Newsletter 25th
December 2021
A present for the
family historians who've yet to discover LostCousins!
Oliver Twist
workhouse to become luxury apartments?
Growing Up In London 1930-1960 FREE BOOK
Legacies: a local
history archive
Past issues of the Radio
Times (1923-2009)
Waitrose 'store' with
a difference
Checked your spam
folder recently?
How Megan knocked
down her 'brick wall'
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 15th December) 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!
There
isn't much good news around at the moment for
example, in some parts of England 1 in 10 of the population currently have
COVID-19, and the numbers are even worse in certain age brackets, notably 2-11
and 25-34 (so beware if you're planning to meet up with grandchildren over the
holiday period).
On
the bright side, sitting at home in front of your computer researching your
family tree is not only a worthwhile pursuit but a very safe way of spending
the holiday period. It's something that honours your ancestors, as well
providing an archive that future generations can draw upon.
Until
the end of December many people around the world can access Ancestry Library
Edition free at home if they belong to their local library (I'm told that at
least one library in Canada has negotiated an extension to 5th March 2022). But
the good news is that you dont need any subscriptions at all to take
part in the LostCousins project all but 2 of the 9 censuses we use at
LostCousins are free online, including one from each country whose censuses we
use.
STAY
SAFE CONNECT VIRTUALLY PROTECT THE HEALTH SYSTEM
A present for the family historians who've yet to discover
LostCousins
Although
LostCousins has been around since 2004 there are still some family historians
who've yet to discover the site and many more who've yet to realise how
collaborating with like-minded people who happen to share the same ancestral
lines can solve mysteries, knock down 'brick walls', and add colour to our
ancestors' lives.
You
can help them advance their research by not only telling the family historians
you know about LostCousins, but also by giving them OMICRON not the
virus, but the code that will unlock a free upgrade that lasts until the end of
January 2022.
Note:
free upgrade codes only work on the registration page, and
can only be used by new members joining for the first time. However, as an
existing member you can earn yourself a free 12 month LostCousins subscription when
a new member who joins on your recommendation wins a prize in my competition,
which runs up to 31st January 2022 (see the last newsletter for full details of
the competition) either invite them using your My Referrals page, give them
your personal referral link (on your My Summary page), or ask them to enter
your membership number (also on your My Summary page) when registering.
Oliver Twist workhouse to become luxury apartments?
The
Strand Union workhouse in London's Cleveland Street is likely to have been well
known to Charles Dickens, who lived just a few doors away at 10 Norfolk Street,
now 22 Cleveland Street, from 1829 before moving the short distance to Fitzroy
Street in 1832.
Prior
to 1836 it was known as the St Paul Covent Garden workhouse, as it served the
parish of St Paul, Covent Garden, under the old Poor Law. Oliver Twist
was published in parts between 1837-39, so if it did provide inspiration for
Dickens' story its likely that it was based on its earlier incarnation (though
by all accounts it was no more hospitable in later decades).
By
the time I was working in Fitzrovia, in 1976, the building had become part of
Middlesex Hospital but according to an article
this week in the New York Times
(you may need to provide an email address to read it), it is now
destined to become luxury apartments.
However that article seems to have been recycled from earlier articles published
in 2017 when planning permission for the development was granted. According to
the website
of Origin Housing, a social landlord, 40 affordable homes will be made available,
though what counts as affordable in central London is an interesting question!
You can read more about the workhouse at Wikipedia,
and at Peter Higginbotham's wonderful Workhouses website. You can also
read Oliver Twist free at the Project Gutenburg site.
Note: in the 1960s I
saw the musical Oliver! in London, around the same time as it launched on
Broadway with Davy Jones (later of The Monkees)
playing the Artful Dodger. There's now only one Monkee
still living, Micky Dolenz, who also played the title
role in the TV series Circus Boy a great favourite of mine in the 1950s.
Growing Up In
London 1930-1960 FREE BOOK
If
you log-in to your LostCousins account and go to the Peter's Tips page you
can download a free copy, in PDF format, of Peter Cox's wonderful compilation
of London memories.
Now
out-of-print, even a second-hand copy of this book would cost you almost £20 at
Amazon. Whether or not you grew up in London, if you were born between 1920 and
1960 this book will bring back memories!
Note:
Peter Cox is also the author of Spedan's Partnership, the story of John Lewis & Waitrose
(see the article below). Many thanks to Peter Cox for making the PDF version of
his book available.
Legacies: a local history archive
There
are some gems hidden away on the BBC website: one of them is Legacies, a repository
for local history from across the UK. What I found most interesting were the
stories submitted by members of the public, such as the true story
of Adolf Hitler's stay in Liverpool just before the Great War, and the history
of the 'Forest Group' of hospitals, built around Epping Forest just outside
London.
Past issues of the Radio Times (1923-2009)
Programme
Index
(formerly The Genome Project) is a record of more than 10 million BBC television
and radio programmes from 1923-2009, with links to almost a quarter of a
million recordings. Drawn primarily from the BBC's archive of historic issues
of the Radio Times the information has been extensively updated since it
was first published.
For
example, last week a LostCousins member wrote to me about her grandfather, who
was a singer in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s by searching the Radio Times I was not only able to find that his
singing was broadcast on 6LV (the Liverpool radio station) in June 1927, but
also the titles and composers of the works that he performed.
Some
of my earliest memories are of programmes I listened to on the wireless in the
days when the choice was between the Home Service and the Light Programme and
I suspect that I'm not the only one. You'll find this wonderful free resource here.
Waitrose 'store' with a difference
Waitrose Memory Store is a
repository for photos, memories, stories and
historical information related to the grocery chain which is part of the
employee-owned John Lewis Partnership.
I
started shopping at the Saffron Walden branch in 1993 at that time it had
only been open for 8 years. An advertisement for the opening on Tuesday 5th
November 1985 shows that the store closed at 6pm (5.30pm on Saturday), except
on Thursdays and Fridays when it stayed open until 8pm and on Sundays it didn't
open at all. Things are very different these days the store is open from 7am
to 9pm from Monday to Saturday, and 10am to 4pm on Sundays.
If you've ever
wondered how the name came about, you can read on the site about Wallace
Wyndham Waite, whose middle-class family fell on hard times, resulting in him being
apprentice to a grocer on the day preceding his 13th birthday. In 1903 or 1904 he
went into partnership with Arthur Edward Rose and David Taylor, opening a grocers shop in High Street, Acton though Taylor left the
partnership in 1906, as you can see from this notice placed in the London
Gazette (contains public sector information licensed under the Open
Government Licence v3.0).
And
so, when Waite and Rose decided to incorporate their business in 1908 they chose the name Waitrose for the limited company; it
was nearly 30 years later that the Waitrose grocery shops became part of the
John Lewis Partnership.
Note:
there are two other 'memory stores', one for John Lewis,
and one for the John Lewis Partnership you can access them via a dropdown
menu at the top right of the Waitrose Memory Store site.
Checked your spam folder recently?
I
have an email program on my computer that downloads my emails automatically, so
I rarely go online to pick up my email. The program uses AI to identify spam emails and this works very well I check the spam folder on
my computer occasionally but its unusual to find genuine emails in there.
What
I didn't know, however, is that in late 2019 the company that manages my personal
email had started weeding out emails they considered were spam,
and putting them in an online junk folder where they remained for just
30 days before being deleted. I've no idea how many genuine emails were lost as
a result of this new practice being introduced, but it must be a significant
number because, when I logged into webmail and checked the junk folder I found several emails in there that definitely
weren't spam, including two from the company that manages my email, one of them
an invoice! Bearing in mind that anything over 30 days old would have been
deleted, I suspect that as many as 100 genuine emails were lost.
I
have been able to change my settings so that any emails they think are spam
get flagged, but are otherwise treated the same way as
other incoming emails, and downloaded to my computer.
Your
email provider wont necessarily offer the same options, but it's very likely
that you have an online spam or junk folder though I suspect that, like me,
many of you won't know that such a folder exists. Let's face it, I've been programming
computers for 45 years and sending emails for 30 years so if I can get it wrong,
what chance do less experienced users have?
If
genuine emails are allowed to remain in your online spam/junk folder it not
only increases the likelihood that future emails that look similar are also treated
as spam, it can also have a knock-on effect for other
people and not just those who use the same email provider, because there are
communal databases (such as Spamhaus) which different
email providers refer to, and contribute to.
On
Thursday I received an email from a member who had changed her email address in
early October, but hadn't received any newsletter
emails from me since then, despite updating the primary email address on her My
Details page. I'm willing to bet that when she logged into Gmail and
clicked All Mail she discovered that my emails
had been treated as spam.
I
frequently get emails from members enquiring about my health they're concerned
because they haven't received any newsletters for a month or more. Others are worried that I've removed them
from the mailing list for some reason this doesnt happen.
In
every single case I've been sending the emails, but they havent been getting
through. These are isolated cases, but I know from experience that for everyone
who writes in there could be a hundred more who don't.
So,
if you use an email program on your computer, rather than going online to collect
your email, please log into webmail and check how your provider deals with spam
you could well be as shocked as I was!
How Megan knocked down her 'brick wall'
I
mentioned recently that Megan would be explaining how she knocked down one of
her oldest 'brick walls' by a combination of old-fashioned research and
new-fangled DNA technology. Here's what she told me earlier in the month:
"It's great to read of your new
competition (and imaginative prize list) in the newly arrived newsletter. I'll
be making some additions, having thought until recently that my chances of
being able to add further blood relatives were poor.
"Two illegitimacies have long given me
two 'brick walls' in my paternal line. But finally a
DNA match has demolished one of these. The elusive Robert HANNANT, stonemason,
who was named in North Walsham in 1832 as the father of my illegitimate great-grandfather,
has shown up as Robert HANNETT, stonemason, in the 1851 Census in Lincolnshire,
born in Little Plumstead and now married with children. That this is the same
person, while tantalising, would not be beyond reasonable doubt on the
documentary evidence alone. But I have a DNA match of appropriate size with one
of the Hannett descendants, plus numerous matches
with descendants of the appropriate family of Norfolk Hannants.
"My earlier failure to find a
documentary link earlier was not helped by Robert's baptism in Great Plumstead
having been transcribed as Robert Stannard. I'm still tracing the Hannett progeny (some in the USA) as well as the lateral Hannant lines from Norfolk."
Subsequently
Megan passed on some information which might encourage some who have previously
been reluctant to embrace this new technology:
"Through the Society of Australian Genealogists I've recently been participating with others
keen on combining analysis of DNA results with their traditional documentary
research. A subgroup of us are also beginning to blog
about where this takes us, guided by a couple of people who are already
seasoned bloggers. I've barely got started but plan to give examples not only
of using DNA to reach beyond 'brick walls' but also to examine the process of
validating one's paper pedigree with DNA evidence. Misattributed parentage
seems to be rather more common than some might formerly have thought!"
Knock
down that 'brick wall has allowed Megan to go back more than just one
generation:
"This now gets me two generations
further back to my great-great-great-great grandparents James Hannant and Susanna Hempenstall.
And these two explain the numerous DNA small matches I turned up using your
technique of searching for the Hannant surname in trees
of matches. Without having found the right Robert I was unable to see how they
might relate to me. But now I do, and this gives me nice corroboration that my
equating Robert Hannant to Robert Hannett
is correct."
Ancestry
are discounting their test by 25% in the UK until midnight
tomorrow (26th December), and their Boxing Day sale in Australia has already
begun it ends on 29th December. In the US the sale continues until the end of
the month.
Please
use the links below so that you can support LostCousins when you make your
purchase:
Ancestry.co.uk (UK only) - Ancestry DNA
reduced from £79 to £59 (plus shipping) ENDS 26/12
Ancestry.com.au (Australia & New
Zealand) Ancestry DNA reduced to $85 (plus shipping) ENDS 29/12
Ancestry.com (US only) Ancestry
DNA reduced to $59 (plus taxes and shipping) ENDS 31/12
Congratulations
to all of the competition entrants who won an opportunity to attend my Zoom presentation
on Wednesday and commiserations to those who missed out, or
had diary clashes. It was amazing to see members in Australia and New Zealand
who had got up in the middle of the night to attend that's the sort of
enthusiasm that can knock down 'brick walls'!
I'm
hoping to schedule another DNA presentation in the New Year, and once the time
and date are fixed I'll add it to the My Prizes
page (remember, you need to log-in to your account to see any of the
personalised pages, whether it's My Ancestors, My Cousins, My Details, or My Prizes).
It's
so easy to enter this year's competition all you need to do is add relatives
from the censuses to your My Ancestors page, so that your own cousins have a better chance to connection in order to compare past findings and collaborate on future
research.
For more details and a full list of prizes please see
this article
in the last newsletter, but I'd like to remind you that this year, for the
first time, you can win more than one prize and there are more prizes than
ever before, so there will also be more prize winners than in previous years.
Many thanks to Baroness Scott, Professor Rebecca
Probert, Dr Janet Few, Dr Donald Davis, Sarah Williams, Chris Paton, John D
Reid, and author Nathan Dylan Goodwin for generously donating their time,
also to Findmypast for providing a 12 month subscription
to the British Newspaper Archive and The Genealogist for offering a 12 month Diamond
subscription. Whether you win the opportunity to attend an exclusive
presentation, a one-to-one brick wall-busting session, or a subscription it's
just a bonus because the real prize is the opportunity to collaborate with
more cousins than ever before.
This year I decided not to make Christmas puddings or
Christmas cake I simply didnt have the time, what with organising the
competition.
But because we still had some apples left from this
year's crop I decided to make a double batch of fat-free mincemeat, once again
using this recipe,
though I substituted apple juice for the cider, and home-made sloe gin for the
brandy and also omitted the ground cloves because I couldnt find them in
time. (It turned out they were right at the back of the cupboard, but I'm very
happy with the outcome, so might well omit them in future years.)
Today (Christmas Day) we're having beef, not turkey
I'm hoping that my brother and his wife will be able to come for a more traditional
meal at some point, pandemic-permitting. (We all have a good supply of lateral
flow tests, not that we're coming into contact with
anyone.)
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......
Enjoy yourself over the holiday period, but please dont take
needless risks either with your health or the health of others because there
are many more Christmases to come!
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2021 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?
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of the links in this newsletter and elsewhere on the website are affiliate
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