Newsletter - 8th November 2017
Military records free online for Remembrance Day weekend ENDS SUNDAY
Census: could mobile phone data replace questions?
Surrogate mother of 'twins' finds one is her own
Know Your Place - West of England
Ancestry offer extra DNA privacy option - get slated
It's a lottery - but it's free
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Military
records free online for Remembrance Day weekend ENDS SUNDAY
From 9am on Wednesday 8th
November until midnight (London time) on Sunday 12th November all UK, Ireland,
Australia, US and Canada
military records are free at Findmypast's UK and US sites. Whilst at this time of the year the focus is inevitably on those
who fell defending their country, we shouldn’t forget those who fought and
survived - after all, weren't they just as brave?
Findmypast has an outstanding
collection of military records, not just for the 1914-18 war but going back to
1760. Of course, you can’t expect all of the records
to have survived - even when it comes to the 20th century only about 40% of the
service records have survived for soldiers who fought in the Great War (thanks
to the Luftwaffe) - but you will find more WW1 records than at any other site.
For example, having searched at another well-known site I thought my paternal
grandfather's service file was amongst the 60% that were lost - but when
Findmypast launched the same collection a few years later I discovered that 7
pages had survived, including his medical records and a form that recorded all
of this postings.
Please use the following
links so that Findmypast know that you read this newsletter - believe me, it
makes a difference!
Census: could
mobile phone data replace questions?
According to a story that has
been reported widely the Office for National Statistics has been experimenting
with the use of mobile phone data to replace traditional census questions about
commuting - this BBC News article is just one
of many in the media.
It seems increasingly likely
that the next census - due in 2021 - will be the last conventional census
carried out in England & Wales (and even though they're run independently,
it's likely that the rest of the UK will follow suit). We've long known that
the heritage value of the census doesn't figure in the ONS calculations - but
perhaps it should?
If the 2021 Census is to be
the last, surely there's all the more reason to ask
respondents to give their place of birth, where known? How else will the family
historians, the social historians, and the local historians of the future be
able to identify and track individuals? No doubt this information resides in
other places, but how accessible will it be - and will it even be kept, given
the extent to which the so-called Data Protection Act leads to data being
destroyed?
The census is all about
people, so isn't it about time that people had a say in the questions that are
asked? Even though a vast majority of the people
responding to the consultation carried out a couple of years ago asked for a
question about birthplace to be added, it was the statisticians who got what
they wanted, not us. I'd like to see the 2021 Census be taken over by the
people of the UK - surely the ONS should be working for us, not us for them? Let's
hear it for the Peoples Census!
Surrogate
mother of 'twins' finds one is her own
A surrogate mother in
California who gave birth to twins later discovered that one of them was her
own child. To read more about this unusual story please see this BBC News article.
Not only has the phrase 'fake
news' made it into the dictionary, it has made it into this newsletter -
everyone who wrote in following the last newsletter agreed that the 'unusual' pencilled
handwriting in the Lutterworth marriage register read "If any" rather
than "Many", so it really wasn't unusual at all (although it was
instructive).
But that's not the only
example of 'fake news' that has made it into this newsletter this year: just
before the mid-April issue was due to be published my attention was drawn to a
story on the website of the Daily Mail
about a husband and wife who discovered they were twins (it was also featured
by many other news sites, including the Daily
Mirror, Fox News and the Huffington Post).
After carefully checking it out on the website of the newspaper that first
published it, I included it in my newsletter, only to discover almost
immediately that not only was the story made up, the newspaper that originally published
it - the Mississippi Herald - didn't
even exist (although, in my defence, it did have a very convincing website, one
that clearly fooled a lot of professional journalists).
Perhaps the reason that both
I and the Daily Mail fell for that
tale is because we'd encountered a very similar story back in January 2008 -
you can read it here.
You might think it's equally unbelievable, but as part of the research for this
article I emailed Lord Alton of Liverpool to verify the report, and he kindly
wrote back "I can confirm that these details were given to me by a High
Court Judge".
Note: people often complain about politicians, but I
emailed Lord Alton at 5.03pm on Saturday, and he replied at 7.18pm the same evening
- that's a faster response from a member of the House of Lords than I'd get
from most of my friends and relatives.
So it seems that the 'fake news' in the non-existent
newspaper was actually inspired by a true story: it reminds me of the way that
fictitious family stories are often seeded by a grain of truth - then, several
generations on, we join the dots up in a way that was never intended. Family
historians operate in an imperfect world - we can't always find the records we
need to provide incontrovertible evidence, and even if we do, they sometimes
turn out to be ambiguous or downright misleading. We have to
try and make sense of the information we have, so there are inevitably going to
be occasions when we inadvertently publish 'fake news' about our ancestors - in
this context publishing could means putting the information on a public tree,
or simply circulating it to cousins who share the same ancestors.
I did something worse than
that in 2015 - I wrote in this newsletter about a discovery I'd made about one
of my Essex ancestors. I'd managed to convince myself that two people with the
same surname, but a different forename, were actually the
same person - and I was over the moon about it, because it explained why I
hadn't been to find my ancestor's baptism.
To be fair, the evidence
seemed pretty convincing: they were both born around
the same time in the same Essex village, they were both wheelwrights (hardly
the most common occupation, as there was usually only one in each village), and
they had both moved to London and remarried to a woman called Mary.
Furthermore, only one of them could be found on each of the censuses from
1841-1861. I suspect some of you would have come to the same conclusion as I
did - that they were indeed one and the same - and for more than two years I
was convinced I was right.
This week I realised that
there were two marriages: my ancestor had married his second wife a few weeks
before the start of civil registration, but his alter ego had married his Mary a year later. Could they still be
the same person - after all, when someone is referred to as a widower there's
no way of knowing how many times he has been widowed? Only if my ancestor had
suddenly forgotten how to write. I clutched at straws - perhaps he'd been
injured in his work, and couldn't sign his name? Hmm… that theory fell apart
when I found the 'other' first marriage. Fortunately, whilst I'd written about
this in my newsletter I don't have a public tree, so it's unlikely anyone has
added the erroneous information to their own tree (I've also added an update to
the 2015 article pointing out my error).
But it just goes to show how
anyone of us can inadvertently spread 'fake news'….
Before I dish up another
selection of interesting entries from the registers let us just revisit the jotting
from the Upton with Fishley register reproduced in
the last
issue. Is it, as some have surmised, a note from the vicar telling his wife
that he is planning to spend time with his mistress - or is it, as Margaret
suggests, a note from a servant indicating that she plans to remain with her
existing employer? I think Margaret's theory is far more plausible, especially
after comparing the handwriting with that in the 1783 register - although
whatever the meaning, I found it hard to understand how a note from 1783 it
came to be on a register page from 1651.
Until, that is, I looked at
other register pages from the same era, and noticed that there were a handful
of baptisms from 1781 and 1783 opposite christenings from 1648. My guess is
that blank pages in the old register were used to record entries when the new
register was unavailable for some reason, and I presume - though I haven't
checked - that the out of place entries were copied into the correct register
at some point. But perhaps you'll spot something I've missed? You'll find the
registers here.
Note: it's worth reminding ourselves that the
abbreviations 'Mr' and 'Mrs' were contractions of 'Master' and 'Mistress',
though they've now acquired a different long form.
An 1831 entry
I found in the burial register of Somerton, Oxfordshire was typical of the way
that significant tragedies were marked. Written in the margin alongside the
records to which it referred (but extending to the entry below, for my 5G uncle
John Butwell) were the poignant words:
"These Three Children were drowned
in attempting to cross the Canal on the Ice, on the Evening of Sunday Feby the
6th & were buried in one grave. Anne Bayliss was
with them but was saved. See No.s
279 & 308 in The Register of Baptisms."
When I looked them up it
transpired that the two baptism entries were from 1839 and 1843 - and related
not to the survivor and her poor drowned sister Hannah, but to two illegitimate
children borne by Anne Bayliss. I wonder, was the
entire note added later, by way of explaining how Anne came to be a 'fallen
woman'? I very much doubt that PTSD would have been recognised and treated in
the early 19th century (although it seems that the symptoms were first noted by
Swiss military physicians in 1678).
It's not unusual to find
illegitimate children in the baptism register, nor for the cleric completing
the register to express his opinion as to the identity of a baby's father, but
when I came across this entry in the records of St Mary the Virgin, High Easter
dated 15th April 1750 I was taken aback:
Extract from D/P 46/1/2
Reproduced by courtesy of the Essex Record Office; all rights reserved
It appears to read "Ann
Daughter of Mary Lines & the Revd Mr John Smith, sworn to be the reputed
Father, late Curate of this Parish" - if so, I would imagine that the Revd
Smith's services were dispensed with pretty quickly when
his indiscretion became apparent. And I thought Grantchester was as racy as it
gets in the cloisters of East Anglia!
When I reviewed
Unseen London I mentioned the
Whitechapel Bell Foundry - and was delighted to learn from Mary in New Zealand that
her great-great-great uncle, William Warskitt, not
only worked at the foundry when Big Ben was made, he was its manager in the 1881
census, at which time he and his wife lived over the shop.
In return I directed Mary
towards the London
Metropolitan Archive, which has a large collection of records for the
foundry business. Business records are sometimes preserved in a local archive -
it’s always worth checking, especially if your ancestor worked for the same
company for a considerable length of time.
Know Your Place -
West of England
Last month I wrote
about the digitised historic Ordnance Survey maps for the whole of England
& Wales that can be viewed at the website of the National Library of
Scotland. John wrote in to remind me that those of us with ancestors from the
West of England can also benefit from another resource, the lottery-funded
website Know Your
Place - West of England which covers the historic counties of
Somerset, Gloucestershire, and Wiltshire (now replaced by seven modern
jurisdictions: Bristol, Bath & North East Somerset, Gloucestershire, North
Somerset, Somerset, South Gloucestershire
and Wiltshire).
Ancestry
offer extra DNA privacy option - get slated
Ancestry have recently come
in for stinging criticism on their own blog after revealing that they're
offering a new privacy option for people who test their DNA with them. But I
think it's a sensible move, and I'm glad to say that DNA experts like Judy
Russell (whose blog,
The Legal Genealogist, is essential
reading), and Debbie Kennett (whose blog
Cruwys News is a great source of
information on genetic genealogy) agree.
In effect the change allows people who test their DNA, but aren't
interested in knowing about matches with genetic cousins, to opt out of the
matching process. The good news for the rest of us is that we're less likely to
waste our valuable time trying to contact people who don't have a family tree,
and have no intention of ever creating one. Now, this isn't the most useful
change Ancestry could have made - I'd much rather be able to filter my matches
according to the tester's country of residence - but it is a step in the right
direction.
Note: some of you might be wondering - why
do people test at all if they're not interested in their family tree? The
reality is that DNA kits are often bought as presents, especially in the run-up
to Christmas, which begins with Black Friday. Others are interested in the
ethnicity estimates which provide a broad-brush picture of their roots (though
not necessarily an accurate one).
Ancestry also revealed that
they have more than 6 million tests in their database, and I'd be surprised if
the figure doesn't reach 7 million early next year.
When you find a 'lost
cousin', whether at LostCousins or anywhere else how do you communicate with
them? Do you treat them like random strangers, shop assistants, or call centre
staff - or do you engage with them in the way that you yourself would like to
be approached?
Once LostCousins has put two
cousins in touch it's entirely up to them what they make of the new connection
- the only time I would get involved was if there was a complaint (so far that
has never happened, thank goodness). But a few words of advice will help to
ensure that things go smoothly…..
The one thing you shouldn't
do when you find a new cousin is ask them questions that they're unlikely to be
able to answer - this would be the best way of ensuring that you don't get a reply!
Instead, imagine you're meeting them for the first time at a family gathering -
stick to simple questions that anyone can answer without having to dig deep in
their files, and you'll gradually lay the foundations for a long-term
relationship. Get it right, and there will be plenty of opportunity later to
ask for names, dates, and birthplaces.
Another important thing to
remember is that it's not just about past research - because you share the same
ancestors and are blocked by the same 'brick walls' it makes sense to
collaborate in some way on future research. This might mean working together,
or it might mean parcelling out the responsibilities in some logical way. It
won't always be perfectly balanced - if you live next door to the Record Office
and your cousin is in a remote part of Australia you might end up doing most of
the primary research. But it's still better than doing it on your own, when you
might have nobody to talk it over with.
Once I've got to know a new
cousin reasonably well I generally ask for their postal address so that I can
add them to my Christmas card list - this ensures that no matter how busy I am
they'll hear from me at least once a year, and it also acts as a reminder for
them to pass on to me any new discoveries they've made (plus details of new
grandchildren and great-grandchildren that I can add to my tree). This might
not work for everyone, but I'm sure you can come up with something that will
work for you and your own cousins.
Get it right and a cousin can
also be a friend - because irrespective of age gaps or differences in
experience, you're both obsessed with the same hobby!
It's a
lottery - but it's free
When you complete your My Ancestors page and click the Search button all
of your entries are compared against all of the existing entries
in the LostCousins database. For the most prolific LostCousins members this
involves over 20 billion comparisons, yet the process only takes a few seconds.
But that's not all - your
entries are also checked against the thousands of new entries that are made
every week, either by new members or by existing members who have found new
relatives on the census. This happens even if you don't log-in - because the
first thing those other members will do after making their own entries is click
the Search button themselves. In
other words, it's a two-way search.
There's no guarantee that
you'll find a new cousin today, tomorrow, next week, or even next month - it's
like a lottery. But the key difference is that IT'S FREE. Each of the entries
on your My Ancestors page is a
ticket, but you don't pay a penny for those tickets to go into the draw, even
though they go into the draw time and time again.
You'd have to be crazy to
tear up your tickets and throw them away, wouldn't you? It would be like
slamming the door in your cousins' faces (and I sincerely hope you wouldn't do
that)!
Tip: make sure that you've completed the 'My
beneficiary' section on your My Details page - there will inevitably come a day
when you’re no longer able to continue researching, and it's better to be
prepared.
I'm not a user of WhatsApp,
and I suspect few of you are, but I thought I should mention the scam messages
that are circulating - currently offering supermarket discounts, but no doubt
the next wave will be completely different. The one thing they all have in
common is a minor difference in the domain name - one that you would never
notice unless it was pointed out.
Even worse, over a million
people were duped into downloading a fake WhatsApp app - again it looked
genuine, but there was an imperceptible difference in the name.
As more and more people use
apps and the Internet routinely and casually the risks are going to increase,
and whilst you or I might not get it wrong, someone in our addressbook,
or on the same WiFi network might be more careless.
Above all make sure that you have copies of your family history data on
read-only media, such as CD ROM or DVD ROM - copies on writeable media such as
USB sticks and portable drives could be compromised.
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 2017
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?