Newsletter - 9th November 2018
Thousands of
births missing from the GRO indexes EXCLUSIVE
Free access to ALL historic records and newspapers at Findmypast ENDS NOON MONDAY
The Home Front: forgotten aspects of the Great War
Do you recognise these WW1 soldiers?
Canada 1926 census to be released next year
Free access to military records at Ancestry.co.uk ENDS MONDAY
Which relatives should you ask to test their DNA?
Adoption matters: the adoptive parents
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
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Thousands of
births missing from the GRO indexes EXCLUSIVE
When the General Register
Office made available their own online indexes of historic births and deaths in
England & Wales it was transformational - at last we could view the
mother's maiden name before 1911, and the age at death before 1866. The modern
indexes include every forename in full, which also helps to identify the right
entry.
Subsequently it became
apparent that the ages at death of infants were, in many cases, wrongly shown -
see my article What
you really need to know about the GRO's new birth and death indexes
from November 2016. But over the past 2 years I've also received a number of emails from members who were mystified that
errors they had reported weren't being accepted.
This week I finally diagnosed
a problem, thanks to an email from Kim in Canada, who had found three missing
entries in the same quarter, and - significantly - all of them had the same
volume reference (when looked up in the contemporary indexes at Findmypast or FreeBMD). What I
discovered is that over 7000 birth entries from the third-quarter of 1881 which
belonged to volume 4a had been duplicated, and also appeared
as volume 3b. The entries which belong to volume 3b - over 5000 of them - are
completely missing. There's an example of one of the duplicated entries (not a
relative of mine) below:
Although there are only a
small number of incorrect index entries in relation to the total number of
births from 1837-1917 (the current upper limit of the new birth indexes), when
an error of this nature is discovered there's always a possibility that other
similar mistakes have been made.
If you've identified a missing
entry in the GRO's birth or death indexes the chances are it’s an isolated
occurrence - indeed, it might simply have been mistranscribed.
But if you able to confirm that all the other records from the same page are
missing I'd like to hear from you!
Note: the simplest way of finding records on the same
page in the GRO registers is to find the entry using the FreeBMD
website, then click the page number.
Free access to
ALL historic records and newspapers at Findmypast ENDS NOON MONDAY
From today until noon (London
time) on Monday 12th November you can access all of Findmypast's historic records and newspapers. That's right
- not just their military records, but all of their
records, so that even if you're focusing this weekend on the grandparents and great
uncles who fought in the Great War you can get a fuller picture of their lives.
It's also a chance to find
out how the war was reported in the press at the time - and how the changes on
the Home Front affected the everyday lives of the relatives who stayed behind.
Please use the links below so that Findmypast know
that you're a reader of this newsletter:
Tip: if you follow this link
to my September Masterclass you'll find advice on making the most of Findmypast, including links to many of the key records.
The Home
Front: forgotten aspects of the Great War
RATIONING
I was born a few years after
the Second World War ended, but at a time when food rationing was still in
force in the UK. The slogan "Dig for Victory" was conceived in WW2 as
a way of encouraging people to grow vegetables in their gardens and on their
allotments, rather than flowers - but for most people the iconic slogan from
WW1 is "Your country needs you", a message reinforced by Lord
Kitchener's index finger pointing at the reader (see this BBC article from 2014).
So it was a bit of a surprise for me to realise a few
years ago that food rationing and allotments dated back to the Great War - my epiphany
came when I read an article entitled 'Pick
it up and eat it' - food rationing during the First World War in the
September 2014 issue of Journal of the
Society of Genealogists. Written by David Evans it reports how in December
1917 over 3000 people had queued outside a grocer's shop in south east London
in the hope of purchasing some margarine (over 1000 came away empty-handed), and explains that before the war the UK had imported around
60% of food.
Flowerbeds in London parks -
and even opposite Buckingham Palace - were turned into vegetable patches, and
the feeding of wild birds became an offence. Although there were various restrictions
in place at earlier dates, especially for restaurants and hotels, it wasn't
until the end of 1917 that rationing came into force, initially for sugar, and
then from February 1918 meat, margarine, and butter. There were also limitations
on the consumption of jam, cheese, and tea - the amounts of which were not
determined nationally, but by local Food Committees.
If you look through
newspapers from 1918 you'll see advertisements from producers of products that
could be used to enhance the limited rations. Rationing continued after the
war, but my November 1920 the restrictions had all been lifted.
AIR RAIDS
The first attempt to bomb
Britain from the air was not in 1939, but on 21st December 1914, when a seaplane
(or rather a floatplane) headed for Dover - but the bombs it was carrying
exploded harmlessly in the sea. A few days later, on Christmas Eve, another
floatplane attacked, and this time it reached its target, although no
casualties resulted, and the damage was not great.
There's an amazing website which
gives details of all 103 German raids on Britain - you'll find it here - and it may
interest some of you to know that the creator of the website, Ian Castle, is
giving a talk at Islington Museum on Thursday 15th November. There's also
information on the Imperial War Museum website - I'd suggest starting here.
According to that page there were more than 300,000 people who sheltered in the
London Underground between May 1917 and the following May - more than in the Blitz.
Note: after the Armistice some people continued to use
their allotments, but others didn't, and my wife's grandparents and
great-grandparents were able to set up a small greengrocery business by renting
unwanted allotments near their village.
Do you
recognise these WW1 soldiers?
I wrote
recently about Peter Jackson's film They
Shall Not Grow Old, which updates silent black and white footage from the
Great War with colour and sound. I haven't seen it yet, but it gets a 5* rating
in today's London Times
("Cutting-edge special effects are combined with impeccable curatorial
instincts to bring the First World War to life in a way that outmatches and
outclasses even the best efforts of movie fiction").
But the reason I'm writing
about the film again is to draw your attention to another article in The Times today, in which the film
director asks for readers help in identifying some of the soldiers who are
shown in the documentary - hopefully you won’t need a Times subscription to see
the photos if you follow this link.
Note: the film is being
shown on BBC2 at 9.30pm this Sunday.
Canada
1926 census to be released next year
The population of the Prairie
Provinces of Canada (Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta) grew much more quickly
than in other provinces, so from 1906 additional censuses were held. The 1926
Census has been transferred from Statistics Canada to Library and Archives
Canada, and according to this page
it should be available online from March 2019 - and it will be free.
Free access to
military records at Ancestry.co.uk ENDS MONDAY
Many of you will already be
aware that more than 50 million military records from the UK, Australia, and
New Zealand are free online at Ancestry this weekend - the offer ends at midnight
(London time) on Monday 12th November. If you’re in Australia
you can access the records until 4am (AEDT) on Tuesday morning.
Some of the records are also
available at Findmypast, but military records are notoriously
difficult to index, so it's well worth searching at both sites, especially if
you are looking for WW1 service records. 60% of these were destroyed during WW2
- but don’t assume your ancestor's file is one of those that was lost until you've
tried both sites.
Which relatives
should you ask to test their DNA?
Those of you who have yet to
take a DNA test might well think that once you've tested your own DNA, that's
it. But anyone who has already tested, and is faced
with thousands or - if they tested with Ancestry - tens of thousands of matches,
will know that it’s just the starting point.
There's nothing in our
autosomal DNA to tell us who it came from - you can’t even tell whether it came
from your mother or your father. So when you get a
match with a cousin, they could be connected to you through any ancestral line
in your tree (including the ones you don’t know about yet, because they're on
the other side of a 'brick wall').
Testing your brothers and
sisters will produce more matches with genetic cousins, but you still won't
know which part of your tree they come from - for that you need someone who
shares some of your tree rather than all of it. It's simple when you think
about it - if you and a known cousin of yours have a DNA match with the same
genetic cousin, you can be almost certain that the match comes from the part of
your tree that you share. All you need to do is identify the most recent common
ancestors that you and your known cousin share - the new cousin you've both been matched with must either be descended from them, or
from one of their ancestors.
Of course, this works the
other way round too. If you're trying to crack a
particular 'brick wall' you need to figure out which cousins are going to
provide you with the best clues.
Tip: DNA tests are expensive, so start by connecting
with as many 'lost cousins' as possible - they’re also researching the ancestors
you share, and some will have tested already, others will be prepared to test
if you explain how you can both benefit. A couple of
hours spent adding relatives from 1881 to your My Ancestors page might save you
hundreds of pounds and hundreds of hours of wasted effort - and it'll
also help with your conventional research, which makes it a really
smart choice!
Adoption
matters: the adoptive parents
I've had an excellent
response to my request for stories from members who
have adopted - in fact there have been so many wonderful contributions that I'm
not going to include all of them in this newsletter (the others will appear in
the issues between now and Christmas). Names - where shown - have been changed
to protect the privacy of all of the individuals
involved.
Adoption legislation and
practice varies around the world, and the first story comes from a member in
Canada:
"We were supportive of
our adopted daughter and son registering with the adoption registry here in
British Columbia. They were adults when
they registered with the goal of learning more of their personal story, to find
out who they looked like and whether or not there were
health issues that they may have inherited.
For both our son and daughter the registry had no problem locating their
birth mothers and each consented to making contact.
"For our daughter their
first meeting was within a very few weeks of contact being made. They spent an
afternoon together; it was exciting at first but it
didn’t take long for the relationship to grow cold. They had very little in
common. The good news though was that she did get to meet her birth mother and
ask those important questions although we suspect some of the answers weren’t
truthful. They do not have any further contact.
"Our son’s birth mother
took a much more careful approach to their meeting. First, she felt that she
needed to tell her parents that she’d had a child and given him up for
adoption. She wanted to do that in person and, as they lived out of province,
it was almost a year before she was able to meet with them. In the meantime she
preferred to correspond in writing to our son.
He was her only child and although he was always in her thoughts, this
was a big step for her. They developed a cautious but good relationship and
when he saw her for the first time he definitely knew who
he looked like. She told him about his
birth father and their relationship, about his birth family and answered his
questions. Unfortunately it was only a few years later
that his birth mother died of a brain tumour.
At that time her sister (our son’s aunt) stepped forward offering to be
the family contact for our son. That
Christmas she worked with me to put together our son’s family history story
with both of his families in words and pictures. We are ever so grateful that our son made the
effort to find his birth mother when he did.
"Being a genealogist and
family historian, my husband and I totally understood our daughter and son’s
need to learn more about their own story.
I’d have wanted to do the same under their circumstances. If anything,
the experience made us even closer to our daughter and son and I know that they
feel the same way."
The second story is from the
UK, but it involves the adoption of a girl from abroad:
"Unlike most adoptive
parents in the UK, I adopted a child from abroad. My daughter was born in South
Korea. It is very unlikely that she could ever search for her birth parents, or
they for her, but I have always said to her that if she ever wanted to, I would
help her in any way I could. However, she has never shown the slightest
interest in doing so; she says we are her parents and that is enough. I thought
becoming a mother herself might change her mind, but it has not.
"I'm sure that her birth
mother thinks of her often and I wish I could write to her, just to let her
know that her grown-up child is much loved and is well, happily married and a
mother of two lovely children.
"Overseas adoption is
much more common in Europe and in fact I was living in Belgium when she was
adopted. I have heard the view expressed here that I 'took her out of her
culture'. That idea is perhaps why it isn't considered politically correct in
the UK to adopt from another country. My reply is that it's better for a child
to have a family here than to be in an orphanage within his or her own culture.
(Koreans, especially 30 years ago, did not tend to adopt abandoned babies). I
did try to teach her about Korea, and a bit of the language, but she has never
been interested. Even K-POP leaves her cold!
"There were some
tumultuous times during her teenage years but many biological
parents can say the same. We are friends now and I'm proud of her - and
delighted to be a granny."
There will be more stories in
the next issue - I'm sure you will find them equally inspiring.
Note: if you’re an adoptive parent I'd like to hear
your story - even if it isn’t for publication.
In the last issue I explained
that one of my aims in writing this newsletter is to get you thinking, and that
this sometimes means taking an unfashionable stance. For example, in that issue
I mentioned that:
"I find it quite discomforting when every mention of a soldier or sailor who was killed or wounded refers to them as a 'hero', because most of them didn’t want to be there at all, and would have jumped at the chance to be back in Blighty with their loved ones. Of course, this doesn’t detract from the fact that there were many acts of bravery, some recognised with medals or mentions in despatches, others known only to God because all of the witnesses perished..."
When I wrote that I didn’t
feel it was in the least controversial - unfashionable, perhaps, but anyone who
has read contemporary accounts of the Great War will know how dreadful an
experience it was for those in the trenches, and that even those who
volunteered often regretted their decision. But for one reader what I wrote was
"very insulting", and I thought it might be useful to print my
response in case you’re ever faced with a similar situation:
The image of brave men courageously giving their lives is an attractive one, but to extend it to everyone who fought is quite wrong. The reality is that many, perhaps most, of those who were killed would have done anything to be back home. Some of those who signed up voluntarily in 1914 did so thinking that the war would be over by Christmas, and they didn't want to miss out on the fun - see this page on the Imperial War Museum website.
The very worst way to honour our ancestors is to forget what really happened. Propaganda in time of war is acceptable, but as historians we must respect the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us feel.
My grandfather fought in the Great War as a conscript and lived - but his only surviving brother volunteered, and died at Ypres in January 1916. His 1st cousin who had emigrated to Canada volunteered in 1915 but was killed almost exactly 100 years ago, on 31st October 1918. My father volunteered in World War 2, and came through unscathed - but the rest of his gun battery were killed. He only survived because his job was communications, which meant he was delivering a message when the shell hit.
My father was not a hero, nor did he aspire to be one - and if the shell had killed him as well it wouldn't have made him any more of a hero. He never spoke about the war when I was growing up, even though he was demobbed less than 4 years before I was born. It was only when he was over 80 that I was able to talk to him about his experiences and record our conversations on video - but he still found it difficult to talk about some of the things that happened.
All families have been scarred by war - but war is ugly, not glorious, and whilst some of those who died were heroes, most were simply victims. You feel proud of what your family did - I just feel grateful that I haven't had to go through what my father and grandfather did.
Nobody can really say what
life would be like now if the Great War had never been fought, or if the 'other
side' had won - perhaps there wouldn’t have been a World War 2? Or perhaps the
eventual war would have been worse - at least neither side used chemical
weapons in WW2, having seen what the effects were in WW1.
What we can say for certain
is that many people, men and women, died while doing their duty - and this
weekend we will remember them. But remember too those who were so seriously
injured, physically or mentally, that their lives were forever scarred -
including those left behind when their loved ones went off to war.
I was reminded of this
sarcastic rejoinder to an improbable statement when I was reading The Rise and Fall of BritainsDNA:
A Tale of Misleading Claims, Media Manipulation and Threats to Academic Freedom,
a 26 page paper by four members of the Research Department of Genetics, Evolution
and Environment at University College London (UCL), one of whom is LostCousins member Debbie Kennett (you can download a PDF
copy of the report here).
According to the paper the (now-defunct)
BritainsDNA business claimed to link some of its
clients to figures from Biblical times, including the Queen of Sheba - and
managed to get considerable free TV and radio coverage, despite the doubts
expressed by experts in the field of genetics, including those at UCL - who
were threatened with legal action (they refused to back down). There are many
aspects of this sorry tale that are worrying, but perhaps the biggest concerns
are the way that the public were misled about what DNA testing could achieve,
and the apparent ease with which BritainsDNA (whose
other trading names included ScotlandsDNA) were able
to get publicity on the BBC for what was arguably 'fake news'.
There's a summary of the
findings here
- even if you don't have an interest in DNA it's worth reading.
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......
I'm afraid that
once again Peter's Tips has had to be
deferred - but you won’t have long to wait, as I'm already starting work on the
next issue, which I hope will be out early next week.
Peter Calver
Founder,
LostCousins
© Copyright 2018
Peter Calver
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