Newsletter – 14th
November 2024
LostCousins is FREE this week!
Save 30% on
Findmypast subscriptions ENDS THURSDAY 21ST
Support LostCousins
and get a bonus!
How Findmypast could
knock down your ‘brick walls’
Polish airmen who
flew with the RAF in WW2
Polish graves in the
London area
Time to enter this
year’s competition
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 7th November) 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!
LostCousins is FREE this week!
From
now until midnight on Monday 25st November the LostCousins site
will be completely free, allowing you the opportunity to connect with as many
new cousins as you can – and unlike some other sites you won’t be asked
to provide bank or credit card details.
For
EXISTING MEMBERS it’s a great opportunity to make new connections with
experienced researchers who not only share some of your ancestral lines, but are researching some of your ancestors. For NEW
MEMBERS it’s an opportunity to discover what LostCousins can do for you
completely risk-free – any data you enter from your family tree will still be
accessible after the offer ends, because most LostCousins features are always free
All
direct ancestors and other blood relatives you enter will count as entries for this
year’s competition so it's not only a great opportunity to make connections
with experienced researchers who are researching YOUR ancestors, but a chance
to win a prize (or two).
If
you're new to LostCousins, or have forgotten how easy it is to enter relatives,
see the Getting Started Guide on the Help
& Advice page - and remember, all of the key censuses we use are
available FREE online (see the Census Links
page for a list), so to take part you won’t need ANY subscriptions for ANY
sites.
Tip: even if you are
unable add any new relatives you can take advantage of this offer to check for
matches with your existing entries (click the Search button on your My
Ancestors page).
It
goes without saying that if you have friends or relatives who are researching
their family tree, but haven’t yet joined, this would be a great time to tell
them about LostCousins – no special codes are required, and they certainly
won’t be asked for credit card or bank details! When the free period ends they will still have access to all of their
data, they will still be able to correspond with the cousins they’ve
found, and they will still receive my newsletters, but they won’t
be put under any pressure to pay a penny.
Save 30% on Findmypast subscriptions ENDS THURSDAY
21ST
Although
family history is one of the cheaper hobbies, it can still be difficult to find
the money for a 12 month subscription, even though
annual subscriptions invariably provide a significant cost saving compared to
shorter subscriptions.
So I am delighted that until Thursday 21st
November Findmypast are offering a 30% discount on the new EVERYTHING subscription
at all of their sites. Of course, the discount only applies to the first
payment so, if you can possibly manage it, purchase a 12
month subscription to lock in your saving for a whole year. As a 12 month subscriber you’ll also benefit from a 15% Loyalty
Discount should you opt to renew your subscription, as many of you undoubtedly
will – and that gives you a saving of around 30% saving in future years
compared to the cost of a quarterly subscription (the savings are even greater compared to monthly subscriptions).
The
offer is open to both new Findmypast subscribers and former subscribers. Existing
subscribers can’t take advantage of this offer – but hopefully you benefited
from a special offer when you bought your first subscription. Upgrading? I'm not sure
if it will work, but follow the instructions below in case it does (if we receive commission you
will be rewarded on a pro rata basis).
Tip:
don’t rush off to Findmypast just yet, because in the next article I provide
the link you will need and explain how you can support LostCousins AND get a
bonus for yourself when you purchase a NEW 12 month
Findmypast subscription under the offer. You could save yourself over £70 in
total!
Support LostCousins and get a bonus!
Although
the Findmypast offer is exclusive to readers of this newsletter, you’ll only be
supporting LostCousins if you use the appropriate link at the end of this
article – but please don’t stop reading as the next bit is really
important!
Please
do what you can to ensure that your purchase is going to be tracked as coming
from LostCousins – if you have installed any browser extensions with names that
include the words 'ad' and/or 'block' this is a danger sign! Beware: if you
allow your children or grandchildren to ‘help’ you with your computer they may
have installed something you don’t know about.
Don’t
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link below and making your purchase. All major browsers are free, so it makes
sense to have a choice (especially since many problems can be solved by using a
different browser).
I
also recommend you use a computer rather than a smartphone or tablet, but
whatever device and browser you choose, please stick to it, as clicking my link
on one device and then making your purchase on another definitely
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In
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and security, then either Cookies and other site data or Third party cookies
depending on the version of Chrome – the default setting
is OFF, as shown BELOW, and this is exactly what you want:
The
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In
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Provided
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it will be extended). To claim your bonus forward the
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How Findmypast could knock down your ‘brick
walls’
If
you’re one of those people who thinks that the big genealogy websites are all
much the same, and that it’s a matter of personal preference which one to
subscribe to, I suggest you re-read this article
from May last year.
And
if you’ve tried Findmypast before, but didn’t like it, see this Masterclass
– which will explain why your experience was so much different from mine.
Although
it was a DNA test that gave me a chance to crack my oldest ‘brick wall’,
without the Catholic baptism records at Findmypast I’d never have knocked it
down!
I
know that quite a few LostCousins members can remember the celebrations at the
end of World War 2, but there can’t be more than a handful of people alive who
can remember the end of World War 1: John Tinniswood, the oldest man in the
world was only 6 when the war ended; Ethel Caterham, the oldest woman in the UK,
was only 12 (she’s also the only person recorded in the 1911 Census who is
still alive).
In
2018 Country Life magazine marked the centenary of Armistice Day by publishing
a wonderful article which drew on a wide variety of sources in order to capture
what Armistice Day had meant for the people who lived through the Great War –
you’ll find it here.
Polish airmen who flew with the RAF in WW2
In
the last issue
I wrote about the first tranche of World War 2 service records that have gone
online at Ancestry – it’s anticipated that it will take until 2029 to get them
all online, so I expect to be writing about the collection on many occasions in
the coming years.
What
I didn’t mention was an index of Polish Air Force personnel who escaped to
Britain and fought with the RAF. There are only 18.405 names in the index, but
as one of them is of my wife’s Uncle Tony, a wireless operator with the RAF
rank of Leading Aircraftman (LAC), it was of great interest in our household. I
never met Tony but we attended Tony’s funeral in 2011 –
though as it was in Polish, I didn’t understand any of it!
The
information at Ancestry has been drawn from a Polish website, but there is an
English version of that site, so going to the source isn’t quite as daunting as
you might expect. The only problem I encountered was the way that the names are
listed alphabetically – I expected to find the surname CZAJKA near the end of
the Cs, but I hadn’t reckoned on the diacritics (which I won’t attempt to
reproduce here).
Poland
and Great Britain, Polish Air Force in Great Britain, 1940-1947
It
was worth starting at Ancestry because that encouraged me to persist at the Polish
site, and when I eventually found the record for my wife’s uncle there was a
photograph of him (which isn’t at Ancestry).
Polish graves in the London area
If
you have Polish relatives who came to the UK you might want to look at the
website of the Polish Heritage Society,
which lists the graves of nearly 12,000 people of Polish descent who were
buried in London cemeteries. You will find a list of the cemeteries here: it shows
the number of Polish graves in each cemetery, as well as the number of Polish individuals
buried there – and further down the page there are clickable links which
display lists of the persons buried in each cemetery.
At
first sight there doesn’t appear to be any way to search all of
the lists simultaneously, but I discovered a site search at the top right of the
page which seems to do the job - sometimes. Or for a more consistent solution
open up all of the lists, then
search the page using Ctrl-F in your browser (thanks to Gavin for this suggestion).
There’s
an excellent article about the Women’s Land Army in this month’s Discover
Your Ancestors magazine. Over 200,000 women and girls joined between 1939
and 1950 when the scheme ended, though whilst many were volunteers, from
December 1941 some of the Land Girls were conscripts.
Tip:
if you’re quick you can get a free one year subscription when you purchase a 12
month Diamond subscription to The Genealogist for just £89.95 (a £50 saving) by
following this link
(the offer ends on 30th November).
One
thing that isn’t mentioned in the article is that the Women’s Land Army was first
set up in January 1917, during World War 1 – that’s something that I only
discovered recently, thanks to this useful website. Over 23,000 women were
recruited, most of whom served in the Women’s Land Army, but as you can see
from this page a
separate Forage Corps had been founded in 1915 to provide food for horses, and
in 1916 the Women’s Forestry Corps was created. There are no central records of
those who served during WW1, but there are a small number of names here,
and there may be other records in local archives.
Index
cards for 120,000 women who served during World War 2 and were born up to the end
of 1922 can be found at Ancestry:
UK,
World War II Women's Land Army Index Cards, 1939-1948
Growing
up in the 1950s I was always being told that “Mummy knows best”, and she probably
did. But 102-year-old Phyllis Vincent, a WW2 land girl, will never forgive her
mother for hiding letters from Ron, her wartime sweetheart who was a gunner in
the army. Convinced that Ron was no longer interested, Phyllis ended up
marrying Norman and becoming a ‘Ten Pound Pom’, though the family eventually
came back to England. Perhaps the cruellest cut of all was discovering the
hidden letters from Ron on her wedding day.
I’m
sure that many budding romances were kyboshed by the war: my father, also a
gunner in the army, was sweet on a girl who wasn’t prepared to wait – she married
a Canadian soldier, and by the time Dad came back from the war the happy couple
were on the other side of the Atlantic. You can read more about Phyllis’s
story, and her time as a land girl, in this BBC article. I wonder
what happened to Ron?
Time to enter this year’s competition
Frankly
it shouldn’t be necessary to bribe you to add relatives from the censuses to
your My Ancestors page – after all, who in their right mind would spurn
the opportunity to compare notes and collaborate with experienced family
historians who are researching the same ancestors? Which of us has so much time
to spare that we would willingly repeat research that our cousins have already done,
or continue bashing our head against a ‘brick wall’ that one of our ‘lost
cousins’ has already knocked down?
But
having said all that, I’m going to do it anyway. There are literally hundreds
of prizes already lined up for this year’s competition, including 12 month subscriptions to some of my favourite websites and
magazines, as well as the chance to attend exclusive Zoom presentations by experts.
And all you need to do is to add more relatives from the census to your My
Ancestors page. It’s not that I’m interested in collecting data – it’s of
no use to me – it’s because your relatives from the census are the vital clues
that enable the LostCousins computer to figure which of the other members are your
cousins.
Many
of you reading this article will think “I’ve already done all that”. Think
again! Whilst it’s a good idea to start
with your direct ancestors and their immediate family, they’re not the ones
most likely to connect you to your ‘lost cousins’. Here’s what I wrote back in
September:
Tip: ALL of your living cousins are
descended from collateral lines, the lines that branch off from your direct
lines, so the best way to find them is to enter the relatives from the
branches. Start with your ancestors' siblings then continue with their cousins.
A good approach is to start with everyone you know about in 1841 – whether or not you can find them on that census – then
track each branch and twig through the censuses until you get to 1881.
There
are a lot of LostCousins members in the New World, and in many cases your direct
ancestors migrated long before the 1881 Census, perhaps before the 1841 Census.
But even if they did, it doesn’t make much difference to your chances of
finding ‘lost cousins’ because the best way to find a cousin is not to enter your
direct ancestors, but to enter theirs. Put it another way, your British
cousins – the people who are best-placed to help you research your British
ancestors – aren’t descended from emigrants, they are descended from the
relatives who stayed behind.
I
don’t recall when I first encountered the fictional legal case of Board of
Inland Revenue v Haddock, but it might well have been when I was studying
law during my first year at university, more than half a century ago. The
defendant, one Alfred Haddock, had attempted to pay his tax bill with a cheque
written on the side of a cow – but it had been refused by the taxman, who was
now pursuing him for payment in some other form. Suffice it to say that Mr
Haddock won his case.
I
was reminded of that story from the humourist A P Herbert when I read yesterday
about the real-life legal case of Malcolm Chenery, who died in 2021 after
writing his will on cardboard packaging from a box of frozen fish and a pack of
mince pies. Though the second page of the will – written on the back of the mince
pie box – had been signed and witnessed, the first page of the will was written
on a different box, so could not be automatically assumed to be part of the
same document. After considering all the evidence the judge decided that the
two pieces of cardboard were indeed the last will and testament of the deceased.
You can see photos of the unusual will in this article
from the Guardian.
Note:
though fictional, the case of Board of Inland Revenue v Haddock has been
mentioned in a number of real legal cases, and in 1967 the Memphis-Press Scimitar,
a now-defunct newspaper in Tennessee wrote about the case as if it were real (the
article is at Newspapers.com).
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
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