Newsletter - 11th September 2018
Outstanding
savings for new subscribers at Findmypast SAVE
30%
Get a free LostCousins upgrade BONUS OFFER
MASTERCLASS: How to get the most from Findmypast
City of London Cemetery: historic registers free online EXCLUSIVE
Finding the
graves of 19th and 20th century ancestors (follow-up)
Don't buy a DNA test on the High Street
You can't get a quart into a pint pot
Ancestry's 'Timber' algorithm - how genetic cousins are
identified
Phone calls to a dead daughter
Monopoly proposal hits the spot
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous newsletter (dated 1st September)
click here;
to find earlier articles use the customised Google search below (it searches
ALL of the newsletters since February 2009, so you don't need to keep copies):
Whenever
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(or else use a different browser, such as Chrome).
To go to the main LostCousins website click the
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Outstanding
savings for new subscribers at Findmypast SAVE 30%
I hope you appreciated your
free access to Findmypast over the weekend - I don't
normally send out a special email to inform members about a single offer, but
this one was too good to miss. Especially because I had a feeling that the free
access might be followed up by an offer.
I was right - but what I
didn’t anticipate was such a generous offer. Findmypast
have clearly figured out that September is the time when many of us in the
northern hemisphere put away our sunglasses and dig out our reading glasses, so
that we can get back to our favourite winter pastime - family history!
And they've made an
interesting change - instead of offering monthly and annual subscriptions
they're offering quarterly and annual subscriptions. It's not clear whether
this is a permanent change, or whether it's being trialled during the offer
period (some of you may remember that a decade ago Findmypast
offered 6 and 12 month subscriptions). But, as I
suspect you've already worked out, because the 30% discount only applies to the
first payment it’s a lot cheaper to pay for an annual subscription up front
(even if it does mean having to raid the piggy bank).
In fact, according to my
calculations (but you might want to check them), if you go the quarterly route
you'll have paid the cost of an annual subscription by the time you're part way through the third quarter. That said, if
other commitments mean you can only research for part of the year, a quarterly
subscription might possibly be the way to go.
(I know that many of you will
be disappointed that the offer is for first-time subscribers only, but if it was
a long time ago try clicking the link anyway, especially if you've changed your
email address in the interim. And all the more reason to buy a 12 month subscription if it turns out you do
qualify!)
Just a reminder that despite the
difference in names, the Pro, World, and Ultimate subscriptions are identical - they all offer access to
the same records and newspapers.
Please use the relevant link
below so that you can support LostCousins at the same
time as securing your 30% discount:
Note that LostCousins
can only benefit if your purchase is tracked as coming from one of those links.
If you haven't changed the default settings in your browser, haven't installed
any browser extensions, and don’t use an Internet security package that blocks
tracking it’ll be fine. If you’re not sure whether tracking is blocked in your
browser, here's what it should look like in Chrome and Edge:
In other words, the slider
should be in the Off position whichever browser you use. If you purchase a 12
month Plus, Pro, World, or Ultimate subscription please note the precise time
of your purchase because you'll need it to claim your bonus (see below).
Terms and conditions
Offer expires at midnight (BST) on Sunday 23 September
2018. This offer is only available to first-time subscribers. The discount can only
be used once per user and can only be redeemed using a valid credit/debit card.
After the initial discounted period, your subscription will automatically renew
at full price unless you switch off auto-renew on the 'My subscription' page
when logged into the site. Previously viewed records that are saved in 'My
records' are only accessible with a valid subscription.
Get a free LostCousins upgrade BONUS OFFER
If you support LostCousins by using one of my links to buy a 12 month Findmypast Plus, Pro, World,
or Ultimate subscription under the offer above I'll give you a free 12 month LostCousins subscription worth up to £12.50 on top of the
savings of up to £46.80 on your Findmypast
subscription - so you could save nearly £60 in all. Your LostCousins
subscription will be paid for by the commission we receive from Findmypast, so please make sure that tracking isn't
disabled in your browser, or by some other program on your computer (such as an
adblocking program, or Interrnet security program). If
we don’t receive any commission then I'm afraid you
won't qualify.
To claim your free subscription
please forward to me the email receipt from Findmypast,
ensuring that the time and date of your purchase is shown. If the email doesn’t
arrive you can send me a screenshot showing your purchase, but you must also
tell me the precise time of the purchase, ie to the minute.
My email address is shown in every email you receive from me, including the one
that told you about this newsletter.
Your subscription will start
from the day you buy your Findmypast subscription -
unless you already have a LostCousins subscription,
in which case I'll extend it by 6 months. The offer includes a joint
subscription where required, so if you're researching your partner's tree, now
is the time to open a LostCousins account for them, and link it to yours (by entering their membership
number on your My Details page). Note
that you can have two accounts at the same email address just so long as the
passwords are different - indeed it’s usually the best option.
MASTERCLASS:
How to get the most from Findmypast
I'm sometimes contacted by
readers who don't get the same excellent results as me when they search at Findmypast - so I'm going to tell you how I transform their
searches….
The first thing you need to
appreciate is that there are two ways of searching at genealogy websites. One
is to enter lots of data on the Search form in the hope that some of it might
lead to the record you're looking for - this type of search works best at
Ancestry, where it typically produces lots of results (though most of them
won't be relevant).
The other approach is to put
the minimum amount of information on the Search form, see how many results you
get and - only if there are too many results to glance through - filter the
results so that you're only left with those that are most relevant. This type of
search works best at Findmypast.
Because I'm so busy I prefer
the second type of search - most of the time the record I'm looking for is on
the first page of search results, so I get there very quickly. I even cheat by
using wildcards rather than type long surnames in full - this has the secondary
benefit of sometimes picking up records that might otherwise have been missed.
How minimal should your
searches be? If I'm searching the census I'll typically enter just a forename,
a surname (possibly using wildcards), and an approximate year of birth. I
rarely enter a place of birth as this tends to vary so much from one census to
another, but when I do I enclose it in wildcards, eg
*London*
Different surnames require
different tactics. The surname Smith is very unlikely to be spelled differently
or mistranscribed - but you are likely to get lots of
results, so you'll need to narrow your search in some way. By contrast, when
I'm searching for my Vandepeer ancestors I'm more
concerned about misspellings than anything else, so I'll typically search for
v*d*p*r* and leave the other boxes empty.
Tip: even as you’re filling in the search form Findmypast are looking to see how many records they have
that match what you have typed so far; a running total is displayed on the Search
button so you'll know when there's no point entering
any more information.
Put these tips into practice
and you'll immediately see the difference. But don't stop reading, because I've
got another, even more important, tip for you - one that even Findmypast won't tell you!
Did you realise that at Findmypast there can be three or more ways of searching for
the same historical record? Would you like to know which of those three ways I
use myself? Yes, I thought so…..
The gateway to all of the different approaches is the Search menu:
Let's suppose that you were
hoping to finds one of your ancestors in the 1881
Census - you could choose Search all
records, or narrow down your search by clicking on Census, land & surveys. But I wouldn't choose either of those
options - I'd go to the precise record set I'm interested in by clicking A-Z of record sets, the option at the very
bottom of the Search menu (but the one I use 99% of the time).
Why do I search specific
record sets, rather than starting with a wider search, then homing in? Because
it's the only way you can access some of the key search options. For example,
when I search the 1881 Census directly the Search form offers an enormous
amount of choice:
But half the fields - the
ones I've highlighted in red - don't appear on the Search form when you choose Census, land & surveys.
So do what I do - whenever possible focus in on the
specific record set of interest, whether it's a census, a collection of baptism
registers for a specific county, or one of the hundreds of other record sets.
Tip: one of the secondary benefits of using this
approach is that you'll get to know the records better. Because they come from
many different sources there are all sorts of quirks - for example, some parish
register transcriptions will be very detailed, others very basic.
Here's a table of links that
will enable you to jump straight to some of key resources at Findmypast without going through the Search menu (all
searches are free, so you don't need a subscription unless you want to look at
the records themselves):
|
1881 British census (FREE transcription
except Scotland) |
* these parish register links
will take you to the baptisms for the county
Note: there are a few record sets which currently
can't be found using the A-Z of Record Sets; for example, if you're looking for
the Chelsea pensioner records you'll find them under British Army Service
Records because Findmypast have grouped together all
service records. Other instances reported to me involve Australian cemetery
records. But 99 times out of 100 the A-Z is the best solution.
Finally, another useful tip -
one that even regular users of Findmypast frequently
miss. When you search an individual dataset you'll see
a list of Useful links & resources
to the bottom right of the page - and when the records in question are parish
records there will usually be a link to page with a list of parishes that are
included, showing the dates that are covered.
City of
London Cemetery: historic registers free online EXCLUSIVE
Last October I reported
that the City of London Cemetery, one of the biggest in the country, had still
not put their historic registers online, despite telling me in a March 2014
response to my Freedom of Information request that they had been scanned in
readiness for uploading. This was important because the cost of paying them to
look through their registers is extortionate:
That's right - £100 per name,
per year if you don’t know the exact date of death, and £25 when you do. I
worked out that I could spend upwards of £10,000 looking for my relatives, and
whilst I could have taken out a second mortgage on the house, I had a feeling
my wife wouldn't be too pleased.... so I've been
waiting, and waiting, and waiting.
But this week I discovered
purely by chance that images of the registers from 24th June 1856 to 7th
October 1955 are, at last, online (nice of them to let me know!). They’re not
indexed but once I'd figured out what to do I managed to search the 6 week period following the death of my maternal grandfather
in a matter of minutes (I didn’t find him, by the way, but at least I now know
he's not buried there). The page which linked to the registers states that
"This service containing 440,000 records is being run as a pilot scheme
and is currently free to use", so there seems to be a possibility that
they'll start charging at some point.
Here's what to do, so that
you don’t flounder like I did (there didn't seem to be any instructions):
- Follow this link to the
new website that hosts the register images; there are 33880 register
pages, and there are 20 per screen.
- Click the orange bar labelled 'Refine search'. Now you can search
by date or, if you know it, burial number.
- You'll probably find that the text in the registers is too small
to be legible. No problem, click the icon at the
bottom left (I think it’s meant to be a magnifying glass), or else press
ALT-L (ie hold down the ALT key and press the
'L' key). This turns the cursor into a magnifying glass that you can run
over the page.
- Alternatively, you can expand the entire register page using your
fingers (if you have a touch screen) or by left-clicking the image; this
works best if you have a large screen monitor (like my 32in BenQ).
- There doesn't seem to be any specific provision to save the
images, so right-click on the page and choose either 'Save image' or 'Copy
image' (if you choose the latter paste it into Irfanview
or your preferred image editor).
It's fairly
time-consuming going through hundreds or thousands of entries but
there's always the chance of making serendipitous discoveries - and unlike many
parish registers, the writing is beautifully legible. So
get in quick and find your ancestors' burial entries in case they start
charging!
WARNING: the online registers aren't quite in
chronological order. They're sorted alphanumerically, not numerically, which means that
(for example) Register 2 follows Register 19, and precedes Register 20. I imagine this
will be fixed before the official launch.
Finding
the graves of 19th and 20th century ancestors (follow-up)
In the last issue I mentioned
that there are many sites which have which offer photos of headstones, or
transcripts of memorial inscriptions, and I linked to an article which
mentioned FindaGrave, one of the biggest free sites
(another is the absurdly-named BillionGraves).
Of course, it makes sense to try
free sites before spending money at DeceasedOnline, the site with the largest number of
burial entries from this period (although searches at DeceasedOnline
are also free), but there are a couple of things that it’s very important to
remember. The first is that many people didn’t have headstones, either because
they were buried in mass graves with 10 or more others, or because
circumstances prevented the surviving relatives from erecting a permanent
memorial (this is certainly the case for most of my relatives who died in the
19th and early 20th centuries).
The other is that it can be
very useful to know where your relative ISN'T buried. At a site like DeceasedOnline, where the records for most cemeteries are
based on the burial registers, you can be certain that if your relative isn’t
in those registers, he or she isn’t buried in that cemetery - but at sites
where the records are compiled by volunteers and based on headstone inscriptions,
the fact that your relative isn’t recorded means little. I'm not, of course,
denigrating the work of volunteers (they do an amazing job), but simply
reminding you that negative inferences can sometimes be just as useful as
positive ones.
After my recommendation of DeceasedOnline in the last newsletter LostCousins
member Linda sent me this email:
Thank you! Thank you!
The latest newsletter containing info on Deceased Online has allowed me to
find where my father was cremated in 1966. Only being a child I had no idea
and with most people also dead and others couldn't remember. I had written
to all the crematoria in the area but with no luck but my search on this
website found him immediately (and I had written to them but they said they
had no record).
I find your newsletters brilliant.
Thank you again it means so much to me
Note: after discovering the City of London registers
online I subsequently discovered some registers for the municipal cemetery in
Hereford which have been digitised by the same contractor - you'll find them here,
and they're also free to view at the current time. There are quite a few
councils which make information available online, often free - I obviously can’t
write about them all in this newsletter, but if you are a member of the LostCousins Forum you can post a link and description of
the site in the relevant county forum. And if you're not a member of the forum
yet, why not? All you need to do to get an invite is complete your My Ancestors
page.
Finally, I just wanted to
mention that the Abney Park cemetery index is back online - you'll find it here.
Don't buy a
DNA test on the High Street
This week a tie-in was
announced between the stationers WH Smith and a genealogy website which also
offers DNA tests. Some people might think the bundle they're offering, which
includes not only a DNA test but also a 3 month
subscription to the website, is a bargain. I don't, however, and here's why.....
Testing your DNA with the
wrong company is a waste of money. Not because the DNA test is inferior
(they're mostly very similar, using chips manufactured by the same company),
but because if you’re a family historian, rather than someone who is simply
curious, what you really want is not a DNA test, but a list of genetic
cousins.
According to the comparison
chart published by the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG),
Ancestry have the largest database of consumer DNA tests in the world - in fact
they've got about 8 times as many tests in their database as the company which
WH Smith will be promoting (you can see for yourself if you follow this link).
That means that you're likely to find many more cousins when you test with
Ancestry as you would if you tested with the other company.
Whilst the numbers may not be
bang up to date, they are 2018 figures - so the ratio won't have changed
dramatically. But there's something else you need to bear in mind - you can upload
Ancestry DNA results to several other websites (including the one that WH Smith
has done a deal with) in order to find even more cousins, but the only way to
match your DNA against Ancestry's enormous database is to test with Ancestry,
because Ancestry can't or won't accept uploads of test results from other
providers. So if you want the maximum number of DNA
matches you've got little choice - you have to test with Ancestry.
For me this was a costly realisation
- long before Ancestry started selling their tests in the UK I'd bought DNA
tests for myself and several of my cousins from Family Tree DNA, so at some
point I'm going to have to pay for those cousins, or other cousins from their
part of my tree, to re-test with Ancestry. Why? Because having now tested
myself, my brother, and two cousins with Ancestry I can see what a dramatic
difference it has made - thanks to Ancestry DNA I've been able to break down
some of the 'brick walls' that have been blocking my way for 14 or 15 years.
I didn't have a choice when I
bought tests from FTDNA several years ago - Ancestry hadn't started marketing
their test in the UK. But most of you do - well over 95% of the readers of this
newsletter live in a country where Ancestry sell their tests, and many of the
others will have friends or relatives who can assist them.
A final tip - if you think
that a family member might possibly buy you a DNA for Christmas, in the Black
Friday sales, or at any other time, I suggest you make them aware of your
preferences. It's one thing to waste your own money, but quite another to stand
by and watch someone else waste theirs.
Note: I deliberately haven’t mentioned the name of the
company which will be providing the tests that WH Smith will be selling. In general I try to avoid mentioning companies whose products
or services I don't recommend - experience has shown that people sometimes
remember a name, but not what was said. Coincidentally the company concerned
sponsors a newsletter which is probably the only serious competitor to this one
- and if anything that underlines the importance of
maintaining the independence of the LostCousins
newsletter.
You can't get a
quart into a pint pot
It was only this week that I
realised how apt this old saying is when thinking about the inheritance of DNA.
We get half of our autosomal DNA from each parent, but they only passed on to
us half of what they inherited. Similarly we only pass
half of what we inherited from them to each of our own children - the other
half they get from our partner.
The good news is that even
though you or I have only inherited half of our parents' DNA, if we have
siblings they will have inherited some of the DNA that we didn’t get (unless
they're our identical twin). But no matter how many siblings test, there's
always going to be some DNA which didn’t get passed on to the next generation.
And that's why, when you're starting out with DNA, you should try to persuade
relatives from the earliest generations to test.
It's natural that you'd want
to test your parents - if they are still living - but in practice it would be
just as effective to test one of their brothers or sisters. Whilst your uncle
or aunt won’t have inherited the same DNA from your grandparents as your parent
did, their DNA is just as representative of your grandparents' DNA.
Ancestry's
'Timber' algorithm - how genetic cousins are identified
We all know that the primary
aim of autosomal DNA tests is the discover genetic cousins, but how does it actually work?
Fortunately I don’t have to
explain this because there's a comprehensive article on Ancestry's website -
you'll find it here.
A most unusual
PoW camp
Ireland was neutral during
WW2, and one consequence of this was the establishment of an internment camp,
where combatants from both sides who strayed into Irish territory could be held
for the duration of the war. You can read all about the K-lines internment camp
if you follow this link - the
account includes a list of all the air crew who landed in Ireland during the
war and ended up in the camp - are you related to any of them, I wonder? Most
were German or British, but there were also Canadians and a New Zealander.
This household from the 1881
Census clearly caused the enumerator to struggle a little, but did he make a
mistake when entering the ages of the two young sons?
© Crown Copyright Image
reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London, England. Used by kind
permission of Findmypast
A check of the GRO's online
birth indexes suggest that Richard Richards was actually 2 years old, and not 2
months old - and there is a possibility that the word 'month' is crossed out - but
as LostCousins member Tim said when he drew my
attention to this household, "I wonder how many would have just added this
family to their tree as it is?".
I don’t know about you, but when
I'm adding twigs to the branches of my tree I always try to find the baptism or
(for children born after 1837) the birth index entry, rather than relying on
the census. Sometimes the name shown on the census doesn’t match the birth
registration, frequently the age is incorrect. And finding the birth in the
GRO's new indexes allows the mother's maiden name to be verified.
Note: simple precautions like these are essential when
you’re taking information from an online tree - you can't assume that just
because the creator of the tree is more closely-related to the individuals than
you are, they’ve got it right.
I've just splashed out on
PDFs for three of the twigs on my branches, since the GRO indexes give
different information about the mother's maiden name for three children who
otherwise appear to have the same parents - it's rather an extravagance, but my
birthday is coming up, so I decided to treat myself. (And, depending on what I
discover, it might make an interesting article for this newsletter.)
I've just started reading Murderous Contagion: A Human History of
Disease by Mary Dobson, whose research paper on malaria in the marshlands
of southern England I mentioned in the last issue - at just £3.99 for Kindle it’s
much more affordable than the book by Dr Dobson that I mentioned last time. I'll
be reviewing in a future issue, but here are the links if you want to buy it
now:
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca
Not yet on my Kindle but arriving soon, according to
the author, is the next mystery in the series featuring genealogist Jayne
Sinclair. MJ Lee's books are always are delight to
read - they're so meticulously researched - and I'm sure the new book, set
against the background of the unofficial truce of Christmas 1914, will be no
exception.
The Silent Christmas is due out on 28th September, but you can pre-order it now:
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca
If you haven't read the
previous books in the series you'll be interested to
know that at the current time you can also buy the first 3 Jayne Sinclair books
as a Kindle 'box set' for just £5.99 (or local equivalent):
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca
LostCousins can benefit when you make ANY purchase from Amazon in
the UK, the US, or Canada - just click any one of my links for the relevant
site. Remember, it's your support that keeps this newsletter independent!
Phone calls to
a dead daughter
I suspect you'll find this poignant
article on the BBC News
website as moving as I did - a mother continued to call her daughter's mobile
phone for 2 years after she died.
Monopoly
proposal hits the spot
Reading this story about the
actor who proposed to his actress girlfriend using a wooden Monopoly game that
he'd carved himself reminded me how I proposed to my wife - I hid the
engagement ring in an Advent Calendar in place of the miniature chocolate bar
that should have been there (it did the trick - we married the following
Valentine's Day).
We've got a good crop of
cooking apples this year, but where we live the blackberry harvest has
finished, so the two batches of Spiced Blackberry & Apple jam I made last
month will have to last us until next year. That won't be a problem so long as
I don’t give too much jam away, as I've also made two batches of plum jam, two
of bullace jam, and one of blackberry & elderberry, but it still leaves me with
the problem of how to use all the apples.
I haven't made apple &
elderberry jam before, so that's one possibility. I'm also tempted to make
chutney, something I haven't done for a very long time - hopefully the
extractor fans in our new kitchen will keep the smell of vinegar from going all
over the house!
We seem to be ever more
reliant on electricity these days. If you've got a caravan or a boat you've
probably experienced problems at one time or another with the 12v/24v batteries
struggling to meet your needs, but whilst a solar panel might be the obvious
solution, until fairly recently they were big, ugly,
and expensive. But things have changed dramatically - earlier this year I found
a 100w flexible panel with controller for less than £125.
Over the course of a year a
100w panel can generate between 70 and 90 kilowatt hours of electricity (which
would typically cost about £10 to £14), so it's not an enormous return on your
investment, especially if you’re not using it all year round - however it's the
convenience of having power to top-up batteries (and reduce the chance of them
failing) that convinced me. There are various suppliers, but you'll find the panel
I bought here - the price is still the
same as when I bought it a few months ago (but make sure you claim 5% discount
by clicking the checkbox).
Until recently I'd regarded
solar-powered lights as a bit of joke, but a couple of months ago I took a
chance on a set of 4 security lights, which cost me less than £50 - and my wife
and I have been so delighted with the performance that we've recommended them
to friends. You can see the lights we bought here
- they’re best value when you buy 4, but you can also buy them individually, or
in pairs.
Regular readers of this
newsletter will know that I love a bargain, and I know that many of you do too.
One of the easiest ways I've found to save money is to buy nearly-new items
(often they're new, but have damaged, missing, or opened packaging). Amazon is
a good source, though I generally restrict myself to items sold by Amazon
themselves ("Amazon Warehouse"). For example, when I wanted to buy a
new Denman hairbrush earlier this year, I
noticed that I could get an "open pack" item for 22% less - and since
it would be new and in the original packaging, why would I want to spend any
more (unless, perhaps, it was intended as a present for somebody else)?
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 hope you've
enjoyed this issue. Do make the most of the free access to the City of London
burial registers - I've no idea how long it will last, and don’t dare ask!
Finally, according to a recent article
in The Times we're at our smartest at
this time of year (in the northern hemisphere, at least), so it’s a great time
to knock down 'brick walls' and extend our family trees!
I'll be in touch
again soon,
Peter Calver
Founder,
LostCousins
© Copyright 2018
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?