ancestry DNA tests – and do remember
to follow the advice in my DNA
Masterclass, otherwise you’ll not only be wasting your time, you won’t make
nearly as many discoveries!
Tip:
I’ve attached a direct ancestors-only public tree to my DNA results – it’s my
only public tree, as I’m very conscious of my relatives’ privacy. But whatever
tree you attach to your DNA results, it must be searchable – even if it is
private – otherwise most of the wonderful features won’t work.
Who Do You Think You
are? magazine OFFER ENDS 31ST MAY
I've
been a reader of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine ever since issue 1,
and I can tell you from personal experience that every issue is packed with
advice on how to research your family tree, including how to track down online
records, how to get more from DNA tests, and the ever-popular readers' stories.
Naturally you also get to look behind-the-scenes of the popular Who Do You
Think You Are? TV series.
There's
an extra special introductory offer for members in the UK, but there are also offers
for overseas readers, each of which offers a useful saving on the cover price:
UK - try 6 issues for just
£9.99
Europe - 13 issues (1 year)
for €74.99
Australia
- 13
issues (1 year) for AU $125
Rest
of the world
- 13 issues (1 year) for US $89.99
To
take advantage of any of these deals (and to support LostCousins) please follow
this link.
Did your ancestors shop at Sainsbury’s?
The
Sainsbury Archive documents
the history of Sainsbury’s from its foundation in 1869, and
also provides a unique record of the changes in retailing since the
mid-19th century. Most of those changes have occurred during my lifetime, and I
found a superb photo of the Seven Kings store in 1955 – it was a wonderful
reminder of what it was like when I went to buy shopping for my mother in the
late 1950s.
Tip:
I found the photo by following a link to an article in the JS Journal, the
staff magazine. It wasn’t immediately obvious so it’s worth experimenting with
the site.
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 2024 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?
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the links in this newsletter and elsewhere on the website are affiliate links –
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