Newsletter
- 15th November 2016
First
digital birth and death 'certificates' arrive
Derbyshire
couple marry - after 65 years!
Groundbreaking analysis of marriages reveals errors &
omissions EXCLUSIVE
Lowest
ever prices for DNA tests - £59 including shipping!
The
positives and negatives of testing cousins
Get a
Findmypast World subscription for next to nothing ENDS
MONDAY
Project
to transcribe Dublin Prisoners Books in prospect?
Save on
tickets for WDYTYA? Live 2017
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First digital birth and
death 'certificates' arrive
The very first digital copies of birth
and death register entries for England & Wales have already arrived in
researchers' inboxes, as the General Register Office trials the new system. My
first order, placed at 12.30pm on Wednesday 9th, was scheduled for completion
the following Wednesday, but the email with PDF attached arrived at 10.09am on
Monday 14th November - here's what the PDF looks like:
As you can see, it's the same
information that you'd get on a certificate. True, because it isn't certified
you couldn't use it in court to prove your right to an inheritance (or anything
else), but that's not why we family historians order certificates, is it?
It's rather wonderful to have a copy of
the death register entry for someone born in 1758, don't you think? Although
I'd previously found his burial, there's more information in the death register
(and I'm now frantically trying to figure out whether the informant is a
relative, or just a neighbour).
Here's another death register entry
which Megan forwarded to me:
I don't know about you, but many of the
certificates I've been ordering recently have been death certificates for the
period up to 1865. The cause of death stated on 19th century death certificates
isn't always very helpful, partly because the common causes of death have
changed so much over the years. For example, it was announced this week that
dementia has taken over from heart disease as the leading cause of death in the
UK (see this article on
the BBC News site), but you won't see it on many 19th century certificates.
My great-great-great-great grandfather
died at 85 from 'senectus' - which Google revealed
meant 'old age', but when Google fails there's a book which usually has the
answer - you'll find my 2015 review here.
Derbyshire couple marry -
after 65 years!
After all that talk of death I felt a
heart-warming story was in order - and what better than this tale of the
Derbyshire couple who married 65 years after they were forced to call off their
engagement in 1951 because her mother's parents didn't approve of his
profession. There's a lovely photo of the happy couple in this BBC News article -
not so much Derby, as Darby & Joan?
Groundbreaking analysis of
marriages reveals errors & omissions EXCLUSIVE
LostCousins member John Pepperdine has
analysed the records of over 5000 church marriages which took place in a single
registration district between 1837 and 1911, comparing them against the GRO
indexes (with the help of FreeBMD).
A quarter of a century ago Michael
Whitfield Foster started work on a 10-year project to analyse the records held
by the GRO and compare them with the GRO's own indexes, which were compiled on
a quarterly basis. John's work is equally important because, although it only
relates to a single registration district, it compares the locally-held
registers with the GRO indexes.
John sent me a spreadsheet summarising
his analysis, from which I could see that of 5150 marriages recorded in the
registers of the various parish churches, there were just 4 which were
completely missing, less than 0.1%, and 5 with only one person indexed. In one
of those 5 cases the wrong surname seems to have been indexed, whilst 3 of the
others were clearly late entries (the page number had an 'a' suffix).
John's sterling efforts confirm that
mistakes were made, but I think we all knew that was inevitable. What we now
know, is that relatively few church marriages were completely omitted from the
GRO registers, and that's very useful knowledge, particularly since there are
likely to be even fewer errors amongst register office marriages (since, unlike
vicars, registrars are paid to do paperwork).
Of course, omissions aren't the only
problem we have to cope with - some entries will have been mistranscribed,
either by a modern day transcriber, by an indexer or by
a later transcriber. For example, according to the GRO indexes Thomas Roberson Tingey's marriage in November 1839 is on page 837 of Volume
13, but the entry for his bride, Jane Beck, lists the page number (correctly)
as 337. John estimates that about 1.6% of marriages will show different page
numbers for the bride and groom at FreeBMD, although that doesn't necessarily mean
that the GRO indexes are wrong.
Tip:
FreeBMD
indicates the expected page range for a district, so if you came across Thomas Tingey's entry at FreeBMD you would know it was likely to
be wrong; the fact that there are no other entries with the same page number is
another clue.
Often it is possible to overcome such
errors, though it's clearly not so easy if you don't know who both parties
were. Some errors will, no doubt, be righted if the GRO ever gets the funding
to scan and transcribe their marriage registers; others will be resolved as
more parish registers become available online. Perhaps when FreeBMD's
data becomes available to others for analysis better ways of identifying and
correcting errors will become apparent?
John kindly compiled these examples of
the sort of things that can go wrong - you might find it instructive:
In Runcton
North 3 Aug 1857 William GREENACRE married Eliza SUTTON (Freebridge
Lynn Registration District) William appears in the 3rd quarter of 1857 but
Eliza appears in the 4th quarter; the entries are on page 536A in each case.
Viewing the entries reveals that they were both interlineated which suggests
that they were not made until after the 4th quarter marriages had been
processed
In West Acre 23 Dec 1854 John ALLISON
married Martha BUNFIELD. Both parties can be accessed by searching in Freebridge Lynn RD and have page reference 1002 but the
entry for Martha BUNFIELD indicates that she married in Penkridge
R D
In East Walton 1 Apr 1848 Robert BAILEY
married Ann MOBBS. Only Robert can be accessed by searching in Freebridge Lynn R D. Ann MOBBS is shown as marrying in
London R D but both have the same page reference 272A
In North Wootton 22 Feb 1851 Joseph
OAKES married Elizabeth Bell JEX. The parties can both be found by searching
for the marriage in Guiltcross R D where it appears
on page 259
At Babingly 2
Jul 1868 James STEEL married Margaret Elizabeth TUNGAY (Freebridge
Lynn RD) The groom is listed on page 548A; the bride is listed in 3rd quarter
of 1868 without a page number or registration district
In Denver 10 Apr 1858 Jonathan OLITER
married Susan OATEY Denver is in Downham RD but the
marriage is registered in King’s Lynn RD
In Gayton 25
Oct 1838 Thomas PALMER married Eleanor PALMER (Freebridge
Lynn RD) Possibly because the bride signed before the groom, the marriage is
registered as Eleanor PALMER married Eleanor PALMER
I've written on many occasions in the
past about errors on certificates, but now that it's possible to obtain copies
of some entries in uncertificated form I need to talk about errors in the
registers. For example, here's a marriage entry that Lesley sent me (this is
taken from a GRO certificate):
It all seems quite straightforward -
Sarah Vincent was a spinster whose father was John Vincent. Except that it's
wrong in almost every respect, as Lesley discovered when she searched the new
online birth indexes, looking for the birth of her great-great-great
grandmother Mary Ann Balmer. The maiden name shown was not Vincent, but
Younger, and before long Lesley discovered the marriage of Sarah Younger to
Simon Vincent. Simon Vincent died a couple of years later, clearing the way for
Sarah to remarry - so why not reveal that she was a widow? Perhaps, as so often
happens, it was down to the questions that were asked, or not asked.
The certificate above shows the marriage
of Robert Hanson to Mary Bradley - or does it? When Lynne searched the new GRO birth
indexes she found that the mother's maiden surname was indexed as Birckley. Now she had the correct maiden name she was able to knock down her 'brick wall' and take the line
back two more generations!
Another LostCousins member, Brenda, not only
has a whole collection of certificates with errors (on a dedicated web page
that you'll find here),
she wrote a letter to Who Do You Think
You Are? magazine which was published in the November issue pointing out
that two birth certificates shown in a previous issue were technically
incorrect, one giving the mother's name as 'Miller formerly Wilkins' and the
other 'Miller formerly White', when they both should have read 'Miller, late
White, formerly Wilkins'. Again, it was probably down to the questions that the
registrar asked.
Brenda also responded to my request for
information about the registration of foundlings - I'll let her tell you in her
own words:
For several years I was one the team of volunteers from Kent FHS who
went into Medway Register Office to index all their old registers and although
none of my Kent ancestors lived in the Medway area to get 'inside information',
on them I did gain a tremendous insight into the way registration worked in the
early years and how procedures and attitudes have changed over the years (the
Registrars take much more trouble now to ensure that all information given is
correct). I also had the great privilege of handling the original register
books. During my time going to the Register Office I saw the birth
registrations of two foundlings.
The first was a child
found exposed under a hedge in Strood. There were blanks
in the columns for mother’s name, father’s name and occupation and the child
was given the names Bentley Hedge. The
informant was the Master of the Workhouse.
This would be the birth registration indexed twice in September quarter
1904 in Strood District as HEDGE, Bentley. Vol 2a Page 676 and as UNKNOWN, Bentley Hedge
Vol 2a Page 676. Sadly, in the same quarter there is the death registration of
HEDGE, Bentley aged 0.
The other foundling
had a better chance in life. He was
found on the seat of a taxi cab on the rank in Gravesend (Kent) and again the
columns for mother’s name, father’s name and occupation are blank and this child
was given four names and the informant was a woman described as ‘in charge of
the child’ whose address was in Cliffe, Kent. Alas I did not keep the note of her name.
This will be the birth
registration in March quarter, Strood district Vol 2a
Page 602a which is also indexed twice in the GRO; as UNKNOWN, Male and as
CRAWLEY, William Patrick B. If memory serves me right Crawley would have the
fourth given name.
In 1901 census 3 year old William Crawley was living in Cliffe
in the household of 57 year old widower George Fuller and described as 'adopted
son'; more likely he was the 'adopted son' of George’s daughter Harriet and
son-in-law Patrick BOSWELL who were living at the same address and had two
daughters aged 2 and 6 months (Piece: 718 Folio: 15 Page: 21). I have not been
able to work out why his surname became Crawley and not Fuller or Boswell. It is just possible that the adoptive parents
knew the true identity of the child but didn’t tell
anyone. WIlliam was not christened at Cliffe, although Patrick and Harriet’s elder daughter was baptised
there on 27 March 1899 having been born 8 January 1899.
The census shows
William's birthplace as Gravesend (Kent) which is probably not correct - indeed
if they thought he had been born in Gravesend the registration should have been
done in Gravesend district. More
probable is the scenario that the cab driver’s previous fare had been from
somewhere in Strood registration district, which included
Cliffe, to Gravesend. But also of course, presumably
the cab driver, or someone around at the time, knew of a family in Cliffe who were willing to 'adopt' a foundling and they
just did the registration from there.
I hope this info will
be of use to someone, especially the fact that GRO seems to have indexed
foundling births twice; once as UNKNOWN, and again using the last of any given
names the child had as its surname, both times with the same volume and page number. Searching on volume and page number (with
year and district) without a surname is possible on FreeBMD but not on the new
GRO search facility.
Ann sent me this birth certificate for a
foundling:
In 1977 the Abandoned Children Register
was instituted by the GRO, although there were no entries in the register in
2012, 2013, or 2014. There were, however, 3 entries in 2010 and 1 in 2011.
Lowest ever price for DNA
tests - £59 including shipping!
With Thanksgiving
fast approaching (it's on 24th November this year) US companies are looking
towards Black Friday, the day after. Family Tree
DNA have once again come up with some outstanding offers - and the good
news is that if you're in the UK the reduction more than offsets the slump in
the value of the pound!
Although Family Tree DNA are based in
the US they will ship worldwide for just $12.95, so if you buy a Family Finder
(autosomal) test at the offer price of $59 the total you'll pay is $71.95 -
which for those of us in the UK works out at almost exactly £59, once you allow
for the extra 2-3% that your bank will add (that's a 40% saving compared to
Ancestry's regular price of £79 plus £20 shipping).
Here for convenience are the costs for
the countries where most readers of this newsletter live:
|
Country |
Approximate cost in local currency
(including shipping and bank charges) |
|
United Kingdom |
£59 |
|
Ireland and other Euro countries |
€68 |
|
USA |
$72 |
|
Canada |
$99 |
|
Australia |
$97 |
|
New Zealand |
$103 |
There are even bigger discounts when you
take a Y-DNA test (males only) and a Family Finder test - but bear in mind that
a Y-DNA test can only tell you about a single line (the surname line), though
by asking cousins to test you can find out about other lines (their surname
lines).
You can find out about all the offers
and support LostCousins by using this link
(please remember to click it immediately before you place your order).
The positives and
negatives of testing cousins
When you take an autosomal test, such as
Family Finder, or Ancestry DNA, you'll get hundreds or thousands of matches.
Only a few will be with close cousins - because we have far more distant
cousins than we do close cousins - but you shouldn't ignore the more distant
matches since they're potentially the most useful, because they're more likely
to knock down a 'brick wall'.
The key to making sense of your matches
is to bring your known cousins into the equation. For example, I recently
arranged for one of my 1st cousins on my mother's side to test - because any
matches we share must be from the ancestors that we share, which in this case
means the maternal side of my tree. This is enormously useful information, not
least because I have ancestors on both sides who come from the same part of the
country.
But it's not just about positive
inferences. If my cousin doesn't share one of my matches
then I will generally start by looking for that match on my father's side of
the tree. There's no guarantee that it will be on my father's side, just
because one maternal cousin doesn't share the match - but it's a useful
inference.
Tip:
if one or both of your parents are still alive it’s much better if they test -
always test the earliest generations.
Of course, if lots of your cousins have
tested then you'll be able to draw many more conclusions by looking at which
matches are, and aren't shared with each cousin. And this is
why it's so important that prices have come down - few of us could
afford to pay for our cousins to test at £200 a time, but at £59 it's much more
feasible.
Tip:
whilst cousins who are also researching their family tree will probably be
prepared to pay for their own tests, in my view it's not reasonable to expect
cousins with no prior interest to fund their tests.
Get a Findmypast World
subscription for next to nothing ENDS MONDAY
With over 8 billion records and
newspaper articles, many of them unavailable elsewhere, Findmypast is one of
the leading subscription sites - but if you're already a subscriber to Ancestry
you might find it hard to justify a second subscription. So
I'm glad to be able to pass on news of an offer that started this week - a One
Month World subscription for just £1 (or $1, or €1 - depending on the site).
It's a great opportunity to search
records that simply aren't available at other sites or which have been mistranscribed. I'm not suggesting that Findmypast don't
make mistakes, but the chances are they'll have made different mistakes!
There are only two catches - one is that
the 1939 Register isn't included in subscriptions shorter than 12
months; the other is that at the end of the first month your subscription will
renew at the full price (unless you change the renewal setting in the My Account
section of the website).
Note:
by using those links you'll be supporting LostCousins.
Project to transcribe Dublin
Prisoners Books under way
I understand that it is hoped to
transcribe a collection of Dublin Metropolitan Police Prisoners Books for
1905-1908 and 1911-1918, said to be amongst the most valuable new documents to
come to light for this key period in Irish history. Images of the books
are online here - but
only when they have been indexed will their true worth become evident.
Explore Your Archive is a joint campaign
by The National Archives and the Archives and Records Association across the UK
- it takes place during November, and if you follow this link you can find out about events
across the country.
Save on tickets for WDYTYA? Live 2017 ENDS TUESDAY
Until midnight (London time) on Tuesday
22nd November you can save nearly 40% when you buy 2 tickets for next year's Who Do You
Think You Are? Live event at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham
from 6th=8th April; this
link will take you to the special offer page.
I'm currently reading File Under Fidelity, the third book in
Geraldine Wall's series about heir hunter Anna Ames
and her interesting family - I'm referring to her living relatives, by the way,
not her ancestors. One of the key themes running through the books is her
relationship with her husband Harry, who has been diagnosed with a form of
early-onset dementia - I'm really impressed by the way
in which the author handles difficult topics like this.
I'll review the book when I've finished
reading it, but in the meantime I strongly recommend you read the first two
books in the series if you haven't already - you'll find my reviews here and here.
Shopping tips often relate to big companies,
so I'm pleased to be able to promote small businesses for a change. Each year
American Express have a Shop Small campaign when cardholders can get a £5
rebate when they spend £10 at one of the small shops in their area which take
Amex cards - in my village this includes the key-cutting shop, pubs,
restaurants and several interesting businesses that I hadn't even realised were
there!
But it's not just the small businesses
that can benefit - if you apply for a Platinum Cashback card now using this link you can earn 5%
cashback on your Christmas purchases (up to £125 cashback), and £25 simply for
spending your first £1 on the card. It's true that there's an annual fee of
£25, but with 1% cashback on your purchases plus special bonus offers (I got
£26 in special bonuses last month alone) you are going to end up quids in.
Note:
I always pay my credit card bill in full every month by direct debit; there may
be better cards for those who are unable to do this.
There was good news from Nationwide this
week: over the past year I've been transferring £500 a month of my savings into
a Flexclusive Regular Saver account, which earns 5%
interest - far more than is on offer in a regular savings account - and whilst
this special interest rate is coming to an end, I'll be allowed to start again
with a new Regular Saver account. Of course, there is a catch of sorts - you have to have your main current account with Nationwide to
qualify, but as this is just one of many benefits I get I wouldn't bank with
anyone else. For example, I get 3% interest on the first £2500 in my current
account, free Europe-wide motor recovery, free Worldwide travel cover for me and my family, free
mobile phone insurance, and the best possible rates when I draw cash abroad.
True, I have to pay £10 a month for my FlexPlus account, but there are also great benefits with
their free accounts.
If you live in the UK and are tempted to
switch to a bank that is owned by its customers (and works really
hard to keep them happy), drop me an email - you can get £100 for
switching and if I refer you, I can benefit too. By the way, this bonus applies
even if you open one of their free accounts!
If at first you don't succeed, try, try
again. It's a good motto for family historians but it's also one to bear in
mind if you're a disgruntled Ryanair customer. In May 2011
my wife and I were delayed by 8 hours on our return home from Portugal,
arriving at 3am instead of 7pm the previous evening - so we put in a claim
under the EU regulations governing delays, although not immediately because
there was a court case waiting to be decided which would be relevant. By the
time I put in my claim it was December 2013, and they refused it right away on the grounds that the plane had been delayed by
'extraordinary circumstances' beyond their control; I wrote again asking what
those circumstances were, but they refused to answer.
Fast forward to October this year - I
discovered that Ryanair had joined a dispute resolution scheme, so
I registered and submitted my claim. Bingo! Within a month the case had been
decided in my favour, and Ryanair had agreed to pay the statutory compensation
of 400 Euros per person. Let's hope it comes through in time for Christmas!
Findmypast have just announced that they have opened
an extra 2 million records from the 1939 Register to mark the 1st anniversary of its release.
That's all for now - but I'll be back
soon with yet more news from the world of family history.
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2016 Peter Calver
Please
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