Newsletter - 25th December 2019
A Christmas gift for your distant cousins
FREE
GRO reveal that hundreds of
thousands of index entries are missing EXCLUSIVE
Two dimensions are better
than one
The importance of being Ernest
New Year competition brings
instant results!
Toddler braves traffic to save Dad
Love letters from the 1940s
looking for a home
The Royal Palace on the High
Street EXCLUSIVE
70 is the new 65 according to the
ONS
Ancient DNA recovered from
'chewing gum'
Do apostrophe's still matter?
Its confusing....
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A Christmas gift for your distant cousins FREE
We've all got tens of thousands of distant cousins, though I doubt
there's anyone who's in touch with a few hundred of them. But, as anyone who
has taken an autosomal DNA test (such as Ancestry DNA, Family Finder, 23andMe, or
MyHeritage) will know, the number of cousins you're in touch with increases
dramatically once you've tested - and, of course, they're not cousins picked at
random from the phone book or the electoral register, they're cousins who are
interested in their family tree (otherwise they wouldn’t have taken the test
themselves).
But you’re not the only who has made dozens of new contacts as a
result of testing your DNA - your cousins will have many other connections,
most of them on the parts of their tree that don’t involve you. So how do you
stand out from the crowd? Give your genetic cousins a Christmas gift, a free subscription
to LostCousins that runs all the way from Christmas to Easter.
Note: free subscriptions are only valid for new members - you can’t
upgrade your own account. There are two reasons for this - one is that website
software can't handle it, the other is that without the income from
subscriptions LostCousins couldn't retain its independence, and you'd miss the
valuable insights that you get from this newsletter.
Giving away subscriptions to attract new members is good news for
everyone - the more people who take part in my LostCousins project to connect cousins
around the world, the more 'lost cousins' we'll all find. Documented cousins who
have tested their DNA are key to making sense of your matches with genetic
cousins - when you connect with a 'lost cousin' who has tested their DNA the
value of your own results goes up! Few of us can afford to buy DNA tests for all
of the cousins we know, but it costs nothing to connect with 'lost cousins' who
have already tested (as all of these new members have done).
All you need to do is tell your genetic cousins about the
LostCousins project and give them the code CHRISTMAS (which they should
enter at the bottom of the registration page). You could also mention these
newsletters and especially my DNA Masterclass, which has transformed the trees
of so many family historians by focusing on what really matters, rather than
blinding you with science.
GRO reveal that hundreds of thousands of index entries are missing
EXCLUSIVE
Regular readers of this newsletter will be aware that with the aid
of LostCousins members I was able to identify six blocks of entries, mostly complete
volumes (each comprising thousands of entries) that were missing from the GRO's
online birth and death indexes. In all we identified about 30,000 missing
entries, and almost as many which had been erroneously duplicated in the wrong
quarters.
In the last issue I reported that the GRO had corrected 36,000
death entries which had been indexed with the wrong volume number. However, at
that time I was still waiting to find out what progress, if any, has been made
in relation to the missing entries.
I've now been informed by the GRO that they are aware of 85
volumes of births and 50 volumes of deaths which "are yet to be digitally
data captured". The number of entries in each volume varies, but if an
average of 5000 entries is assumed then the total number of missing entries
will be in the region of 700,000. I understand that there is a project in progress
to resolve the discrepancies, but no timescale has been given, and I suspect
that funding may be an issue.
Fortunately all of these entries are in the contemporary indexes,
which were compiled at the end of each quarter - these are the indexes that you
can access at numerous sites, including FreeBMD, Ancestry, and Findmypast. Nevertheless,
the release of the GRO's own indexes provided a wonderful opportunity for
family historians, because they included information that wasn't in the
original indexes, such as the mother's maiden name (births) and the age at
death.
It's important to remember that we're fortunate to have these indexes
at all - the project to digitise the birth, marriage, and death registers was abandoned
half-way through - whether that was an issue of cost, quality control, or a
combination of the two hasn't been made clear - and the GRO deserve credit for
the fact that it was possible to salvage so much useful information, and for making
it available to the general public.
This latest news arrived in my inbox at 2.45pm on Christmas Eve,
so I've not had a long time to think it through - however, it strikes me that
if the GRO needs people to transcribe and index the missing registers, they
will have volunteers queuing all the way from London to Southport!
Note: if you wish to share the information in this article (or any
other article in the LostCousins newsletter) please share a link to the
newsletter, rather than copying the text. You can link to a specific article by
going to the contents list above, right-clicking, and choosing 'Copy link'.
Two dimensions are better than one
We live our lives in three dimensions, but it's surprising how many
family historians are one-dimensional in their approach. Even amongst the
LostCousins membership there are a few who relentlessly plough the same furrow,
never once looking around to see what clues there might be scattered around.
The best family historians are continually looking from side to
side, and disappearing down side tracks to see what's down there. Partly it's curiosity,
but mainly it's the result of experience and/or training - our ancestors had
families, friends, and work colleagues just as we do, so when we ignore what
was going on around our ancestors we risk missing vital clues.
When we're researching before 1837 (the introduction of civil
registration in England & Wales - it was later in other parts of the UK)
there's rarely sufficient information included in a baptism register entry for
us to be 100% certain that we've found the right entry. Although some forenames
and surnames are rare across the country and throughout history, most of those
names are nevertheless fairly common in certain places, or certain families, or
at certain times. For example, I was in my 60s before I met another person who
shared my surname, but in the Suffolk village where my great-grandfather was
born it was more common than Smith.
The one-dimensional approach, focusing on the direct line, simply can't
work reliably - and even worse, you may never know that you've gone wrong. In
genealogical terms, nothing could possibly be worse than researching the wrong
line - no wonder some people are so scared of taking a DNA test!
When there's only one entry that fits, surely it has to be the
right one? If only the life of a family historian was so simple! The baptism of
my great-great-great grandmother Elizabeth Keehner isn't recorded in the
register of St Mary Magdalen, Bermondsey - unlike the baptisms of her sisters
and brothers, who were all younger. Indeed, I couldn't even be certain who her parents
were, because having been born c1793 she doesn't appear in any censuses with
her supposed parents and siblings, and because she died before 1851 Census all
we know from the 1841 Census is that she wasn't born in Middlesex (which at
that time included London). Bermondsey might be in London today, but in those days
it was in Surrey - so the 1841 Census doesn’t help very much.
Keehner is an adaptation of the German surname Kuehner, and the spelling
varies quite wildly until the 1830s (the baptism of Sarah on Christmas Day
1794, precisely 225 years ago, shows the surname as 'Keenar'. Furthermore, in
the Bermondsey register the father is sometimes shown as Jacob (as in Sarah's
case), sometimes as John Jacob. This meant that the baptism of Elizabeth Keener,
daughter of Jacob Keener at St Peter & St Paul, Mitcham, Surrey in February
1793 seemed like a very good fit for my ancestor. Indeed, this baptism is
recorded in many online trees, and even appeared in my own tree (which wasn't
online) for over a decade.
But in truth, I was never totally convinced, since I couldn’t find
any other connection with Mitcham. The final nail in the coffin came when
Surrey registers went online at Ancestry, and I discovered the burial of an
Elizabeth Keener (infant) at Weybridge, Surrey in May 1793, and since there
were no other Elizabeth Keener baptisms in Surrey that I could find it seemed
very likely that this was the child who had been baptised at Mitcham.
My current theory is that my ancestor was baptised at Bermondsey,
but her baptism was not included in the register because it would have incurred
Stamp Duty - several of my ancestors who were born between 1783-1794 don’t appear
in baptism registers, and I'm sure my family is far from unique in this
respect. Sometimes the most likely baptism entry isn’t the one you've found, it’s
the one that doesn’t exist. Thank goodness we can now overcome missing records
using science.
Of course, the primary reason I had wanted to find Elizabeth
Keehner's baptism was to confirm who her parents were. Fortunately her mother left
a will which mentioned all of her daughters and, because she included the names
of their husbands, I could be absolutely sure that the Elizabeth referred to in
the will was my ancestor. But most of our ancestors didn’t leave wills, or - if
they did - their wills didn’t go to probate. But there's often other evidence to
be found - in this case the sisters were witnesses at each other's weddings,
which - whilst not absolutely conclusive - was strong supporting evidence.
We're all at risk of falling into traps during our research -
family history is a bit like driving, once they've discarded their L-plates,
everyone thinks they’re a better driver than average. The traps in your tree won’t
be exactly the same as the traps in mine, but the one thing you can be sure of
is that the more confident you are that you can avoid the traps, the more likely
it is that you’re wrong - pride comes before a fall.
So don’t be a one-dimensional research. Instead look around -
research the branches of your tree, and continue looking even when you think
you've found the answer. I made the mistake of stopping when I found the 1769
marriage of my great-great-great-great-great grandparents John Sheiring and
Anne Cobbet in 1769, which described them both as single. But one of my distant
cousins was more persistent: she also found their marriage licence, which said
that Anne was a widow - which makes a BIG difference. Now I know that I should
be looking for a marriage, not a baptism.
The importance of being Ernest
Earlier this month I introduced you to Ernest Cawcutt, whose
notebook from World War 2 has miraculously survived, proving facts and figures
that 80 years on would be hard to find (if, indeed, any other records still
exist). Lots of people were in the right place at the right time, but the importance
of Ernest's contribution is that he wrote it all down.
In my first article I reported on the shortage of Christmas 1941,
and compared the limited fare on offer with the cornucopia of delights at my
local supermarket. Things hadn't changed much by the follow year:
Fresh
fruit was once again unavailable; poultry was still dear and scarce. On the
bright side, sultanas and prunes were plentiful, though subject to rationing -
so Christmas cakes and Christmas puddings would have been made.
Fresh fruit was still scarce at Christmas 1943, but there was some
dried fruit (still rationed), and fruit cordials were plentiful. Ernest write
of poultry that there was "none on open market". I'm not sure whether
he means that is was only available on the black market. Vegetables, however,
were plentiful.
Christmas 1940 was in the middle of the Blitz - 3,793 civilians
were killed by enemy bombing in the month of December alone, more than half of
them women or children. But tragic as those statistics are, they were
a considerable improvement on the months of September and October - over 6,000 civilians
lost their lives in each of those months, and in November it was still over
4,500.
Christmas Day and Boxing Day brought a brief respite - supposedly
because of the weather, but Ernest commented in his notebook that it "looks
like an unofficial truce". However it didn’t last long - he records that
at 6.37pm on December 27th the air raids recommenced, causing considerable
damage in London, and it was even worse on 29th December, when the Guildhall
and many churches were gutted.
According to Ernest the last time the air raid sirens sounded in
London was at 7.50am on 28th March 1945, and the 'All Clear' was just 7 minutes
later. At 12 noon on 2nd May the National Air-Raid Warning System was
discontinued. (VE Day was on 8th May)
In his notebook Ernest records 1225 air raid alerts in London during
the 6 years of the war; the official figure that was given out was 1228, but my
money is on Ernest getting it right!
Toddler braves traffic to save Dad
This story is
nothing to do with family history - but it is about family, and I suspect most
of us could do with some heart-warming stories given what's happening in the
world.
New Year competition brings
instant results!
It's only 4 days since the New Year Competition was announced, and
already I'm receiving appreciative emails from members who have found new
cousins as a direct result of taking part. In fact, the benefits of completing
your My Ancestors page are so blindingly obvious that you might question
why I have to give away prizes in order to encourage members to do their bit!
It's all about inertia. We all have such busy lives that we need
an incentive to take on an additional responsibility, even one that brings such
enormous benefits. It's a bit like people who stick with the same energy or
broadband supplier for years on end because they can’t face the hassle of
switching, even though it will save them £100 a year or more (that's something
else that only takes about an hour when you set your mind to it).
Remember,
all you need to do in order to take part is add relatives to your My
Ancestors page. Every direct ancestor (ie someone you’re descended from) or
blood relative (a deceased cousin)
counts as an entry in the competition, and those from the 1881 Censuses (England
& Wales, Scotland, or Canada) count double.
In the last issue I revealed the first of the many prizes - the
chance to win one of 5 day tickets for Family Tree Live 2020, which
takes place at Alexandra Palace in April.
The next prize to be unveiled is something really special - a copy
of The Death Certificate, signed and dedicated by the author, Stephen
Molyneux. If it was me I'd keep it somewhere very safe and read the Kindle
version instead - who knows how valuable it might become in the future?
If you want to buy a copy please use these links - as I mentioned
in the last newsletter I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but the first
book in the series is a firm favourite of mine:
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca
Love letters from the 1940s looking
for a home
All too often family correspondence passes out of the family - but
at least this collection
of love letters has survived. Are there relatives out there who would like to
have them back? I'd like to think so.
The Royal Palace on the High
Street EXCLUSIVE
You may know Newmarket as the home of horseracing, but what few
people know is that it became famous for
horseracing only because it was patronised by the Royal Family who built not
one, but two Royal Palaces in Newmarket!
James
I of England (James VI of Scotland) visited the area so he could hunt and built
the first palace at Newmarket in 1606, the year that Guy Fawkes was tried and executed for trying to blow up the Palace of
Westminster. Charles I also regularly visited Newmarket with his son - who became
Charles II after the Interregnum which followed the execution of King Charles
in 1649 (at one point he had been held captive in Newmarket). Unfortunately,
there are no remains of this first palace as it fell into ruin during the
Interregnum and was ultimately demolished. However, after the Restoration,
Charles II returned to Newmarket and brought with him his passion for
horseracing, which led him to commission a new and larger palace, part of which
remains today as ‘Palace House’.
Palace House is now part of The National Heritage Centre for
Horseracing and Sporting Art – which, as well as housing an Art Gallery in the
former Royal Palace, also boasts historic stables with real horses, and family-friendly
interactive displays (including a horseracing simulator you can ride) in the
Kings Yard and the National
Horse Racing Museum in Trainers House.
Amazingly, during a recent refurbishment an original sash window
was discovered on what is now an internal wall. The window, estimated to have
been installed in 1671, is the oldest counter-balanced sash window in England,
and with the cottage Charles bought for his mistress at 4 Palace Street visible
from this window, I wonder if they used to communicate with each other in
secret?
There is also rumoured to be a tunnel from the Palace to Nell
Gwyn’s cottage but this has not yet been discovered. All in all, it's very
interesting historic site which few people know about - well worth visiting
even if you are not a horseracing fan.
Note: if you have ancestors of relatives who were in the
horseracing industry, you'll be interested to know that the museum is planning
to open its Library one day a week, starting in early 2020, and visitors to the
Library will be able to access documents from the archives (by arrangement).
70 is the new 65 according to the ONS
According to the Office for National Statistics people aged 70
today feel just as healthy as those of 65 would have done in the 80s and 90s. As
I'm going to reach the 70 mark during 2020 I'm looking forward to feeling
reinvigorated!
Ancient DNA recovered from
'chewing gum'
This Guardian article
about the recovery of human DNA from birch tar that had been chewed by a young
woman 6,000 years ago opens up all sorts of possibilities.
Technology has moved a long way, but when a member wrote to me
recently asking what chance there was of recovering DNA from her mother's
ashes, I couldn’t come up with a hopeful answer.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that her mother's DNA is lost
for ever - most people will have left DNA samples behind, perhaps on a hair
brush, or when they licked a postage stamp. Perhaps in a century's time family
historians will be lamenting the invention of self-adhesive stamps?
The National Genealogical Society in the US has launched a $100 online
course entitled Understanding and Using DNA Test Results. Alternatively you
can rely on the tried and trusted information you get in the LostCousins
newsletter - you'll save $100, and I'll only tell you about the things you actually
need to know!
Even better, if you do it my way, you can use the money you save
to buy a DNA test for another member of your family.
Do apostrophe's still matter? Its
confusing....
The Apostrophe Protection Society has closed, and this BBC article asks
whether this spells the beginning of the end so far as English grammar is concerned.
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 are one of the many who will discover a new
cousin this Christmas - it's the gift you can't buy in any store!
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2019 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?