Newsletter - 16 August 2011
Cemetery scandal in east London
Essex Record Office to launch
subscription service
Where did they marry?
TV companies seek help
WDYTYA continues to work its magic
Help us find new members
The future of the
census?
74 years of marriage - and counting!
National Archives lose priceless
documents
Have you discovered the BBC online archive?
The Genealogist adds Australian records
Transportation of convicts
'Digital Microfilm' from TNA
Wills and probate
Are twins good for you?
LostCousins is free until the end of
August
Peter's Tips
About
this newsletter
The LostCousins newsletter is published
twice a month on average, and all LostCousins members are notified by email
when a new edition is available (unless they opt out). To access the previous
newsletter (dated 28 July 2011) please click here. Each newsletter links to
the one before, and you can go back to February 2009
when the newsletter first went online; there will shortly be an online index to
articles thanks to the sterling efforts of members Elizabeth and, especially,
Gill.
Whenever possible links are
included to the websites or articles mentioned in the newsletter (they are
highlighted in blue or purple and underlined,
so you can't miss them). Note: when you click on a link a new browser window or
tab will open so that you don’t lose your place in the newsletter - if you are
still using Internet Explorer you may need to enable pop-ups (if a link seems
not to work, look for a warning message at the top of your browser window).
Cemetery scandal in east London
This week's issue of New Scientist includes an article which begins
as follows:
"In
an out-of-the-way corner of a cemetery in east London, the graves are being dug
up. Bodies are lifted out of their coffins, placed in hessian
bags and lowered into a communal grave nearby. Once full - it can take 80
corpses - it will be covered over and a new one opened... If this popular
graveyard is to remain open, the only solution is to use old plots. So they are
unearthing bodies at the rate of about 10 per week. So far, over 300 have been
moved, and another 1000 graves are earmarked for reuse."
I very much doubt that there has been
any attempt to contact descendants of the people whose graves are being
desecrated. Many of my ancestors lived - and died - in east London, so I can
assure you that I'll do my best to find out which cemetery the story relates
to.
If you are aware of similar 'recycling' in
progress or planned at other cemeteries please let me know.
Essex Record Office to launch
subscription service
Essex Records Office recently announced
an online subscription service that will offer much more than is currently
available free:
"Essex
Record Office will be launching Essex Ancestors on 30 August. This new service
will offer unlimited pay-to-browse access to Essex parish registers and many
wills, giving customers fuller and wider access to our holdings from the
comfort of their homes. Parish register coverage will extend from at least 1538
to 1837 with the period 1837 to the present partly included at go-live date or
planned imminently. Marriages within the last 50 years will be excluded, in
compliance with government guidelines, however."
It's interesting that they have chosen
to 'go it alone' rather than work with Ancestry or findmypast. Personally I'd
rather have access through one of my existing subscriptions than have to sign
up for a separate service - just imagine how complicated it would be if every
county did this!
Tip:
currently you can still get free online access to some of the Essex registers
when you click here.
Where did they marry?
The Guild of One-Name Studies is
branching out with a site called Marriage
Locator, which aims to identify the precise church in which a marriage took
place by making use of the fact that records for a particular church are
recorded consecutively in the GRO records.
To make use of the free service you must
first identify the marriage in the GRO indexes - for example, here's the record
from findmypast for the marriage of my great-great grandparents Robert Wells
and Ann Driesen:
When I type this information into
Marriage Locator it tells me:
I already have a copy of the marriage certificate
- I've had it for years - but if I didn't, this would allow me to go to the records
office and get a copy of the register entry much more cheaply.
Note:
in this case the name of the church and the name of the registration district
are the same - but this is most unusual.
You'll find an explanation of how
Marriage Locator works here. Currently
most of the records are from east London, but the intention seems to be to
cover the whole of England & Wales eventually.
TV companies seek help
Both the BBC and ITV were advertising in
the August issue of The
Oldie looking for members of the public to help them with forthcoming
series.
ITV want to hear from anyone who was
born in Britain on 10th May 1946: they are developing a series exploring the
lives of people who were born on exactly the same day. If you're interested in
taking part email ParallelLives@itv.com
and include your contact details.
The BBC are carrying out research for a
documentary and want to hear from elderly people who are considering going to
live with their family (or from people who are thinking about taking an elderly
relative into their home). If you are able to help please contact Jenny on 020
8008 3825 or email jenny.williams@bbc.co.uk
WDYTYA continues to work its magic
The very first Who Do You Think You Are? series
aired in 2004, when LostCousins was just a few months old - so I've always had
a special affinity with the programme. Now it's back for another series, and
this week's programme features a celebrity who has had more influence than most
on modern culture - JK Rowling, author of the Harry
Potter books.
Tip:
to mark the occasion findmypast are offering 10% of all subscriptions when you
take out a new subscription before 24th August using the code WDYTYA811 - so if you missed out on my
exclusive offer last month there's another opportunity to save. Click here to go the findmypast site - you'll need
to log-in or register before you enter the code.
Help us find new members
With Who Do You Think You Are? on our TV screens
it's a great time to attract new members to LostCousins, but I can't do it
without your help. Unlike big commercial websites like Ancestry, findmypast,
and Genes Reunited which have marketing staff and - it would seem - enormous advertising
budgets, there's only me here!
What's in it for you? Simple arithmetic
shows that because there are over 86,000 LostCousins members already, every new
member who joins must be a 'lost cousin' to several existing members. In other
words, the more new members join, the more 'lost cousins' existing members like
you and me will discover. Of course, it probably won't be the people I invite
to join who turn out to be my cousins, or the people you invite to join who turn out to be
your cousins - but if we each do what
we can then everyone will gain.
To encourage new members to join LostCousins
I've arranged for them to be able to use the same code as in the findmypast
offer above to get a free upgrade to LostCousins subscriber status that lasts
until the end of September - that's plenty of time for them to complete their My Ancestors page and link up with their
new cousins. The code must be entered on the Registration form - it can't be
added later.
Tip:
new members can use the WDYTYA811 code to get a LostCousins upgrade whether or
not they subscribe to findmypast! (See below for offers that apply to existing
members)
Remember that when you use your My Referrals page to invite friends or
relatives to join you can include a short note of your own - so you can use
this to tell them about the offer code. And if the people you're inviting are
relatives, you can get them started by indicating which of the relatives on
your My Ancestors page they share
(make sure you use Refer a Relative,
and not Refer a Friend, otherwise you
won't have this option).
The future of the
census?
Belatedly reading a June issue of The Economist I came across an article
which summarised the ways in which censuses around the world are changing. For
example, after 24 years with no censuses in Germany - thanks to the anti-census
lobby there - this May they surveyed just 10% of the population, collecting the
rest of the data from national employment records and local population registers.
I learned that in all 17 European
countries are using government databases as a source of census data, and that
in 9 of these countries they will be the only
source of information. The British government plans to decide by 2014 whether
we too will go down that route.
One of the reasons put forward is to
save money - but it seems that some countries in Asia have managed to keep the
cost down despite running conventional door-to-door censuses. For example, whereas
the last US census cost approximately $42 per person, this year's census in
India cost about 40c per head and last year's Chinese census a reputed $1 for
each of the 1.34 billion people in the country. True, wages are considerably
lower in those countries, but that surely isn't the only explanation for the
enormous difference in cost?
According to the Beyond
2011 page at the Office of National Statistics website there will be a 12
week public consultation about the future of the census this autumn - this is
likely to be our only chance to influence the future of the UK census, so we
must grab the opportunity when it arises!
I will let you know when the consultation
document is published.
74 years of marriage - and counting!
My wife and recently went to Bruges in
Belgium for a long weekend, and whilst we were there we discovered the Japanese
Garden of Ostend (Shin Kai Tei).
However the real find was Rene, the gardener, who told us not only about his
500 year-old bonsai tree, but also his great-grandparents - who at the ages of
107 and 111 have been married for an amazing 74 years!
National Archives lose priceless
documents
According to a story in the Daily
Telegraph last week 1600 folders of documents have been reported
missing at the National Archives in the past 6 years, including regimental
diaries, medal records, letters from Winston Churchill, and papers from the
courts of Henry VII, Queen Elizabeth I, and King Charles I.
Not all have been lost for ever - some
have simply been misfiled - but so far less than half of them have been found
despite "a continual programme to search for lost items".
Have you discovered the BBC online
archive?
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands,
of TV and radio programmes in the BBC's online
archive. I've just been listening to survivors from the Titanic, and to H G
Wells bemoaning the economic conditions in 1932; I've also been watching a Man Alive programme from 1966 which
examined the question in Britain. Before that I heard the words of evacuees
from September 1939 - children who had been uprooted from their city homes and
transported by train to the countryside, where they would be less exposed to
Hitler's bombs.
For copyright reasons some of the
programmes aren't available outside the UK, but many are. There are also numerous
written documents - two interesting ones that I stumbled across were the cover
of the Radio Times from 16th November
1947, showing the Royal couple who would marry that Thursday, and extracts from
the diary of John Reith, the first Director General
of the BBC, giving his account of the events surrounding the Abdication of King
Edward VIII in 1936.
I could have spent all day browsing -
but then you wouldn't have had this newsletter!
The Genealogist adds Australian records
Convict lists, musters, and the New
South Wales 1828 census have been added at The Genealogist,
although they are only available to Diamond subscribers.
Transportation of convicts
My first 'encounter' with a transported
convict was in the pages of Dickens - you may recall that Magwitch,
Pip's secret benefactor, was transported to New South Wales. However, Australia
hadn't always been the destination for Britain's unwanted convicts - when
transportation was first devised as an alternative to hanging in the early 17th
century convicts were sent to North America or the West Indies. It was the outbreak
of the American Revolution in 1776 that led to the foundation of new penal
colonies in Australia.
There's a very useful guide
on the National Archives website which gives the historical background to transportation
and lists numerous sources - it's a good place to start if you have a
transported convict in your family tree.
'Digital Microfilm' from TNA
The National Archives have created PDF
files of some of their microfilmed records and placed them on their website,
where they are available for download
free of charge. It's worth noting that some of the files are very large (the
average is 400mb).
Let me know if you make any interesting
discoveries!
Wills and probate
There's an excellent research guide to
wills and probate on the TNA
website, but there's another guide that you might find even better on the Dorset
History Centre site.
Are twins good for you?
A research
study at the University of Utah has come up with convincing evidence that
mothers who give birth to twins are healthier - and so are their children.
However, it's not clear that giving birth to twins makes you healthy - it seems
more likely that healthy women are more likely to produce twins.
The data for the Utah study came from
the 1807-1899 period. By contrast the Journal of Sports Medicine reports that sitting
in front of a TV screen (a luxury not available to our 19th century ancestors)
for 6 hours a day can take 5 years off your life. I just hope that the results
don't also apply to those of us who spend most of the day staring at a computer
screen!
But the most encouraging article I've
read recently was in last week's New
Scientist: entitled 'Life begins at 90' it sets out the evidence that once
we reach a certain age the body simply stops ageing. Of course, my wife has
known about this all along - she's been 21 for many years!
LostCousins is free until the end of
August
Although August is traditionally a time
when Britons take their summer holidays, the weather this year isn't being very
kind to us. I've therefore decided to give all LostCousins members subscriber
privileges until the end of August - which means that you have two weeks when
it won't cost you a penny to find and contact your 'lost cousins'!
To make the most of this opportunity focus
on the 1881 Census: because it's the only free census, and the only one we've
been using since we started, more members have entered more relatives from this
census than any other. As a result, when you enter a household there's about 1
chance in 20 that you'll get an immediate match with a 'lost cousin' - which is
pretty good odds considering that it only takes a minute or two.
There are lots of opportunities to make
new connections - 9 out of 10 people reading this newsletter have omitted some
or all of the relatives most likely to link them to their 'lost cousins' (the
chances are you're one of them). There are two very common mistakes: one is to
focus on just one or two lines - but the most frequent error is to enter only
the households where your direct ancestors were living.
Did you realise that the relatives most
likely to link you to your living relatives are not your direct ancestors from
1881, but the brothers, sisters, and cousins who had families of their own at
the time of the census? That's because we have more 2nd cousins than we do 1st
cousins, more 3rd cousins than 2nd cousins, more 4th cousins than 3rd cousins
and so on.
In my experience the best contacts are
3rd and 4th cousins - they're sufficiently close that they share several of
your ancestral lines, but sufficiently distant that they'll have lots of
information to share with you.
Tip:
if the number of 'blood relatives' shown on your My Summary page isn't at least
10 times the number of 'direct ancestors' you're almost certainly missing out.
Click here to
check....
Peter's Tips
If you subscribe to LostCousins between
now and the end of August you can get an extra month free (on top of the two
weeks that are free for all members). When you enter the offer code AUGMENT on the Subscribe page you'll be
offered a subscription that lasts until the end of September 2012, rather than
the usual 12 months - but you won't pay a penny more.
Are you involved in a community project
or local charity? NatWest are offering awards of
£6,000 to hundreds of causes (they supported over 600 last year). Check out the
CommunityForce website for full
details, but don't delay - the closing date is 4th September.
Amazon once again has Family
Tree Maker 2011 Platinum on offer for just £29.99. I don't recommend the
software, but the free 6 month PREMIUM subscription to Ancestry that's included
is worth almost £60 - so it's an incredible way to save on an Ancestry
subscription.
You can get 500 extra Clubcard points (worth
up to £15) when you order £50 or more of wine from Tesco's
online wine store before the end of August using the code XXMPRH (and if you spend over £99 they'll throw in free delivery).
I don't normally drink white wine, nor do I like paying more than £4 a bottle, but
a friend recently introduced me to the Wither Hills Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc,
and I was so impressed that I ordered a case.
If you take your car to the Continent
it's worth stopping off at the Carrefour supermarket
at Cite Europe, between Calais and Boulogne (right
next to the Eurotunnel terminal). For 1.32 Euros a
bottle, the Vin De Pays Des Bouches
Du Rhone was well worth buying (although it's probably
not the sort of wine you'd want to serve up at a dinner party). However, if you
like chocolate, an even better bargain is Carrefour's
own brand 74% dark chocolate - just 49c for 100gm when I was there last week,
yet it's very palatable indeed.
Stop Press
This where any last
minute amendments that I make will be recorded or highlighted.
I hope you've found my newsletter
interesting, and that you find some new cousins between now and the end of the
month.
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins