Newsletter - 13th September 2019
Save
20% on Society of Genealogists membership ENDS
SUNDAY
Last chance to get a free DNA test? UK
ONLY
Long service: Bob breaks the record
Growing up in London, 1930-1960
Reaching into the past: Barbara's story
Tracing your mediaeval ancestors
MyHeritage
acquire Promethease
The right to know - and the right not to know
You've got to accentuate the positive
The LostCousins newsletter is usually published
2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue (dated 6th September)
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!
On Tuesday 10th September the
University of Leicester celebrated the 35th anniversary of the discovery of DNA
fingerprinting by Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys - this Guardian article
has a picture of the very first DNA profile.
At first the potential for DNA
in solving crimes wasn't generally recognised but after it was used to nail a
serial murderer in 1988 it became an important tool for forensic scientists
(though in that particular case the culprit pled guilty, so the evidence wasn't
tested in court). However, it's not just about catching the guilty - in the
same case DNA evidence was used to clear a suspect who had falsely confessed to
one of the murders, as the Guardian article explains. By 2016 as
many as 50 million people had had their DNA tested since the invention of DNA profiling
- and that's before DNA testing became popular amongst family historians.
But there are more anniversaries this week. Wednesday
11th September was the 18th anniversary of 9/11, when as many people died in
terrorist attacks as are now missing in the Bahamas, following the hurricane.
On a happier note, Wednesday
was also the 71st anniversary of the day my parents married, at Seven Kings
Baptist Church; I wouldn't be talking to you today if they hadn't met and
fallen in love. By the way, that's the best man next to my Dad in the photo -
and doesn't my mum look beautiful? (But it was one of the bridesmaids who became
a model.)
Saturday 11th September 1976 should
also have been a happy day - I had two tickets for the 'Last Night of the
Proms' at London's Royal Albert Hall, an annual musical celebration of Britishness,
fuelled by jingoism and patriotism. But as you can see, I still have them..... I
didn’t go, because the day before I'd been told that my mother had terminal
cancer.
Today, Friday 13th September,
is the 43rd anniversary of the day mum died. I always had trouble living up to
her standards, but I think she'd be pleased - and perhaps a little proud - that
I've spent the past 15 years bringing thousands of families back together.
Save 20% on
Society of Genealogists membership ENDS SUNDAY
You can save 20% on your
first year's subscription when you join as a full or associate member and enter
the promotional discount code SSP20 - but you'll have to be quick because this
offer ends on Sunday 15th September. To find out more about the benefits of SoG
membership follow this link.
Last chance
to get a free DNA test? UK ONLY
Findmypast haven't set a
closing date for their offer (see last issue for full details),
but I can't imagine that an offer this generous is going to last much longer. Do
please read the information carefully to ensure that you can both support
LostCousins and earn yourself a free LostCousins upgrade.
So far almost all of the
readers of this newsletter who have taken advantage of the offer have qualified
for the LostCousins upgrade: just two have missed out - one had disabled
tracking in their browser, the other had installed an adblocking program (which
had the same effect). It's worth bearing in mind that free and mostly-free
sites generally rely on advertising as source of income - so when you block
advertising or disable tracking you can be depriving those sites of much-needed
funding.
As far as I can ascertain Findmypast
have no plans to extend this offer to other territories - sorry!
Long service:
Bob breaks the record
Do
you remember reading in the last newsletter
about Jeffrey Fry, who has worked at Waterloo Station for 58 years - which the
BBC clearly felt was a record?
Several
members wrote to tell me that they'd come close to matching the record - but
Bob has actually beaten it! He started working in the civil service in
September 1959 and retired - in his 80th year - at the end of May 2019. That's
not far short of 60 years, so Jeffrey Fry - if you’re reading this - there's a
challenge for you!
Bob
tells me that he comes from a 'civil service' family - his father joined when
he was demobbed in 1919 and was still working for the civil service when Bob joined
40 years later. So that's over a century between them....
Growing up
in London, 1930-1960
The
previous extracts from this wonderful book focused on fathers - this time it’s the
turn of mothers:
"It was hard for my mother after my father died.
At our age she had been in a loveless orphanage. Always resourceful, she bought
second-hand clothes at jumble sales, unpicking and washing the wool, and either
knitting new garments for us, or crocheting it into blankets and outfits for my
two dolls. One was white, always good, the other black, naughty but lovable. I
blanch when I remember saying she couldn’t help being naughty because she
didn’t believe in God. Such racist views were assimilated without thought."
"When I was 13 I came home from school to make
myself lunch – my mother was a cleaner and father a caretaker – when there was
a knock on the door. A man said: ‘Are you Patsy? I’ve come about the adoption.’
I was traumatised. That night I told my mother and she said: ‘Sorry, I have
something to tell you.’ I said: ‘Yes, you’re not my mother, and I know who it
is, it’s that horrible Annie Horrigan opposite.’ When I was about six she’d stopped
me in the street and said: ‘Hello Patsy, you know I’m really your mother, don’t
you?’ At the time I’d put it out of my mind, but I should have twigged because
my name then was Patricia White but my ration book had Patricia Pring on the
top. So it was that I discovered that my natural mother had four children, by
several fathers. My elder sister, who was the only one to stay with our natural
mother, later told me we had different fathers, and to this day I don’t know
who mine was. My natural mother’s husband disappeared, and I think she made
ends meet in the same way. The eldest of the four was a boy, Jack, who was sent
to grandparents in Ireland and ran away to sea. I only saw him at my natural
mother’s funeral. Then there was a sister younger than me. She was sent to an
orphanage and was bitter about it all her life. In fact my adoptive parents hadn’t
been married themselves until after the war, after which they formally adopted
me. They were living together opposite my natural mother when I was born, and
they took pity on me because they could see I was being neglected, so they took
me in, then formalised it over ten years later. When eventually I wanted to
marry it was to a Roman Catholic, so I had to find out if I’d been baptised as
one. To do that I had to pluck up courage to ask my natural mother. My adoptive
mother was fiercely opposed to this, so I went to see her on the quiet, and she
told me I’d been baptised RC at St Mary Magdalene in Marylebone."
Remember,
thanks to the generosity of Peter Cox, the compiler of this wonderful
collection, you can download a free copy in PDF format. Simply log-in to your
LostCousins account, then look for Peter's Tips in the website menu.
Note:
if you've forgotten how to log-in, click here for an
instant email reminder. (Make sure the email address you enter is the one shown
in the text of the email that told you about this newsletter.)
As
a young boy I was given a copy of A A Milne's Now We Are Six, which I read over and
over. And over.
At
that age it never crossed my mind that Christopher Robin was a real person, but
now I know better - especially after reading this Daily Telegraph article
by Giles Brandreth, who got to know A A Milne's son in his later years. (It was
first published in 1998.)
Reaching
into the past: Barbara's story
In
the last issue I also mentioned
a news story about the detective work that enabled a batch of love letters to
be reunited with their owner after 70 years - so I was delighted to discover
that LostCousins member had been doing some detective work of her own. And what
a lovely story it is.....
"I am a regular reader of your Lost Cousin’s
newsletter and absolutely love reading through your information and also
reading other members' stories - so I wondered if you’d be interested in reading
about my own detective work?
"I’ve always had a keen interest in family
history and our roots and have held a long standing ambition to attempt to
write a novel based loosely on my own genealogy research. As I took early
retirement last year and now have a little more time on my hands I continued
with the family research that I started way back in the 1980’s, pre-Internet
days. Obviously as you are aware searching genealogical resources is now much,
much easier as birth/marriage and deaths and old parish records are available
online either via free or paid sites. So it was with great enthusiasm that I
gathered information in readiness for my writing.
"I was keen to know more of my mum’s childhood
and teenage years before she married my dad in 1952 and I started looking
through the family mementoes that she had obviously treasured and kept, from
photographs, to her 21st birthday cards and also some letters from an old
friend in Canada. Mum had passed away 10 years previously and I had kept
everything safe and decided recently to read in more detail the letters from
her friend in Canada to see if they could offer any clues to help me with my
research. They actually threw up many questions, and not many answers as the
letters were obviously replying to ones my mum had written, and I only had one
half of the story.
"It occurred to me that mum’s friend Irene could
still possibly be alive as she would be around the age of 90 and I then
wondered if it would be possible to try and track her down and return the
letters and possibly she may have kept the letters that mum had sent to her.
But where and how did I start?!!!!
"The only information that I had was her name: Irene
Molyneaux. I started by compiling a family tree file for her and began
searching for her birth around the same time that my mum had been born in 1929
in and around Preston, Lancashire which is where almost every branch of my
family lived. Fortunately for me there was only one birth in 1928 that matched.
This then provided me with the maiden name of Irene’s mum and I began searching
for a few year’s prior to her birth for a marriage now that I knew both
parent’s surnames.
"Again I was successful in locating a marriage in
1928 in the right location. So I continued to build up a mini family tree file
and I discovered that Irene’s grandfather had the same family surname as my
grandmother and there was a tenuous family connection, a few times removed!
This family connection could’ve been how my mother and Irene knew each other.
"I uploaded the mini tree to Ancestry. After a
few days I received ‘hints’ from Ancestry that other people also shared this
information that I had compiled for my new tree. After many searches I
discovered a marriage between an Irene Molyneaux and a Hubert B Hart in Canada.
I was also able to locate an emigration document for Irene showing a sailing
from Liverpool to Canada for a person of the correct age and location, which
tallied with the information and date on the postcard and letters that I had. I
was unable to contact the owner of this other tree on Ancestry so I started
Googling!
"I put the name Irene Hart into Google and drew a
blank. I then put her husband’s name Hubert Benjamin Hart into a search and it
brought up an obituary site that the family had set up following his death. There
was a short biography and this confirmed that Hubert’s wife Irene had
pre-deceased him:
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing
of Hubert Benjamin Alexander 'Bud' Hart on January 4 2010, at the age of 81
years. Bud is survived by his daughters, Betty (Jim) Krewusik, Donna Dowe, and
Rhonda (Michael) Burke; sons, Grant and Victor; sister, Alice Campbell;
brother, Les; 9 grandchildren; 8 great grandchildren and numerous nieces and
nephews. Bud was predeceased by Irene, his wife of 45 years, and both of his
parents.
"From this information I possibly had the names
of Irene’s children and the daughter’s married names. Armed with this
information I searched on Facebook for Betty Krewusik and immediately located
someone of this name living in Canada, so I thought I may have the right people
to contact. I was getting very excited
by this time as a couple of week’s searching was about to bear fruit I hoped.
"I sent a private message to Irene's daughter apologising
for messaging her out of the blue, but explained that I thought our mothers
could have been friends in their teens and that I had some letters from her mum
which I would like to share with her. I did not hear anything in reply for a
couple of days so tried to send a 'friend request'. This also did not work.
"I went back to the memorial information and
searched for another married daughter and again sent the same message.
"The next day I received a cautious response from
Betty asking how I knew her and found her, as she had no record of my mum or
any letters that her mum had sent. I forwarded the post card from the ship that
she had sent to my mum and she confirmed that it was indeed her mother’s
writing. As you can imagine she was extremely moved by what seemed like
messages from beyond the grave. She told
me that she still missed her mum dreadfully and it was such a comfort to read
her words.
"Over the following 10 days I sent a scanned copy
of each letter and she was overjoyed to read them and described it like reading
a novel and waiting anxiously for the next chapter and apologised that she had
nothing to send me in return. I told her that I wasn’t sending them to her to
get anything back, but just wanted copies of the letters to be returned to the
family. She explained that her mum had a hard life with her dad and very soon
after they were married a fire occurred in their house and her mum lost
everything which connected her to family and friends back in England.
"I said that I wished we could’ve reunited our
mums as they would’ve been thrilled to be back in touch with each other, but
sadly they had both passed. Betty then said that in a strange way our mum’s
have been reunited, but it was through their daughters that we had done this.
"The letters had continued for only about a year
and it is a mystery to know if there were more or why they stopped.
"I asked Betty if her mum had ever returned to
England and she said that she often wanted to but the family were unable to
afford the journey for her, and by me sending the letters to her she had gained
great comfort from them and could not thank me enough for tracking her
down. We have promised to keep in touch
with each other and we are now Facebook friends.
"Many thanks, and hope you enjoyed the story!"
I certainly did Barbara, and I've
no doubt that a lot of other LostCousins members did too; in fact, I suspect that
more than a few of you reading this will have found it inspirational. Have you
solved a similar mystery through detective work? Do let me know how you managed
it!
Note: in the group photo
Irene is at the centre of the back row, and Barbara's mother is on Irene's
right. Ethel, her mum's sister, is second from right in the front row.
Tracing
your mediaeval ancestors
On 26th September Michael
Gandy is giving a one-hour talk at the Society of Genealogists at their London
premises - entitled Tracing your Medieval Ancestors: The Realistic
Possibilities
It's designed for those of us
who have got back to the 1500s on some of our lines, and are wondering about
the feasibility of researching further back. There were only 11 places left
when I last checked, so if you want to attend, you’d better not delay - you can
find out more and book here.
MyHeritage
acquire Promethease
At the end of July I wrote
about the health aspects of DNA testing, and one of the websites I mentioned
was Promethease. This week MyHeritage announced
that they had bought Prothease and its sister website, SNPedia.
MyHeritage are keeping Promethease
separate from their own, clinically-validated health reports; but if you have
tested with another provider, such as Ancestry, the good news is that
Promethease is being made free, though until the end of 2019.
But bear in mind the warnings
I gave in July - you might not like what you are told! Also see the article
below.
The right
to know - and the right not to know
There was an interesting article
in New Scientist last month which reported on two legal cases related to
DNA and health. In London this autumn a woman will be suing a hospital in ther
High Court for failing to warn her that her father had been diagnosed with Huntington's
disease: there is a 50% chance of the mutation being passed on to a child, and the
woman is arguing that had she known of her father's diagnosis she wouldn’t have
had a child herself.
The other case involved a woman
in Germany who sued a doctor for telling her that her ex-husband had been diagnosed
with Huntington's disease, meaning that their children were at risk. The result
was that the woman went into a depressive state - she would rather not have
known.
So if you’re thinking of
taking a genetic health test, or uploading your DNA results to Promethease, you
might first want to consider how you would react in the event that you
discovered some really bad news.
You can't get away from it -
life in the UK is currently dominated by Brexit, and if the UK leaves without a
deal it is even going to have an impact on LostCousins. Currently we don't have
to charge VAT on subscriptions because we're too small, but if the UK leaves
the EU without a deal we'll have to charge VAT on all sales to members who live
in the EU. I don’t think there is any way round it.
Note: 'Deal or No Deal'
was the name of a long-running TV show fronted by Noel Edmonds, who I was at
school with. He went around with my friend Hugh Ferguson's older brother Edwin
(known as Tony); sadly both brothers became drug addicts and were dead within a
few years of leaving school - the 60s and 70s weren't quite as wonderful as some
people think.
You've got
to accentuate the positive
According to this BBC article friendship,
hobbies, and humour are the key to staying positive - and I'd like to think
that with LostCousins you get all three. We all share one of the most
fascinating hobbies there is, and I know that - like me - many of you have made
some wonderful friends as a result of finding distant cousins. As for humour -
I hope that some of the things I write bring a smile to your face!
When I read this news
story about a man who had spent £30,000 in legal fees fighting a £100
speeding fine I was reminded of the time I fought a £15 parking fine imposed by
Harrow Council. It was a genuine mistake on my part - the car park used to be
free - and the parking charge would have been only 20p (this was 30 years ago).
Considering that the fine was 75 times the cost of parking I reasoned that
nobody would deliberately try to evade the charge, so all they were doing was
penalising honest citizens who, like me, had other things on their mind. I
offered to pay a £3 fine and donate the remaining £12 to the Mayor's charity,
which I felt was a fair way of resolving the issue.
The council didn’t think much
of this offer, so I was summoned to appear in court a few weeks later. Convinced
that I was morally right I decided to check the bye-laws, to make sure that the
council were following the law to the letter. It didn’t take long to spot the
flaw in the legislation - whilst the bye-laws stated that parking without a ticket
was an offence, due to a drafting error there was no penalty specified for that
particular offence (although there was for other infringements). Whoops!
I pointed this out to the
council, who pooh-poohed my assertion - then told me they'd got an opinion from
a QC to back up their view. This was very interesting news - they were so
convinced they were right that they were prepared to spend hundreds of pounds consulting
a QC over a £15 parking fine? Hmm.....
I had a feeling that the QC's
advice had not been nearly as reassuring as they claimed - and for them the
stakes were high, because if they lost in court it would not only be bad
publicity, they'd have to repay all of the fines levied for this offence since
the bye-law was introduced. I stood my ground, and on the morning of the court
case I got a phone call from the council, asking me if I would be prepared to
drop the case if they waived the fine. It would have been interesting to have had
my day in court, but I'd achieved my objective, so I accepted the offer and donated
the entire £15 to the Mayor's charity. I got a phone call from the Mayor thanking
me for my donation - and he clearly knew the background to it!
I'll save the story of how I
tangled with British Rail - and won - for another day.
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 2019
Peter Calver
Please do NOT copy or
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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?